Regular Meeting

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[23] SPEAKER_33: Yes. Member Martinez?

[26] Maria Huffer: Here.

[27] SPEAKER_33: Member Nguyen?

[28] Maria Huffer: Here.

[29] SPEAKER_33: Member Hill?

[30] Maria Huffer: Here.

[31] SPEAKER_33: Member Grindle? Here. And President Zhang?

[34] SPEAKER_30: Here.

[36] SPEAKER_33: All present.

[36] Bowen Zhang: OK. Moving on to approval of agenda. May I get a motion to approve the agenda as it is?

[45] Elisa Martinez: I move to approve the agenda as is.

[46] Jodi Croce: I'll second.

[50] Bowen Zhang: Moved by Member Martinez, seconded by Member Nguyen. Member Martinez, how do you vote?

[56] Elisa Martinez: Yes.

[57] SPEAKER_30: Member Grindel?

[59] SPEAKER_28: Yes.

[59] SPEAKER_30: Member Hill? Yes.

[61] Bowen Zhang: Member Nguyen?

[62] Jodi Croce: Yes.

[63] Bowen Zhang: My vote is yes as well. Motion carries with five ayes. Public comment on board study session. We do have a study session and we have one, I believe we have one public comment. Ms. Gutierrez, can you bring in the public commenter?

[80] SPEAKER_33: That is correct. The first and only comment for the study session is carry no.

[89] Cary Knoop: Hello, can everybody hear me? Yes, you may begin. Oh, good evening, everybody. Um, great, um, topic for discussion, I think. And, um, you know, I just want to get some personal comments here on this. Um, obviously the superintendent is the, if you can say like the CEO of our organization. So he leads the executive team and he is obviously responsible for the hiring. And in general, I would say that board members. have not much to do with that for particular cases. However, the board does set the standards in terms of the ethics of hiring, who do we hire, what are our procedures, our procedures followed by the book. Are people hired on, I know this person and I work with this person or they hired on objective criteria. I want to emphasize that there's definitely a difference between the public sector and the private sector in this matter because in the private sector, you do have your circuit of friends or people you work with but in the public sector that should be very different. You don't want to give any ring of conflict of interest or to the worst cronyism where you hire people you know or you work with or who knows you had dinner with or what have you. So in the public sector you have to be extra careful and the board is the watchdog here. So yes, the superintendent and his immediate reports do decide on who to hire but at all times the board needs to make sure that standards are adhered to and You know, there may be some problems with that. I don't know. I think one of the most important things is what staff and the superintendent needs to realize is that the board does evaluate the superintendent based on these criteria as well. You know, how well is the hiring done and is the hiring done with the highest ethical standards? And it's not only the hiring, but also the firing or reallocation of people. We just want to make sure that we have the highest standards and board members should be held accountable for that. So my input here is for the board to make sure that if at any point you start having questions about certain standards, why are people fired? Why are people hired? Why are even staff or consultants hired that maybe have personal relationships? These questions need to be asked and so that's my input to this discussion. Thank you very much.

[261] Bowen Zhang: Thank you. Ms. Guderia, do we have any other public comment?

[266] SPEAKER_33: No, that's it for this topic.

[268] Bowen Zhang: Okay. We'll move on to our study session. Superintendent Triplett.

[273] Mark Triplett: Thank you very much President Jeanne. Good evening board members, staff and community. Welcome to this board meeting, the first board meeting after the end of school in 2021-22. So we are really excited to have finished off the year strong and we're looking forward to sharing some information this evening about about how the end of the year went. This study session is about the leadership selection process and it was a board request consensus that we bring forth some information and explain about the leadership selection processes that we have. And so we're looking forward to sharing this with you. And I'm gonna turn it over in a minute to our executive director, Ms. Ingham-Watters, who will begin the presentation. We also have guests from one of our attorney groups, Mr. Seth Eckstein, who also will be joining us and will be supporting the board as we discuss this issue. So without further ado, I'll turn it over to Ms. Singham-Waters.

[353] SPEAKER_42: Good evening. Thank you, Dr. Triplett. Hello to the board. I am the Executive Director of Human Resources, and tonight we'll be talking about the process for leadership selection. Our purpose for this evening will be to review and understand the policies and practices in current board policies, to identify best practices of the board relating to selection processes and policy, and finally, to identify how to best support the mission and vision of the district as it relates to personnel, selection, and retention of leadership. So our agenda this night will begin with a review of Newark's current board policies. It will then move in to human resources processes, not just for Newark, but we will also highlight the policies for our neighboring school districts. We will then move into the role of the board and some rationale behind that and finish up with Q&A discussion and any next steps. So I will go ahead and get started with our first item. Our current board policy in regards to personnel and hiring and selection is best covered in board policy 4000 concepts and rules, and board policy 4111, highlighting recruitment and selection. I have packets for everyone to read and review these two board policies in their entirety. But for the sake of tonight, we will highlight the policies as they relate to our topic personnel. So starting over here on the left side, what is the role of the governing board as it relates to personnel? To elect or reject new employees on the recommendation of the superintendent. In the same board policy 4000, it describes the role of the superintendent, including the major responsibility of nominating people for employment, all certificated and classified personnel. I kept the entire text of this part of the board policy because it describes the working relationship between the board and superintendent as it relates to hiring and employee selection. The board desires to be guided principally by the advice of the superintendent in regard to its relation with district personnel. The board does not desire to exercise its employment responsibilities contrary to the recommendation of the superintendent and will not employ any person unless recommended by the superintendent. If a nomination by the superintendent is not acceptable to the board, the nomination shall be withdrawn. The superintendent shall then present other nominations to the board for consideration. And finally, the board desires that the superintendent conduct the district's personnel relations with fair and sound practices approved by the board. Moving forward to review board policy 4111. This is summarized for your convenience and review this evening. So details of the process include a fair, open and transparent recruitment and selection processes and procedures. And I'll go into more of these in a future slide, but this is just highlighting what the board policy specifies. A review of the job description. Moving into screening processes, interviews, observations, and recommendations. Interview committee as appropriate to rank candidates and recommend finalists. superintendent or designee shall present to the board one candidate. So that is what the board policy as it currently stands read. The next slide or two, we'll talk about the process used at Newark Unified School District. And so We do have a variety of leadership positions. So for our study session tonight, we're going to look at the process, using as an example, a principal selection process. The first thing is a thorough review of the job description, otherwise known as the essential functions of the job. We want to look for any updating that needs to be done, and really making sure that the job description is accurate for the position. We then move into the posting and screening process. Primarily in education, we post on a platform called EdJoin for our positions. And moving into the screening process, looking at things required by the job description or essential functions, for example, credential requirements, years of experience, past positions, the number of years in each of those past positions, looking at letters of recommendations, looking at their interest letter, etc. After the screening process, we would For example, for a principal holds our initial panel. These would include a representation from our Newark Teachers Association, representation from our Classified Labor Group, representation from our Management Association, as well as parents or guardians from the community. And for our secondary principal panel, we like to have student voice. And so student representation may be a part of the principal selection there. Panel one makes recommendations to executive cabinets. Candidates are notified. And panel two is with executive cabinet members. After panel two, we would move forward with a reference check process with the desired candidate. And if that process shows to be strong references in their past position, we will be ready to make an offer at that time, and then a recommendation and board ratification. So this is an example of a principal position. Now, other leadership positions may have some variance in the members of the panel, but more or less, this is the process for leadership selection positions. Going a little bit deeper in the first initial panel, Before we begin our interview schedule for the day, the panel themselves has an orientation with myself as the director. And we talk about a number of things to really set the stage for a fair process for our candidates. The first thing, and actually before the day of the interviews, all of our participants agreed to have the process remain confidential, that they are able to share and participate, but that it is a highly confidential process. We also talk about their responsibility being an advisory role. Their job is to make a recommendation to executive cabinets. They are not the hiring body. And so we really really go into what their role is for panel number one. We talk about the position and what is required of that position. We talk about the district's commitment to non-discrimination in employment. We talk about and review the prepared questions And in our first panel, we stick to that set of questions. We may repeat it for the candidates, but we do not ask for follow-ups or ask for additional information or otherwise ask anything different than the set questions for all of the applicants. We also have tips, do's, and don'ts for interviewing so that the candidates feel comfortable and the panel feels comfortable for our day of interviewing and some guidance there. We use a ranking system as we move through the variety of candidates. And then at the end, we look at our ranking as a group and provide a session for debrief to give their input, collect their strengths, their concerns, and ultimately, as the advisory panel, recommend a number to move forward to the level two panel with executive cabinets. So moving into how Newark and policies match up or differ, we looked at the policies of our neighboring school district. So Fremont Unified and New Haven Unified. Again, the same policy, 4000 and 4111. I have the full text of both districts for both of those for board policies in packet form for our board tonight. And they will also be available in our supplemental board meeting folder. But I wanted to mention upon our analysis of our Tri-City districts, the same belief that the success of district students and programs hinges on effective personnel. They are substantially similar to our New Works policies that I just reviewed. For example, procedures for selection, ensuring equitable fair processes, and the superintendent presenting one candidate to the board. So again, I have prepared the policies of our neighbors in full for you. But really, the summary is that they are substantially similar. And so now, I would like to pass it over to Mr. Eckstein.

[1156] SPEAKER_09: Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Seth Eckstein. I'm an attorney with Fragrant Freeman and Full Frost. It's a pleasure to be here. I wanted to, first of all, start by saying the idea of the board role, that's a huge topic. And, you know, we have a communication staff of former board members who give these kind of trainings and And that's a day-long kind of strategic conversation with board members. So I certainly wouldn't pretend to be covering all the different matters here. But here, just wanted to kind of talk specifically around personnel matters and where the board fits in. And as Ms. Ingham-Watters talked about earlier, you know, the board, The board role often begins in the front end and the back end of personnel matters. The beginning stage of approving vacancies and classifications and job descriptions, and then creating processes for the superintendent and staff to follow, whether it's through policies or resolutions. And then the last part is to facilitate for discussion to allow, and I wholeheartedly agree with the public comment that came right before this discussion around the idea of the board's role in transparency. I think it's very, very important. So all of that begets a question of, well, what's the rationale behind that? And there's sort of three that I wanted to lift up. The first one is the idea is that the board and the bylaw, the policies and the bylaws are meant to honor the collective power of the board over any individual board members. And that's straight from the board bylaws and this idea that individual board members aren't seen as vested in individual authority, that power vests with the board at large. And that the idea is that you have the board as a collective body making decisions. And you'll see, again, as it's laid out in the board bylaws, they're specifically restricting individual board members from exercising any administrative responsibilities with respect to the schools or any services involving school employees. And that is, again, meant to capture this idea that it's the board as a body that's taking action and has that power, not any individual board. The second, and this is from the legal standpoint, sort of a practical consideration is, the policies and the way that this relationship is set up for the board is meant to be protective of individual board members. You may be very familiar with or have seen, when it comes to personnel selection, there are issues of, or always concerns around, the process and making sure that it's handled fairly. And on occasions it turns into a legal dispute. And as much as possible, there's this interest in shielding board members on an individual level from claims around discrimination and bias. If matters go into a lawsuit, the process of a lawsuit can be very invasive with depositions, subpoena witnesses, discovery of documents and forcing witnesses to disclose a lot of information. And the idea is that that should be something that individual board members are shielded from to avoid that sort of invasive inquiry related to lawsuits. And the third one, and this I can speak somewhat to some experience of myself is, when you have individual board members wanting to be involved, there's often a sort of amount of time before all board members want to be involved. And that raises a lot of tricky issues around Brown Act and are there triggers around the duty to disclose or to provide notice if there's a board member present. So the idea is that and having this separation, essentially having the board start at the beginning, finish at the end, but then have the superintendent and personnel manage the day-to-day personnel actions. It's there to protect board members for those different reasons. And then the third one is, and again, this is laid out somewhat in the board bylaws, is the idea of, you know, establishing clear boundaries between what the board does and what the superintendent does. And earlier, Ms. Ingham-Watters talked about the sort of the differences in the two roles. And again, this is called out in the bylaws and the idea that generally speaking, individual board members work with the superintendent and channel questions through the superintendent, whether it's to be put on the board or for response from superintendent staff. And again, at the end of the day, your superintendent is someone who you're going to want to evaluate based on certain parameters and having a clean line between what is the responsibility of the board and what is the responsibility of the superintendent really helps allow the board to, at the end of the day, reach assessments around the superintendent's authority. And I'll just, I didn't put it in the slide, but, you know, and there's also obviously education code that sort of spells that out more to just to highlight, you know, the different roles about, that the superintendent performs. And obviously all of this is under the, you know, the authority of the board. So, you know, so where does that leave us in terms of, you know, just kind of to summarize, we should be very clear that at the end of the day, the board as a body has authority to, a very broad authority to do what it wants. And both traditionally and as seen in board policies and in other school districts, it's typically there, the board is getting involved in that beginning stage, setting the parameters by which the superintendent carries out his agenda.

[1601] Mark Triplett: All right. Thank you, Mr. Eckstein and Ms. Ingham-Watters. So that concludes the presentation, and we wanted to then turn it over to any questions that board members may have for any of the three of us. I will just I'll just conclude by saying that, as you saw in the presentation, the district and the superintendent has the ability to either a point or or form hiring committee or panel. The way that we are trying to do things is how Ms. Ingham-Watters illustrated in her example. While a superintendent could appoint people to different positions, we really believe that the selection of leaders needs to be a community-based decision and needs to involve stakeholders and not just be a unilateral decision by a superintendent. So that's sort of an added guiding philosophy, if you will, behind the way that we think is the right way, the transparent way, the fair and the openest way to conduct these processes.

[1682] SPEAKER_30: Okay. Member Guendel.

[1688] Terrence Grindall: Superintendent, I just wanted to follow up on that comment, that point directly. Should that, is there a place for that good practice to actually make it into our policies? And obviously not tonight, but is that something we can work towards? Because I would agree with you, it's a good practice and I'm wondering why it wouldn't be part of our policies.

[1711] Mark Triplett: Yeah, thank you. I think that definitely is something that could be incorporated.

[1721] SPEAKER_30: Member Hill.

[1725] Aiden Hill: And Mr Epstein, thank you for your presentation. I appreciated it. Just by way of a little bit of background. So I've spent most of my career in business. I actually started out working for a partnership, a very large partnership called Accenture. It's not a partnership anymore, but it used to be. And I've worked at a number of different partnerships. And also in a private capacity, I've actually worked with a lot of Fortune 500 C-level executives and also their boards. But I'm just like a little bit confused about this because I'm just seeing something here that just doesn't make sense and maybe you can help me. So I'm curious, you work for a law firm and you have partners, right? Sure. And so in many respects, partners are kind of like a board of directors, right? They have collective authority. They don't have individual authority, correct? Sure. Sure. OK. And what I'm just a little bit confused by, and again, I've never seen this in corporate America, is either at a board level or at a lower level. In your partnership, when you've got, and I don't know your structure, if you've got directors or who are under your partners, if they're hiring somebody to work for them, do they not consult the partners at all in the hiring process?

[1822] SPEAKER_09: Well, I guess I'm not sure I'm seeing your question. I mean, they would be consulting with, the staff just like they would be consulting with the board, both at that initial stage and at the final stage of the recommendation. Some private organizations have, you know, CEOs, which I think are very much similar to how the, you know, the superintendent operates in a public structure. I will say though that the analogy between private and public sector only goes so far I think at the end of the day it is because we have an elected body with rules that are prescribed not by an individual charter or you know, for example, you're familiar obviously with as a private in a private sector you have your Corporate bylaws and you have your articles and corporation in a public sector You have you have the education code and you have what the policies are spelled out in the board policies. So those are the, you know, those are the driving authorities. So, and they're different, you know, in terms of what authorities are provided or spelled out. under those authorities compared to what you might see in a... Maybe my question was a little bit too broad.

[1914] Aiden Hill: Let me maybe be more specific. So let's maybe set aside your partnership or whatever. One of the things that we've currently been going through is at a cabinet level, and I would 100% agree that the board shouldn't be involved in every hiring decision at the district. But at a cabinet level, at the leadership level, I believe it should. And the logic behind that is, have you ever seen a situation where you have an employee, right, so you're the boss, and you have an employee, and the employee decides that there's an open rec, they're going to hire somebody. And the employee basically tells you, you know, I got it covered. You know, you've hired me. I'm going to make sure everything is done appropriately. And I'm not going to consult you as I evaluate candidates. I'm not going to share resumes. I'm not going to discuss any of this. I'm not going to involve you in any interviews. But I am going to come and ask you to sign off since ultimately you control the budget. I'm going to ask you to sign off. And I won't introduce you to the employee that you're signing off to until after the sign off. So have you ever seen that happen in a normal business?

[1999] SPEAKER_09: Well, I'll be honest, because I focus exclusively with public schools, that's my... Does that happen in your company?

[2007] Elisa Martinez: Again, you'd have to ask my... Point of order, President Zhang, if I may.

[2014] Bowen Zhang: I guess the direct question is just, I think the reason we have this request for this meeting is, could the board member be involved in the interview process? I think we'll just make it more straightforward. Is there any, if the board member can be involved in the interview process, what will be the role of the board member? Can he sit on an interview panel? And what will be some potential downside of that?

[2038] Elisa Martinez: Sure. Sorry. I'm sorry, President Zhang, I've had my hand up and I just wanted to bring something up. I think that we can play in a hypothetical, but I think coming back to the role that we play and and Missing in Water is reminding us and bringing up and sharing board policy, which is what we do and what we decide and what direction we give. So I think any questions should be in the context of not hypotheticals, but rather within the existing board policies and direction that we've given. So with that, I think that it's important that we are reminded as a board that Newark Unified the Board of Education of Newark Unified is infamous through the famous grand jury report, right? And I think, and I can certainly quote, anyone can pull it up right now. But one of the main findings from the grand jury report is the willingness or just kind of a couple of individual board members running rogue and not abiding by the board policies. And so I think what I would like to remind us is that that's what we're here to discuss, not hypotheticals. So I think that's the question at hand.

[2129] SPEAKER_30: Member Grundell?

[2133] Terrence Grindall: I really just wanted to get into the queue. I think Member Hill might have been before me. I just wanted to go on record that I think the process as we have it where the board is not involved directly in the process is the right way to do things. We hire the superintendent. He's responsible for running the district. It's our job to hold him accountable for that. I believe that our process as laid out in our existing policy is the right way to go. We should not be involved in the process except in the ratification as it's structured now.

[2171] Bowen Zhang: I see Member Nguyen raising her hand. Member Nguyen?

[2177] SPEAKER_39: I just wanted to concur and I'm totally in agreement with what Member Grandel had mentioned that we are the board, and it is at the discretion of the superintendent, and we are to hire staff, and we do hold him accountable for the decisions in the evaluations at the end of the year and at the end of the year once those processes have been completed.

[2213] Bowen Zhang: Member Hill?

[2221] Aiden Hill: Sorry, a couple of follow-up questions for Mr. Eckstein. And so what I'm hearing, and it sounds like my fellow board members are interested in upholding the policy, right? And so it's a democracy and ultimately the majority wins. But my question is, it doesn't sound like other than board policy, which we the board can change, that there's anything in Ed Code or anything that would prevent the board from establishing a hiring committee and appointing a member to serve on that committee, no different than any other committee we have, audit, et cetera. Is that a fair statement, Mr. Eckstein?

[2262] SPEAKER_09: That is accurate, that there's broad authority to the board. Obviously, you have to be complying with the Brown Act if there are multiple board members, and that would trigger any sort of notice requirement.

[2273] Aiden Hill: Right. And we would be held to kind of the same standard that we are held when we serve on any committee, like the audit committee, where we may be a representative, but we're not, we're not, we don't have the authority of the entire board. Anything that the committee discusses ultimately, I mean, you know, especially when it comes to hiring the superintendent will present a recommendation to the board. and the board will ultimately make a decision on that. But again, there's nothing to prevent us from having a committee and having a board member serve on that committee.

[2309] SPEAKER_09: Correct.

[2310] SPEAKER_28: Okay.

[2311] Bowen Zhang: Well, Mr. Eckstein, can you follow up on one of my key questions that I raised? I think it's sort of the point of contention for this meeting. Can a board sit on an interview panel? And what will be the role of that board member if the board member decides to sit on an interview panel? And is there any potential legal exposure for that board member? Any personal liability on that board member if he insists to sit on the interview panel? So the first... I'll give you a little bit of background. So roughly two years ago, when we were hiring a high school principal, the then superintendent actually invited two board members to sit on the interview panel as an observer. So we obviously couldn't make any decisions. So we'll just observe and then get some of our feedback, but ultimately that we don't really want to appear to dictate the superintendent when it comes to who to hire for the principal. So Is there anything wrong with that process? Or like, just back to the, should the board sit on the interval panel? And if it is, what is the role? What is the legal exposure there?

[2378] SPEAKER_09: Sure, that's a great question. So the first answer is, if the board policies allow it, a board, individual board trustee could technically sit on one of those panels. But you raise an important point, and that goes something one of my slides earlier is, Absolutely, that individual board member now exposes themselves to individual liability or liability through their participation on that committee. So for example, if, and this sometimes happens, if there's a feeling like this, that one of the candidates was discriminated against, there was bias, there was a conflict of interest, and we really haven't talked about that, all of those, create legal exposure for that individual, for the votes that were on that board. And that's part of why, in general, it is recommended practice to have boards at the beginning of the process and the end, but to have the superintendent and his staff involved in sort of the day-to-day selection of the candidates.

[2452] Bowen Zhang: when you told that individual board members was being exposed, personal liability by sitting on that interim panel. I mean, how is that any different from any other member that sit on that committee, like CSTA representative, NTA representative? Wouldn't these people also have personal liability being exposed by being involved in the interim process?

[2475] SPEAKER_09: Yeah, that's a good question. There's very similar, and I think it we'd have to kind of look at the sort of specific facts of what, you know, what might come out of that. I mean, one of the things that's different is that a CSCA member isn't technically connected to the district, right, that they're a sort of a third party. But I think there's a

[2502] Bowen Zhang: Oh, actually, when I mention CSA, I'm talking about an employee of the district. Oh, an employee, yeah. Yeah, because many of the people that sit on the panel, they are employees of the district plus some parents.

[2513] SPEAKER_09: Yes, yes. So I think there's the same idea, the same concern that you have. They are now sort of in equal footing of they're just people on this panel who are now advising and are involved in that process. And their background, their knowledge of the situation that creates the exposure.

[2536] Mark Triplett: If I may, Mr. Eckstein, I believe the, could you speak a little bit about the possible risk of then that board member is, if the board member is then involved in hearing any sort of complaints later on, then what would be the conflict there for that situation? So if you have a board member who was both involved in the panel and then later on, if a candidate were to raise up a complaint that was going to the board, then would there be a conflict there, I guess, is the question for that board member who both sat on the panel and now is actually acting as almost like in a more role of making a decision around some sort of personnel complaint.

[2601] SPEAKER_09: Sure, sure. So it would certainly depend on the district board policy. And I have to take a closer look on the complaint process. But generally, in a situation like that, I think it would pose a conflict to have someone both adjudicating in a certain way a complaint that were to make its way up internally if that person was also on the panel in that kind of situation. it would probably be advisable for the board member to recuse him or herself from the review of that complaint.

[2643] SPEAKER_30: Member Martinez?

[2646] Elisa Martinez: Member Hill had his hand up first. Go ahead.

[2652] Penny DeLeon: Sure.

[2654] Elisa Martinez: OK. So thank you for that, Mr. Eckstein. And I think coming back to President Zhang's earlier question and example he cited, both he and I participated. And so I think we were kind of coming in with some of the past practices that had historically been there. But I mean, very quickly you learn that it can get messy. So I think that's some of the history. But I think something that key that member Zhang pointed out is at the discretion of the superintendent, we were invited. It was not a, hey, you must do this because that is now no longer in compliance with the board policy. So I wanted to make sure that's a very clear distinction.

[2704] SPEAKER_09: That's correct, right? Because under the current board policy, the process is best with the superintendent to And so if he were to make that decision, you're right, then it would be appropriate. But otherwise, you would need to amend the board policy. Thank you.

[2725] SPEAKER_30: Member Hill.

[2729] Aiden Hill: Yeah, thank you. Yeah. And so and President Zhang has made a comment that's like got me worried now about liability. And so if we kind of extend that concept, Mr. Eckstein. So I serve on the audit committee right now. So if there's an issue, now, number one, I would like to say this is a highly unlikely scenario because Ms. Dela Cruz is an awesome chief business officer and she's got her hand on, or she's got her finger on the pulse of everything that's going on. But if she's absent one day and all of a sudden we have somebody commit fraud, and there is a material finding of that, and that gets out, and there's legal action that's taken against the district. Would I have some liability exposure as serving on the audit committee?

[2779] SPEAKER_09: You know, I will say in very broad strokes that there is always that concern. It's very hard for me, and this is the lawyers being careful about, you know, the devil's always in the details of what ends up happening. So it's hard for me to say with certainty, but that's always a concern if there's a, sort of depending on the role that the board member is taking, if they've sort of, they're extending themselves beyond the traditional, being at the dais in a group setting voting, that there's risk involved.

[2816] Aiden Hill: And let me ask you, this is maybe more directed at Ms.dela Cruz. And so my experience working with corporate boards, but it could be different here, is that boards are always potentially, there's a liability in serving on a board. But boards have directors and officers insurance, right, to protect against that. And I would imagine that we also have DNO insurance to protect our board. Is that correct, Ms.dela Cruz?

[2847] SPEAKER_13: Under our insurance coverage, all of- You're on mute.

[2866] Bowen Zhang: Actually, on the screen, yeah, she's not on mute, but I'm not sure, I can't hear her from the audio.

[2888] Aiden Hill: So to repeat for those that didn't hear so, Ms. Dela Cruz confirmed that we do have directors and officers insurance to protect the board in liability situations.

[2901] SPEAKER_39: Um. Thank you, Mr X team. Um, I do have a quick question in terms of our recruitment and selection process the way that we currently have it right now for the first. The panelists on interview panelists. Uh, number one. It includes members from our teachers union, which are teachers in the district. Um and our CSCA members, which are classified employees in the district and our, um NEWMA group, which is our management group, which is also employees of the district. And then the only external panelists are parents. So if we were to develop a fair and open and transparent recruitment process selection, would you say that best practices, in terms of best practices, should we include external panelists from other districts, other teachers from other districts? or instead of just parents, or instead of just internal panelists sitting, or a combination of both?

[2971] SPEAKER_09: It very much depends on the interests of the board. I think, and again, this is more from the legal perspective, that the more you have an internal process and folks that you have some sort of oversight over, I think there's a strength in both ensuring confidentiality and knowing essentially, you know, who's on that panel and feeling confident about who's on that panel. I think you always just have a little bit of this fear of the unknown when you go beyond the district. But I also understand why in important decisions like administrators, why you would want to have parents weighing in. But I haven't seen it um to be the case where they go beyond the district to say other school districts, you know bring folks in because then I think um, um, yeah, it I think I think it it's seems like it would be um, straying a bit far from the sort of the the community itself, but Um, you know again this goes back to my early point at the end of the day It's you know, it's the board discretion on sort of how they want to set that up in terms of the original policy then the superintendent on how he wants to execute on that process.

[3052] Bowen Zhang: Before I move on to the other two, I guess coming back to my question from Mr. Eckstein, is there really no difference between an individual employee being appointed by the superintendent to be on that interim panel and a board member who who volunteer, I mean, and a board member who sits on that interview panel when it comes to leadership selection process. Because I'm assuming there gotta be some differences between an individual employee being appointed by the superintendent on the panel and a board member who is part of a board that's above the superintendent to be sitting on that interview panel for personnel process, right?

[3089] SPEAKER_09: Well, I think the concern is particularly when it comes to both the optics and the politics of it. In terms of the legality of it, or the sort of the legal exposure of it, you know, I think at the end of the day, there probably isn't too much of a difference, but when it comes to, you know, you have essentially a board member, an individual board member on one of those panels and no other board member is privy to that information and aware of it, I think there's, you know, You know, I think it sets up a situation where you have an imbalance of information that I think can be problematic.

[3136] Bowen Zhang: Delacruz, Miss Delacruz.

[3149] Marie dela Cruz: Right now? Oh, okay. No, I just wanted to clarify that question about insurance. The board is covered as part of our liability insurance, not specifically with what Mr. Hill said, directors, there's an admission that I can't say for certain specifically, but in terms of liability insurance, yes.

[3176] SPEAKER_30: Member Grindel.

[3186] Terrence Grindall: I wanted to concur with the gist of President Zhang's point that there's an inequality. A board member is one of five that employs a superintendent, that's at least in perception, having sort of more authority over the superintendent. and it creates at least a perception of undue influence by one board member. So I think that's where you were getting to, President Jiang, and I concur, that's a big concern of mine.

[3219] Bowen Zhang: Yes, so the reason I brought that up was like, I mean, legally, we already said the board has pretty broad discretion when it comes to being involved in the interview process. So the reason I brought this one up is two years ago, there was a district employee that when I had a one-on-one private conversation with the superintendent that we think is underperforming. And the superintendent was literally, the previous superintendent was telling me, a certain board member pushing to hire this person. So when you have that kind of stuff, is that, who are you holding, who do you hold accountable for that hiring decision? Is that a superintendent or is that that board member? So that was the reason that I brought that, you have a board member that got on to the interview. So you sort of give the superintendent a leeway you have a higher, happens to be around higher.

[3267] SPEAKER_30: Remember Hill?

[3274] Aiden Hill: I'm not sure I agree with this train of logic because we've talked over and over again about how the authority of the board comes from the collective body, right? And so we all have private one-on-ones with the superintendent and we certainly have viewpoints and we can advocate for those. And one could argue that since we're each one of the superintendent's bosses that could have some influence over his thinking. But at the end of the day, it's the board and their collective decision that makes it. And so I don't see where there's any conflict of interest or undue influence. This is a matter of course around how our relationship, the board members with the superintendent at all levels.

[3327] Elisa Martinez: Yeah, I'm watching the clock, President Zhang, but I think, you know what, I wanted to just bring it back to the presentation that staff has brought forward. I think, you know, we do need to talk about the fact that the board policy currently in use, I've heard a couple other board members say that, hey, this makes sense. It's consistent, I think, with the intent. The process that we're following is consistent with the intent of the board policy. So I just wanted to, again, thank you for that and just reiterate that I think that we've got a good process. We've got a method to hold our superintendent accountable. And I think that what I'm hearing from the majority of the board is that we support the current practice and that we should continue with the existing board policy as is.

[3384] Bowen Zhang: I guess my thing about this is, I do think that it might be because during the presentation, it looks like the board can be consulted when it comes to the job description of an individual physician. What about the board approving the job description or the criteria we're looking at for a key executive cabinet hire, or even that is out of window? because we obviously don't really need to get involved in the personnel selection process, but let's say we're hiring a high school principal, does the board not have the discretion to at least consult with the superintendent saying, hey, this is the list of qualification we're looking for for a high school principal or whatever principal? Mr. Eckstein or?

[3430] SPEAKER_09: Yeah, so again, what the board would do is they would provide, so the board would approve board job descriptions and and if there's a a The board can can raise to the superintendent to to you know suggestions around the the job description itself, but the board wouldn't or individual board members wouldn't it wouldn't be appropriate for them to be Sort of dictating, you know the the job description itself What about collectively? So collectively, again, the board has the discretion on how it defines, has broad discretion on how it defines job description. So it could put to a vote to make that, but it would be, again, it would be something as part of the collective body, not the individual.

[3491] Bowen Zhang: Okay, thank you. Watching the clock, I think we're past 6 p.m. Thank you, Mr. Eckstein. It's a great presentation and Q&A session. And I think that's pretty much it for our study session. And moving on to a closed session, do we have any public comment on the unclosed session item? Ms. Gutierrez?

[3511] SPEAKER_33: No public comment.

[3513] Bowen Zhang: Okay. So In a closed session, we'll be discussing item 4.2, Public Employee Discipline Dismissal Release. 4.3, Conference with Labor Negotiator, Employee Organizations, NTNCSEA. 4.4, Conference with Labor Negotiator, Employee Group, NEWMA, Unrepresented Supervisors, and Contracted Management. 4.5, Conference with Legal Counsel, Anticipated Litigation. And 4.6, we'll be back to open session around seven. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you in a bit. Thank you all.

[6643] SPEAKER_42: All right.

[6697] SPEAKER_33: The only reason I'm asking because if you do then so you can present the cops. If not, then you only present it in the afternoon. And then we'll present it in the morning.

[6805] Diego Torres: What would you like to do? I just want to take order.

[7020] Bowen Zhang: Okay, we're back to open session. Member Martinez will be dialing from home. First item, Pledge of Allegiance. Member Grindel will lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Ms. Gutierrez, please turn on the flag. Everybody else, please stand with me.

[7049] Terrence Grindall: and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

[7061] Bowen Zhang: Thank you, Member Grundahl. Report of closed session item. On closed session item 4.2, public employee discipline, dismissal, and release, the board took action to release and reassign a certain certificate administrator at the end of 2020 and 2021 school year. The vote was unanimous. Next student report, Superintendent Triplett.

[7087] Mark Triplett: Thank you, President Jun, and welcome to our student board member, Mr. Salemi. Ms. Gutierrez, I believe we have our, do we have our student representatives from the junior high today?

[7100] SPEAKER_33: No, sorry. Today we'll have, we'll start off with our student representative from Alt Ed. And let me just confirm. We'll actually wait a little bit. If we can start with our high school student member.

[7119] Mark Triplett: Excellent. So I'll turn it over to student board member Salemi.

[7125] SPEAKER_03: Thank you, Dr. Triplett. Firstly, I want to congratulate all of the students on all of the amazing achievements they have made this school year. And congratulations to the class of 2021. There's not much to say in terms of a student report as the school year has ended. Therefore, I wanted to use this time to reflect on this past year as student board member, especially since this will be my last meeting. I want to take this time to thank all the students again for giving me the opportunity and honor of representing them in this capacity. I had many goals coming into this role, including shedding a light on racial disparities, creating a conversation around mental health, normalizing student involvement in things like the LCAP, collecting data, and amplifying the voice of those who have been forgotten. And for the most part, the student body and I have accomplished and begun the hard work that goes into solving these problems. But what makes me so happy as I leave this role is that maybe students are seen as leaders and people who want to play an active role in their education, that we have been heard and our problems hold importance to administrators at this level. I know that once I leave this position, the amazing student leaders that fill this role after me will be able to further the conversations begun this year, and they will not limit themselves to things limit the things that they can accomplish. Some of the work and demands that students push for and want this year have been unprecedented, and I'm proud, and I'm so proud of us. This work isn't easy, but I do it because it's important, and my ask and hope for moving forward are that students are treated as equal partners and stakeholders within Newark. It has been such a rewarding experience this past year, and I want to say to all the students out there, please continue to push for change and grow into leaders who uplift each other. Thank you.

[7228] Bowen Zhang: You know, student board member, I want to take some time to thank you for your service in the past year and I mean, this is a very unusual year, and I'm glad that we all finally can meet you in person today. And we're also a little bittersweet to see you go because the first time we meet you in person is your last board meeting. And I thank you for your service, and I wish you all the best in your future endeavors. And other board members that want to chime in? Member Martinez?

[7266] Elisa Martinez: Yes, thank you, President Zhang. Student Board Member Salemi, I just wanted to tell you that I feel very blessed and very fortunate to have shared the virtual dais with you. You are really, I mentioned this to you a little earlier, I mean, just the words that come out of your mouth are just, they're so wise and they're so well grounded that it's just been wonderful for you to be that representative of your fellow students. And again, I just know you're going to do wonderful and fantastic things in your life, not only for yourself, but for your fellow man. So I'm very, very, very fortunate to have worked with you. Thank you so much for everything you've done for us. Thank you.

[7326] SPEAKER_30: Member Goodell.

[7329] Terrence Grindall: Yeah, I want to second the comments of my fellow board members. Mr. Salemi, you're an amazing and inspiring person. We look forward to following your fantastic career as you go forward and really appreciate the energy you put into this effort and excited by what you bring to our world. So thank you.

[7353] Bowen Zhang: Thank you. Member Nguyen.

[7357] SPEAKER_39: Thank you, Student Member Salemi. I am very, I'm sad that you're not continuing on for another year. I know that you have such a huge heart and grit, determination, and you want to make positive changes for our community and especially for our students. So I would like to honor you and Really, I heard you and I want to be able to also continue that partnership with the students and see and view all students as equal partners as we move forward in improving the district and making our district more equitable and also uplifting all of our students and our family and our community. That's in part by the inspiration that you have shed onto us and we just really appreciate all your hard work and effort throughout this year. So thank you so much.

[7418] SPEAKER_03: Thank you.

[7420] Bowen Zhang: Thank you. Superintendent, do you have anything to say to the student board member?

[7424] Mark Triplett: Yes, thank you President Jun. Member Salemi we I think President Jun used the word bittersweet and I really agree. It has been such an honor to have you on this board to learn from you, and to, to collaborate with you. You are a such a strong advocate and a champion for equity justice. mental health and wellness. And I know that you are going to continue to really push on those things and really advocate for, not just for yourself, but for all of your peers. And so keep speaking up, keep telling us, keep pushing us because your voice and the voice of the students is what's most important. And so thank you.

[7470] SPEAKER_03: Thank you.

[7473] Bowen Zhang: Superintendent Triplett, next student report.

[7479] Mark Triplett: Yes, Ms. Gutierrez, did we have the other student leaders?

[7484] SPEAKER_33: I'm going to ask to see if we wait a couple of minutes if the student logs on and then I will let you know when they join. Otherwise, right now we can move on to the next topic.

[7497] Mark Triplett: All right, very good. Could I just say, I did have that chance to see Miss Ristu being promoted from the junior high. And it was wonderful to see her in person after seeing her on the screen this whole year and her reports to the board. So that was a real treat.

[7517] Bowen Zhang: OK. So I guess we'll wait for the, we'll move on, wait for the other student member to log in. Next item will be employee organizations. Ms. Gutierrez, can you bring in the speakers?

[7534] SPEAKER_33: Yes, for NTA. Give me one second. They're not available yet. So we're going to start off with CSCA. Ms. Sue Yusis. And just one second as we move her over. Apologies for the delay. Sorry, just a little bit longer. Okay, Ms. Eustace, you can unmute and you may begin. Hi, Ms. Eustace, if you hear us, you may begin. And we apologize. She may be having some difficulties on her end. Ms. Eustis, we will leave your microphone available to us if you're read out. She might have logged out. So we'll move on. And then hopefully, I think she might be able to log back in. We'll move on to our next speaker, which is Neuma, Ms. Leonor Rebosura. Sorry, one second. While we get Ms. Leonor Rebosura. Okay, and Ms. Rivasura, you may begin.

[7685] Leonor Rebosura: Good evening. Good evening, President Chung, members of the School Board, Superintendent Triplett, and the Executive Cabinet. I'm Leonor Rebosura, member-at-large of NEWMA Board, Director of Newark Teacher Induction and Science. Tonight, I'd like to give you updates on the activities of Teacher Induction and Elementary Science and highlight two outstanding NEWMA members, Craig Ashmore and Laura Johnson. Though it was a most incredible and historic year in induction, I'm so pleased to report that with the excellent guidance and support of the mentors, 20 candidates successfully completed their program this year. We submitted 11 recommendations for clear credentials. One of the items the CTC Commission Accreditation requires induction programs to collect data on is the impact of induction to its participants' teaching practice. This evidence is one of the questions candidates respond to at the end of the year in their individual learning plan. The question is, how has induction impacted your teaching? Here is a sampling of responses. The teacher induction program has helped me reflect and grow as a teacher. The program has held me accountable to develop a tool that I will continue to use in my career. This teacher induction program has been rigorous and also effective. The weekly meeting sessions with my mentor helped me discuss my teaching strategies, practices in the classroom, and also get suggestions and guidance from a veteran teacher. The most beneficial aspect of this process has been to stop, reflect, and rethink at regular intervals to make my teaching more effective and meaningful. Participating in teacher induction has completely changed my approach in the classroom. I believe this process made me do an immense amount of reflection. The reflection mixed with the research and my mentor conversations helped me see areas I could grow in. Participating in teacher induction has helped me grow as a professional by helping me take a close look at my current teaching practice and think critically about what I can do to continue to grow and improve. Through my action research, I was able to learn more about barriers to attendance that may create challenges for students, different ways to measure and encourage engagement and how to support students and help build strong connections, even during the time of distance learning. These statements, and many others we have on file, reveal how the goals of teacher induction were met this school year, despite the challenges of virtual teaching, learning, and mentoring. Lessons learned by the science resource teachers. We asked the elementary science resource teachers to identify a challenge they experienced and how they resolved it. Here's some of their answers. Organizing materials for hands-on experiences was very labor-intensive, but we did it anyway. It increased student engagement and interest. When kids didn't pick up the materials, we tried to deliver these to their homes and tried not to take it personally. Students were not turning in their assignments, so I offered choice options and improved completion. To adjust to teaching remotely, we created videos and slides which were then posted on Google Classroom so that students could review the lesson later to gain a better understanding in case they missed taking notes during the synchronous session or they missed their class. As a result of the continued collaboration with Bayside and Elementary Science Partnership, we accomplished the following from March to May. On March 31 and May 11, consultants from the Elementary Science Partnership based in ACOE presented Let's Give Them Something to Talk About in Science. 20 to 26 kinder to sixth grade teachers and two paraprofessionals participated in this two-part workshop, which focused on sensemaking, discourse, and science integration. Based on the feedback after each session, this is what we know how teachers apply their ideas and strategies to science. 5E lesson plan, begin a lesson with observations and discourse. use of scent and stem, and use of modeling to capture a student's idea through pictures and captions. With guidance and facilitation by the Bayside team, the District Science Leadership Team began to draft an environmental literacy vision supported by a K-12 action plan, which we will continue to develop in the fall. Tonight, we would also like to highlight two outstanding NEWMA members, Craig Ashmore and Laura Johnson. Craig Ashmore is the department chair of physical education. He began his career with Newark Memorial High School, first as a student teacher 34 years ago, and joined the faculty the following year. He is the coach of the men's basketball team, which is ranked top 10 in the East Bay. When asked what he likes about NUSD, it would be students and the staff, he replied. And about Newark, the city, it would be the fact that it's a small town and the student athletes. Laura Johnson has served Newark Unified School District for 10 years. She's currently the Administrative Assistant in the Human Resources Department. Her main responsibilities include working with the Department of Justice, Department of Transportation, and Department of Labor for fingerprinting of applicants and volunteers, random drug testing for employees, and monthly labor reports. She also coordinates recruiting and hiring for management positions. and schedules the annual Kenan Safe School training for all employees. In addition, she updates board policies, procedures, collective bargaining agreements, employee handbook, and the website. The thing she likes most about her job are the people. Thank you. Have a good evening.

[8050] Bowen Zhang: Thank you for your report, Mrs. Riversura. And Ms. Gutierrez, do we have any other representative from the employee group?

[8060] SPEAKER_33: Coming on? No, at this point, they're not there as attendees, so we can move on. Just one last look. OK. Nope, nothing there.

[8071] Bowen Zhang: OK. Moving on to item 9.1, Recreation and Celebration. 9.1, Certificate and Classified Employee of the Year, Superintendent Triplett.

[8082] Mark Triplett: Thank you President Jun. We're very excited for this part of the agenda. So every year the district honors a certificated and a classified employee of the year. And it is our belief that Newark Unified School District is honored to have so many highly qualified employees who dedicate and share their time, caring, compassion, skills, and wealth of knowledge with the students and families in the city of Newark. Eligibility was extended to all classified and certificated employees in the district. And we're very excited to have our two honorees here this evening. So I'm gonna turn it over to Ms. Ingham-Watters, who is with our celebrities right now.

[8128] SPEAKER_42: Good evening to the Newark community. I'm Catheerine Ingham-Watters, Executive Director of Human Resources, and it is my great honor and privilege to acknowledge these two amazing staff members of the NUSD team. I'd like to present Miss Alondra Beltran as our Classified Employee of the Year. Miss Alondra, as she is known, in the classroom has been a special education aide at Newark Unified since 2013. She has done an exceptional job working with her students and is known to be a positive person who faces challenges in an exemplary manner. In the words of her nominator, she treats everyone with compassion and understanding and is totally professional inside and outside of work. On behalf of the Newark Unified School District's Board of Trustees, as well as our Executive Cabinet and the entire Newark community, we are thrilled to present Ms. Alondra Beltran a Classified Employee of the Year Award. Congratulations. I am now thrilled to present Miss Katherine Sheving as our Certificated Employee of the Year. Miss Sheving has been a teacher at Newark Unified for over 30 years. In addition to providing outstanding individualized instruction to her students. She has mentored many colleagues and student teachers over the years with her expertise and knowledge about student learning. Catherine has been a part of groups that provide grants to our teachers in Newark, as well as providing donations to local community organizations like Viola of Life and Love Newark. On behalf of the Newark Unified School District's Board of Trustees, as well as Executive Cabinet and the entire Newark Unified School District community, we are thrilled to present Mrs. Catherine Chevy as our Certificated Teacher of the Year. Congratulations.

[8308] Bowen Zhang: Hey, thank you so much. Congratulations on our award recipient and thank them for their services. Moving on to the next item, retirement and longevity honorees, Superintendent Triplett.

[8325] SPEAKER_33: Oh, sorry, go ahead, continue.

[8327] Bowen Zhang: Yeah, Superintendent moving on to retirement and longevity honorees, Superintendent Triplett.

[8334] Mark Triplett: Thank you, President Jhun. So this is another point where we want to honor some amazing employees that have dedicated their virtually their entire professional life to serving Newark, Newark Unified and the students and families. So I'm going to turn it back over to Miss Ingham-Watters to talk about this.

[8358] SPEAKER_42: Hello again. The district would like to recognize employees who have retired this year. It is with the deepest appreciation and gratitude we honor and thank them for their years of dedication and service to the Newark community. The district would also like to recognize employees who have been part of the Newark family for 25 years or longer. These employees are an essential part of our team, and their continual vital contribution to the district promote success in meeting our district's mission, vision, and values. Their combined years of service for all retirees and longevity award winners, 369 years of service to the students of Newark Unified. would like to present a retirement and longevity presentation to honor our employees.

[8444] SPEAKER_45: I got a feeling

[8464] SPEAKER_43: That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good, good night I feel it That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good, good night I wanna be there That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good, good night I wanna be there Tonight's the night Let's live it up I got my money Let's spin it up Go out and smash it Like oh my God Jump out that sofa Let's kick it off I know that we'll have a ball If we get down and go out and just lose it all I feel stressed out, I wanna let it go Let's go way out, spaced out and losing all control Fill up my cup Mazel tov, look at her dancin', just take it off Let's paint the town, we'll shut it down Let's burn the roof, and then we'll do it again Let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it And do it, and do it, let's live it up and do it That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good, good night Tonight's the night Let's live it up I got my money Let's spin it up Go out and smash it Like oh my god Jump out that sofa Let's kick it Fill up my cup Mazel tov Look at her dancing Just take it Let's paint the town We'll shut it down Let's burn the roof And then we'll do it again Let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, let's do it And do it, and do it, let's live it up And do it, and do it, and do it, do it, do it Let's do it, let's do it, let's do it, do it, do it Here we come, here we go, we gotta rock. Easy come, easy go, now we on top. Feel the shot, body rock, rock it, don't stop. Round and round, up and down, all round the clock. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Friday, Saturday, Saturday in the sun. Get, get, get, get, get with us. That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good, good night, baby That tonight's gonna be a good night That tonight's gonna be a good night

[8751] SPEAKER_42: We presented today by special delivery a crystal apple with our logo and a thank you message for our recipients to display in their homes or maybe in their home offices now. So we just wanted to share that happy news and give them our very best, whether they're retiring or continuing to support our families in Newark. So thank you very much for this opportunity and congratulations to all of the classified and certificated staff honored this evening.

[8792] Bowen Zhang: Yeah, thank you for all the employees who have been with us for so long and who have served our community and our district so honorably. Moving on, I believe Ms. Gutierrez, Ms. Eustace is back online, so I think we can bring her in.

[8807] SPEAKER_33: That's correct. Mr. Rose, if you can please try to bring Ms. Eustace back. Hi, Ms. Eustace, can you hear us? Hi, Ms. Eustace, if you hear us, you can unmute your microphone.

[8833] SPEAKER_11: I apologize. I've had nothing but Comcast problems for two days. I would like to start and hopefully get through reading a petition that we have sent to the trustees of the board. CSCA classified staff are the front line essential workers and have been the majority of us working and doing our duties in person during this difficult school year. If it were not for classified employees, student meals wouldn't have been served. Mitigation such as cleaning and petition installations would not have occurred. IT classified staff kept troubleshooting for the district on technology issues. Clerical staff continue to order materials, pay bills, keep students' data systems going. and keeping the school district procedures flowing. If it were not for classified staff, the district would not have been ready or able to reopen to welcome students back to in-person learning. CSCA continues to keep NUSD running. CSCA staff are often overlooked. They feel unappreciated. They feel undervalued. While the district received federal and state COVID relief funds this year to support distance learning and the reopening of schools, the district used some of this funding to provide stipends, but only for some. but not all staff. This lack of equity stings. During Classified School Employees Week, we were thanked with a cone of popcorn and empty words of appreciation. Newark Unified School District is spending too much money contracting out work. The district's 17% fund reserves goal continue to increase at the expense of employees. The amount of time and money wasted on projects and initiatives that is directly related to poor decisions and mismanagement, the Newark students and staff suffer as consequences of these actions. All CSCA staff wants and deserves is a fair and equitable compensation, including stipends like everyone else. Classified workers are frustrated. The Board of Trustees can acknowledge our hard work during this 2021 pandemic year and authorize an equitable stipend for all classified employees or any employees that did not get a stipend. I can only say this with sincerity, that we are insulted, that we are not thought of the same way other employees are. I also would like to express my anger at not, I gave information, a half hour of information about things that they could take and that they can do with the A, B, Um, 80, it's, I can't remember if it's 84 or 86. That information was never given to the LCAP committee because I was there. I did not hear a word of it. And I can only say to you, it's time that this stops. We've got to get back together. We've got to treat everybody equally and share the load and get this district back on the road. Unless this unless things change, this is only going to get worse. And I really do not appreciate having to say these words on any. network or on zoom but i feel i had to in fairness to classified employees because we are important and if it wasn't for us we wouldn't you would not have a school district teachers and classified are important as well as administrators everybody's important and it's time you started treating people such thank you very much thank you miss eustace now miss guderius do we have the

[9102] Bowen Zhang: Do we have the NTA representative on?

[9108] SPEAKER_33: The NTA representative that was selected today is Cheri Villa. However, I don't see the name. So if Ms. Villa is watching and she can let us know what her, she raised her hand. There's LLYT that raised their hand Okay, President Zhang, do you want me to unmute?

[9141] Bowen Zhang: Let's bring in the speaker.

[9142] SPEAKER_33: Okay, we'll unmute Lily. Hello, Ms. Villa?

[9155] Abbey Keirns: Hello, can you hear me?

[9156] SPEAKER_33: Yes.

[9158] Chery Villa: I apologize. It says my daughter's name on there. I apologize, everybody. She changed it and I don't know how to change it back. It's me, Cheri Villa. Thank you. No problem. All right. Well, good evening, everybody. Again, thank you to our NTA president, Shauna Bruzee, for allowing me to talk during this time. I would like to use this time to say thank you on behalf of our NTA board to all of the 295 members of our NTA. Thank you. All of you, the monumental effort that you all gave during this pandemic and distant learning and the reopening of school has been tremendous. There have been both struggles and successes and everything in between along the way. But in the end, after that 180th popsicle stick was put in the cup and you primary teachers know what that means, you got the job done. So again, to all of our NTA members on behalf of the E-board of our Newark Teachers Association, Thank you for all that you do because our students deserve the best. Thank you.

[9230] Bowen Zhang: Thank you. Moving on to our next item, 10.1 public comment on non-agenda items. Ms. Gutierrez.

[9240] SPEAKER_33: Yes, we do have a few for this one. Our first one is gonna be Eric Tam. Hi, you may begin.

[9259] SPEAKER_20: Hello, sorry, can you hear me?

[9260] SPEAKER_33: Yes, you may begin.

[9261] SPEAKER_20: Okay, sorry about that. I'm just trying to get out of it. Okay. Yes, sorry about that. Here we go. Hello, board members, Dr. Triplett and staff. I wanted to start off by apologizing for an incorrect statement in my last public comment. I stated that member Hill voted against the MPPI. While researching, I needed to correct myself that member Hill was for the resolution. I went up to my mistake and apologize. Sorry. Tonight, I'll address two specific items. First, the electronics device collection policy that was sent to parents. In the letter, I quote, because we know that the pandemic impacted many families' income, we will be collecting reduced fees for broken or damaged devices. Please see the below fees. $100 for missing or broken Chromebooks, broken is defined as a device that will not turn on or is broken beyond repair. $50 for Chromebook damage, damage defined as minor and fixable. $20 for missing charger or for Chromebook. I'm hoping that NUSD did not collect this specific amount of fees from families. I am not against collecting fees for damages. However, I wanted to remind NUSD about the memo California Department of Education sent on July 23, 2020. titled a fiscal management advisory in relation to a free public school system, especially specifically related to materials and equipment at code 17453.1, fees for sale or lease of internet appliance or personal computers to parents for the purpose of providing access to the school district's education computer network at no more than cost. I repeat, at no more than cost. Dr. Triplett and board members. I believe our Chromebooks are five years old. Two parents posted in our chat group their make and model, simply Googling the make and model and matching the voltage and amps. A brand new adapter was $11.99 to $12.99, yet NUSD is charging $20, a nice $700 to $800 profit. What about laptops? The same make and model for brand new Chromebook at Walmart for $70 versus NUSD collecting $100. That's another $30 profit. The parents could literally go to Amazon and Walmart, buy the exact same brand new item, and still have saved money. I do not know if the schools actually collected the fees, but the fact that you would send this out to all the parents shows the lack of work staff have done to figure out what it actually costs. If we did collect those specific fees, I would like to remind NUSD about Doe v. State of California in 2010. ACLU sued 50 California school districts for these types of fees, and with the passage of AB 1575, we can now officially report schools for these wrongful fees. Board, please make a motion and vote to ask staff audit these fees and ensure we only collected at no more than cost so NUSD didn't illegally profit from Newark families. Lastly, I need to speak about our CPRA process. Thank you, Ms. Gutierrez for your help, but she needs support. On April 20th, I filed CPRA requests related for air testing and voices. 44 days later, it has not been completed. By law, records are to be produced promptly. Berkeley Unified promptly fulfilled the same request in 11 calendar days. Thank you.

[9444] Bowen Zhang: Thank you. Next speaker.

[9450] SPEAKER_33: Thank you. The next speaker is Jennifer Cerello.

[9458] SPEAKER_15: Good evening, board members, board members, district staff and NUSD community. Congratulations to the board, district staff, teachers, school staff, parents and students on surviving one of the most challenging and difficult academic years in history. I hope each person in our school community has had a moment to take a deep breath and acknowledge that the school year is over and our students have persevered. I want to begin by stating I only have positive words for you tonight. There is already too much negativity in our community, and I can't imagine how exhausting it must be for all parties involved. Tonight, I want to tell you how the hybrid model saved my son's emotional health. And sorry, I'm going to get choked up a little bit. and how thankful I am to the district and school staff for bringing our kids back to the classroom, even if it was only for a month. My son approached distance learning in March, 2020, like some of his third grade peers, very excited for the opportunity to wear his pajamas during school hours, sometimes, in the comfort of his own home. We rocked the end of the 2019-2020 school year with Zoom play dates with his friends, virtual talent shows in his classroom, and exciting broadcasted events from various resources around the Bay Area, all while attempting to keep up with on his schoolwork. I am so proud with how hard my son and my daughter worked to complete all their assignments and how my son was able to maintain his positive, hilarious, funny personality. He started the fourth grade with the same energy, now a pro at the distance learning thing. I recognize how lucky and privileged we were not to have to struggle academically during this time when so many other students were not so lucky. However after a few months I noticed my son my son's sunny disposition start to dim as the new school year entered into full swing. Too many times we had to let his teacher know that he needed a camera break so we could sit together and lull as he struggled to understand why he was even crying in the first place. For the record he was initially against going back to school when the district began the hybrid schedule. He really loved his slippers which was hard to blame him. I encouraged him to go and on the same first day of attending school in person He came home with the biggest smile on his face, talking a mile a minute of how happy he was to be able to go back to school. I saw improvements in his emotional health every day after that, as he talked excitedly about the funny thing that happened while he was playing soccer with his friends or what the snack of the day was. Big five-star rating for coffee cake days. I know that the decision to go back to school was not easy, to say the very least, but as a parent of a fourth grader and seventh grader, I wanted to take the time to say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. To the teachers who went the extra mile to teach kids both in a hybrid and distance learning setting. To the district staff for all of our safety protocols and the groundwork to get things moving for families comfortable with returning, yet still supporting those who were not comfortable and wanted to continue distance learning. And to the school staff who spent countless extra hours to make sure my children's learning environment was a safe space to be. Thank you so much.

[9643] Bowen Zhang: Thank you, Mrs. Serrato for your comment. Next speaker.

[9648] SPEAKER_33: Yes, we have the next speaker is Delight Evans-Vasquez.

[9661] SPEAKER_32: Hello, Dr. Triplett and board members. Today was teacher work day, a day where teachers get to close out the school year by packing up the classroom to get it ready for a deep summer clean. finishing up paperwork, and for Graham, it means having our end of the year lunch. We present awards, present gifts to retiring teachers and staff that are leaving. It was a beautiful lunch. There were tears and laughs. We took our group photo picture, which is always a hoot to take. We ate outdoors in the kindergarten area. It was really nice. I really wish that our wonderful staff and community would have been able to have some sort of communication about Ms. Bird. You see, I heard many, where's Ms. Bird from children? I saw many flowers and notes and cute little handmade gifts that were left for Ms. Bird by students. Our staff bought farewell gifts for Ms. Bird. I want the students to know that she did apply to be the principal and did not get the job. I want them to know that she didn't just leave them during a pandemic. I have asked for some sort of communication from the district to speak about what happened to Ms. Bird. Why doesn't she have an administrative position in the district? So as I end my 20th year as an educator in Newark Unified, I am asking the board to invest in some diversity training over the summer. We need to increase our efforts to recruit and keep educators of color. Educators of color need to feel supported and feel like they belong. In the past, I have not spoken up about the way I feel as an educator of color, but I will tell you this, that I often do not feel supported by NUSD. I often feel dismissed and I seek out other educators on YouTube or Instagram who want to teach their students about diversity because I want to feel connected. I know there are other educators in Newark who feel the same way. We need to stop making promises and empty talk to our Black and Brown community, and we need to make plans to take action. We need to act on a resolution to the Asian and Pacific Islander community. We need to act on our Black Lives Matter resolution and we need to make communication available for everything in English and Spanish. NUSD must walk the walk, not just talk the talk. Catherine Pulsifer said this, we are all different, which is great because we are all unique. Without diversity, life would be very boring. Thank you.

[9809] Bowen Zhang: Thank you for your comment, Mrs. Evans-Vasquez. Next speaker, please.

[9816] SPEAKER_33: Yes, thank you. Our next speaker is Nicole Isant.

[9822] Nicole Izant: Hello. Hi, you may begin. Okay, thanks. Okay, so hi, board members and staff. I wanted to kick off my remarks with, or by recognizing how incredibly challenging this year has been, and I applaud your collective efforts to get us through this school year to the best of your capabilities. To the superintendent, I really appreciate you taking steps to be more accessible than your predecessors had been to our community. This school year, we've had the opportunity to hear from you via emails, pop-ups in the park and other locations, town halls, and social media posts. your outreach and increased availability to the public has been noted. For anyone who has been in this district for more than a year or two, these practices are a huge improvement over what we had in the past, and I really look forward to seeing how you engage with the parent and student communities going forward, hopefully with increased frequency. To the school board members, I've watched most of the years meetings from my couch on the live stream and have noted that many of them have run long have had a lot of material to pre read and prepare during the week. and you still have a lot of legacy issues from past boards and other administrations. It's incredible the amount of work I think that you all put in in your own time for a very small, I think, I don't know if you guys get a stipend or whatever, but I can only imagine that you have at least 20 hours a week on top of your regular day jobs in school. You also hear a lot of public comments, some positive and some negative. It can't be easy to be the recipient of those comments, and I thank you for listening with grace and understanding. By listening and learning from these comments, while it may be tough to hear, it will hopefully inform your work going forward. So for that, thank you. Thank you for listening and learning from each other, from staff, from the trainings made available to you, and from the general public as part of your decision-making and strategy decisions going forward. To the amazing staff, teachers, everybody, a huge thank you to you. Your resilience this year amid so many changes really helped kids make the most of the learning opportunities available to them. I think our staff, everyone is so well qualified and it's just an amazing group of professionals with many subject area experts who come to work every day with the intention of creating the best learning environment and educational experience possible for our kids. So huge standing applause. If there's a few things I can leave you with that I've learned as a parent during this trying year is that if the district. I've noticed there's a big need for clear concise and centralized communications and I think you're making website improvements so kudos to you on that. But again, you've heard it many times having those in English and Spanish. Another thing as a parent, I've also just learned that I need to be positive and have a positive outlook and transfer that to my child and to all of my other friends just to keep a positive outlook in the face of adversity. So thanks and let's keep it positive.

[10004] Bowen Zhang: Thank you, Mrs. Eisen for your comment. Next speaker.

[10011] SPEAKER_33: Yes, thank you. Our last speaker is Michelle Padilla.

[10018] SPEAKER_36: Hello, good evening board members and Superintendent. As we close out this school year, I would like to take a moment to thank our new Superintendent for making the hard decisions that kept our kids safe through this pandemic school year. This has been a challenging year for everyone. As a parent with two elementary school children in the district, I don't think I could have hoped for a better outcome. In addition, I want to thank you for following through with the very important racial bias training. I admire your ability to face the relentless criticism with a positive attitude. Please know that though these voices are loud, they do not speak for the majority of parents in our district. Thank you.

[10058] Bowen Zhang: Thank you, Mrs. Padilla. I believe that's it for all the public speaker, right? OK. Moving on to next item. Board of Education agenda request and USD affinity groups and cultural clubs. So before I bring it back to board member Hill, I believe we have a public speaker on that. Is that right?

[10082] SPEAKER_33: That is correct. We do have you want to start with the public speaker? Yep. Okay, so we'll have the public speaker is Nicole. Is that

[10095] Nicole Izant: Hi board and everyone listening. I just wanted to make a comment that when I first saw the posting that came out about affinity groups. I was super excited in in real life affinity groups or sometimes they call them employee resource groups they exist at companies to help confront many issues that exist in our district systemic racism. Issues with kids not feeling or sorry in the professional not feeling included access to trainings and things like coaching on career development and all kinds of wonderful things come out of those groups in a professional setting so I was super excited to see that the district, maybe potentially heading towards this for our kids. I also, as I mentioned like two seconds ago, I think we have a wonderful group of professionals here that whoever's going to be the manager for this is going to do their due diligence to make sure we're not violating any laws, that we're doing things the right way, that we have a well-organized structure and plan, ways of engagement, rules of respecting, and so on and so forth. There's tons of literature from all of the great think tanks and universities out there on how to successfully set up affinity groups within the public education world and so I really hope that you know whatever comes in the discussion going forward that we do. really follow through with setting this up in the correct way. And I just really hope that we trust in the staff, we trust in the experts that have been hired here. They're gonna do the job the right way. And I just really wanted to reinforce that I think this is a good move and we should collectively get behind making our school district a place for everyone. So thank you.

[10196] Bowen Zhang: Thank you, Mrs. Eisen. Okay, with that, given this as a board request, I'll bring this back to board member Hill.

[10210] Aiden Hill: So do we have to vote on whether we're going to discuss this? Or I'm not clear on that protocol.

[10216] Bowen Zhang: Oh, so I guess, given you request this item, give us some background information. Give us what your intent for this. And then as a group, we will collectively decide whether we're going to ask the staff and the superintendent to spend time on this item.

[10232] Aiden Hill: Okay, all right. So yeah, so I learned about this affinity group initiative because a community member forwarded me the Facebook page. And when I saw it, I was concerned because it looked like we as a district were encouraging basically the recruitment, formation of groups that are based on immutable characteristics. So your race, your gender, and I believe that that is a potentially dangerous path. And I'd like to just read for everybody why I think that it's a dangerous path. So if you go out to the U.S. Department of Justice's webpage and you look at the resources that they have, to make sure that we do not have discrimination in all forms of our society. They have a specific section, a specific group called the Educational Opportunities Section. And here's what they say is their mission. They say 60 years ago in its landmark decision in Brown versus Board of Education, the Supreme Court held that the intentional segregation, right? And that's what we're talking about when we form affinity groups for segregating based on race, on gender. The intentional segregation of students on the basis of race in public schools violates the 14th amendment to the US constitution. Subsequent federal legislation and court decisions also mandate that school officials not discriminate against students on the basis of color, sex, national origin, language barrier, religion, or disability. And they say this group basically enforces these statutes. They go on to say, specifically, the Educational Opportunity Section is responsible for enforcing Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which gives the Attorney General authority to address certain complaints of discrimination alleging denials of equal protection. This is in our Constitution, 14th Amendment, equal protection to students based on race, color, national origin, sex, and religion by public schools and institutions of higher learning. They also go on to say that there's other sections, Title VI of Civil Rights Act 1964, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin by recipients of federal funds. So any government entity that receives federal funds is prohibited by law from discriminating on any of those characteristics. So when we start to look at this through this lens, it becomes a very dangerous approach. And my viewpoint is we have a lot of issues in our school system right now, and a lot of it's related to performance. And I would welcome if the district actually started to encourage the formation of groups that really bring us together to solve Newark's problems as a whole, rather than dividing us. into different groups that, you know, again, are, in the words of Plessy versus Ferguson, which is the predecessor to Brown versus Board of Education, and Plessy versus Ferguson is what ultimately allowed the formation of Jim Crow laws, they laid out the idea of separate but equal, okay? And Brown of Board of Education overturned that and said that separate is inherently unequal. And so I would like for us to number one, we as a board have not approved this. So I think that the district needs to stop doing this until we as a board have a discussion, get community input, and then we decide whether we think this is appropriate path or not. So that's the topic that I would like for us to discuss.

[10475] Bowen Zhang: Member Martinez.

[10481] Carina Plancarte: Sorry, I'm sorry.

[10483] Bowen Zhang: Yeah, okay. Student Board Member Salemi, you go first.

[10488] SPEAKER_03: I think I would have to disagree with the request being made. Cultural groups and affinity groups should be viewed as positive things, especially in our district and city, which have so much diversity. These different groups are a way in which we embrace that diversity. At NMHS alone, we have over 40 different student organizations, the majority of which are cultural clubs. We as students and a community welcome these groups. And for a lot of us, it brings us so much joy and makes NMHS who we are. It's unfortunate that it seems like we never think of students when we start making demands like this. So we talk about students being able to learn about their own histories in the classroom. And quite frankly, that's not been the case for a long time across the nation, but students have taken it upon themselves through these different groups to empower each other and teach each other about their histories and cultures. These groups are also very memorable and meaningful parts of the high school experience. And the purpose of affinity groups is, and especially in this case, is to create a safe space for our most underrepresented populations in the district and give them a chance to directly communicate and give input to us on work that we are doing, especially as it pertains to equity. I don't think I need to explain the importance of addressing issues we have with equity and racial disparities within the district. And I think that's the real conversation we should be having. by getting rid of affinity groups, we would essentially, we would have to get rid of cultural clubs. So respectfully and concisely, I think these are, there's some problems with the ask and I would, I think it would take us back instead of forward.

[10582] Bowen Zhang: Member Martinez.

[10589] Elisa Martinez: Yes, I think there is an inherent misunderstanding of what an affinity group is. And I'm trying to take a deep breath because I can't even believe we're having this discussion. I think that we have as a board come a long way in just, to student member Salemi's point, you know, we are not, we all recognize that we're not doing enough from an education perspective. to really teach all of us, not just our students, all of us, right? Those of us making decisions about the real issues that our students are facing. In particular with the direction that the staff has taken to begin active discussion. And by the way, again, an affinity group is anything. It's the French club. It's any sort of group. that gets together, that shares, that has something in common, right? Nowhere does it say exclusion. And I invite you, Member Hill, to do a little research on affinity groups and what the intent is. With regards to the board, the board gave direction in the Black Lives Matter resolution to really tackle um, systemic bias to look at, um, sensitive, uh, sensitivity training to really start to open this discussion up. And that is what staff is doing. And I celebrate that. And I think that, um, there's so much more to be done. This is just the first step and we have to have a lot of work ahead of us. So I celebrate sooner, um, um, your word student members. So let me, and I celebrate your direction, Superintendent. Thank you.

[10714] Bowen Zhang: You know, before I move on to other board members, I do think that anytime we have a conversation on race or cultural group, I hope that this is a very contentious and sensitive issue in our national discourse. I hope everybody can tone down the rhetoric a little bit, because it is very easy to get emotional and get contentious on these things. Okay. Member

[10738] SPEAKER_39: I would definitely have to agree with student members on these statements. I will not try to repeat any of the stuff that he says because it is an emotional subject. And we are, like member Martina says, we're just reaching the subject. We haven't resolved any of the true diversity or have done the true work in in making our district feel whole or inclusion. And there's so much more work to be done. And so I too, with the same sentiment, and so grateful for student member Salemi's statement. So we definitely need to be doing more work on this.

[10789] Bowen Zhang: Member Guendel?

[10793] Terrence Grindall: I agree with, I agree with a student members words I always hate following his his wise words. I'm strongly in agreement with that and the other, and also a member Martinez member knowing. I think if, if anything, this, if there's any board involvement it's to. it's to expand and support affinity groups. I don't think we need to have any further discussion about that, because I believe our staff is doing a good job of that. But if there did need to be a discussion, it would be about further supporting it, certainly not curtailing them. So that's my opinion.

[10834] Bowen Zhang: So my opinion on this is, first, Two weeks ago, when Member Hill raised this issue, that was actually the first time I got to have a deeper understanding about what a fraternity group really is. Today, I would still say I do not 100% understand what these groups are for. If the motion is just to suspend all the activities, I wouldn't agree to that. But I think for me, it will be worthwhile that we have a staff report or study session to actually introduce to the community what these groups are doing and what are the things we're trying to accomplish. And then from a board perspective, we can have an overall picture about whether we want to expand and how we want to make the program better or there are some issues really within these programs. So that's my opinion, I would be for spending a little bit of staff time superintendent time to to give us a presentation or staff report to really give us a more comprehensive overview about these groups. Because last time when I checked, these are voluntary groups, like doesn't really exclude certain people. And it's a place for people to understand and learn. And in certain ways, more for privacy reasons, that people want to heal and seek psychological counseling. That's what I heard. But I will still say, I do not know 100% about what these groups are for.

[10918] SPEAKER_30: Member Hill?

[10921] Aiden Hill: Yeah, I just want to make a clarification so that my point is not misunderstood. So an affinity group can be anything, right? It can be any type of club. And I don't have a problem with student-generated clubs that they want to join. What I do have a problem with is the district encouraging the formation of affinity groups that are primarily based on things that are prohibited by the 14th Amendment and by the Civil Rights Act. And those areas are color, sex, national origin, language barrier, religion, or disability. And we are prohibited by law by that, especially if there are any federal funds that are used. But a larger thing that I think that we should be thinking about, and if we think about, you know, our long heritage and what's made our country great, it's on the back of our quarter, okay? E pluribus unum. which means in Latin, from many to one. So I think that we ought to be looking at and encouraging affinity. You know, number one, I think it should be student-driven. I don't think the district should be getting involved. I think all this stuff should be student-driven. But at the end of the day, you know, I think that we should be encouraging things that bring all of our community together and respect our common, you know, essentially things that we all have in common and how we can make our city, our district great. So that's my viewpoint.

[11015] Terrence Grindall: Member Grundell? Yeah, I just have to respectfully disagree. I think that these affinity groups are part of supporting our students and enriching the educational environment. Our purpose is to educate children. And to the extent that these programs and this approach helps our children to become more complete people and learn and healthier, they're a good thing. And I don't oppose President Zhang's idea of having further discussion about this. I am sensitive to the superintendent having a lot of things on his plate. So if we want to have further discussion in terms of how we can support and expand these programs, I'm open to that. I am concerned about the superintendent's time though.

[11067] Bowen Zhang: Student member Salami.

[11071] SPEAKER_03: Mr. Chair, I think it would, as a clarifying question, I know that member Hill wants is more in favor of student driven clubs and stuff like that. But wouldn't this motion essentially also stop that?

[11086] SPEAKER_33: Actually at this point, just to provide clarity at this point, there's no motion on the table. This item is just agendized for discussion. So there would be no motion for today.

[11097] SPEAKER_03: Excuse me, yes, because ask. Yes, of course. Thank you.

[11102] SPEAKER_30: Member Martinez.

[11105] Elisa Martinez: Yes. Thank you, President Young. Um, I actually, um and thank you for your words. Um, member Grendel. I. I think that at some point it's it would be great to get an update on on the progress, but I don't I don't think my recommendation is that we don't spend discussion time there. It's it's to remember Grindel's point. It's what else can we do? How else can we And so if that's the intent, Member Hsiang, then I can't support your request. But if it is around at some point down the road to get an update from superintendent staff as a staff report, then I think it makes sense. I want to further talk about the Blue Ribbon Unum. Sorry, I need to say this because I think there is, we have a responsibility, those of us of, that are people of color on the board, right? And we are a voice to our community. And yes, I would say, who is a more proud American than I am? We all can say that, right? We have that in common, absolutely. But guess what? We also bring differences to the table. And if we pretend that they don't exist, we don't help our kids, our community, learn to talk about it in a comfortable way, right? we have preconceived views of each other. That's the reality, right? And how do you engage? How do you confront that? We've heard a lot about what are we doing about systemic racism. We got to talk about it. We got to provide safe spaces for our kids. And that's just, those are affinity race bias, but there's other affinity groups, right? How do we teach our kids? I was 27, 28 years old, and I was a keynote speaker in Massachusetts, working for a well-known organization. Right before I went on stage, I went to the bathroom. And while I was there, a woman asked me or mentioned to me, that the bathroom needed to be restocked. How do you engage? I wasn't prepared, right? I've worked so hard and I'm young and I've got all this energy. How do you engage? I didn't have anger towards that individual. I didn't know her, right? But I should have had words. because this woman needed to be educated. She saw me on stage a few minutes later, right? But that is a very personal story, right? And yes, maybe our families or whatever, one could argue, but our schools, that is the bedrock of our society. And the fact, just the mere fact that any one of us on this dais is forgetting our responsibility as to what we're bringing to our kids. I just, I don't, I don't have words. Right. So once again, um, if, if we're going to talk about what else can we do, how else can we support staff? Let's have at it. But for staff to come convince us that we should do this, Member Zhang, I must respectfully disagree.

[11336] Bowen Zhang: Well, I wasn't talking about convince us to do this. It's more like a status update and then what these four are doing. Superintendent Triplett, I guess the question is, would that be time consuming? I'm fine with giving an update later on down the road, but Superintendent Triplett, I guess you have something to say. And can you also comment on the time commitment for the staff if you are going to give a status update.

[11363] Mark Triplett: Yes, thank you, President Hsuan. And I just want to appreciate the importance of this conversation. And so I'm really glad that we're having it. And we are deeply committed as a district to addressing issues of equity and the disparities that student member Salemi was mentioning. We actually could talk about it right now if the board would like. I think Ms. Pierce would be happy to give a brief summary of some of the work that has been started. And it's just barely been started to Ms. Member Nguyen's point is we're just at the beginning of this. But if the board would like, I think Ms. Pierce would be happy to share a little bit about the affinity groups work that we've begun in the last month or so. Would that be something we should do?

[11420] Bowen Zhang: Like I said, give me an update later on down the road. I don't, I mean, no, I'm not like asking staff to spend a lot of time on this. An update for me is fine because for me, it's a good educational opportunity. Like I said, I'm not agreeing to just suspend all of these without me really understanding what everything is saying. And I guess generally for this item, everybody already has two chance to talk and I would, I would just want to say something because this is my second chance. You know, in November 2008 with the election of Barack Obama, myself with many of you right now who are tuning in are pretty much assuming that we're entering in America that is post-racial America. Looking back, our assumption, however well-intentioned, was actually never realistic. I want to emphasize this again, that I don't think America is a fundamentally flawed country. I don't believe we are a fundamentally racist country, but we have to acknowledge that in certain pockets and certain regions in our society, there are bias. There are people that are being discriminated by something that they couldn't control, particularly in the area of public institution, not necessarily in private sector, but particularly in the area of public institution. I wish we live in a colorblind society. I wish we live in a post-racial society. I think that should be the ideals that all of us should strive for. But the reality, like I said, our intention, our assumption with the election of Barack Obama was well-intentioned, but however, never realistic, and in a certain way, even naive to assume that one. So in a certain way, we have to talk about these things honestly, and openly. And this is going to be very hard and very emotional issue that we'll discuss. So like I said, giving us an update on these things, I'm actually fine with this, but I am not fine with just go ahead and suspend all of this. Remember here, I will give you a last chance to talk and we got to move on from this topic.

[11547] Mark Triplett: Oh, sorry, President Chun, would you like, what I was saying is Ms. Pierce is happy to talk about it right now and give a five minute summary of affinity groups. Ms. Pierce.

[11561] SPEAKER_31: Okay, so our affinity spaces are intended, absolutely, everyone is right on the right page. I think there is some misconception. So we are there to create safe spaces for participants to speak to the experiences of being a member of a group, sharing an identity, but they speak from the I perspective. So affinity groups really are intended to bring people together over commonality. We benefit from these interactions, psychologically, socially, we know this, we have the data to prove that, right? However, when you are in the minority or of a community, those familiar bonds you may not receive on a daily basis. And so these are the times, as Member Salemi said earlier, where people start to feel voiceless or unseen. Affinity groups can create a safe space for people who may not feel safe otherwise to speak to what it means to be in that group. During affinity group meetings, people can share freely with less inhibition about their experiences. And then when paired with allies-based work, they really can enhance your entire organization. So they are designed to foster inclusion and community through a support network of mentors, allies, and peers, educate the broader campus community or district community on a minority's group perspectives and concerns, recruit and retain minority groups and their allies and advocate for policies and programs to meet the needs of non dominant groups, particularly those that we've done so far for federally federally protected classes, such as race, color, gender, age, religion, sex, nation of origin ability and so on. Affinity spaces really are a best practice. They are considered a best practice for organizations seeking to achieve more equitable outcomes. It is the talk, the talk, right? It's not just the talk, the talk, it is the walk, the walk. It is the action that you can show. And you've seen this at very well-restricted universities such as Stanford, Cal State Berkeley, Loyola University, East Carolina University, major corporations such as Salesforce, Kaiser. They are really used, again, to bring together unity and create a space that is safe. They can look different, though. So I want to be clear. In NUSD, affinity groups are not necessarily organizations or clubs. They are flexible. So it isn't that one organization says, I want to have an affinity group. It's saying, let's speak to the experience of being a member of this particular group. And they are done in coordination with others so it's not like we are doing just affinity groups and isolation, we are doing affinity groups, communities of practice professional learning communities clubs organizations they are done as part of an equity, a larger equity plan. So they have flexible membership. And if someone is not a part of a group. We also don't out, you know, oust them from the group, we have really caring conversations around what the purpose of affinity group is and why we want those to be safe spaces for instance, if we had someone if we had a, we did have a special education. affinity group. And if we're creating this safe space, we want to make sure that we're not then asking members of that space to take time and energy to try to explain to others what they go through on a daily basis. If I'm in a wheelchair and I go to an affinity space, I don't want to have to explain to you while I'm in it. I want to be able to speak to others and really understand what it is like to be in that wheelchair so that we can talk about the next steps. If I am a person of color we've heard a lot of that. It is, it is nice to be able to hear what the experiences are others, so that we could start to provide feedback to the district. And to the school sites around how we can better support those members so that we keep them and that then includes and foster and fosters more retain retainment of our employees of color and so on. So the benefits really are long lasting I can, I can certainly speak more to this. Some of those benefits include employee. This is data that informed employee retention performance and morale. They make employees feel welcome, comfortable, and safe. This includes students as well when we apply them to students. They help address discrimination concerns. They promote networking and friendships across an organization. And finally, our data outcomes are also very much linked to some of the affinity groups that we're putting together. For instance, the California Data Dashboard that we are actually measured on as a district, how well we are doing as a district, measure some of these subgroups out. And so it is kind of the policy of decolonizing education, essentially, that we take an effort to ask the people closest to the situation, what can we do to better serve you? So if we are talking about how we better serve our African-American population, if we are talking about how we better serve our LGBTQ plus population, maybe we should start by asking them what their experience is. And that's exactly what we do in affinity groups we start by asking what is your experience what is on your heart and mind and what kinds of feedback, can you give your school and district on how to improve conditions for you. And lastly i'll just end with the students that have participated have really thanked me. And others, it's not just myself, we actually have a wellness committee committed to this work. We have those interested in equity work have really thanked the adults who have opened the space and said, I'm so I have finished every single session saying I'm grateful, grateful for this space. So again, I just encourage us to continue to walk this walk, and I'd be more than happy to talk about other benefits at more length if you would like me to.

[11924] Bowen Zhang: Okay, Member Hill, you got your last chance.

[11929] Aiden Hill: So I know that many of you probably think I'm a spring chicken, hopefully. But, but actually, I was a part of the early experience in integration post civil rights. And so I was part of the busing experience in Berkeley. by the legacy and the words of Martin Luther King, and especially his I have a dream speech, and this is something that we talked about all the time and the focus on at that point was, how do we integrate our society, and the words that Dr. Martin Luther King said was, I have a dream. that we are going to all sit down at the table of brotherhood, the table of brotherhood, and we are going to learn to judge people, not based on the color of our skin but on the content of our character. And so, he was promoting integration. not segregation. He wasn't saying sit at separate tables. He was saying the only way we're going to come together is to do this. I believe that what we're talking about now is actually putting us at separate tables. It's going to divide us further. I don't think it's productive. But I would leave it to President Zhang to decide if you want to have further discussions on it. But my only request is if we're going to have a policy, it needs to be basically decided by the board. And so I would request whether we have more discussion or not, that at some point we make a decision on whether we're going to continue to promote affinity groups based on these characteristics. And that's it.

[12028] Bowen Zhang: I mean, does the board agree with me that sometime later on, the board get an update on the status of these affinity groups and the overall picture of these groups? Because that's what I'm really asking for. and an update and overview and education for the war on what the work they're doing. I see Member Grindel raised their hand.

[12057] Terrence Grindall: I believe Miss Pierce just gave us an update and I would expect going forward, the superintendent will continue to keep us up to date on this and other activities. I don't think we need to call it out.

[12068] Bowen Zhang: Because the interesting thing is we've never had an update from the superintendent so far on these things.

[12074] Aiden Hill: Yes, it's a policy that we need to approve.

[12080] Mark Triplett: Just to be clear, throughout the year, I have updated this board on equity work from the very beginning and throughout the whole year in my superintendent reports. But I'm happy to share any information that the board wishes.

[12105] Bowen Zhang: Moving on to Moving on to the superintendent report. Superintendent Triplett.

[12116] Mark Triplett: Thank you all for that conversation, discussion. Let me put up the presentation here.

[12130] Sean Abruzzi: Oops, sorry.

[12135] Mark Triplett: There we go. All right. So this is the superintendent report for the third of June. Just putting on my stopwatch because I like to, as you all know, I like to talk. So I'm trying to monitor my own talk time. So in this presentation, I wanted to really quick touch upon the end of the year promotions graduations that we've been experiencing this last week. It's been really delightful. Wanted to give the board a merger update. So in the past I've shared a Gantt chart of all of the different action items that we are trying to do each month in order to have a successful merger of the snow and gram together. So I wanted to speak to that. I wanted to give you a little update on COVID-19 and the some of the data around the both vaccinations and testing that we have been supporting the community and our staff and students with and then touch briefly on 2021-22 school year and some of the engagements that we're planning on having with community in the next week actually to talk with them and hear from them about what they really wanna see in the upcoming school year. So starting with some celebrations here, it's been wonderful. I've had the opportunity to go to almost every promotion or graduation thus far. Unfortunately, there were two that were at the same time and I was only able to go to one of those. But what you see here is graduation celebration of adult ed, really tremendous, lovely occasion that occurred last week. Here you see some end-of-year kindergarten party bags that Birch Grove Primary was giving to their youngsters on the way out the door this week. This is a picture of the promotion ceremony at the Newark Junior High. Really tremendous ceremony and the PTSA there did an incredible job of setting up a really wonderful thing on the front steps And this was the promotion ceremony at Graham, where we had PTSA members also created just a beautiful, beautiful setup for families and students to do a little walk through and take pictures and get certificates. So it's been really nice. This is another picture of the primary goodie bags that our little ones got. So it's been really wonderful. It's been such a joy. and all of the work that has happened this year. It's really nice to get a chance to see our families and young people, to celebrate with them, to congratulate them, because it's been hard. It's been hard for all of us. Shifting gears here, so Graham Snow merger update. You cannot see any of that text. That's intentional. I'm going to show you each different section, but I wanted to just remind you of this chart that I shared with you earlier in the year and that you all pushed me on, which I really appreciated, around what is the plan, who's going to do what, how is it going to be done. So if you recall at the beginning when I first presented this, it was almost all pink. or pink or red. And that was because that's something that hadn't yet been done yet. Yellow signified in progress and green signified complete or on track. And so I'm just going to go through the different areas and give you an update on how things are going. So I'm not going to show from the beginning of the year, but just the most recent couple of months. And first, I wanted to talk about academic programming. And just a reminder on this chart, so this is a zoomed in version of the chart you just saw, that we set up a system we call RACI, which is who is the R, the person or the group responsible for each of these items, who is the person accountable who is the person either consulted on or supporting, and who are those that are informed, are communicated to and with. And so under academic programming, we've had an amazing year with the design team. They've done incredible work. April and May, they've been finishing up around systems for leadership and adult learning, as well as parent engagement in their plans. And in June, what we're going to do, they're finalizing their written plan. And then we're going to present that to the board. The design team will present that to the board. And that's a plan that includes school culture aspects, parent engagement, leadership structures, instructional and academic plans, really amazing work that they've done. So they'll present that at the upcoming meeting on the 17th. And then the last thing that's going to happen with that group is actually next week on the 10th will be their end of year reflection and celebration. The group agreed that they actually wanted to go to to a location and and celebrate with maybe a little like non-alcoholic cider and just reflect on all of the work that's happened. And then, of course, July is summer school, and then August is when we will kick off with student and family orientations and welcome. Within budget and enrollment, these are the action items from the last couple months. So I'm pleased to say that the school and the leadership there developed their site plan. You will see it this evening later on. And they completed their budget. And then in May, there was the school name process which this board has been a part of, and it's in yellow because tonight is the last, the final night, we hope where the, where the board will will discuss and make a decision on the school name. There's some other things that are in progress, including engaging with the photocopier company about bringing the snow photocopier over to Graham and also finalizing the process for surplus furniture and equipment. That'll happen as all of the teachers have been boxing up, packing up all of their things, and then once the movers come and move everything, then we'll shift gears to the surplus items that are gonna remain and what should happen to them. And then there's a couple other things you see on there. We're at the point where we do need to engage with CDE around the finance of changes, CDE finance around the changes due to the school consolidation and then preparing for the eMERGE school. With staffing, you see here all of the green things. There was ongoing recruitment and hiring. We did engage with NTA about the moving process. We did discuss with the different labor organizations at the site around assignments and any possible layoffs. We finalize the selection process, as you know. And then what we're doing now, we have almost completed all the hiring. We're leaving that yellow just on the chance that if there is any unexpected last minute situations with hiring that we need to address. July, we're planning on some optional trainings or workshops for some. And then we'll have PD and or staff retreat in August. And then I believe this is the last section, facilities and IT. And so we are now at the point where we have prepared for the move. We engage with both communities, both staffs around the move. They have been working tirelessly, packing up things, preparing for the movement, either from one class to another or from one school to the other. And so we'll be conducting or finishing that in June. And then, of course, there'll be facilities and IT work during the summer. And then there'll be unpacking and preparing for opening that happens in July, August. So that's the update around the merger. I'm pleased to announce that we are, for the most part, on track. Of course, there's been adjustments that have happened, but the work of the team has been really tremendous. Shifting gears, I just wanted to share out an update around the COVID testing and vaccinations. And you can see here, these are all of the opportunities we had for COVID testing. with our partners throughout the year. And then likewise, all the vaccination opportunities that have happened on our sites. There's been additional ones, of course, at the Coliseum and in other places, but these are the ones that we partnered on site to provide both testing and vaccines for the community. And then you see, we have some amazing partnerships and plans lined up for future vaccinations throughout the summer. These are our partners that we've been engaging with, TrueCare 24, Bay Area Community Health, Washington Township Medical Foundation, and the Clayworth Pharmacy. We've been so grateful to partner with them and to be able to provide this service to the community, to the students, and to staff. And then lastly, actually, I think I have two more things. One, you heard earlier Ms. Rebasura during the NEWMA presentation talk a little bit about the induction program. I had the opportunity to be with them today in what they call the induction colloquium. So these are teachers who are in induction and are doing a really intensive and really powerful individual learning plan, action research essentially, where they are focused on their own professional goals aligned to both site and district goals, and they get a mentor that's a more veteran teacher and that has been supporting these newer teachers throughout the year. I had a chance to hear today some of the projects they've done, really, really tremendous, very data-based. I remember hearing one teacher who was speaking about some of the data she collected, what You notice that at the beginning of the year in terms of what our students were learning or not learning and then the steps she took and then the result, the change was really powerful. So 91 candidates, excuse me, 91% of the candidates, that's 20 teachers. out of the 22 that started the program, have completed it as of today, which is super, super exciting. These are the new teachers who now have gone through induction and done a really rigorous process to really establish their teaching. We did have one that left a little early, and then we have one that is still completing, but we're very confident it's going to be completing the process as well. And then lastly just wanted to highlight, we are getting out communication about this but we will have a virtual town hall on June 8 that's next week, both one in Spanish, and then one in English, but with Spanish translation. And these town halls will be to begin the conversations around next year. We don't have all the answers yet, but we wanted to share what we do know from the state and the county, including what are the different options that we're gonna be supported by the state to provide in this upcoming year, both in-person and also discuss around the virtual option that we wanna make sure that we're also providing. That is my report for this evening.

[12860] Bowen Zhang: Thank you Superintendent Trivoli. Any questions from the floor? Member Hill, Member Grundahl. I think Member Grundahl is first.

[12874] Terrence Grindall: I was just wondering if Superintendent had any information of when the age range for the vaccines would be expanding, and I believe they're down to 12 years old at this point, but is there any rumbling of bringing that even further down?

[12888] Mark Triplett: Yeah, thank you, Member Grindel. Not that I have heard of. We are at 12, and we are now having students who are participating in some of these vaccination activities. But I'm not sure if or when it's going to go down lower. So we'll continue to check in with the County Health Department and definitely let you know when we hear anything.

[12912] SPEAKER_30: Thank you. Member Hill?

[12920] Aiden Hill: Yes, so thank you, Dr. Triplett. So regarding the school merger, so as kind of a long-term project manager, one of the things that I've learned is that all great project managers are glass half empty, not glass half full. And one of the things that's really drilled into you to be a great project manager is to not talk about what's called the happy path, right, which is that we're going to assume that everything's going to go great and it's going to go as planned. And based on my experience, every single project that I've been on, even the best ones, have always had issues and there have always been tasks that have been off track and there are always risks that you need to be paying attention to. So I'd be curious to, you know, to get a little bit more information from you around what things are we behind on and what potential risks do we face and what are the mitigations that we're thinking about to address those.

[12976] Mark Triplett: Thank you, Member Hill. Yeah, so I mean I could go back to the to the chart there the ones that are in that are from May, for example, but are not green yet. Those are the things that you know we're not we're not we didn't complete in the time that we anticipated. And so we've had to pivot. a little bit. I can say one of the big challenges that we've had is around the spacing issue and so really trying to make sure that has slowed us down a little bit because it will be tight this upcoming year on the campus just by the virtue of the fact that the sixth grade will still be on the campus. And so we know that while the sixth grade will be leaving the following year, we're trying to We've been wrestling with that challenge of like what to do for one year while the space is a little bit tighter. And it has meant that we've had to double up some, no classrooms, but we have had to double up with some of our outside partners or with offices and things like that a little bit. But we're working through it. And the other thing we've had to do is rent some temporary storage that we're moving onto the campus to hold some of the things that, again, because of the space issue in the short term, we don't have a classroom space to put them in. Thank you.

[13077] Bowen Zhang: Any more questions? With that, thank you for your report, Superintendent. Moving on to Staff Report, Summer School 2021, Superintendent Triplett.

[13091] Mark Triplett: Thank you, President Chun. So I'm going to turn this over to Assistant Superintendent Pierce-Davis. And we wanted to give the board an update on summer school. As you know, we have been provided additional funding this year for summer school through the state state grant, and so we've been really working hard to put together a program that is bigger than normal, while also really making sure that we're thinking about all of the safety protocols and continuing with the things that we've developed during this in-person learning time. So, Ms. Pierce-Davis.

[13134] SPEAKER_31: Thank you. Yes, so I'm going to start off with a quote from the incomparable Kim Nickerson, she is a Tosa in NUSD. I wish I would have said this myself because it's brilliant. But this has really been our sort of mantra for our summer learning so learning recovery accelerate, not remediate. So summer school, we have sent out our applications, they are open to all applicants and seats will be available based on interest and availability of teachers. So what that means is we've really tried to open up as much as possible, like Dr. Triplett said, to see as many students as possible who are interested will get a space. That being said, if we don't have We're only limited by the amount of teachers that we have, and we still have to make sure that we're maintaining spacing and everything else. So priority placement is given to those students recommended by site principals and teams. However, after those priority pupils get in, we are opening it up to as many students as we possibly can serve. The dates and times of July 14 through July 9, there will be no school obviously an observance of Fourth of July holiday. The elementary program hours are 830 to 1220 daily preschool hours are slightly less. And then the secondary programs are very by their credit needs and so. We have some afternoon apex offerings as well as some morning in-person instruction offerings. Again, because of the board's recommendation around graduation requirements, we've really tried to up specifically for our seniors those credit recoveries so that our seniors can graduate on time. And then we also have our ESY extended school year for our special education students with the exact same times. We have three programs, elementary enrichment, held by Dr. Castaneda-Leal and that's housed at Schilling. We have our secondary credit recovery, Ms. Rangel, she's housed at Newark Memorial High School and then our extended school year will be right over here at Musick Elementary. I do want to take a moment to just celebrate these administrators, they are moving mountains. to ensure after everyone else is tired and celebrating the end of the year, they are moving mountains to ensure that our students still have access to extended learning. And I just want to take a moment and celebrate them. We also have expansion of opportunities so I want to speak on that a little bit so we have increased number of teacher positions to offer in hopes of being able to increase our capacity to serve more students. We have increased incentives so we currently have the highest paying summer school teacher positions in the Tri-City area. We have increased support staffing positions so we've included instructional coaches, counselors, we've included a budget for PBIS to really support that summer school program. And then again, increased credit opportunity. We may also be looking to add a kindergarten bridge program in August, if it is possible. And so this isn't just ending here we're going to continue all the way through August and to see what else we can support and provide our students during this pro during this time the lunch program continues for a seamless distribution. These flyers have gone out to the community, so I just wanted to take a moment to share. Not only at these three sites, but also at two additional locations, families can receive free meals throughout the summer if they have kids aged 1 through 18. So I just want to promote that as well. How to apply. So again, these flyers have been sent out. There is an application link on them. They have been shared by site principals, the district office. And up to this Friday, again, we are giving priority placement to students that have been recommended by their administrative teams. And then after this, we will start to open it up on a first come first serve basis. And we will notify families as they are admitted so that they can come and register. I believe that is it for my presentation. So hopefully that gave you a little sense of what our summer school offerings are.

[13388] Bowen Zhang: So before we bring back to the board, I believe we do have a public comment. Ms. Gutierrez, can you bring in the speaker?

[13398] SPEAKER_33: Yes, President Zhang, the speaker is Anne Chung.

[13403] SPEAKER_10: Hi, can you hear me?

[13405] SPEAKER_33: Yes, you may begin.

[13407] SPEAKER_10: Hello, my name is Ann Chung. I'm a parent of a student at Snow Elementary. When my husband and I first received the email regarding summer school opportunities, we were very excited about the elementary enrichment program because we thought it would be, you know, enrichment. However, upon emailing the district office, we learned that the program will focus on math and reading and review concepts learned in the current grade level. To me, that's not enrichment. That's remedial education. Please don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining about NUSD offering summer school to help students who weren't able to process all the material during the school year. I think it's very important and necessary. My complaint is for the district to call the program what it is, so it's not misleading to the general public. On another note, I'm curious on how many students are actually accepted into the summer programs. By stating, recommended for all NUSD students on the flyer, it sounded like every student would be accepted if they wanted to. But in reality, admission is first as needed basis and then goes down the waiting list. Again, please do not mislead the general public. Lastly, I love how there is an increased summer school incentives for staff by offering the highest paying summer school teacher positions in the Tri-City area. Now, if only the board did not piss off most of our teachers by ignoring their concerns a couple months ago, who will want to teach summer school after such a stressful time? Anyways, moving forward, I hope this board and NUSD will work on being transparent and rebuilding trust with NTA and the community. Thank you for your time.

[13503] Bowen Zhang: Thank you. Bringing back to the board member Winston.

[13511] SPEAKER_39: Thank you. So, um, I, yes, I just have a clarifying question, um, for kids who are transitioning into like sixth graders going into seventh grade. Well, and the speaker had mentioned that the students were going to be the summer school would be for the current grade that they're in. Um, which is correct, but for the, for, um, for the secondary program, does the junior high students, um, take those courses at the high school?

[13545] SPEAKER_31: Um, so that was our intention. Yes. That our junior high school students would take it at the high school. Um, again, it is dependent upon, um, whether or not we have the teachers to teach the courses. Um, and what I can say is that we are committed to continuing to recruit as many teachers as possible for as long as up until the day of summer school starting, we're not stopping. Um, we're going to continue to try to recruit and see if we can expand that program to serve as many kids as possible.

[13575] SPEAKER_37: Thank you.

[13580] SPEAKER_30: Member Hill.

[13583] Aiden Hill: Miss Pierce, thank you for the report and thank you for, you know, spearheading this. I think it's an incredibly important initiative. Um, and as, as a teacher in a district, in a different district, you know, I know how the kids have struggled with remote learning and, um, and how a lot of times they really need, not only do they need to get back as a community, but they have some remedial learning that they need to do. The question I have is just a clarifying question, because you talked about, I mean, not only are we increasing pay, but we're increasing the number of positions. And I believe that this is all coming from a lot of the funding that's being provided by the governor, you know, as in an effort to basically kind of get schools restarted. And so I just wanted to clarify and confirm that that's kind of where the funding is coming from.

[13628] Mark Triplett: Yeah, that's correct. Ms. Delacruz, do you want to speak about specifics around that?

[13634] Marie dela Cruz: Yes, thank you, Member Hill. The funding is mainly coming from the Expanded Learning Opportunity Grant, which was the intent of the governor providing us with those resources.

[13649] Bowen Zhang: Any other questions? Okay, thank you, Mrs. Pierce, for the wonderful summer school presentation. Moving on to public hearing, 14.1, public hearing on the 2021 to 2022 proposed budget. Public hearings open at 8.51 p.m., Superintendent Triplett.

[13677] Mark Triplett: Thank you, President Jun. So I believe that we are starting with the proposed budget. So I will turn it over to Ms. Dela Cruz. Are we doing any sort of presentation, Ms. Dela Cruz?

[13693] Marie dela Cruz: Yes, I have a presentation on the proposed budget.

[13706] Mark Triplett: Well, Ms. Delacruz is putting that up. I just wanna, how many pages is this thing again, Ms. Delacruz? 187. I just want to appreciate Ms. Delacruz, Ms. Lola, the whole team. This is an incredible, incredible effort and with such detail. So I'll turn it over to her, but I really want to appreciate her for all the work.

[13729] Marie dela Cruz: Thank you, Dr. Triplett. And good evening, President Zhang and members of the board and the community. I'm pleased to share with you our 21-22 proposed budget. So this is the proposed budget for next school year, July, 2021 through June, 2022. It includes a budget for all 10 of our funds, which includes the general fund, adult education fund, child development, cafeteria fund, our special reserve for other than capital outlay, our building fund, capital facilities, a special reserve for capital outlay projects, our bond interest and redemption fund, and our Post-Employment Benefits Self-Insurance Fund. It also includes a multi-year projection for the two subsequent years of 22-23 and 23-24 for the general fund. This budget must be adopted by the governing board by July 1st, and it is due to the Alameda County Office of Education five days after being adopted or by July 1st, whichever comes first. And then the county will be reviewing the budget. There's no certification required for the adopted budget. The county will either approve it, disapprove it, or conditionally approve our district budgets. So starting with our revenues, we are projecting a total of $68.2 million in revenues. Of that, 85% represents unrestricted revenues, and 15% is restricted. Most of our funding does come from the local control funding formula, 83% of our total revenues, and it's 97% of our unrestricted funding. In the federal revenues, we have special ed funding, our Title I and Title III funding. Expanded Learning Opportunity Grant and ESSER II revenues are not included in this 21-22 budget because we recognize those revenues this year in 2021. And any unspent funds will be reflected as carryover, and it will be shown in the expenditures. The ESSER III funding, which is also part of the stimulus money, was not included in this budget. We had received the allocation and resource code information late after we had already created this budget. And so we will include that allocation, which is $4.2 million in the 45-day budget revision. In the state revenues, it includes lottery, mandated cost reimbursements, and after-school education safety grant. And in the local revenues, This represents our interest income, income we receive from leases and rentals and use of facilities, local grants, and the transfers we make to our special education program. As I mentioned earlier, the local control funding formula represents 97% of our unrestricted funds included in this year's LCFF is the 5.07% COLA that the governor is proposing, and that includes 2.31% for this year, 2021, a 1.7% COLA for next year, 2122, and also an increase of 1% to the LCFF base. The total LCFF funding is about 56.2 million, And that's based on an ADA of 5,483. And that ADA, just as a reminder, is based on the 19-20 Hold Harmless provision. And that will end this year. The total LCAP supplemental and concentration funds is $5.8 million. almost 5.7 million, and that's based on an unduplicated pupil percentage of 55.56%. So if you recall, in order for us to get concentration funding, our UPP has to be above 55%. So the budget includes one-time funds, And in the Expanded Learning Opportunity Grant, we got allocated the $3.9, almost $4 million. In the In-Person Instruction Grant, we have just a little over $1.5 million. And then in the ESSER II funding, we received $1.8 million. And in ESSER III, the $4.2 million, for a total of about $11.5 million. And we have a spending period for the Expanded Learning and In-Person Grant from July 20, 2020 through August 2022. And for the ESSER II funding, we have until September 2023 to spend that money, and the ESSER III until September 2024. And the ELO funds, based on the plan that was approved, can be used for various strategies to accelerate learning and address student needs. such as extended learning time, like summer school, professional development, and programs to address social emotional learning and supports for credit deficient students. The in-person grant could be used for reopening needs, such as PPE, materials and supplies, facilities needs. And the condition was that we had to reopen by May 15th, 2021. And the ESSER funds, they could be used to help schools respond to the pandemic and related activities, meet the students' needs and teachers, improve the use of technology, support distance learning and reopening needs, and make up for lost learning time. The governor's proposal still includes deferrals. It was reduced down to 2.6 billion. What this means is that we still have deferrals in February of this year through June, which means our payments from the state are being delayed to next year. It does, however, eliminate next year's. So previously, we were going to get deferrals in February 2022 through May 2022. And those have now been eliminated. So for example, the way that works, The funding that we would have received, for example, in February, we're going to receive in November of next year. And then the March payment, we're receiving in October of next year. The April payment, we're receiving in September of next year, the May, in August, and then the June payment, we will receive in July. And the reason why this is important, because it has to do with our cash flow. And our cash flow, is what pays our salaries and also our vendors. On the expenditure side, we have a total of 72.4 million in total expenditures. Of that amount, 78 to 79% are salaries and benefits. 67% is unrestricted and 33% is restricted. So on the restricted side, it does include our one-time ELO and ESSER funds. And it also includes the increase in our state unemployment tax, which is in the benefits. Our tax rate went up from a 0.05% to 1.23%, which is a $485,000 increase from 2021. The good thing is, because it is due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are allowed to use our ESSER II funds to cover this, which is a relief to our general funds. Restricted also includes our special education funding, as well as the routine restricted maintenance account. In the contributions, the general fund contributes $8.9 million to the special education program and the routine restricted maintenance account to cover expenditures and excess of revenues. We receive about $3.7, $3.8 million in special education funding. And on the expenditure side, the special ed is about $10.6 million. And then the routine restricted maintenance is $2.05. for a total expenditure of 12.6. So you see the contribution there is 8.9 million. We are required to have 3% of our total expenditures go towards routine restricted maintenance. Although we do not receive any revenues for that. So what's the bottom line? We look at our unrestricted funds. When you look at the total revenues of 57.8 million and the expenditures, you subtract that from the revenues. We have a balance of 9.3 million. However, when you apply the contributions of the 8.9 million, we have a net increase to our fund balance of 381,000. So that increase to fund balance is added to the beginning balance of 7.1 million. So our total ending fund balance for the year is 7.5 million. The restricted fund balance of 405 doesn't count towards reserves. So when we're looking at our reserves, we have 7.4 million. And then add that to the fund 17 reserves of 2.3 million. We have a total reserves of 9.7, which represents 13% of total expenditures. In the multi-year projection, we have to apply certain assumptions. So in the multi-year projection, we have assumptions in the COLA for the local control funding formula, the 5.07% is still based on the governor's proposal, which is not final yet. And that's what I have to emphasize that the governor's proposal has not been enacted and the legislature is still reviewing and vetting the proposals. Same thing with the 22-23 COLA of 2.48% and 3.11%. Please keep in mind, these are projections. They're not final, and they're not actual COLAs. We have included assumptions in step and column increases for both Certificated and Classified and NEWMA. The salary adjustments that were already settled include the 1% effective July of 2021, and then the 1.5% effective February 2022. And it also includes changes in our STRS employer contribution rates. The changes in PERS is the one that has a bigger impact in that between the next three years, we're looking at 6.4% total increase in our PERS contribution rates. And again, the unemployment insurance next year is looking at 1.23%, and then projected to go back down to 0.2%, which is still higher than our current 0.05%, but obviously not as high as the 1.23. A big piece of the assumptions also has to do with our enrollment and our ADA projections. Our enrollment projections are still based on a 1% decline for each year in 22, 23, and 23, 24. So this year, our current enrollment is 5,504. And next year, we're projecting down to 5,496. And then the following year, 5,441, and then 5,387. The projected ADA is based on a 97% ratio between ADA and enrollment. And the funded ADA is based on the higher of either the current year or the previous year. So as I mentioned earlier, this year and next year's ADA Funded ADA is based on the hold harmless that the state had given us. But in 22-23, it's going to be based on our estimated ADA of 5,331, which is over 100 ADA less than what we're getting funded for this year. Our unduplicated pupil count we're projecting to remain stable, just a little above the 55%. So in looking at the multi-year projection, our 21-22 revenues are based on the governor's May revised proposals. It's still pending, the final state budget. And then for the two subsequent years, the revenues are based on school services of California projections and not actual COLA. And the expenditures include one-time funds and also savings from school consolidation. So for next year, we have a $381,000 net increase to our fund balance. And then in 2022-23, a slight increase of $9,000, and then in 23-24, $102,000. So we're projecting balanced budgets for next year and the next two subsequent years. So how that impacts our fund balance for next year, we're looking at a 13% reserve. And then in the following year, 14% and in 23-24, just a little bit above 14%. The board is committed to building 17% reserves by June of 2026. So I think we are on track to reaching that goal. We do have other funds, our adult education, child development, cafeteria and special reserves and building fund, capital facilities funds and the special reserves for capital outlay and bond interest and redemption fund and self-insurance fund. All of these are restricted funds and can only be used for certain activities. And these funds are also available for inner fund borrowing in the event we are cash deferrals are needed in order for us to continue our operations. So what's next? The legislature will start or they've already started to vet all of the governor's revised proposals. So they'll look through all of his proposals and either approve it or change it. And they have until June 15th to pass a budget. And after they pass a budget, then the governor will have 12 days to sign it, approve it, or veto the budget. And then once the governor signs the budget, the district has 45 days to make public any significant changes to the adopted budget. And at the next board meeting, June 17th, That's when staff will recommend for formal action and approval of this 21-22 proposed budget. So in summary, our proposed 21-22 budget does project a balanced budget, assuming the governor's May revise proposals are approved. And we will meet our 3% minimum required reserve for the budget year, as well as the two out years. The state enacted budget is still pending. We have a 45-day budget revision after the governor signs the budget. And at the next meeting, we will recommend approval of the proposed budget. Just a reminder of our budget reporting cycle. We are in June, where we're presenting the adopted budget. The 45-day budget revision will probably occur in August, either the first or second meeting of the board, depending on when the governor signs the budget. And then we have our year-end actuals in September, our first interim report in December, and then our second interim report in March. Lastly, yes, I would like to thank the staff and the community for their contribution towards the development of this budget, especially to Kim Lola, our director of fiscal services, our principals and our LCAP committee for all of their help and contribution to putting this budget together. And at this time, like to open it up for discussion, comments, questions, and continue the public hearing and hear any comments from the public.

[14931] Bowen Zhang: Ms. Gonzalez, let's bring the public speaker for the public hearing.

[14937] SPEAKER_33: Yes, we have two public speakers. The first one is going to be Brian Foster. Brian, you may begin.

[14952] SPEAKER_17: Thank you, board president and trustee.

[14953] Marie dela Cruz: Sorry. My speaker. Um, I'm sorry. I couldn't.

[14960] Mark Triplett: Shall I begin again?

[14961] SPEAKER_17: All right. Thank you. Board president and trustees, administrators, staff, parents, and students who are here virtually tonight, you review the most important policy document of the year, the budget. In addition, you are reviewing the local control and accountability plans and school plans for student achievement. When you budget funding for any program or goal, you are explicitly making policy for the school district. Integrated into this budget and school policies is the continued use of APEX learning as an alternative to regular education. We use APEX primarily as a form of credit recovery, which sounds benign, but has become a way for students to lie, cheat, and steal their way to a high school diploma. The 2019-20 Alameda County Grand Jury cited the Oakland Unified School District for abusing APEX learning, yet NMHS actively engages in many of those same malpractices today. Make no mistake, APEX has become the escape valve that students use to obtain credits to graduate. And we are all complicit in this deceit because it is one of the primary methods we use to artificially boost our students' graduation rates. APEX does not help our students to learn but instead teaches them to cheat and abuse systems. How else can you explain why for multiple years, otherwise non-graduating seniors themselves requested, and our counselor assigned to them, APEX classes in the last week of the school year? Students prefer to complete an entire semester of APEX in just a week or less because it is easier and faster than making up all of their late work in regular classes. The facts are clear. In a week or even just one day, students copy and paste answers from the internet to earn an entire semester's credit in APEX. When given that choice, why wouldn't any student choose APEX instead of doing all the work that the other students complete throughout the year? If APEX really worked, then why wouldn't we just assign all students APEX work for a couple of weeks and then leave for the year? While one might argue that APEX allows students to graduate, it comes at great cost. and not just budgetarily. First, it cheapens the hard work of every serious student at school. It devalues our high school diploma. It also undermines the authority and credibility of our teachers. Why would a student choose to do their teacher assigned work when they can instead take an Apex class and earn the same credit seemingly without penalty? Teenagers tend to value immediate gratification over long-term investment. You know that. Why should we adults indulge in their worst tendencies? Each of you can choose tonight to vote for academic integrity or continue to endorse one of the biggest reasons of the school's high graduation rates do not reconcile with our test scores and student performance. Tonight, you can choose to restore value to our diploma or continue to cheapen it. Either you believe in actual learning or you endorse cheating. The choice is yours. I encourage you to defund Apex.

[15145] Bowen Zhang: Thank you, Mr. Foster. Next speaker.

[15150] SPEAKER_33: Yes, the next speaker is Kerry New.

[15156] Cary Knoop: Am I live? Yes. Good evening again, boards and executive staff, superintendents. Ms.dela Cruz, thank you very much for the presentation. Very clear. Thank you very much for the first few pages giving an overview of the budget. Things look a lot brighter than they were just before we closed two schools and that's great. We're not deficit spending for the next three years according to the prognosis of course. I think the COLA is the big unknown here and it probably would be a good thing if possible to run a sort of a what if simulation if the COLA just goes up a lot more and Obviously, it's going to be also intertwined with union negotiations and things like that if inflation is going to pick up. One comment I want to make, and I don't want to be misunderstood, but I'm just raising the question. Not too long ago, we were talking about closing two schools and deferring one closure, and that was music and again I'm not saying that we should just say don't close music but I think it is justified to at least raise the question and say look with this better budget and the fact that we're not deficit spending that we're actually getting a surplus what would happen if we decide to for instance wait another year and then we evaluate again and again I'm not saying that we shouldn't close music But I think in all fairness, if finances go better, I hope we're all for, you know, small community schools. And if we can keep these open, then we should. And so, you know, my point would be, you know, for Miss Dela Cruz, basically, to show really the hard numbers and saying, it's totally impossible to do this. And, you know, I'm not totally naive. I, you know, it's not that we're doing wonderful, but Again, at any opportunity, we need to reevaluate whether we can stop closing a school. And, you know, I just wanna raise the attention that we ought to at least raise the question and, you know, give Ms. Dela Cruz the opportunity to say it might absolutely not. And, you know, I think we owe that to the community. So that's my input here. You know, great that we have a so much better budget, but at any time we always should reevaluate our plan. Most important thing is planning as a process, not saying we have a plan and we have to stick to it. You need to continuously evaluate whether your plans are still active. So again, that's just my two cents here. Thank you very much.

[15333] Bowen Zhang: Thank you, Mr. Nguyen. With that, public hearing close at 9.19 PM. Moving on to 14.2 public hearing on LCAP. Superintendent Triplett.

[15346] Mark Triplett: Thank you, President Chen. I know we're running late, so I will turn this one over to Ms. Pierce and Ms. Cervantes-Falk, who will do a brief presentation about the LCAP.

[15362] SPEAKER_31: Thank you, and I believe Ms.dela Cruz will be joining us. Is Isabel in the space with us?

[15371] Mark Triplett: You mean Ms. Cervantes-Falk?

[15373] Chery Villa: Yes. Thank you.

[15379] SPEAKER_33: Yes, she just joined.

[15380] Bowen Zhang: Public hearing open at 920. Okay.

[15393] SPEAKER_31: Ms. Cervantes-Falk, you can take it away.

[15396] SPEAKER_37: Good evening, and thank you, Ms. Piers. Good evening, board members, executive cabinet members. We are here to provide you with a quick presentation on our 2021, excuse me, 21-22 LCAP actions and goals. Next slide, please. Thank you. The purpose is to present you with our draft of their 21-22 LCAP and to hold our public hearing. I'll give you a quick review of the LCAP requirements the timeline and the development process. Then we'll present the summary of our 21-22 LCAP goals and actions, and then present the draft to you. Next slide, please. A quick review of the requirements for the state. The three major requirements is that we adhere to the approved LCAP template that we adopted at the same time as we adopt our budget. and that we make sure that it reflects the minimum percent required for increasing improved services for unduplicated students. Next slide, please. What you see here is just a quick snapshot or a picture of the different sections of the LCAP. And just to give you an understanding of it, because it can be very daunting when you try and see everything that is there. So I'm just quickly going to and demonstrate that as you open the document, the first thing you're going to see is the LCFF budget overview for parents. This is something that we brought to you back in December. However, that one we brought in December was for this current school year. And now that we're back in the actual cycle of the LCAP, we are now presenting to you the 21-22 budget overview. That is followed by the annual update of the previous year. And because this was an interesting and different year for the LCAP, you're gonna see two annual updates, one that says the 2019-2020 LCAP, and then you're gonna see the 2020-21 LCP update, followed by the plan summary of the start of a three-year LCAP. Then there's a section on the stakeholder engagement. And then we'll get to the goals and actions. And then the last section that you'll see would be the increased and improved services. And again, this is just to give you an idea of what's in how the entire document is put together. Today, we are not going to go through every single aspect of that. Today, we're just going to give you a quick summary report. So in terms of the timeline in consultation with our different stakeholders, we are now at stage three where we are providing an opportunity for the public to give input. We've consulted with all of the different stakeholders that you see on this slide. Next slide, please. And in a little bit more detailed, we've outlined the different dates that we've met with the different groups. So you can see for yourself, I'm not gonna necessarily read through all of these, but our LCAP advisory committee did meet monthly. And then we engaged with our ed services team, with our principals, our school board study session, of course, our DLAG. We did also have a, student groups. We had two student groups that provided input. And as I had mentioned earlier at a different meeting, we had input from our school site council, as well as our ELACs throughout the month of March and April via the principals of the sites. And to start our summary of our goals, I'm gonna pass it on to Ms. Davis here. And yes, so back to Ms. Davis.

[15657] SPEAKER_31: So I'll get us started with goal one curriculum and instruction. We also align these to our state centers as well so you can see their priority two and for the general description, we want again we want to promote a culture of instructional excellence and continuous improvement. There are metrics for that. We use the California dashboard, excuse me. So we're looking at our SBAC, ELA, and math. We're looking at EEL progressing. We're looking at college and career indicators such as A to G, course completion, AP exams taken and passed, things like that. We're also looking at some local measures such as I-Ready, our EEL reclassification rates, as well as some other assessments. So some of the actions that we're going to take as a result of this. And again, this really came and stemmed from looking at themes that came from our various stakeholder groups. So we started with the data that came from these various stakeholder groups. We then drew themes from the different stakeholder groups, and we use that to really inform our actions. Things that came from this were intervention teachers, EL specialists, counselors at our secondary sites, as well as licenses and some of the other things that you see there. For goal two, Ms. Cervantes?

[15745] SPEAKER_37: Sure. So for goal two, we again continued with the buckets that we had started. So goal two had been engagement in school climate. You can see there how it's relevant and it addresses the state priorities, three, five, and six. And for this one, we started looking at working towards promoting a culture of community and partnership among our parents, our students, our staff, and entire community that will result in an increase in parent involvement and student participation, as well as a positive school culture. And the California dashboard metrics that align to this is our graduation rates, our chronic absenteeism rates, and our suspension rates. local measurements that we will also use is the pairing opportunities that we promote and that we hold at the district level, as well as the site level, such as also committees such as ELAC, DELAC, school site council, et cetera. And I just need to emphasize that the purpose here when we're talking about the pairing involvement, it's not so much just of participating in different activities, but participating and being involved in their students' education and participating in opportunities where decisions are being made. And then the other piece too is that we're really tying this to our PBIS and our cost programs and services that we also have in place. So as Ms. Pierce mentioned, some of the actions and services that came out of our different input sessions and that we looked at how can we best support are included in this slide here. Again, continuing to support our PBIS system, we're looking at, you know, our administrators, how do we encourage or support the focus on our unduplicated student groups, and then as well as translation service. I don't think we ever will have enough translation services to meet the need, but we definitely are trying. And next slide, please. Well said. And for this one, I'm gonna go ahead and pass it on to, I think we said we were gonna pass it on to Ms. Marie, if I remember correctly. Ms.dela Cruz.

[15904] SPEAKER_31: If not, I can take this one. Oh, go for it.

[15906] Marie dela Cruz: Yeah, if you could, Ms. Davis, I thought I had the next slide.

[15911] SPEAKER_31: So goal three is around exceptional learning environment. And this starts really with making sure we have our foundational conditions for schools. So we think about reports such as Williams reporting, facilities, and then all the way up through creating a really exceptional learning environment by offering additional AP courses, creating conditions for accelerated learning and things like that. So some actions that we have chosen to fund that are coming out of this goal is around our East Bay Induction Consortium, which we heard a little bit about earlier this evening, really increasing the amount of teachers that we have in classrooms, as well as supporting low-income students paying for AP exams, which also supports our equity initiatives as well.

[15962] Jodi Croce: Thank you.

[15965] Marie dela Cruz: So some of the other LCAP goals have to do with student achievement, engagement, and conditions of learning. And the activities under student achievement include intervention teachers, our EL specialists, RSP teachers, counselors, the Bayside contract, and a regional occupational program under the engagement activities. We have an assistant principal funded at the high school, our PBIS support, translation services, and our library clerks in the conditions of learning, the East Bay induction, class size reduction, and our AP exams. So our total supplemental and concentration funds is $5,661,785. We allocated $1.9 million to the sites, which they've incorporated into their SPSAs. And the total under the 21-22 LCAP goals is $3.7 million. And total contributing to the improved and increased services is $4,062,000.

[16044] SPEAKER_37: And that wraps up the quick summary of the LCAP goals and actions. Like I said, it's an executive summary. You will see a lot more in detail the different actions and then the amounts per action. in the actual document itself.

[16072] Bowen Zhang: Okay, Mrs. Gutierrez, please bring in the public speakers.

[16077] SPEAKER_33: Yes, thank you. We have two speakers for this one and the first one is Ramon Medina. Ramon, you may begin.

[16086] SPEAKER_13: Hello, can you hear me?

[16088] SPEAKER_33: Yes, you may begin.

[16091] SPEAKER_13: Before I begin, let me set the record straight. My goal is not to promote negativity, although I've been unfairly accused of this while participating in this committee before I even said a word during our last meeting. I believe in the reckoning of strengths and weaknesses. If we do not admit our weaknesses, then they are not likely to be remedied. I have a vested interest in seeing this district become successful. As a parent, a community member, a taxpayer, and a business owner. If it seems like I'm pointing out our shortcomings, it is only with the hope that these issues receive attention and be corrected, not continued. When I volunteered to be a part of this committee, I understood that there was going to be a learning curve for me, as I'm not familiar with many educational acronyms and budgeting policies. But I tried to pay close attention to programs that were working, and I tried to analyze the programs that were not meeting the goals, or maybe needed additional support. When I requested data and information be provided to inform my suggestions and participation, I was ignored.

[16164] SPEAKER_43: Hold on. OK.

[16176] SPEAKER_13: Sorry, my air conditioner broke. I had an emergency here, so somebody was helping me. When I requested that information be provided to inform my suggestion and participation, I was ignored. I do not believe I am the only member of the committee to experience this. Perhaps I was ignored so the committee could be stirred to predetermine action items. That is what I felt like. But others were ignored as well. So why weren't committee members' requests honored? Meetings were organized to limit the time committee members had actually discussed objectives and goals. Many times we had only 10 minutes to do this. From my perspective, meetings require more than an hour to give thoughtful input. But if the goal was only to meet a minimal requirement of having a meeting, then I can see why the time was cut short. Our district leadership must understand that all meetings must not only be efficient, but effective. with all those involved in the sites and district meetings. As I reflect on my experience in the committee, I have found several areas that can be improved. There should be a roll call and confirmation of quorum at each meeting. Minutes should be reviewed and approved at the beginning of each meeting. The committee should be able to review data to access programs A budget for individual goals should be provided and discussed. Again, I am pointing these items out in hopes they will be corrected for future meetings. Finally, one of the goals LCAP addressed is improving participation among stakeholders. From my own experience, I find it difficult to participate when I am ignored and labeled as a negative. As an active Padre Latino of this community who has volunteered and supported this district since my daughter started in this district five years ago. I'm disappointed on the leadership of this committee, on the way another Latino gets treated in a formal meeting in this district, and on the way this year we manage our meetings. The following committee members supported my statements. Carissa Gang, Soyla Avila, Sue Eustace, Jebediah Ross, and Cherry Villa. Please note, I only reached out to six of them.

[16295] Bowen Zhang: Thank you. Next speaker.

[16301] SPEAKER_33: Thank you. The next speaker is Sherry Vela. You may begin.

[16315] Chery Villa: Hello again. Once again, my name is Sherry Vela, and I'm the NTA representative on our LCAP Advisory Committee. Okay, in regards to this 140 page LCAP that was just presented by our director of special projects, the committee, which is a Brown Act committee appointed by you, the school board, we were not given to review that 140 page document. What we were given was a five page summary of the LCAP and with the explanation that a complete draft was not available for us to review because it was already submitted. Now, going back to what I wanted to say, being a Brown Act committee, besides no roll call to confirm quorum and no approval of previous minutes, which were supposed to happen because being a Brown Act committee, our committee There was no meaningful discussion or, I lost my picture. There's no meaningful discussion or deliberation on any item of this LCAP at any one of our meetings. We were not given any data to see if the actions that we are doing currently are working or not. We were not given a budget or a budget summary even to discuss. And ultimately, you know, we weren't given the complete draft of the LCAP with all of the seven components that are laid out by the Department of Education. The seven components are the LCFF budget overview, the annual update, the plan summary, the stakeholder engagement, the goals and actions, increase or improve services, and the expenditure table. We weren't given any of that. not at one meeting. Our meetings consisted of, they were scheduled for one hour and for at least half of that hour, our committee was either talked to or given information, not information that we were supposed to be given and that was asked for at the meetings, but, you know, going back to the plan, step two and three of the LCAP development says that any questions or comments that are given by the committee will be responded to in writing by our superintendent. So instead of giving my comment in the Google spreadsheet, like we were always asked to do, instead of asking that loud, I did ask for this committee to be given a chance to do this LCAP work. And the response that was given by our superintendent was basically, thank you for your comments. We will take it into consideration for next year. So again, going back to how many times it said at board meetings or at town hall meetings that this LCAP committee has meaningful input into this LCAP, absolutely not. So again, I'll wrap it up by asking, If this committee can have a chance to do the work that we're charged with, when will we be given a chance to do that? Because as of now, it has not happened.

[16531] Bowen Zhang: Thank you for your comment. With that, public hearing closed at 9.39 PM. Watching the time, it's 9.39. We still have quite a bit of items to go through. I move that we temporarily extend the meeting to 11 p.m. May I get a second? Second. Seconded by Member Grundahl. Obviously, student member, you feel free to leave. Member Martinez, how do you vote? Member Martinez, how do you vote?

[16571] Elisa Martinez: Sorry, yes.

[16573] Bowen Zhang: Member Grundell? Yes. Member Hill? Yes. Member Nguyen?

[16579] Jodi Croce: Yes.

[16580] Bowen Zhang: My vote is yes as well. Motion carries with five ayes. Meeting currently extended to 11 p.m. So next big session will be new business. 15.4 is the only item that has public speakers. Is the rest of the board comfortable of doing 15.4 first? Okay, now we'll go to 15.4 first. H5 replacement, Superintendent Triplett.

[16608] Elisa Martinez: Point of order, President Hsiang. This is the second time that we've done that. My recommendation is that if we want to have a practice of doing, you know, so we have speakers before it gets too late, I recommend that we move some of the agenda items during the agenda approval. So in my I just wanted to voice that I don't agree. I don't support changing that. But of course, if the majority of the board, I support it. I just wanted to call that out.

[16635] Bowen Zhang: Yeah, because sometimes when we have speaker that at the last of the new business, if let's say this is 841, we'll probably just go with order. But given that we're closer to 10, so I would really, I would ask the discretion to move 15.4 first. OK. Superintendent Triplett, H5 replacement.

[16657] Mark Triplett: Thank you, President Jean. So this is the next step in our goal of replacing our HVACs and really, really improving the system. So I'll turn it over to Ms. Dela Cruz, who will speak more about the details of this item.

[16676] Marie dela Cruz: Thank you, Dr. Triplett. Ms. Gutierrez, is Mr. Caputo available?

[16684] SPEAKER_33: Yes, he's being moved over right now.

[16686] Marie dela Cruz: OK, thank you. Mr. Caputo and I will be presenting this item. And this is part of the HVAC replacement project. This particular action and recommendation is with the architects agreement. If you recall a few months ago, the board did approve the architects contract. And at that time it was the initial contract But now that we're getting into the construction phase, this is the contract that will actually cover the rest of the project. And I'm going to have Mr. Caputo go into that more in detail.

[16733] SPEAKER_25: Thank you, members of the board, Superintendent Triplett. Tonight in front of you is the proposal from the architect for the design services for the phase one part of the replacement projects. We're submitting them in individual packages to the DSA regulatory agency as per their new or more recent requirements. At any rate, the fee for the architect's work is $722,000... $722,685. Yeah, and on February 18th, when we approved the contract for the preliminary planning phase, it also included the authorization to move forward with this, provided we were within the threshold of the proposal that they did, which was a 9 to 11 percent of the construction cost range. Based on the current estimate for the work, we're at about 9.5%, which is well within reason and as anticipated, much lower than the other estimates we are getting from other architects through the RFQ process. So that is one component of this. The second component is that we did provide a budget that's in the package. This is basically the summary sheet of the budget that outlines a number of other services that we'll need in terms of inspection and testing and Um, as long along with our services, and we're asking the board to, um, approve the district, um, moving forward with those as needed. We'll bring any contracts back to the board. Um, but these are all part of, um, how we need to move forward with the project. And then, um, lastly, I think, um, um, Ms. Dela Cruz has a budget, um, as, as part of the, uh, board package. And with that, I'm available for any questions.

[16882] Bowen Zhang: Let's please bring in the public speaker, Mrs. Gutierrez.

[16886] SPEAKER_33: Yes, of course. We'll start with the first public speaker, which is Carrie New. I think he stepped out, so we'll go with our second speaker. Our second speaker is Eric Tam. Hello, can you hear me? Hi, yes, you may begin.

[16917] SPEAKER_20: Hi, board, Dr. Triplett, Ms. Dela Cruz, and staff. This is just more questions. First, Ms. Dela Cruz, I would love to sit down separately, one-on-one later, if we can just look at the numbers, and hopefully I understood your bond project budget update.pdf correctly. And hopefully I got it correct. So if I understand correctly, and I added the numbers within the total initial allocation for a track updates. We have budgeted $9.5 million And then if I look all the way down. I wish I could present this on the screen. So it's hard to describe on Excel sheet right now. A project management, finance consultant, and audit, other administrative expenses. If I add that all up, that's another $200,000 combined together, and that would be a total of $9.7 million budgeted. And there are other Measure G items like pavings, security upgrades, landscape, plumbing repairs, flooring, bleachers. I made the assumption that those are not related to this HVAC project, if I understood those numbers correctly. So we have a $9.7 million budget. And I was just scanning the contracts. So the initial preliminary draft It had $9.784,837. That was from RGM Kramer and then Mr. Caputo also mentioned right now from our design architect the Ratcliffe firm, they're at $722,685. So if I combine those together, the number equals 10,507,522. So if I subtract that current estimate, those two estimates in the contracts that we have, and I subtract the budget of $9.7 million, There's $807,522 for these 318 HVAC small units that we need to install. I was unable to find that amount. And maybe we're taking that money from the other Measure G items, but that would be an interesting item for the board to ask and clarify. And then a second item would be kind of similar to my comments from last week. I know there's roughly, I believe it was 368 or 378 total HVAC units that need a replacement, and those in the 50 are the larger units, which will involve larger construction. I would also be curious on how we are planning to budget for that. Thank you.

[17092] Bowen Zhang: Thank you. Ms. Gutierrez, do we have Mr. Noob there?

[17096] SPEAKER_33: Looking at our attendee list and still no.

[17100] Bowen Zhang: Okay, bringing back to the board, questions and comments from the board.

[17109] SPEAKER_30: Member Hill.

[17112] Aiden Hill: Yes, so thank you. So this is a question for Mr. Caputo. So thank you for putting this together. As I kind of mentioned earlier, so you know, having spent most of my career in project management, I'm always kind of a glasses half empty kind of person. And the question I have is, I mean, the district has had you know, kind of a checkered past as it relates to air conditioning units. I mean, and I know that our recent challenges as we tried to restart the schools, as we found out, you know, essentially they were, they were not meeting standards and they didn't have the sufficient, you know, basically airflow, et cetera. And I know that we're now trying to upgrade and, but the challenge now just kind of becomes one of credibility of like, you know, Do we have the right plan? I mean, we just got out of a situation where we said, we've got these ionization units, they're going to be great, right? And then it turns out that it's not true at all. We've got to basically yank them out. And so I guess the question is, number one, do we have standards that are going to meet a sufficient level that's going to last us for a long period of time so this investment is going to really pay off? And then also, what are the mitigations that are built into this contract so that if things are not delivered, you know, per spec, that we have some type of recourse that, you know, can either we get our money back or there's some type of service contract that guarantees that they're going to correct these deficiencies. So it's really two questions. You know, can you please remind us, here's the standards, here's how long we're going to, we're expecting them to basically be good for the life of the unit. And then secondly, If the promises don't hold up, what's our recourse?

[17221] SPEAKER_25: Yes, thank you for your questions. First of all, all the contracts are prepared by district council and they are very strong, very well used agreements. They're standard in the industry. I can't remember offhand the architects agreement, but it's probably close to 60 pages and has lots of references to it. There's indemnification and insurance. They obviously have to warrant their work as professionals and they're all well standing in the industry. And then there's also other consultant agreements and construction contracts, which are also very rigorous and very standardized. We work with a number of district councils and these are very good documents. They are updated just prior to the embarkment onto this last wave of your bond measure projects. In terms of The current costs and budgets is still a little bit fluid. DSA is making revisions as early as today at four o'clock. I was in a meeting with the design team and what will come out of our review that we are learning is we will also be required to be adding strobes in addition to carbon monoxide detectors. in each of the classrooms and ductwork. So, you know, we still have contingencies and hopefully they're sufficient, but these are preliminary numbers at this juncture and we'll continue to keep you appraised.

[17322] Bowen Zhang: Thank you. Any other questions? So I believe for my question for Mrs. Delacruz, I think April, mid April, the board had updated from one of the staff report in mid April, the updated staff report for the budget for the HVAC, I believe that got increased to 8.6 million, right? And this is part of that, right?

[17356] Marie dela Cruz: Yes, that is correct, President Zhang. So remember, yeah, back in April, I gave an updated budget. And so with this, board item, we will actually be also approving the budget, because at that time it was just information only. And in this recommendation, it does include an approval of the updated budget.

[17387] Bowen Zhang: Okay, okay. With that, okay, Member Nguyen?

[17398] SPEAKER_39: Thank you, President Jung. So just one quick question, Mr. Kruder. If we approve this tonight, when do you anticipate work being started on the contract?

[17411] SPEAKER_25: That's a very good question. And as I had indicated before, we are submitting to DSA when these projects were being designed. Um, we believe that they fell under the exemption requirements, but there are new, um, requirements at the state, um, architect's office, um, both with respect to how they process new projects, uh, under the COVID regulations. And also as a result, they're adding new requirements to some of these depth work, um, and unit changes. Um, so, um, we have a meeting on the ninth. So on the 17th, I'll be able to update you. That meeting, the design team is presenting two of the projects. The structural engineers, electrical engineers will all be there. And they hope to demonstrate that these are not exceeding the weight, that the designs fall within the requirements. And we're hoping that they can help us expedite their review. They are looking at fire life safety, so they could be adding some other requirements But, you know, our goal is to try and get as much of these done in the summer as possible. And obviously, if DSA decides that they, you know, they're sending stuff out to other regions right now, if they decide they're going to take a long time, then we'll have to work on this around school. We've done it before. It's not all of our work in schools doesn't happen in the summer. Sometimes we have to deal with some of it encroaching into the school year.

[17513] SPEAKER_39: Thank you so much.

[17518] Bowen Zhang: With that, I move that we approve the Radcliffe.

[17522] SPEAKER_33: President Zhang, sorry to interrupt you before making the motion. Kerry New is back. Did you want to take his comment before making the motion or would you want to proceed?

[17534] Bowen Zhang: Is he really back? We can take his comments.

[17538] SPEAKER_33: Okay. So Mr. Rose, if you could please unmute, carry on.

[17547] Cary Knoop: Thank you very much. And I apologize for I had to step away for an urgent matter. And I really apologize for it's really, it's really a bad behavior. And again, I'm sorry for holding up everybody or, you know, getting things out of sync. I would like to be I would like to say I'm very concerned about this budget for a couple of reasons. One is that when you have a project of this size, you need details. And when you approve a budget without any details, and yes, there's a couple of details, but just not enough, it's like, you know, steering blindly. We need to know what HVACs, where, if they're new, if they're used, if they're out of shelf, whatever, we need to get detailed on this. You can't simply approve this. Second, you need to have a giant chart with timelines saying like, well, maybe we can get this done in the summer and maybe not. And maybe next year, sorry, that's all big red flags to me. Third, how are you going to fund this? Um, I know, I think in a previous version of this document, it mentioned the developer funds and the board would be wise to get legal advice as to whether HVAC installations or maybe even repairs can be used for the developer funds. We have declining, you know, numbers and you really ought to get legal advice whether developer funds can be used for this. But again, there are no details. And in addition, $700,000 for architecture. And yes, there's some specification, but again, I would really demand more details. This is a, you know, too loose of a proposition to put so much money at. I hope that six months down the road, a year down the road, we're not going to all realize this was not enough. Thank you very much.

[17686] Bowen Zhang: Thank you, Mr. Nup. Okay. I mean, just to confirm, Mrs. Delacruz, I believe this is from Measure G, right? Just like what we updated on April 15th during that board meeting on a staff report. This is coming from Measure G, not the developer fund, right?

[17702] Marie dela Cruz: It's a combination, President Zhang. What's coming out of Measure G is about $4.5 million. And then the balance, we are proposing to use developer fees.

[17717] Bowen Zhang: It's $4 million, right? Sorry? It's $4.6 million from Measure G and $4 million from developer fee, right? Because in April 15th meeting, we said this total budget is going to be $8.6 million, I remember.

[17731] Marie dela Cruz: $8.6 million was the balance of the bond.

[17735] Bowen Zhang: Oh, yeah.

[17736] Marie dela Cruz: Yeah, so the HVAC project was actually almost 10 million. So it was about 9.5, 9.6 million is what we were estimating. And four and a half was coming from the Measure G bond. And then the balance, we were proposing to use a combination of resources, but mostly from developer fees. But we could also use, fund 40, which is the Russian fund. We can use ESSER funds as well, but majority would be developer fees. And we have already received a legal opinion, legal advice on that.

[17774] Bowen Zhang: Okay, I see. Good. With that, I move that we approve the Radcliffe Architects proposal for phase one of H5 replacement project and the master project budget as presented. May I get a second?

[17790] Elisa Martinez: I'll second.

[17791] Bowen Zhang: Seconded by Member Martinez. Student Member Salami, how do you vote?

[17796] SPEAKER_03: Yes.

[17797] Bowen Zhang: Member Martinez?

[17800] Abbey Keirns: Yes.

[17801] SPEAKER_30: Member Goodell? Yes. Member Hill?

[17804] Bowen Zhang: No. Member Nguyen?

[17807] Jodi Croce: Yes.

[17808] Bowen Zhang: My vote is yes. Member Hill voted no. Motion carries with four ayes. Could you explain your opposition?

[17816] Aiden Hill: I mean, it was per my earlier comment to Mr. Caputo. I just don't think that we have sufficient detail. I don't think that we have clear goals. I don't think, as the speaker had said, I don't think we have clear timelines. And I don't have clear assurances that if something's going to go wrong, because the response that I got was, well, we've got lawyers working on this, and we've got lots of boilerplate. But that didn't help us in our most recent fiasco with the ionization units. So, you know, I think that we need a lot more detail to make sure that we don't have another issue. So that's my reason.

[17860] Bowen Zhang: Back to item 15.1, school naming, Superintendent Triplett.

[17866] Mark Triplett: Thank you, President Jung. So the board is very familiar with this process at this point. Last session, we had a public hearing to discuss the three finalist names. Just in the interest of time, I won't go over the whole process, but you do see it in the attachments that are on this agenda item. What I will report is that the design team, the group charged with leading this process and making a final recommendation to the board, they met last week. They weighed the comments from the public hearing. And had a had a really hearty discussion about the pros and cons of the three remaining name choices which include grow elementary. Cherry Elementary and Coyote Hills Elementary. And then I'm really excited to say that there was a unanimous vote by the design team. And usually there's a lot of healthy debate on that design team, but unanimously they voted to bring forth Coyote Hills as the recommended school name to the board. So I'll turn it over to back to you, President Jun. Happy to answer any questions or any details about the process. And then it's really up to the board if they want to vote to approve this name.

[17958] SPEAKER_30: Member Hill.

[17961] Aiden Hill: So my understanding was that a part of this process was that we solicited actually input from the community and the community voted. I mean, so they You know, there was a larger group and then it got winded down to a smaller group. So, and what I'd like to know is what were the percentages across these three choices from the from the community vote. How many people voted for coyote hills elementary. How many people voted for cherry elementary and how many people voted for grow elementary on a percentage basis.

[17995] Mark Triplett: Yeah, I think we, sorry, Member Hill, I don't have that information in front of us. We, I think we did have some data about that at one of the prior meetings, but I don't have it handy right now. What we did with the, with the selection process, and maybe I should just pull back up the design team process and go over it. So give me one second here. So this was the school naming process. And as you recall, so there was suggestions. It was an open call for suggestions by the community between the 14th and the 28th of April. And then the design team reviewed those suggestions. I believe there was 65 or so different suggestions, narrowed it down. And then they did vote, they narrowed it down to, I believe it was around 17 that fit the criteria that were sort of legitimate, if you will, based on the criteria. And then they voted to narrow that further to six that went to the, went to the community. And so then you see here there, the, The May 3 through the 11th is when the community voted and rank choice voting, but they actually didn't vote. We intentionally did not make it so that it was which of the three finalists had the most votes. We did it so that it was selecting the three choices with the highest votes. I know that might sound a little confusing, but we did do it so that it wasn't about which school or which name had the most of the three. It was which three choices had the most. I will say, though, I do believe that Coyote Hills did receive the most votes of those three, but I can't off the top of my head remember exactly how many that was. Then it went to the public hearing at the board meeting to get final input from the public. And then based on that, the design team made the final selection of one of those names to bring forth to the board as a recommendation. But yeah, I apologize. I don't have the exact numbers off the top of my head. President Hsuan, would you like us to call on other board members?

[18171] SPEAKER_30: Member Martinez.

[18175] Elisa Martinez: Yes, I just wanted to congratulate the design team. This is huge to come to a name and it's really I'm really glad to hear that it was unanimous. I'm sure there was a lot of discussion. So, you know, again, some of us who've experienced the, you know, the merger before and where we had did a name change, you know, I think it was a little bit unsettling, but then once it happened, there was a ton of excitement and people can really rally around this new name and this new identity. just wanted to congratulate everyone for all of their hard work and bringing the recommendation forward.

[18216] Bowen Zhang: Member Gwendolyn.

[18220] Terrence Grindall: Yes, I want to compliment the superintendent and his staff for such an exhaustive and inclusive process with the community and with the design team. I agree with Member Martinez. It's great that there was a unanimous move forward. And I'm inclined to respect that process and go forward with their recommendation.

[18247] Bowen Zhang: Member Nguyen.

[18250] SPEAKER_39: I too would just like to say thank you to the design team. I know that this process has been very difficult for everyone. I know that in the process of consolidation, we end up losing snow. And I know that our grant community is feeling a sense of loss also in terms of their own identity now that the school is being considered for renaming. And I just want us to take a moment and really recognize that it is coming together of two communities. And this is, in some ways, closure, and that we can, from this point on, move forward with the new name. And like Member Martinez had mentioned, building a new identity together and growing together. So I hope that we go towards that in that spirit. and remember and love and cherish our schools and our community, but also embrace the change that is coming forward and towards us for the next school year. So I hope that everybody has an open heart and an open mind and embrace what's to come and not harbor any ill will or or sadness moving forward. We can keep it with us, but we need to bring in embrace and and try and find happiness moving forward for for our entire community. So thank you for the hard work to the design team and to staff. I just wanted to say thank you again.

[18361] Bowen Zhang: Student member Salameh.

[18363] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I would just like to echo everybody's comments and thank everyone who was involved in the process. I thought that the top three choices were all fitting, and I would be happy to move forward with the selection made by the design team. It meets the requirements, but I also think that it is a name that reminds us all of a significant place in our community and a place that is important and meaningful to all of us.

[18388] Bowen Zhang: With that, I move that we rename the merged school as Coyote Hill Elementary. Can I get a second? I'll second. Seconded by Member Grundahl. Student Member Salami, how do you vote?

[18404] SPEAKER_03: Yes.

[18405] Bowen Zhang: Member Martinez?

[18407] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Yes.

[18408] Bowen Zhang: Member Grundahl? Yes. Member Hill? No. Member Nguyen?

[18414] SPEAKER_39: Yes.

[18415] Bowen Zhang: My vote is yes as well. Motion carries for four ayes. Member Hill voted no. Can you explain your opposition?

[18423] Aiden Hill: Yeah, my I think that all three names are a good choice, but My issue is kind of similar to the last item. And it's just, I want to, I want to see what the people voted for. And I remember when we talked about this earlier that I asked that same question and made that request and we still don't know the answer to it. And so, you know, again, I want, I want to see the data as we make decisions on things. So that's my opposition.

[18455] Bowen Zhang: Moving on to 15.2, NEWMA employees 2021 to 2022 salary schedule adjustment. Superintendent Triplett.

[18465] Mark Triplett: Thank you. Ms.dela Cruz, would you like to speak on this one?

[18470] Marie dela Cruz: Sure. Thank you, Dr. Triplett. So this item is a recommendation to provide an ongoing salary increase to the NEWMA salary schedules, which is the same as NTA and CSCA. So it provides a 1% increase effective July 1st, 2021, and then a 1.5% effective February 1st, 2022. So the NEWMA includes the New Work Management Team, which is a Certificated and Classified Management, our confidential unit, our classified supervisory, our behavioral specialists, and our occupational therapists.

[18525] Bowen Zhang: Any questions from the board?

[18528] SPEAKER_30: Member Hill?

[18531] Aiden Hill: Sorry, Ms.dela Cruz. Could you repeat again the categories that fall under this? I'm sorry.

[18537] Marie dela Cruz: Yes, so the NEWMA is the New Work Management Association. It includes our certificated management, like our principals and our directors, and our classified management, confidential unit, classified supervisory, behavioral specialists, and the occupational therapists.

[18558] Aiden Hill: Thank you.

[18563] Bowen Zhang: With that, I move that we ratify the new salary schedule for NEWMA 2021 and 2022. May I get a second?

[18576] SPEAKER_39: I second.

[18577] Bowen Zhang: Seconded by member Nguyen. Student member Salami, how do you vote?

[18582] SPEAKER_03: Yes.

[18584] Bowen Zhang: Member Martinez?

[18588] SPEAKER_39: President Zhang, this is a personnel. I don't believe student members is able to vote.

[18594] Bowen Zhang: One of the thing is this is still business impact wise. So I think this student member should vote on this because this did not fall into personnel item four.

[18609] Elisa Martinez: It is a personnel related item. Okay, I'm sorry.

[18615] Bowen Zhang: I'm sorry. Do remember, so let me actually don't get. Remember Martinez, how do you vote?

[18626] Elisa Martinez: Yes.

[18627] Bowen Zhang: Remember Grindell?

[18629] SPEAKER_45: Yes.

[18630] Bowen Zhang: Member Hill? Yes. Member Nguyen?

[18633] Jodi Croce: Yes.

[18634] Bowen Zhang: My vote is yes as well. Motion carries with five ayes, 15.3, side circle, multi-year service agreement. Superintendent Triplett.

[18645] Mark Triplett: Yes, so this is a return on this topic of the Sizerco. Ms. Delacruz, would you like to preface this one?

[18655] Marie dela Cruz: Yes, thank you, Dr. Triplett. So this is the multi-year agreement for the Sizerco remote Allerton building automation system that monitors our HVAC systems district-wide. We are bringing back the multi-year agreement. Several months ago, we presented a five-year agreement, but it didn't include costs for the software upgrade. And the software upgrade was presented separately and was approved at the last board meeting. And what we're recommending here is a five-year agreement, although Ms. Ash has also provided the option of years four and five. If the board is not comfortable approving a five-year agreement, then we can move forward with only a three-year agreement. But the staff is recommending the five-year agreement. That way, it locks us into the pricing, which includes a 3.7% increase every year. The risk with not going with option year four and five is that that amount could increase. And Ms. Ash is here tonight, if you have any specific questions.

[18744] SPEAKER_19: Hello, Superintendent Triplett and the board. Thank you for having me today. If you have any questions, I'm a member of Gwendolyn.

[18761] Terrence Grindall: is the likelihood that we wouldn't want to continue this for year four and five? Because if it's very unlikely we would end that, it would make sense to achieve the savings. But what is the likelihood that we would continue with this program for year four and five?

[18785] SPEAKER_19: So my recommendation would be to continue on with this service contract. We've been there to support the district with both firmware, software upgrades, as well as on-site support. I find that it's been in place for over five, six years. I don't expect it to be canceled, but I did want to give the community that option.

[18808] Terrence Grindall: Thank you for that. I was actually looking for comments from our staff. Zella Cruz, could you speak to that?

[18815] Marie dela Cruz: Yeah, so the likelihood of us not continuing this for years in four and five is very small. To engage or to introduce a new system would be, I think, a bigger investment.

[18836] Bowen Zhang: Thank you. Mr.dela Cruz, I guess. Following up from member Grindel, I guess my question is, under what circumstances will we consider opting out of this service contract?

[18854] Marie dela Cruz: If for any reason we are not satisfied with the service that we're receiving, if we're not satisfied with the program, any of the functionalities, if we're not getting the responses that's being, that's being promised or included in this service agreement. It really has service and functionality of the whole system.

[18884] Bowen Zhang: Let's say after two years, we're not happy with this. Can we opt out at the end of the second year?

[18891] Marie dela Cruz: The termination, Ms. Ash, could you go over that a little bit more in detail? I think you're more familiar with those clauses?

[18900] SPEAKER_19: Absolutely. There's a clause in place that we would need a 60-day notice in order to cancel the contract. So if at the end of two years, we have not met the district's expectations, we can go ahead and terminate the contract.

[18917] Bowen Zhang: So I guess a follow-up question is, what if after one year and four months, we're not happy with this? Does it have to be at the end of the year, or we can terminate in the middle of the year?

[18928] SPEAKER_19: you're able to terminate with a 60-day notice.

[18931] Bowen Zhang: Okay, thank you. With that, I'm actually given that we do have the 60-day notice to opt out anytime we want, so I am in favor of voting for the five-year contract. Member Hill?

[18947] Aiden Hill: Just a quick question, and then if it turns out that we did want to cancel, what are the penalties associated with that?

[18957] SPEAKER_19: As long as payment is made for the work that we have completed up until that point, that would be it. Okay, thank you.

[18967] Bowen Zhang: Can you repeat that? With that 60 day notice, what will be the penalty?

[18974] SPEAKER_19: No, there's no penalty fee for wanting to cancel. It would just be a matter of completing the payment up to the work that has already been completed.

[18983] Bowen Zhang: Okay, so it's prorated in a certain way within a year.

[18986] SPEAKER_19: Yes.

[18987] Bowen Zhang: Okay. Member.

[18991] SPEAKER_39: Thank you. I mean, considering the fact that we did approve sole source and last board meeting for the software, the units to match the software that's being supported on the HVAC, I think that it is okay for us to be able to agree to approve the five-year contract. But my question is, I noticed that there is preventative maintenance for each year of service, but how often is the preventative maintenance schedule that you guys perform? Because I don't want there to be only an annual preventative maintenance. And during that cycle, you guys only do a backup once a year. I don't think that is acceptable. I think that there should be multiple backups of the system. So can you explain how often in the one-year cycle is there a plan for preventative maintenance on the system?

[19060] SPEAKER_19: Absolutely. So the preventative maintenance would be done on an annual basis. So that would be on one time a year, we would be doing a deep dive into the alert system specifically. During that time, we would do a disaster recovery, which is a backup the system of one copies left at the district. And we maintain another copy in case of any sort of emergency. We have eight days owner directed days built into the contract. And those are days that we can do whatever the district would like us to do. So if you would like at the beginning of each owner directed day that we start the day by taking a backup of the system and spending a little time to do that, we'd be more than happy to make that an activity on each owner directed day.

[19108] SPEAKER_39: So for those eight days, is that eight days? allocated for the five years, or is it eight days per year?

[19117] SPEAKER_19: Eight days per year. Okay. In that case, you'd be getting nine backups per year.

[19123] SPEAKER_39: Okay, perfect. Thank you.

[19128] Bowen Zhang: Actually, point of order, I just discovered something. Student member Salami, are you vaccinated? Because if you are not, I would ask member Hill to cover your mask.

[19142] SPEAKER_03: I am vaccinated.

[19143] Diego Torres: Okay, okay.

[19146] SPEAKER_30: Okay.

[19148] Bowen Zhang: Okay, and with that, I'll move that we will, I move that we approve the multi-year service agreement with option year four and five.

[19164] Terrence Grindall: May I get a second? I'll second that. the particularly with the with the fact that we can cancel this contract if we need to, and staff indicates that five years is most likely to be the time we need this at least. I would support this.

[19185] SPEAKER_33: President Zhang, before you take a vote, just for clarity of motion, it currently states staff recommends the Board of Education approve the Sizerco multi-year service agreement, including option for year four and five Do you want me to remove the foyer here?

[19200] Terrence Grindall: No, can you keep the motion as is?

[19203] Bowen Zhang: Include it. Keep it as is, okay, thank you. My motion is include year four and year five.

[19208] SPEAKER_33: Thank you.

[19210] Jodi Croce: I will second.

[19212] Bowen Zhang: Seconded by Member Nguyen.

[19215] SPEAKER_33: I believe I already had a second by Member Rundell.

[19218] Bowen Zhang: Okay, seconded by Member Rundell.

[19220] SPEAKER_33: I'll just take a vote. Thank you.

[19223] Bowen Zhang: Student Member Salami, how do you vote? Member Martinez?

[19232] Elisa Martinez: Yes.

[19234] Bowen Zhang: Member Hill? Yes. Member Grindel? Yes. Member Nguyen?

[19242] Jodi Croce: Yes.

[19245] Bowen Zhang: My vote is yes as well. Motion carries with five ayes. So the reason a couple minutes I asked student member for his vaccination is because if he is not vaccinated, I do think all of us should cover our mouth. given that he's vaccinated, so I guess we can give a little bit of leeway there, even though for maximum insurance, I will still cover my mouth.

[19265] Mark Triplett: Okay. Just to be, sorry, President Chen, but we do have a, part of the district policy is that we should all be masked while we're on district facilities. It's the current regulations, and after the 15th, that may change. I hope it does, but until then, that is part of the policy.

[19286] Aiden Hill: I have a medical condition with my throat that causes me difficulty when I'm asked to breathe and I am vaccinated.

[19296] Elisa Martinez: OK, moving on to consent calendar, point of order, I don't I don't point of order, President Zhang, if Superintendent Tripoli is saying that that is that is a regulation, then my recommendation is that maybe Trustee Hill moves out to the hallway space. If that's even allowed.

[19322] Aiden Hill: I can go back to my home if you'd like.

[19326] Bowen Zhang: Time to move on. Consent calendar 16.2 personnel report.

[19333] Marie dela Cruz: Thank you, Ms. Ash.

[19339] SPEAKER_19: Thank you.

[19340] Bowen Zhang: I move that we ratify the personnel report as presented. May I get a second? I'll second. Motion made by myself, seconded by Member Nguyen. Personnel report, student member doesn't get a vote. How do you vote, Member Martinez?

[19358] Elisa Martinez: I vote yes.

[19360] Bowen Zhang: Member Hill? Sorry, what are we voting on? Personnel report, 16.2, consent calendar.

[19372] Aiden Hill: Just 16.2? Yeah.

[19376] Bowen Zhang: Yes. Member Hill? Oh, sorry. Member Grindel?

[19382] Terrence Grindall: No problem.

[19383] Bowen Zhang: Yes. Member Nguyen?

[19387] SPEAKER_39: Yes.

[19388] Bowen Zhang: My vote is as well. Motion carries with five ayes. Did the board come up? It didn't come up for me.

[19399] SPEAKER_33: Yes, I got everybody's vote.

[19401] Bowen Zhang: OK, OK. Consent calendar, non-personal items. Anybody want to pull any item? Which item, Member Hill?

[19416] Aiden Hill: I want to pull the item. Let's see here. It's the item that's related to the plan for Newark Memorial. That's 17.13, right? It looks like it. Yes, 17.13.

[19441] Bowen Zhang: Okay. So I'll make a motion that we approve. Consent calendar, non-personnel items, 17.2. Resolution 2020-21-031, declaring surplus equipment, 17.3. Lincoln Elementary School, school plan for student achievement, 17.4. John F. Kennedy Elementary, 2021 to 2022, school plan for student achievement, 17.5 EL Music Elementary 2021 to 2022 school plan for student achievement. 17.6 August Children Elementary 2021 to 2022 school plan for student achievement. 17.7 Snow Grand Elementary 2021 to 2022 school plan for student achievement. 17.8, Birch Grove Primary, 2021-2022, School Plan for Student Achievement. 17.9, Birch Grove Intermediate, 2021-2022, School Plan for Student Achievement. 17.10, New World Junior High School, 2021-2022, School Plan for Student Achievement. 17.11, Crossroad Alternative High School, 2021-2022, School Plan for Student Achievement. 17.12 Bridgepoint Continuation, CHI School 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Achievement, and 17.14 minutes of the May 20th, 2021 regular meeting of the Board of Education. Can I get a second? I'll second. Seconded by Member Grindel. Student Member Salami, how do you vote?

[19536] Leonor Rebosura: Yes.

[19539] Bowen Zhang: Member Martinez?

[19541] Abbey Keirns: Yes.

[19543] Bowen Zhang: Member Nguyen?

[19544] SPEAKER_45: Yes.

[19545] Bowen Zhang: Member Hill? Yes. Member Grindel? Yes. My vote is yes as well. Motion carries with five ayes. 17.13, New World Memorial High School 2021 to 2022 School Plan for Student Achievement.

[19559] Aiden Hill: Member Hill. So you want me to comment on this issue?

[19568] Bowen Zhang: Yes.

[19570] Aiden Hill: Yeah, so the issue that I have, so we were just talking earlier about the LCAP, and we were talking about goal number one, which is promoting instructional excellence. And as I think all of us know, when we look at the California School Dashboard, I don't remember the specific statistics, But historically, we have had a high graduation rate. However, we've had a low score in terms of preparedness for college or for, you know, basically work. I don't remember what the exact category is called. And I think that this has been going on for a while. There are some underlying causes for this. But as I look at this particular plan, one of the issues that they're trying to rectify is low performance. But the way that they're actually promoting that or the resolution is to measure reducing the number of Ds and Fs, and that's essentially the goal. So rather than creating or using some objective performance standard, we're saying that we're instead going to measure ourselves on what percentage of Ds and Fs that we're reducing in various categories. I think that this is a potential recipe for great inflation. I think it connects back to what one of the earlier speakers had commented on. about having escape valves, I don't think it's appropriate. And I think we ought to tell the team to go back to the drawing board and come up with some new metrics. I don't think those are appropriate.

[19671] Bowen Zhang: Any other comments from the board? Oh, without getting into an item that's not on the agenda today, so. I want to track the water a little bit carefully. So the high school graduation requirement, the rigor, is a discussion that have been going on with me and the superintendent in private for a while, particularly on the item of APAS and the usage of APAS, where a student sometimes seems to fail the class during the regular semester and take a less rigorous version of that class in the APAS in order to achieve the passing grade in the class. So that's a discussion that I have I have going on with the superintendent for a while, but I suspect eventually that I think we will bring this when it comes to high school graduation requirement and other actions and the rigor of our curriculum in the secondary school into either a board request or a study session or a staff report. So I don't want to talk about something that's not on the agenda, but the discussion is going on. It's not that, at least from my perspective, I have not lost sight when it comes to the problem at Howard High School. That's my comment. Any other comments on the board? Member Martinez?

[19758] Elisa Martinez: Yes, President Zhang. Yes, I just wanted to, I think, you know, expand on the concern about APEX. But the timing, right, they think the timing is for my concern is around AP offerings and the use of APs to, you know, expand on A through G when we're already having, you know, issues getting to those performance levels. But I don't think that, you know, today is The SPSA is, the leadership is, or high school leadership is bringing up the options. If we have concerns, I think you're right. I think it's with regards to how we set the goals going forward, you know, and for superintendent and then, you know, potentially thinking through having some, some study sessions to get into a bit more understanding of how the licenses are being leveraged.

[19816] Bowen Zhang: I think that there and the other thing without getting to a future agenda item from the new school year obviously the board will have a meeting again special meeting again to develop goal for the next year so at that point yeah at that point I think that's the time we can you know probably agree expanding our scope when it comes to rigor and whether we're we're encouraging great inflation out of the high school. Member Hill.

[19842] Aiden Hill: So there's a lot of issues going on. I really am just commenting on the issue related to the high school itself, right? So this agenda item that we've pulled, what is it?

[19852] Bowen Zhang: Is it 17? 17.13, yeah.

[19857] Aiden Hill: 17.13. So we're being asked to approve that plan, right? And so I'm making a suggestion to say that I don't believe that the metrics in that plan are appropriate. And so I think that we ought to delay the approval of that plan and have those metrics adjusted.

[19874] Bowen Zhang: Superintendent, let's say come July or August when we're making the plan for the goal of the school year, is there any room for you to modify this plan from August or September if the board really gets some specific metrics when it comes to improving the rigor and the achievement at a secondary school?

[19895] Mark Triplett: Yeah, President John, site plans can be modified with SSC approval. But when the board approves the site plan and the board is essentially approving it, a board wouldn't approve a site plan to then return and want to see it again at a different point. but SSC with the principal can make modifications later on to a site plan. I wonder if President Chen if you would be willing to hear a little bit from Ms. Rangel about some of the questions that are being raised.

[19940] Bowen Zhang: That's bringing in Principal Rangel. Yes, she's here with us.

[19944] Vicenta Ditto: Good evening, board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. I want to just remind that our California dashboard's most recent information came from 2019, where we got the 41% college and career. So thus, we had to look for other metrics, which is why we use the DNF data. We also tried last year to do our first senior exit survey to really define where our seniors are going or where their plan is. But unfortunately, we were only allowed only able to get about 130 student responses and so this year it's it's a part of our exit process that now we are able to do in person and already we have nearly 350 responses out of 400. So while we can use that as a metrics this will be our baseline data.

[19992] Bowen Zhang: Okay and obviously that I when superintendent said this site plan can be modified or cannot be modified

[20002] Mark Triplett: The expenditures on a site plan can be revised by the SSC. That's the site council, I think. Yeah, sorry for the acronym. Yeah, the school site council can vote to modify or revise the expenditures under the guidance of the principal.

[20024] Bowen Zhang: OK. Under the guidance from the school board, is that what you said? From the principal. OK, or from principal. Any other questions? So I guess what's likely to happen is that if the board decide to put in some different metrics for the secondary school, like primarily the high school, comes August or September, I guess superintendent can inform the principal and work with the principal on a modification of the treatment plan for Memorial High.

[20059] Mark Triplett: Yeah, just just to reiterate what Miss Rangel said so unfortunately with the pandemic we've had a real dearth of data. And that's true of all, all schools across the entire country. And so, like she mentioned, we've been challenged to try to find alternative data sets and I think that the school has done a really good job of really trying to do that. But moving forward, of course, we will be going back to the California dashboard. metrics and so this will be a baseline not just for Memorial but for all schools. We're going to be really starting with a new baseline for this upcoming year because we've just have not had the same data and the data that's aligned across the whole state and Um, so it is it is a bit of a, uh, a baseline year come moving forward. And then, um, and then we're absolutely going to be accountable to the same data that has been, um, applied in the, in the past.

[20126] SPEAKER_30: Hey, remember Grindel.

[20130] Terrence Grindall: I share Member Hill's concern about using this as a metric. I understand the lack of data makes that sort of default to this, but it does evoke great inflation. And I wonder if there's a way to amend that. I don't know what the timing would require here. Is there a way to, or even to add um sort of soft language that or other um or other metrics or when available or something like that i'm i'm just uncomfortable with using the the grades as the metric itself um and what options what options would the board have if they wanted to see this um made more scientific yeah um miss rangel feel free to chime in um but uh

[20188] Mark Triplett: Really, without the state testing, we haven't had a... a state calibrated means of assessment for this year. And again, that's not a Newark Memorial issue, that's a across the country issue. And likewise, the means of collecting data, other types of data has been significantly challenged by the pandemic. I mean, everything from attendance, we're taking, we've had to take attendance differently. And so it's just not going to be the same as in regular years. But we're anticipating being back to normal. And so we will go back to collecting all of the data sets that are required by the state moving forward. But It is a challenge of having the same level of datasets that we've been able to have in the past. I will also add that part of our plan, part of our LCAP plan is to, and some of the additional state grant dollars that we've received, We're really eager to revisit all of our data platforms and really set up a much more robust data platform across all different data sets, everything from suspensions, detentions, academics, attendance, all of those things. We're really looking for in the upcoming year to developing a way of being able to not just ourselves see and use data in that way, but also the public to be able to see and utilize the data that we'll be able to generate. But we don't in this pandemic, we have not had that ability. And that's just the reality of it. Mr. Rangel, did you want to say anything else about that?

[20320] Vicenta Ditto: As another part of the plan later on is this year we didn't provide the S back to students. We provided the Illuminate assessment to 11th graders. And while I would have loved to use that more throughout my SPSA, we didn't get enough students to also take that due to the pandemic. And so next year we do plan to provide that assessment three times in the year to really evaluate our progress throughout the year rather than just waiting till the end. and providing support to students. So that could be another piece of data that is utilized. But again, unfortunately due to the pandemic, we weren't able to assess all 11th graders.

[20357] SPEAKER_37: Dr. Triplett, if I may as well, as the Director of Special Projects and supporting the schools through this process, echoed what we said already. This is a difficult year in terms of trying to figure out what's the best data to use and to measure. But I just want to remind the board that these are just additional metrics and they're not the only metrics, right? So we're still looking at our dashboard, at our California dashboard as to how we do as a whole with the entire population. And I do want to commend our high school team for not only really working towards creating SMART goals, which I know that member Hill is always looking for, but they also looking at a specific population, right? They're looking at their students with disability and they're looking at their English learners. And while I understand that the concern may be that it might move towards, you know, great inflation, Without due respect, I think that's an assumption. And I think we need to give ourselves a way of starting to at least address such need among these students. But I also see that above the reduction of F&Ds percentages, we're looking at really increasing our passing rates. So that's really the ultimate goal. But how do you do that? You do that by start looking at what are the groups of students that are struggling and how, you know, how do we do that? So that, I'm just wanting to point out that that's just an additional metric or those are just additional metrics. It's really the bigger piece. We want all of our students to have passing grades, especially in mathematics.

[20486] Bowen Zhang: Member Hill and Member Martinez, last round of comment.

[20490] Aiden Hill: So, yeah, just quickly. I mean, I understand the challenges that testing has been interrupted during the pandemic. But I don't see why we couldn't use an earlier baseline from when testing was occurring. And now we're saying we're going to go back to basically normal. And so we'll be able to measure again and we'll compare against that former baseline. And I think that we could put in some accommodations to make it fair or some realistic understanding that there's probably been some decline in learning during remote learning. But I think that it's much better to have an objective measurement versus one that potentially can be manipulated.

[20535] SPEAKER_30: Member Martinez.

[20538] Elisa Martinez: Yeah, I just want to say, you know, I, I agree with, um, you know, obviously some of the, the challenges that my fellow board members, um, have brought forward. Um, however, you know, this is, this is an unusual year. And the reality is, I think to, to, um, Ms. Cervantes-Folk, you mentioned, you know, we're making some assumptions. This could happen. we could inflate grades, we could, you know, all these, you know, we'll call extreme situations could happen, anything could happen. The reality though, is that we know this is an unusual situation. We're not gonna baseline our plans going forward off of this interim path forward, this interim solution for this year, right? So I think that's another thing we need to consider is, you know, we could either go back couple of years where the data is, you know, not necessarily no longer representative or put a stop gap. So, you know, I definitely have some concerns, but I also recognize that, you know, with what let's do what we can with what we have, and we're gonna really big work hard to set the right baseline starting in the following year. I think that at the end of the day, And Ms. Rangel knows that I have not been easy on the high school and the leadership team. But I, you know, we have to start from a assume good intent. Nobody at the high school is trying to inflate grades for why, right? Yes, the risk can be there. but I don't think it's anybody's intention to go promote that. So I support the CPSA as is with, you know, if we redirect some, give some additional guidance in the future, we could all, the students like council could always revisit it. But for now, I recommend that we accept the CPSA as is.

[20663] Bowen Zhang: Okay. I mean, bottom line for me is if we're going to have a standardized testing for the dashboard, that these are all public information, you know how well we did compared to 2019. you know whether we're going to have a big decline or something. This is not secret information once this happens. So with that in mind, I will move to approve the 2021 to 2022 school plan for student achievement for Memorial High. May I get a second?

[20688] Elisa Martinez: I'll second.

[20689] Bowen Zhang: Seconded by Member Martinez. Student Member Salami, how do you vote?

[20694] SPEAKER_03: Yes.

[20695] Bowen Zhang: Member Martinez?

[20698] Elisa Martinez: I vote yes.

[20701] SPEAKER_30: Member Grundell?

[20703] Cindy Parks: Yes.

[20704] SPEAKER_30: Member Hill?

[20705] Bowen Zhang: No. Member Nguyen? Yes. My vote is yes. Motion carries with four ayes and one no. And I think Member Hill has explained his opposition. Moving on to the Board of Education Committee reports. Mission Valley ROP?

[20724] Elisa Martinez: I don't have any updates. We have a meeting upcoming, but I don't have any updates.

[20729] Bowen Zhang: Nothing for SELPA. What about the Liaison Committee? Anything for liaison committee?

[20738] SPEAKER_39: Our liaison committee meeting is going to be this month on the 21st.

[20743] Bowen Zhang: OK. Anything for EBIT?

[20747] SPEAKER_30: Member Martinez?

[20751] Elisa Martinez: No, I have not been in any meetings, so I have nothing to report.

[20754] Bowen Zhang: Audit committee? No, we haven't. Nothing to report. OK. I got nothing for bond and parcel tax.

[20762] Terrence Grindall: We have a meeting scheduled, actually.

[20766] Bowen Zhang: Board of Education request?

[20770] SPEAKER_30: Member Martinez?

[20771] Elisa Martinez: How about we start with City Member Salemi?

[20775] Bowen Zhang: OK. City Member Salemi, any requests? No requests. OK. Member Martinez?

[20785] Elisa Martinez: I don't have any requests, thanks.

[20787] Bowen Zhang: Member Grindel?

[20789] Terrence Grindall: No requests tonight.

[20790] SPEAKER_30: Member Hill?

[20793] Aiden Hill: I have a request, based on your earlier comment, President Chong, about concerns around apex. And we heard the same thing from a speaker this evening. And I've been hearing some things from community members as well about this. And I'm very concerned. And I think and I to the speaker's point, I think that we I would like to put an agenda item to discuss potentially suspending the APICS program and having an audit performed to ensure that there's integrity and we do not have great inflation and we live up to our LCAP expectations of instructional excellence. So I'd like to have an agenda item put on to discuss that.

[20837] Bowen Zhang: Okay. I guess either next meeting or after that we'll just have what we did for the affinity group today.

[20846] SPEAKER_33: Remember when? Sorry, President Zhang, just for point of clarity, is this going to be... I mean, is the board ready to vote on this today? No, no, no. My question is, is this going to be a requested agenda item or is this a staff report?

[20862] Bowen Zhang: No staff involved. Just a requested agenda item. No staff involved.

[20865] SPEAKER_33: Okay. And then just based on the governance handbook, it'll be a featured agenda item. Okay.

[20872] SPEAKER_30: Remember when?

[20873] SPEAKER_39: I don't have a request tonight, but I do have a clarification from my last request at the last board meeting in terms of requesting the staff for a IT strategic plan. I would like to modify it and request that it is just an IT assessment.

[20896] Diego Torres: Okay.

[20897] Bowen Zhang: Okay. My request is related to public record requests. I think I've received quite a bit of email these days regarding the district's handling and the strategy when it comes to public record requests. I hope that we can give an overall picture about how many of these public record requests we're getting. What is our strategy to completing them? Is that a lot of people are requesting or just several people requesting a lot of them? And what is the consumption of the staff time when it comes to dealing with these public record requests? and we can place this on next board meeting's agenda, just like member Hill's request. Member Grinnell, do you have anything to say?

[20939] Terrence Grindall: Yes, I just wanted to point out, I wanted to ask if the APEX discussion would potentially be happening as a part of the budget that we'll be looking at on the 17th.

[20951] Bowen Zhang: No, it will be agenda item just like what we discussed with the affinity group today. There will be some discussion and we'll decide, we'll be the next step for that item. Okay, thank you. Next one is recognition announcement. Student member Salemi.

[20975] SPEAKER_03: I just want to say, again, thank you to everyone on this call, students, teachers, everyone for everything that they've done and for entrusting me with this position. and I want the district to know and everyone to know that, you know, I'm always a partner in trying to look for solutions. So again, thank you for everything and this hope this past year and this experience that I've been able to go through.

[21005] SPEAKER_30: Member Martinez.

[21009] Elisa Martinez: Yes, and I'll repeat as two members of me, the honor has been ours and we are just just so proud of, of who you are, and that we have such an awesome representative of our student body. I wanted to just, you know, I know that it's well, the graduation is still happening. So there's much more activity that's going on. But I just wanted to thank every single one of the folks that made school happen this year in whatever form, in whatever crisis that was solved, responding to parents and to families. Thank you for bearing with us and our hiccups as a district. And we are representatives of the district. So thank you, everyone. I want to thank district staff. You guys have a lot of bumps and bruises this year. A lot of really difficult decisions and difficult discussions have happened. And I continue to be very hopeful of what's in front of us. So hang in there. We are here. We are your partners. And we really believe that we're on the right path. Yes, we've got some challenges, but let's not let the noise distract us. I'm really happy personally where we're headed. So thank you for everything, all your hard work.

[21113] Terrence Grindall: I just want to echo the comments about Member Salemi. It's been wonderful to have you joining us. You've made these, you've added a lot to our meetings and not just in the words you use and the questions you ask, but just the spirit that you bring. So we really appreciate that. I want to congratulate everybody on the end of a great school year. It's been a challenge as indicated by Member Martinez. everything's been thrown at you as a staff and also the students and the parents and everyone's and really the resilience and the adaptability has been amazing. We're looking forward to a really great return to normal school in August. So thank you.

[21167] SPEAKER_30: Member Hill.

[21170] Aiden Hill: Yeah, I also want to thank Member Salemi. I think you're a great person and you've got great potential and look forward to seeing the things you're going to go off and do in the future. So, you know, best of luck. I also want to acknowledge CSCA and Ms. Eustace. I understand, you know, the challenges and the frustrations. But again, we see you. We know the work that you're doing. We know you're integral and important and so thank you very much to you and your members for everything that you do. Thank you.

[21209] SPEAKER_39: Thank you president john I just wanted to say congratulations to the senior class of 2021, and to the sixth graders and eighth graders promoting on to junior high and high school, we are all very proud of all your hard work and accomplishments and then to all the rest of the students. being resilient and adaptable and, you know, dealing and having to deal with all the changes that had that you had to face this year and a half and and for you guys to. have a wonderful summer, celebrate, relax, and hopefully back in the fall we can start back up with some normalcy. And to staff, to the district office staff, thank you so much. I know that along with the pandemic we've gone through so much together as a community and As a team, there's been so many difficult subjects that we had to deal with school consolidation, obviously, you know the reopening of the schools this year and and distance learning at the very beginning and everyone has done. an amazing job. And I just am so appreciative of all everyone's hard work. And I want to also echo Mr. Member Hill's sentiments for CSCA. Yes, we could not reopen schools without all the hard work and dedication that all the workers or all of our classified staff has put in. And we thank you for that, for keeping everyone safe and making sure that our kids who were able to come back in to hybrid learning had a wonderful experience. So thank you so much for all your hard work. And to my fellow board members, thank you. I know that sometimes we don't always agree on stuff, but I think we know that all our hearts are in the right place. We are doing this for students and families in this community, and I hope that we can continue to tackle all the difficulties that comes along with the responsibilities that we have and recognize that although sometimes our decisions may not be popular, that in the end, it has a lasting positive impact. So that's my hope anyways. I'm I'm opposite of Member Hill I am half my glasses half full so I'm pretty optimistic, but I can understand and see why from a planning perspective that I would be wanting to be half empty so. So I appreciate all of our perspectives and all of our thoughtfulness. So I just wanted to say thank you to everyone. Have a good night. Oh, and also especially to our families. Thank you for dealing with all of this with us and continuing to work with us to improve the district. Thank you.

[21403] Bowen Zhang: Yeah. So I want to echo all the board member and student movement I've said. So, and another thing is, I think late last month, Member Hill celebrated his birthday. So, a late happy birthday for you, Member Hill. Student Member Salami, again, so glad to see you in person today. And thank you for sticking with us today, for staying up so late with us. And I wish you all the best for your future endeavors. It's truly an honor to have you by our side. And another thing is next week, we're going to have AP Computer Science, AP Calculus, and the other AP exams for our high school kids. For those who are taking these exams, I know school is not over for you, and these are not easy exams. I wish you all the best next week for your AP exams. It's a tough week. You learn that completely online for these courses. Best of luck, and excited for tomorrow's graduation ceremony. OK, Superintendent Triplett.

[21468] Mark Triplett: Thank you, President Jun, and thank you all. I know this is a very late night. But really appreciate everybody sticking through it and sticking through this year. We brought students back to in-person learning. Over 1,000, I think a little bit under 2,000 students, which is a remarkable feat and we did it together and we did it safely. And that could not have happened without this board, without our teachers, without our classified staff, without our district staff. But I'm so proud, and without our families or without our students, of course. I'm so proud of this and the fact that as a community, we really put students first and ensured that they were able to return safely. So I want to thank you all, and in particular, Mr. Salemi, you are going to be so missed, but I look forward to seeing you next year at the high school and seeing all of the amazing things that you continue to achieve.

[21535] Bowen Zhang: Thank you all. I move to adjourn the meeting.

[21540] SPEAKER_03: Second.

[21541] Bowen Zhang: Seconded by member Salemi. Member Salemi, how do you vote? Yes. Member Martinez?

[21549] SPEAKER_31: Yes.

[21550] Bowen Zhang: Member Goodell? Yes. Member Hill? Yes.

[21554] SPEAKER_30: Member Nguyen?

[21555] SPEAKER_39: Yes. And I can't wait to see student members so let me shine even brighter.

[21561] Bowen Zhang: My vote is yes as well. Motion passed unanimously. Meeting adjourned at 11 and 3 p.m. Good night, everybody.

1. Live Comments: Join with an Internet-connected device (tablet, computer, phone, etc.)

Virtual Meeting Practices & Connection Information

Type Information, Procedural In accordance with the Governor's Executive Order N-29-20, Board meetings will be held "virtually" until further notice. These meetings will be accessible to the public by internet or telephone. No physical meeting place will be provided.

Meetings will live-streamed on the NUSD YouTube on the internet. Public comment opportunities will be available through the virtual meeting. Please see the public comment instructions provided here.

As always, we encourage you to contact the entire Board by email at "board@newarkunified.org." This address goes directly to the Board members, who check their emails frequently.

Roll Call

Type Procedural Board Members:

President Bowen Zhang Member Phuong Nguyen Member Elisa Martinez Member Terrence Grindall Member Aiden Hill

Student Board Member: Member Wahhab Salemi

2. APPROVAL OF AGENDA

2. Live Comments: Join with an Internet-connected device (tablet, computer, phone, etc.)

Approval of Agenda

Type Action

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the agenda for this meeting. Action Purpose:

Members of the Board may request that the agenda be approved as presented or amended.

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the agenda for this meeting.

Motion by Elisa Martinez, second by Phuong Nguyen.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Elisa Martinez, Bowen Zhang, Phuong Nguyen, Terrence Grindall, Aiden Hill
Not Present at Vote: Wahhab Salemi

3. STUDY SESSION

Public Comment on Board Study Session Items

Type Procedural Purpose:

To provide a space for the community to make a comment on the Board Study Session.

Background:

Please see the link below for Public Comment information.

http://go.boarddocs.com/ca/nusd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=BN8PNC6402C1

Leadership Selection Process: Policies and Practices

Type Information Purpose:

To review and understand the policies and practices relating to recruitment, selection, and hiring of NUSD personnel (and leadership in particular), and the Board's role in the process.

Background:

During the Board meeting on March 4, 2021, the Board of Trustees had consensus to hold a study session for additional information on the topic of NUSD's leadership selection process.

Board Policies, including 4000 and 4111, describe the Superintendent's and Board of Trustees' roles in recruitment, selection, and hiring. The study session will highlight these board policies, as well as summarize the district's leadership selection process. In addition, the study session will include a discussion of the Board's role and responsibility in the hiring of personnel.

File Attachments NUSD Study Session Leadership Selection 6.3.21.pdf (200 KB)

4. CLOSED SESSION

Public Comment on Closed Session Item

Type Procedural Purpose:

To provide a space for the community to make a comment on Closed Session Items.

Background:

Please see the link below for Public Comment information.

http://go.boarddocs.com/ca/nusd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=BN8PNC6402C1

Public Employee Discipline/Dismissal/ Release (GC54957)

Type Action, Procedural Information will be provided by the Superintendent and Executive Director of Human Resources.

Conference with Labor Negotiator (GC54957.6(a)): Employee Organizations - NTA & CSEA

Type Action, Procedural Information will be provided by the agency negotiator, Executive Director of Human Resources. Assistance from legal firm Dannis, Woliver, Kelley, Attorneys at Law may be provided.

The employee organizations include NTA & CSEA.

Conference with Labor Negotiator (GC54957.6(a)): Employee Group - NEWMA, Unrepresented Supervisors & Contracted Management

Type Action, Procedural Information will be provided by the agency negotiator, Executive Director of Human Resources, and the Superintendent. Assistance from legal firm Dannis, Woliver, Kelley, Attorneys at Law may be provided.

The employee organizations include NEWMA, Unrepresented Supervisors, and Contracted Management

Conference with Legal Counsel - Anticipated Litigation (GC 54956.9(d)(4))

Type Action, Procedural Information will be provided regarding:

Significant exposure to litigation pursuant to paragraph (2) of subdivision (d) of Section 54956.9: One case

Recess to Closed Session

Type Procedural Purpose:

The Board will recess to Closed Session, and reconvene to Open Session on or about 7pm.

5. RECONVENE TO OPEN SESSION

Pledge of Allegiance

Type Procedural

6. REPORT OF CLOSED SESSION ACTIONS

Report of Closed Session Actions

Type Action, Procedural Purpose:

If available, a report of closed session will be provided by the Board President.

7. STUDENT REPORT

Student Report from Newark Junior High School, MacGregor and Newark Memorial High School

Type Information Purpose:

At regular Board meetings, a spokesperson of each secondary school may make a brief presentation.

Discussion items may include updates, celebrations, and upcoming events.

1. Newark Junior High School - Alyssa Torres & Rachel Ristau

2. Alternative Education - Alexis Blanco-Barron

3. Newark Memorial High School - Wahhab Salemi

8. EMPLOYEE ORGANIZATIONS

Employee Organizations

Type Information Purpose:

At regular Board meetings, a single spokesperson of each recognized employee organization (NTA, CSEA, NEWMA) may make a brief presentation.

Background:

Discussion items are limited to updates, celebrations, and upcoming events.

1. NTA: Sean Abruzzi

2. CSEA: Sue Eustice

3. NEWMA: Leonor Rebosura

9. RECOGNITIONS AND CELEBRATIONS

Certificated and Classified Employee of the Year

Type Information Every year the district honors a certificated and classified employee of the year. It is our belief that Newark Unified School District is honored to have so many highly qualified employees who dedicate and share their time, caring, compassion, skills, and wealth of knowledge with the students and families in the City of Newark. Eligibility was extended to all classified and certificated employees in the district.

The following process was followed in selecting the certificated and classified employee of the year: Nomination letters and forms were sent to all certificated and classified employees in February. A committee, comprised of representatives from CSEA, NTA, and NEWMA reviewed all the nominations. The criteria included: Unusual or outstanding characteristics or achievements. Acts of service demonstrating how the employee fulfills the District Core Beliefs. Ways in which the employee demonstrates the Core Values of Character, Leadership, Innovation, and Continuous Improvement. Community service. The committee members submitted their top three choices from each association to the Board of Education for final selection.

Retirement and Longevity Honorees

Type Information Newark Unified School District would like to recognize employees who have retired this year. It is with the deepest appreciation and gratitude we honor and thank them for their years of dedication and service to the Newark Community. The District would also like to recognize employees who have been part of the Newark family for 25 years or longer. These employees are an essential part of our team and their continual vital contribution to the District promotes success in meeting our District's Mission, Vision, and Values.

10. PUBLIC COMMENT ON NON-AGENDA ITEMS

Public Comment on Non-Agenda Items

Type Procedural Purpose:

To provide a space for the community to make a comment on non-agenda items.

Background:

Please see click the link below for Public Comment information on Non-Agenda Items and Agenda items.

http://go.boarddocs.com/ca/nusd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=BN8PNC6402C1

11. BOARD OF EDUCATION AGENDA REQUESTS

NUSD Affinity Groups and Cultural Clubs

Type Discussion Purpose:

This item is brought forth to the Board as a request by Member Hill at the May 20, 2021, regular board meeting. The Board is asked to decide if they want to hear the content of the request, and if heard, to decide if the request merits additional discussion and further development from staff for a later meeting, or if the request has been satisfied.

Background:

"It is the intent of the Legislature that members of the public be able to place matters directly related to school district business on the agenda of school district governing board meetings," as long as it "is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the governing board." (Ed. Code 35145.5) It is within the role of the board president, working with the superintendent, to develop the board agenda. A school district may exercise discretion not to place an item on the agenda if the district determines that the matter is not "directly related to school business." Mooney v. Garcia (2012) Cal. App.4th 229, 231.

"A board is not required to place an item on a specific portion of an agenda (closed versus open), is not required to discuss, prepare a report, or take any action on an item requested by a member of the public, and is not required to provide any additional time to the requester for public comment. To meet the requirements of the statute, a board must only agendize the item, call the item, and allow for public comment as it would for any other agenda item." (DWK Brown Act Manual)

"Even if a district places the matter on the agenda, however, no action is legally required and the item need only be considered. The law does not require the item be placed on the agenda immediately, but it is advisable to place the item on the agenda within a reasonable time frame, ... Interested members of the public may comment on the item, subject to the Board's policies regarding public comment generally." (SCLS)

"The Board will be open to having 'brainstorming' discussions about any idea that a Board member may feel merits exploratory consideration. 'New Ideas' are defined as any proposal brought forward by a Board member, at his or her own initiative or at the request of a constituent, which has not previously been discussed during a Board meeting. Board members will first notify the Board President and/or the Superintendent of their interest in bringing forward a new idea. The preliminary discussion of a new idea will not require staff research time. Initially, staff will be expected to respond to new ideas based on current knowledge.

    Only a majority of the Board may direct the Superintendent to conduct research regarding the exploration of a new
    idea. The Superintendent will decide on the delegation of assignments to other District staff.
    The new idea will be agendized for discussion only. The Board will decide if the new idea should be further developed
    and studied by staff. A Board majority will decide if staff time should be invested in the 'fleshing out' of new ideas.
    Individual Board members, in the course of interactions with constituents, will be careful not to make or imply a
    commitment of the full Board to explore or proceed with implementing new ideas." (NUSD Governance Team
    Handbook)

12. SUPERINTENDENT REPORT

Superintendent Report

Type Information Purpose:

The superintendent will provide the Board with district information, updates, news, or anything in the jurisdiction of the board or the superintendent.

Background:

Information provided by the Superintendent

File Attachments Supt Report 6.3.21.pdf (2,550 KB)

13. STAFF REPORT

NUSD Summer School 2021

Type Information Purpose:

To provide information to the Board of Trustees about 2021 summer school offerings for the 2021-2022 academic school year.

Background:

This presentation is intended to provide information regarding expanded summer school enrichment and credit recovery offerings that are possible in part due to the 2021 Expanded Learning Opportunity grant.

File Attachments Summer School Staff Report.pdf (2,008 KB)

14. PUBLIC HEARINGS

Public Hearing on the 2021-22 Proposed Budget

Type Discussion, Information Purpose:

To present the 2021-22 Proposed Budget to the public and Newark Unified School District Board of Education, and for the Board to conduct a Public Hearing.

Staff will recommend the adoption of the 2021-22 Budget at the Board's meeting on June 17, 2021.

Background:

Notice of the public hearing was posted in English and Spanish at all NUSD school sites and the District Office on May 24, 2021 (see attached).

The 2021-22 Proposed Budget is available for public inspection as an attachment to this agenda and also in person at the Business Services office.

In accordance with Education Code 42103, the Governing Board of each school district shall hold a Public Hearing on the proposed budget.

Education Code 42127 required the Board of each school district to adopt a budget on or before July 1 of each year for the upcoming fiscal year.

Staff will recommend the Board adopt the 2021-22 budget at the June 17, 2021, meeting for the following funds: General Fund; Adult Education Fund; Child Development Fund; Cafeteria Fund; Special Reserve Fund for Other Than Capital Outlay Projects; Building Fund; Capital Facilities Fund; Special Reserve Fund for Capital Outlay Projects; Bond Interest and Redemption Fund; Self Insurance Fund.

File Attachments 2021-22 LCAP and Budget Public Hearing Notice_English & Spanish_posted 5-24-21.pdf (121 KB) 2021-22 Proof of Publication_LCAP and Budget Public Hearing.pdf (76 KB) 2021-22 A7 Public Hearing Reserve Disclosure Certificate.pdf (944 KB) 21-22 Adopted Budget Full Book-rev6-1-21.pdf (3,929 KB)

Public Hearing on the 2021-22 Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP)

Type Discussion, Information Purpose:

To present the 2021-22 Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) to the public and Newark Unified School District Board of Education, and for the Board to conduct a Public Hearing.

Staff will recommend the adoption of the 2021-22 LCAP at the Board's meeting on June 17, 2021.

Background:

Notice of the public hearing was posted in English and Spanish at all NUSD school sites and the District Office on May 24, 2021 (see attached).

The 2021-22 LCAP is available for public inspection as an attachment to this agenda and also in person at the Business Services office.

Education Code � 52062(b)(1) A governing board of a school district shall hold at least one public hearing to solicit the recommendations and comments of members of the public regarding the specific actions and expenditures proposed to be included in the LCAP or annual update to the LCAP. The agenda for the public hearing shall be posted at least 72 hours before the public hearing and shall include the location where the LCAP or annual update to the LCAP will be available for public inspection. The public hearing shall be held at the same meeting as the public hearing for the budget to be adopted required by Education Code � 42127(a)(1).

Education Code � 52062(b)(2) A governing board of a school district shall adopt an LCAP or annual update to the LCAP in a public meeting. This meeting shall be held after, but not on the same day as, the public hearing held pursuant to paragraph (1). This meeting shall be the same meeting as that during which the governing board of the school district adopts a budget pursuant to Education Code � 42127 (a)(2).

File Attachments 2021-22 LCAP and Budget Public Hearing Notice_English & Spanish_posted 5-24-21.pdf (121 KB) 2021-22 Proof of Publication_LCAP and Budget Public Hearing.pdf (76 KB) 2021-22 LCAP Public Hearing Presentation_6-3-2021.pdf (885 KB) 2021-22 Draft LCAP Public Hearing Board Packet_6-3-2021.pdf (2,010 KB)

15. NEW BUSINESS

School Naming - Merged Graham/Snow Elementary

Type Action

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the name selected by the Design Team Action for the merged Graham/Snow Elementary Purpose:

To provide the Board of Education with a recommendation from the Design Team regarding the new proposed name for the merged Graham/Snow Elementary.

Background:

On November 19, 2020, the Newark Unified School District Board of Education voted to merge Snow Elementary and Graham Elementary on the Graham campus in the 2021-22 school year. As part of this merger, an inclusive and transparent process was created to select a name for the merged school. The school naming process followed the criteria outlined in Board Policies 7310 and 7511 (attached here). The Board policy articulates that a committee would be formed to weigh the different school name options, engage the school community in the naming process, and bring forth a name recommendation to the Board of Education for approval.

The school naming process (articulated in the attached document titled, Design Team School Naming Process Doc) was begun on February 2, 2021, and included an open-call for students, staff, families, and the community to submit name ideas. The submissions were then reviewed by the Design Team and narrowed to 6 school name suggestions that fit the criteria outlined in the Board Policy. The 6 school name suggestions were then shared with students, staff, families, and community on a ballot (online and paper forms) to narrow the selection to the final three choices.

These top three choices were presented at a public hearing at May 20th, 2021 Board of Education meeting: 1. Coyote Hills Elementary 2. Cherry Elementary 3. GROW Elementary

After which, the Design Team voted to select a final single choice to present to the Board for approval. The name, unanimously selected by the Design Team, and the recommendation presented to the Board is Coyote Hills Elementary.

File Attachments Design Team School Naming Process Doc.pdf (437 KB) School Naming Process_ Public Hearing 5.20.21.1.pdf (1,546 KB)

Motion & Voting Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the name selected by the Design Team for the merged Graham/Snow Elementary

Motion by Bowen Zhang, second by Terrence Grindall.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Elisa Martinez, Bowen Zhang, Phuong Nguyen, Terrence Grindall, Wahhab Salemi
Nay: Aiden Hill

NEWMA (Management/Confidential/Supervisory) Employees 2021-22 Salary Schedule Adjustments

Type Action

Fiscal Impact Yes

Budgeted Yes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education ratify a 1% salary increase on the salary Action schedules effective July 1, 2021 and 1.5% increase on the salary schedules effective February 1, 2022, for NEWMA, the Newark Management Association, for the 2021-22 school year. Purpose:

Governing Boards must orally report out a summary of a recommendation for final action on certain local agency salaries, salary schedules, or other compensation.

Background:

NEWMA stands for "Newark Management Association" which includes Certificated Management, Classified Management, Confidential, Classified Supervisory, Behavioral Specialists, and Occupational Therapists. The NEWMA salary increase on the salary schedules for 2021-22 is 1% effective July 1, 2021, and 1.5% effective February 1, 2022.

File Attachments NEWMA salary schedule FY21-22_Certificated Mgmt.pdf (79 KB) NEWMA salary schedule FY21-22_Classified Mgmt_Confidential_Supervisory.pdf (108 KB) NEWMA salary schedule FY21-22_OT and BS.pdf (28 KB)

Motion & Voting Staff recommends the Board of Education ratify a 1% salary increase on the salary schedules effective July 1, 2021 and 1.5% increase on the salary schedules effective February 1, 2022, for NEWMA, the Newark Management Association, for the 2021-22 school year.

Motion by Bowen Zhang, second by Phuong Nguyen.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Elisa Martinez, Bowen Zhang, Phuong Nguyen, Terrence Grindall, Aiden Hill
Abstain: Wahhab Salemi

Syserco (HVAC Management System) Multi-Year Service Agreement

Type Action

Fiscal Impact Yes

Dollar Amount $195,736.00

Budgeted Yes

Budget Source Routine Restricted Maintenance Account

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the Syserco Multi-year Service Action Agreement, including Option Years 4 and 5, covering the period of July 1, 2021 thru June 30, 2026. Purpose:

To renew the service agreement for the Alerton Building Automation System which remotely and electronically monitors and controls the HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning) systems district-wide. The purpose of this agreement is to provide the short and long-term support needed to ensure the district operates at peak efficiency with minimum downtime.

Background:

To control and monitor the complex HVAC mechanical systems that ensure occupant comfort and safety, Newark Unified School District installed the Alerton Building Automation System. Syserco Inc., located in Fremont, currently provides the energy management services to support the Alerton Building Automation System which remotely monitors and controls the HVAC systems district-wide. Alerton control systems are only available through approved Alerton dealers. Syserco is the Alerton dealer serving Newark, therefore, they are the only company authorized to sell, install, and service the Alerton system for the district. Syserco began installing the Alerton system at Newark USD in 2003 and began partnering with the district for service support in 2015. This long-term relationship provides Syserco the experience and knowledge to best serve Newark USD.

On January 7, 2021, the Board approved a Syserco six-month Service Agreement covering the period of January 1, 2021, through June 30, 2021.

On May 20, 2021, the Board approved the software upgrade on the district's Syserco HVAC management system to the Alerton Compass software.

The proposed agreement covers the period from July 1, 2021, through June 30, 2024, with the option of extending an additional two years, 2024-25 and 2025-26. The annual increase from July 1, 2021-June 30, 2026 is about 3.7%. (The previous 5-year agreement expired on December 31, 2020.)

                   Year 1                    Year 2                        Year 3                       Option Year 4             Option

Scope Item: 7/1/21 to 6/30/22 7/1/22 to 6/30/23 7/1/23 to 6/30/24 7/1/24 to 6/30/25 7/1/25 Total $36,748 $37,580 $38,989 $40,451 $41,96

Summary of the deliverables: Year 1:

 1. Annual Global Controller Firmware Updates
 2. Annual Disaster Recovery Backups
 3. Preventative Maintenance for Alerton Energy Management System
 4. (2) Correction Action Implementation Days
 5. (8) Operator Support and Coaching Days
 6. (2) Seats in Compass Operator Seminar
 7. (1) Seat in Field Level Troubleshooting Seminar
 8. Online Technical Support
 9. Preferred Emergency Response
10. Discounted Labor and Material Rates

Year 2-3 (and optional year 4-5): 1. Annual Software and Cybersecurity Updates 2. Annual Global Controller Firmware Updates 3. Annual Disaster Recovery Backups 4. Preventative Maintenance for Alerton Energy Management System 5. (2) Correction Action Implementation Days 6. (8) Operator Support and Coaching Days 7. Online Technical Support 8. Preferred Emergency Response 9. Discounted Labor and Material Rates

Summary of Services: Preventative Maintenance of Alerton Energy Management System Software & Cybersecurity Updates: Software Updates provide new features, security patches, bug fixes, and compliance with evolving standards. These features make it more convenient to operate your system, reduce system vulnerabilities, and ensure compatibility with future products. Global Controller Firmware Updates: As the automation system product line is enhanced, modifications are often made to the Firmware to provide faster speed of response, greater flexibility, and new applications. Disaster Recovery: In the event of a catastrophic system failure, these backups allow Syserco to completely restore your system to the last backup state. System-Level Preventive Maintenance Routines for Alerton Energy Management System. Corrective Action Implementation (PM): After completing the Preventative Maintenance routines, Syserco will provide two (2) days of labor for each PM period to remediate any identified deficiencies that the Syserco Team deems critical to the operation of your system or require immediate attention.

Customer Support for Alerton Energy Management System Operator Support and Coaching: Syserco will provide eight (8) days per year of pre-scheduled Operator Support to assist staff in modifying the system, identifying, verifying, and resolving issues found, and/or providing supplemental training. Local Classroom Training (Fremont). Emergency Response Services: Online Technical Support, Priority Response Time, Emergency Response.

Service Delivery & Discounts Dedicated Service Team Service Work-Order Documentation Discount on Labor & Material

File Attachments Syserco_Multi-Year 2021-2024 Service Agreement_Opt 2024-2026_Proposal.pdf (517 KB)

Motion & Voting Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the Syserco Multi-year Service Agreement, including Option Years 4 and 5, covering the period of July 1, 2021 thru June 30, 2026.

Motion by Bowen Zhang, second by Terrence Grindall.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries


Yea: Elisa Martinez, Bowen Zhang, Phuong Nguyen, Terrence Grindall, Aiden Hill, Wahhab Salemi

HVAC Replacement Project

Type Action

Fiscal Impact Yes

Dollar Amount $722,685.00

Budgeted Yes

Budget Source Measure G Bond Funds

Recommended Staff recommends the Board approve the Ratcliff Architects proposal for Phase 1 of the Action HVAC Replacement project and the Master Project Budget as presented. Purpose:

To approve the proposal from Ratcliff Architects for Construction Documents, permitting through DSA and Construction Administration services for the HVAC Replacement on six campuses (Kennedy, Birch Grove Primary, Graham, Schilling, Newark Jr High, and Newark Memorial High School).

Background:

On February 18, 2021, the Board authorized District administration to negotiate and award a preliminary service agreement to Ratcliff Architects, in the amount not to exceed $35,000, and a design and engineering contract not to exceed 11% of the construction cost. Phase 1 of the HVAC replacement upgrades includes 318 units:

Campus Count Kennedy E.S 23 Birch Grove Primary 25 Graham E.S 28 Schilling E.S 28 Newark J.H.S 65 Newark Memorial H.S 149 Total HVAC Units 318

Recommended Action: (1) Approve/ratify design engineering agreement with Ratcliff Architects in the amount of $722,685 for the Phase 1 HVAC Replacement Project (318 total units); (2) Review and approve Master Project Budget including soft costs and contingencies and authorize staff to enter into agreements with other consultants including RGMK for planning and CM oversight on a Time and Expense NTE $469,100; Testing and Inspection services (Vendors TBD); Air Balancing with Cypress Engineering Group (Cost TBD) and Commissioning for the controls with Cypress Engineering and other services and expenses within the approved budget and contingency allocations. Construction contracts will be brought to the board for approval upon receipt of bids and evaluation.

Additional background and history:

At the April 15, 2021, Board meeting, staff provided an update on bond projects, including the pending HVAC replacement projects. The presentation and discussion identified approximately 378 Rooftop HVAC units nearing the end of their useful life and have been earmarked for replacement. Of those units, approximately 70-75% were smaller Carrier brand HVAC units. Specifying more efficient Carrier brand models that are of similar size and weight that can reuse the existing roof curbs, align with the ductwork, electrical and gas connections can save considerable time and cost and may require less regulatory review time. The architectural and engineering team has matched nearly 300 units that can meet these criteria, whereas other models or brands would require structural roof framing modifications, new curbs, roofing, and rework of utility connections.

On May 20, 2021, the Board of Education adopted Resolution No. 2020.21-030 Authorizing Staff to Acquire Equipment Using Sole Source and authorize the District to specify and pre-purchase Carrier brand HVAC replacement units and Alerton/Syserco Energy Management System as a district proprietary standard.

File Attachments Ratcliff Architects proposal_HVAC project.pdf (275 KB) Preliminary Budget - Phase 1 Districtwide HVAC Replacement Project 5-27-2021.pdf (38 KB) Bond Projects_Budget update 6-3-21 Board meeting.pdf (54 KB)

Motion & Voting Staff recommends the Board approve the Ratcliff Architects proposal for Phase 1 of the HVAC Replacement project and the Master Project Budget as presented.

Motion by Bowen Zhang, second by Elisa Martinez.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Elisa Martinez, Bowen Zhang, Phuong Nguyen, Terrence Grindall, Wahhab Salemi
Nay: Aiden Hill

16. CONSENT AGENDA - PERSONNEL ITEMS

PLACEHOLDER - One Consented Vote

Type Action

Recommended Staff recommends that the following personnel agenda items be approved under one Action consented vote. Items _________. Purpose:

This is specifically a placeholder, and will only be used if multiple agenda items are approved under a consented vote.

Background:

Items within Consent Agenda are considered routine and will be approved, adopted, or ratified by a single motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items; however, any item may be removed from the Consent Agenda upon the request of any member of the Board and acted upon separately.

Personnel Report

Type Action

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education ratify the personnel report as presented. Action All personnel activities including new hires, changes in status, resignation, leaves, and retirements are routinely submitted to the Board for ratification.

File Attachments HR PAL 06.03.21.pdf (159 KB)

Motion & Voting Staff recommends the Board of Education ratify the personnel report as presented.

Motion by Bowen Zhang, second by Phuong Nguyen.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Elisa Martinez, Bowen Zhang, Phuong Nguyen, Terrence Grindall, Aiden Hill
Abstain: Wahhab Salemi

17. CONSENT AGENDA - NON-PERSONNEL ITEMS

PLACEHOLDER - One Consented Vote

Type Action

Recommended Staff recommends that the following agenda items be approved under one consented vote. Action Items _________. Purpose:

This is specifically a placeholder, and will only be used if multiple agenda items are approved under a consented vote.

Background:

Items within Consent Agenda are considered routine and will be approved, adopted, or ratified by a single motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items; however, any item may be removed from the Consent Agenda upon the request of any member of the Board and acted upon separately.

Motion & Voting Staff recommends that the following agenda items be approved under one consented vote. Items 17.2 - 17.4, except 17.13.

Motion by Bowen Zhang, second by Terrence Grindall.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Elisa Martinez, Bowen Zhang, Phuong Nguyen, Terrence Grindall, Aiden Hill, Wahhab Salemi

Resolution 2020.21-031 Declaring Surplus Equipment

Type Action

Fiscal Impact No

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve Resolution 2020.21-031 which lists Action items to be declared as surplus to the needs of the District. Purpose:

The purpose of this item is to obtain Board approval of Resolution No. 2020.21-031, declaring surplus equipment as recommended.

Background:

Surplus materials will be disposed of per Board Policy and Administrative Regulation 3270 Sale And Disposal Of Books, Equipment And Supplies (Personal Property). Education Code, Section 17546 states that if the Governing Board, by a unanimous vote of those members present, finds that the property, whether one or more items, does not exceed the value of $2,500, it may be sold at private sale without advertising, by a District employee empowered for that purpose by the Board; the property may be donated to a charitable organization, or it may be disposed of in a public disposal facility.

The personal property as described in Resolution No. 2020.21-031 includes equipment used in the Maintenance Operations and Transportation (MOT) Department, Child Nutrition Services Department, and Lincoln Elementary School. Staff determined that items are obsolete and/or beyond economic repair.

The equipment is currently stored and will be recycled/disposed of upon Board approval.

File Attachments Resolution 2020.21-031 Declaring Surplus Equipment.pdf (14 KB)

Lincoln Elementary 2021-22 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Type Action

Preferred Date Jun 03, 2021

Fiscal Impact Yes

Budgeted Yes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Action Achievement.

Goals 1. To provide academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. 2. Establish financial stability and fiscal solvency in order to drive continuous improvement. 3. Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment. VISION: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student. MISSION: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Purpose:

This 2021-22 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is coming forward for Board approval. The SPSA serves as the organizer for an individual school's improvement process. The plan is developed with a deep understanding of root causes of student academic challenges and identifies and implements research-based instructional strategies to raise the achievement of students who are not yet proficient by state standards.

The plan: Builds on a premise that students are capable of learning with effective instruction. Includes school goals aligned with activities and goals included in the LCAP to maximize school reform efforts. Is based on verifiable data analysis. Focuses on student achievement and academic interventions. Implements high leverage school improvement actions. Directs resources where they will most directly improve student academic achievement. Ensures all resources are aligned to serve identified students' needs. Uses research-based strategies. Implements strategic coordination of resources.

Background:

The School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is a plan of action to improve student academic performance by coordinating all educational services and resources. Pursuant to California Education Code Section 64001, schools that receive state and federal funds are required to consolidate all school plans into a SPSA.

It is the goal of the Newark Unified School District (NUSD) to provide equitable opportunities to each of our students and school sites. Each site-specific SPSA and the district-wide Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a roadmap created in partnership with all district stakeholders to achieve our vision and mission:

NUSD Vision: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student.

NUSD Mission: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful and productive citizens.

Each school site aligns its SPSA action items to six of our LCAP goals: Goal 1.1 Implement Common Core State Standards in Mathematics Goal 1.2 Implement Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts Goal 1.3 Implement NGSS and Common Core Literacy Standards Literacy Goal 1.4 Implement ELD Standards and Monitor English Language Proficiency Progress Goal 1.5 Promote College and Career Readiness for all students (high schools) Goal 1.6 Identify and address learning gaps among students, including low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care Goal 1.7 Implement activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth Goal 2.1 Promote parent involvement in decision-making and participation in various advisory groups as well as other parent/family activities Goal 2.2 Promote a school climate that centers around student engagement and allows students to feel safe and connected to the school community Goal 2.3 Promote a culture that values and supports mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL) Goal 3.1 Provide access to a broad course of study (VAPA, Health, STEAM, PE, etc:)

Data Analysis: School level goals are informed by data. Each goal area includes data analysis on current measures across student subgroups, and on outcome measures to determine progress. Local and State data are used to develop each goal. I- Ready is a source of local data. The California School Dashboard is the source of State data.

Evaluating Progress: The SSC agendized a meeting to review Dashboard data and measure the impact of actions on student achievement. The principal and staff evaluate academic progress at minimum three times a year through an academic Professional Learning Community (PLC) model with benchmark data.

Role of School Advisory Committees: California Education Code Section 64001 requires that the School Site Council (SSC) develop the SPSA. The SSC's responsibilities include approving the plan, recommending it to the local governing board for approval, monitoring its implementation, and evaluating the effectiveness of the plan at least annually. The SSC must seek the review, advice, and certification of applicable advisory committees, including the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC).

File Attachments Lincoln Elementary SPSA 21-22.pdf (1,179 KB)

John F. Kennedy Elementary 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Type Action

Preferred Date Jun 03, 2021

Fiscal Impact Yes

Budgeted Yes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Action Achievement.

Goals 1. To provide academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. 2. Establish financial stability and fiscal solvency in order to drive continuous improvement. 3. Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment. VISION: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student. MISSION: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Purpose:

This 2021-22 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is coming forward for Board approval. The SPSA serves as the organizer for an individual school's improvement process. The plan is developed with a deep understanding of root causes of student academic challenges and identifies and implements research-based instructional strategies to raise the achievement of students who are not yet proficient by state standards.

The plan: Builds on a premise that students are capable of learning with effective instruction. Includes school goals aligned with activities and goals included in the LCAP to maximize school reform efforts. Is based on verifiable data analysis. Focuses on student achievement and academic interventions. Implements high leverage school improvement actions. Directs resources where they will most directly improve student academic achievement. Ensures all resources are aligned to serve identified students' needs. Uses research-based strategies. Implements strategic coordination of resources.

Background:

The School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is a plan of action to improve student academic performance by coordinating all educational services and resources. Pursuant to California Education Code Section 64001, schools that receive state and federal funds are required to consolidate all school plans into a SPSA.

It is the goal of the Newark Unified School District (NUSD) to provide equitable opportunities to each of our students and school sites. Each site-specific SPSA and the district-wide Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a roadmap created in partnership with all district stakeholders to achieve our vision and mission:

NUSD Vision: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student.

NUSD Mission: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful and productive citizens.

Each school site aligns its SPSA action items to six of our LCAP goals: Goal 1.1 Implement Common Core State Standards in Mathematics Goal 1.2 Implement Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts Goal 1.3 Implement NGSS and Common Core Literacy Standards Literacy Goal 1.4 Implement ELD Standards and Monitor English Language Proficiency Progress Goal 1.5 Promote College and Career Readiness for all students (high schools) Goal 1.6 Identify and address learning gaps among students, including low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care Goal 1.7 Implement activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth Goal 2.1 Promote parent involvement in decision-making and participation in various advisory groups as well as other parent/family activities Goal 2.2 Promote a school climate that centers around student engagement and allows students to feel safe and connected to the school community Goal 2.3 Promote a culture that values and supports mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL) Goal 3.1 Provide access to a broad course of study (VAPA, Health, STEAM, PE, etc:)

Data Analysis: School level goals are informed by data. Each goal area includes data analysis on current measures across student subgroups, and on outcome measures to determine progress. Local and State data are used to develop each goal. I- Ready is a source of local data. The California School Dashboard is the source of State data.

Evaluating Progress: The SSC agendized a meeting to review Dashboard data and measure the impact of actions on student achievement. The principal and staff evaluate academic progress at minimum three times a year through an academic Professional Learning Community (PLC) model with benchmark data.

Role of School Advisory Committees: California Education Code Section 64001 requires that the School Site Council (SSC) develop the SPSA. The SSC's responsibilities include approving the plan, recommending it to the local governing board for approval, monitoring its implementation, and evaluating the effectiveness of the plan at least annually. The SSC must seek the review, advice, and certification of applicable advisory committees, including the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC).

File Attachments John F. Kennedy Elementary SPSA 21-22.pdf (887 KB)

E. L. Musick Elementary 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Type Action

Preferred Date Jun 03, 2021

Fiscal Impact Yes

Budgeted Yes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Action Achievement.

Goals 1. To provide academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. 2. Establish financial stability and fiscal solvency in order to drive continuous improvement. 3. Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment. VISION: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student. MISSION: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Purpose:

This 2021-22 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is coming forward for Board approval. The SPSA serves as the organizer for an individual school's improvement process. The plan is developed with a deep understanding of root causes of student academic challenges and identifies and implements research-based instructional strategies to raise the achievement of students who are not yet proficient by state standards.

The plan: Builds on a premise that students are capable of learning with effective instruction. Includes school goals aligned with activities and goals included in the LCAP to maximize school reform efforts. Is based on verifiable data analysis. Focuses on student achievement and academic interventions. Implements high leverage school improvement actions. Directs resources where they will most directly improve student academic achievement. Ensures all resources are aligned to serve identified students' needs. Uses research-based strategies. Implements strategic coordination of resources.

Background:

The School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is a plan of action to improve student academic performance by coordinating all educational services and resources. Pursuant to California Education Code Section 64001, schools that receive state and federal funds are required to consolidate all school plans into a SPSA.

It is the goal of the Newark Unified School District (NUSD) to provide equitable opportunities to each of our students and school sites. Each site-specific SPSA and the district-wide Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a roadmap created in partnership with all district stakeholders to achieve our vision and mission:

NUSD Vision: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student.

NUSD Mission: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful and productive citizens.

Each school site aligns its SPSA action items to six of our LCAP goals: Goal 1.1 Implement Common Core State Standards in Mathematics Goal 1.2 Implement Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts Goal 1.3 Implement NGSS and Common Core Literacy Standards Literacy Goal 1.4 Implement ELD Standards and Monitor English Language Proficiency Progress Goal 1.5 Promote College and Career Readiness for all students (high schools)

    Goal 1.6     Identify and address learning gaps among students, including low-income students, students with disabilities,
    English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care
    Goal 1.7     Implement activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with
    disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth
    Goal 2.1     Promote parent involvement in decision-making and participation            in various advisory groups as well as other
    parent/family activities
    Goal 2.2     Promote a school climate that centers around student engagement and allows students to feel safe and
    connected to the school community
    Goal 2.3     Promote a culture that values and supports mental health and social emotional learning (SEL)
    Goal 3.1 Provide access to a broad course of study (VAPA, Health, STEAM, PE, etc:)

Data Analysis: School level goals are informed by data. Each goal area includes data analysis on current measures across student subgroups, and on outcome measures to determine progress. Local and State data are used to develop each goal. I- Ready is a source of local data. The California School Dashboard is the source of State data.

Evaluating Progress: The SSC agendized a meeting to review Dashboard data and measure impact of actions on student achievement. The principal and staff evaluate academic progress at minimum three times a year through an academic Professional Learning Community (PLC) model with benchmark data.

Role of School Advisory Committees: California Education Code Section 64001 requires that the School Site Council (SSC) develop the SPSA. The SSC's responsibilities include approving the plan, recommending it to the local governing board for approval, monitoring its implementation, and evaluating the effectiveness of the plan at least annually. The SSC must seek the review, advice, and certification of applicable advisory committees, including the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC).

File Attachments E. L. Musick Elementary SPSA 21-22.pdf (1,503 KB)

August Shilling Elementary 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Type Action

Preferred Date Jun 03, 2021

Fiscal Impact Yes

Budgeted Yes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Action Achievement.

Goals 1. To provide academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. 2. Establish financial stability and fiscal solvency in order to drive continuous improvement. 3. Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment. VISION: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student. MISSION: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Purpose:

This 2021-22 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is coming forward for Board approval. The SPSA serves as the organizer for an individual school's improvement process. The plan is developed with a deep understanding of the root causes of student academic challenges and identifies and implements research-based instructional strategies to raise the achievement of students who are not yet proficient by state standards.

The plan: Builds on a premise that students are capable of learning with effective instruction. Includes school goals aligned with activities and goals included in the LCAP to maximize school reform efforts. Is based on verifiable data analysis. Focuses on student achievement and academic interventions. Implements high leverage school improvement actions. Directs resources where they will most directly improve student academic achievement. Ensures all resources are aligned to serve identified students' needs. Uses research-based strategies. Implements strategic coordination of resources.

Background:

The School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is a plan of action to improve student academic performance by coordinating all educational services and resources. Pursuant to California Education Code Section 64001, schools that receive state and federal funds are required to consolidate all school plans into a SPSA.

It is the goal of the Newark Unified School District (NUSD) to provide equitable opportunities to each of our students and school sites. Each site-specific SPSA and the district-wide Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a roadmap created in partnership with all district stakeholders to achieve our vision and mission:

NUSD Vision: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student.

NUSD Mission: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Each school site aligns its SPSA action items to six of our LCAP goals: Goal 1.1 Implement Common Core State Standards in Mathematics Goal 1.2 Implement Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts Goal 1.3 Implement NGSS and Common Core Literacy Standards Literacy Goal 1.4 Implement ELD Standards and Monitor English Language Proficiency Progress Goal 1.5 Promote College and Career Readiness for all students (high schools) Goal 1.6 Identify and address learning gaps among students, including low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care Goal 1.7 Implement activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth Goal 2.1 Promote parent involvement in decision-making and participation in various advisory groups as well as other parent/family activities Goal 2.2 Promote a school climate that centers around student engagement and allows students to feel safe and connected to the school community Goal 2.3 Promote a culture that values and supports mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL) Goal 3.1 Provide access to a broad course of study (VAPA, Health, STEAM, PE, etc:)

Data Analysis: School level goals are informed by data. Each goal area includes data analysis on current measures across student subgroups, and on outcome measures to determine progress. Local and State data are used to develop each goal. I- Ready is a source of local data. The California School Dashboard is the source of State data.

Evaluating Progress: The SSC agendized a meeting to review Dashboard data and measure the impact of actions on student achievement. The principal and staff evaluate academic progress at minimum three times a year through an academic Professional Learning Community (PLC) model with benchmark data.

Role of School Advisory Committees: California Education Code Section 64001 requires that the School Site Council (SSC) develop the SPSA. The SSC's responsibilities include approving the plan, recommending it to the local governing board for approval, monitoring its implementation, and evaluating the effectiveness of the plan at least annually. The SSC must seek the review, advice, and certification of applicable advisory committees, including the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC).

File Attachments August Schilling Elementary SPSA 21-22.pdf (1,243 KB)

Snow/Graham Elementary 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Type Action

Preferred Date Jun 03, 2021

Fiscal Impact Yes

Budgeted Yes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Action Achievement.

Goals 1. To provide academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. 2. Establish financial stability and fiscal solvency in order to drive continuous improvement. 3. Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment. VISION: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student. MISSION: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Purpose:

This 2021-22 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is coming forward for Board approval. The SPSA serves as the organizer for an individual school's improvement process. The plan is developed with a deep understanding of the root causes of student academic challenges and identifies and implements research-based instructional strategies to raise the achievement of students who are not yet proficient by state standards.

The plan: Builds on a premise that students are capable of learning with effective instruction. Includes school goals aligned with activities and goals included in the LCAP to maximize school reform efforts. Is based on verifiable data analysis. Focuses on student achievement and academic interventions. Implements high leverage school improvement actions. Directs resources where they will most directly improve student academic achievement. Ensures all resources are aligned to serve identified students' needs. Uses research-based strategies. Implements strategic coordination of resources.

Background:

The School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is a plan of action to improve student academic performance by coordinating all educational services and resources. Pursuant to California Education Code Section 64001, schools that receive state and federal funds are required to consolidate all school plans into a SPSA.

It is the goal of the Newark Unified School District (NUSD) to provide equitable opportunities to each of our students and school sites. Each site-specific SPSA and the district-wide Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a roadmap created in partnership with all district stakeholders to achieve our vision and mission:

NUSD Vision: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student.

NUSD Mission: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful and productive citizens.

Each school site aligns its SPSA action items to six of our LCAP goals: Goal 1.1 Implement Common Core State Standards in Mathematics Goal 1.2 Implement Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts Goal 1.3 Implement NGSS and Common Core Literacy Standards Literacy Goal 1.4 Implement ELD Standards and Monitor English Language Proficiency Progress Goal 1.5 Promote College and Career Readiness for all students (high schools) Goal 1.6 Identify and address learning gaps among students, including low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care Goal 1.7 Implement activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth Goal 2.1 Promote parent involvement in decision-making and participation in various advisory groups as well as other parent/family activities Goal 2.2 Promote a school climate that centers around student engagement and allows students to feel safe and connected to the school community Goal 2.3 Promote a culture that values and supports mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL) Goal 3.1 Provide access to a broad course of study (VAPA, Health, STEAM, PE, etc:)

Data Analysis: School level goals are informed by data. Each goal area includes data analysis on current measures across student subgroups, and on outcome measures to determine progress. Local and State data are used to develop each goal. I- Ready is a source of local data. The California School Dashboard is the source of State data.

Evaluating Progress: The SSC agendized a meeting to review Dashboard data and measure the impact of actions on student achievement. The principal and staff evaluate academic progress at minimum three times a year through an academic Professional Learning Community (PLC) model with benchmark data.

Role of School Advisory Committees: California Education Code Section 64001 requires that the School Site Council (SSC) develop the SPSA. The SSC's responsibilities include approving the plan, recommending it to the local governing board for approval, monitoring its implementation, and evaluating the effectiveness of the plan at least annually. The SSC must seek the review, advice, and certification of applicable advisory committees, including the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC).

File Attachments Graham_Snow Elementary SPSA 21-22.pdf (1,117 KB)

Birch Grove Primary 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Type Action

Preferred Date Jun 03, 2021

Fiscal Impact Yes

Budgeted Yes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Action Achievement.

Goals 1. To provide academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. 2. Establish financial stability and fiscal solvency in order to drive continuous improvement. 3. Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment. VISION: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student. MISSION: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Purpose:

This 2021-22 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is coming forward for Board approval. The SPSA serves as the organizer for an individual school's improvement process. The plan is developed with a deep understanding of the root causes of student academic challenges and identifies and implements research-based instructional strategies to raise the achievement of students who are not yet proficient by state standards.

The plan: Builds on a premise that students are capable of learning with effective instruction. Includes school goals aligned with activities and goals included in the LCAP to maximize school reform efforts. Is based on verifiable data analysis. Focuses on student achievement and academic interventions. Implements high leverage school improvement actions. Directs resources where they will most directly improve student academic achievement. Ensures all resources are aligned to serve identified students' needs. Uses research-based strategies. Implements strategic coordination of resources.

Background:

The School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is a plan of action to improve student academic performance by coordinating all educational services and resources. Pursuant to California Education Code Section 64001, schools that receive state and federal funds are required to consolidate all school plans into a SPSA.

It is the goal of the Newark Unified School District (NUSD) to provide equitable opportunities to each of our students and school sites. Each site-specific SPSA and the district-wide Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a roadmap created in partnership with all district stakeholders to achieve our vision and mission:

NUSD Vision: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student.

NUSD Mission: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Each school site aligns its SPSA action items to six of our LCAP goals: Goal 1.1 Implement Common Core State Standards in Mathematics Goal 1.2 Implement Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts Goal 1.3 Implement NGSS and Common Core Literacy Standards Literacy Goal 1.4 Implement ELD Standards and Monitor English Language Proficiency Progress Goal 1.5 Promote College and Career Readiness for all students (high schools) Goal 1.6 Identify and address learning gaps among students, including low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care

    Goal 1.7     Implement activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with
    disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth
    Goal 2.1     Promote parent involvement in decision-making and participation            in various advisory groups as well as other
    parent/family activities
    Goal 2.2     Promote a school climate that centers around student engagement and allows students to feel safe and
    connected to the school community
    Goal 2.3     Promote a culture that values and supports mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL)
    Goal 3.1 Provide access to a broad course of study (VAPA, Health, STEAM, PE, etc:)

Data Analysis: School level goals are informed by data. Each goal area includes data analysis on current measures across student subgroups, and on outcome measures to determine progress. Local and State data are used to develop each goal. I- Ready is a source of local data. The California School Dashboard is the source of State data.

Evaluating Progress: The SSC agendized a meeting to review Dashboard data and measure the impact of actions on student achievement. The principal and staff evaluate academic progress at minimum three times a year through an academic Professional Learning Community (PLC) model with benchmark data.

Role of School Advisory Committees: California Education Code Section 64001 requires that the School Site Council (SSC) develop the SPSA. The SSC's responsibilities include approving the plan, recommending it to the local governing board for approval, monitoring its implementation, and evaluating the effectiveness of the plan at least annually. The SSC must seek the review, advice, and certification of applicable advisory committees, including the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC).

File Attachments Birch Grove Primary SPSA 21-22.pdf (847 KB)

Birch Grove Intermediate 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Type Action

Preferred Date Jun 03, 2021

Fiscal Impact Yes

Budgeted Yes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Action Achievement.

Goals 1. To provide academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. 2. Establish financial stability and fiscal solvency in order to drive continuous improvement. 3. Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment. VISION: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student. MISSION: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Purpose:

This 2021-22 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is coming forward for Board approval. The SPSA serves as the organizer for an individual school's improvement process. The plan is developed with a deep understanding of the root causes of student academic challenges and identifies and implements research-based instructional strategies to raise the achievement of students who are not yet proficient by state standards.

The plan: Builds on a premise that students are capable of learning with effective instruction. Includes school goals aligned with activities and goals included in the LCAP to maximize school reform efforts. Is based on verifiable data analysis. Focuses on student achievement and academic interventions. Implements high leverage school improvement actions. Directs resources where they will most directly improve student academic achievement. Ensures all resources are aligned to serve identified students' needs. Uses research-based strategies. Implements strategic coordination of resources.

Background:

The School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is a plan of action to improve student academic performance by coordinating all educational services and resources. Pursuant to California Education Code Section 64001, schools that receive state and federal funds are required to consolidate all school plans into a SPSA.

It is the goal of the Newark Unified School District (NUSD) to provide equitable opportunities to each of our students and school sites. Each site-specific SPSA and the district-wide Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a roadmap created in partnership with all district stakeholders to achieve our vision and mission:

NUSD Vision: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student.

NUSD Mission: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Each school site aligns its SPSA action items to six of our LCAP goals: Goal 1.1 Implement Common Core State Standards in Mathematics Goal 1.2 Implement Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts Goal 1.3 Implement NGSS and Common Core Literacy Standards Literacy Goal 1.4 Implement ELD Standards and Monitor English Language Proficiency Progress Goal 1.5 Promote College and Career Readiness for all students (high schools) Goal 1.6 Identify and address learning gaps among students, including low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care Goal 1.7 Implement activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth Goal 2.1 Promote parent involvement in decision-making and participation in various advisory groups as well as other parent/family activities Goal 2.2 Promote a school climate that centers around student engagement and allows students to feel safe and connected to the school community Goal 2.3 Promote a culture that values and supports mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL) Goal 3.1 Provide access to a broad course of study (VAPA, Health, STEAM, PE, etc:)

Data Analysis: School level goals are informed by data. Each goal area includes data analysis on current measures across student subgroups, and on outcome measures to determine progress. Local and State data are used to develop each goal. I- Ready is a source of local data. The California School Dashboard is the source of State data.

Evaluating Progress: The SSC agendized a meeting to review Dashboard data and measure the impact of actions on student achievement. The principal and staff evaluate academic progress at minimum three times a year through an academic Professional Learning Community (PLC) model with benchmark data.

Role of School Advisory Committees: California Education Code Section 64001 requires that the School Site Council (SSC) develop the SPSA. The SSC's responsibilities include approving the plan, recommending it to the local governing board for approval, monitoring its implementation, and evaluating the effectiveness of the plan at least annually. The SSC must seek the review, advice, and certification of applicable advisory committees, including the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC).

File Attachments Birch Grove Intermediate SPSA 21-22.pdf (854 KB)

Newark Junior High School 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Type Action

Preferred Date Jun 03, 2021

Fiscal Impact Yes

Budgeted Yes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Action Achievement.

Goals 1. To provide academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. 2. Establish financial stability and fiscal solvency in order to drive continuous improvement. 3. Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment. VISION: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student. MISSION: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Purpose:

This 2021-22 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is coming forward for Board approval. The SPSA serves as the organizer for an individual school's improvement process. The plan is developed with a deep understanding of the root causes of student academic challenges and identifies and implements research-based instructional strategies to raise the achievement of students who are not yet proficient by state standards.

The plan: Builds on a premise that students are capable of learning with effective instruction. Includes school goals aligned with activities and goals included in the LCAP to maximize school reform efforts. Is based on verifiable data analysis. Focuses on student achievement and academic interventions. Implements high leverage school improvement actions. Directs resources where they will most directly improve student academic achievement. Ensures all resources are aligned to serve identified students' needs. Uses research-based strategies. Implements strategic coordination of resources.

Background:

The School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is a plan of action to improve student academic performance by coordinating all educational services and resources. Pursuant to California Education Code Section 64001, schools that receive state and federal funds are required to consolidate all school plans into a SPSA.

It is the goal of the Newark Unified School District (NUSD) to provide equitable opportunities to each of our students and school sites. Each site-specific SPSA and the district-wide Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a roadmap created in partnership with all district stakeholders to achieve our vision and mission:

NUSD Vision: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student.

NUSD Mission: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Each school site aligns its SPSA action items to six of our LCAP goals: Goal 1.1 Implement Common Core State Standards in Mathematics Goal 1.2 Implement Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts Goal 1.3 Implement NGSS and Common Core Literacy Standards Literacy Goal 1.4 Implement ELD Standards and Monitor English Language Proficiency Progress Goal 1.5 Promote College and Career Readiness for all students (high schools) Goal 1.6 Identify and address learning gaps among students, including low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care Goal 1.7 Implement activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth Goal 2.1 Promote parent involvement in decision-making and participation in various advisory groups as well as other parent/family activities Goal 2.2 Promote a school climate that centers around student engagement and allows students to feel safe and connected to the school community Goal 2.3 Promote a culture that values and supports mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL) Goal 3.1 Provide access to a broad course of study (VAPA, Health, STEAM, PE, etc:)

Data Analysis: School level goals are informed by data. Each goal area includes data analysis on current measures across student subgroups, and on outcome measures to determine progress. Local and State data are used to develop each goal. I- Ready is a source of local data. The California School Dashboard is the source of State data.

Evaluating Progress: The SSC agendized a meeting to review Dashboard data and measure the impact of actions on student achievement. The principal and staff evaluate academic progress at minimum three times a year through an academic Professional Learning Community (PLC) model with benchmark data.

Role of School Advisory Committees: California Education Code Section 64001 requires that the School Site Council (SSC) develop the SPSA. The SSC's responsibilities include approving the plan, recommending it to the local governing board for approval, monitoring its implementation, and evaluating the effectiveness of the plan at least annually. The SSC must seek the review, advice, and certification of applicable advisory committees, including the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC).

File Attachments Newark Junior High SPSA 21-22.pdf (3,281 KB)

Crossroads Alternative High School 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Type Action

Preferred Date Jun 03, 2021

Fiscal Impact Yes

Budgeted Yes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Action Achievement.

Goals 1. To provide academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. 2. Establish financial stability and fiscal solvency in order to drive continuous improvement. 3. Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment. VISION: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student. MISSION: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Purpose:

This 2021-22 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is coming forward for Board approval. The SPSA serves as the organizer for an individual school's improvement process. The plan is developed with a deep understanding of the root causes of student academic challenges and identifies and implements research-based instructional strategies to raise the achievement of students who are not yet proficient by state standards.

The plan: Builds on a premise that students are capable of learning with effective instruction. Includes school goals aligned with activities and goals included in the LCAP to maximize school reform efforts. Is based on verifiable data analysis. Focuses on student achievement and academic interventions. Implements high leverage school improvement actions. Directs resources where they will most directly improve student academic achievement. Ensures all resources are aligned to serve identified students' needs. Uses research-based strategies. Implements strategic coordination of resources.

Background:

The School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is a plan of action to improve student academic performance by coordinating all educational services and resources. Pursuant to California Education Code Section 64001, schools that receive state and federal funds are required to consolidate all school plans into a SPSA.

It is the goal of the Newark Unified School District (NUSD) to provide equitable opportunities to each of our students and school sites. Each site-specific SPSA and the district-wide Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a roadmap created in partnership with all district stakeholders to achieve our vision and mission:

NUSD Vision: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student.

NUSD Mission: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Each school site aligns its SPSA action items to six of our LCAP goals: Goal 1.1 Implement Common Core State Standards in Mathematics Goal 1.2 Implement Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts Goal 1.3 Implement NGSS and Common Core Literacy Standards Literacy Goal 1.4 Implement ELD Standards and Monitor English Language Proficiency Progress Goal 1.5 Promote College and Career Readiness for all students (high schools) Goal 1.6 Identify and address learning gaps among students, including low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care

    Goal 1.7     Implement activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with
    disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth
    Goal 2.1     Promote parent involvement in decision-making and participation            in various advisory groups as well as other
    parent/family activities
    Goal 2.2     Promote a school climate that centers around student engagement and allows students to feel safe and
    connected to the school community
    Goal 2.3     Promote a culture that values and supports mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL)
    Goal 3.1 Provide access to a broad course of study (VAPA, Health, STEAM, PE, etc:)

Data Analysis: School level goals are informed by data. Each goal area includes data analysis on current measures across student subgroups, and on outcome measures to determine progress. Local and State data are used to develop each goal. I- Ready is a source of local data. The California School Dashboard is the source of State data.

Evaluating Progress: The SSC agendized a meeting to review Dashboard data and measure the impact of actions on student achievement. The principal and staff evaluate academic progress at minimum three times a year through an academic Professional Learning Community (PLC) model with benchmark data.

Role of School Advisory Committees: California Education Code Section 64001 requires that the School Site Council (SSC) develop the SPSA. The SSC's responsibilities include approving the plan, recommending it to the local governing board for approval, monitoring its implementation, and evaluating the effectiveness of the plan at least annually. The SSC must seek the review, advice, and certification of applicable advisory committees, including the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC).

File Attachments Crossroads Alternative High School SPSA 21-22.pdf (802 KB)

Bridgepoint Continuation High School 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Type Action

Preferred Date Jun 03, 2021

Fiscal Impact Yes

Budgeted Yes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Action Achievement.

Goals 1. To provide academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. 2. Establish financial stability and fiscal solvency in order to drive continuous improvement. 3. Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment. VISION: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student. MISSION: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Purpose:

This 2021-22 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is coming forward for Board approval. The SPSA serves as the organizer for an individual school's improvement process. The plan is developed with a deep understanding of the root causes of student academic challenges and identifies and implements research-based instructional strategies to raise the achievement of students who are not yet proficient by state standards.

The plan: Builds on a premise that students are capable of learning with effective instruction. Includes school goals aligned with activities and goals included in the LCAP to maximize school reform efforts. Is based on verifiable data analysis. Focuses on student achievement and academic interventions. Implements high leverage school improvement actions. Directs resources where they will most directly improve student academic achievement. Ensures all resources are aligned to serve identified students' needs. Uses research-based strategies. Implements strategic coordination of resources.

Background:

The School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is a plan of action to improve student academic performance by coordinating all educational services and resources. Pursuant to California Education Code Section 64001, schools that receive state and federal funds are required to consolidate all school plans into a SPSA.

It is the goal of the Newark Unified School District (NUSD) to provide equitable opportunities to each of our students and school sites. Each site-specific SPSA and the district-wide Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a roadmap created in partnership with all district stakeholders to achieve our vision and mission:

NUSD Vision: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student.

NUSD Mission: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Each school site aligns its SPSA action items to six of our LCAP goals: Goal 1.1 Implement Common Core State Standards in Mathematics Goal 1.2 Implement Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts Goal 1.3 Implement NGSS and Common Core Literacy Standards Literacy Goal 1.4 Implement ELD Standards and Monitor English Language Proficiency Progress Goal 1.5 Promote College and Career Readiness for all students (high schools) Goal 1.6 Identify and address learning gaps among students, including low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care Goal 1.7 Implement activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth Goal 2.1 Promote parent involvement in decision-making and participation in various advisory groups as well as other parent/family activities Goal 2.2 Promote a school climate that centers around student engagement and allows students to feel safe and connected to the school community Goal 2.3 Promote a culture that values and supports mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL) Goal 3.1 Provide access to a broad course of study (VAPA, Health, STEAM, PE, etc:)

Data Analysis: School level goals are informed by data. Each goal area includes data analysis on current measures across student subgroups, and on outcome measures to determine progress. Local and State data are used to develop each goal. I- Ready is a source of local data. The California School Dashboard is the source of State data.

Evaluating Progress: The SSC agendized a meeting to review Dashboard data and measure the impact of actions on student achievement. The principal and staff evaluate academic progress at minimum three times a year through an academic Professional Learning Community (PLC) model with benchmark data.

Role of School Advisory Committees: California Education Code Section 64001 requires that the School Site Council (SSC) develop the SPSA. The SSC's responsibilities include approving the plan, recommending it to the local governing board for approval, monitoring its implementation, and evaluating the effectiveness of the plan at least annually. The SSC must seek the review, advice, and certification of applicable advisory committees, including the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC).

File Attachments Bridgepoint Continuation High School SPSA 21-22.pdf (816 KB)

Newark Memorial High School 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA)

Type Action

Preferred Date Jun 03, 2021

Fiscal Impact Yes

Budgeted Yes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Action Achievement.

Goals 1. To provide academic excellence via equity and opportunities for all students. 2. Establish financial stability and fiscal solvency in order to drive continuous improvement. 3. Newark Unified School District will increase our enrollment. VISION: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student. MISSION: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful, and productive citizens.

Purpose:

This 2021-22 School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is coming forward for Board approval. The SPSA serves as the organizer for an individual school's improvement process. The plan is developed with a deep understanding of the root causes of student academic challenges and identifies and implements research-based instructional strategies to raise the achievement of students who are not yet proficient by state standards.

The plan: Builds on a premise that students are capable of learning with effective instruction. Includes school goals aligned with activities and goals included in the LCAP to maximize school reform efforts. Is based on verifiable data analysis. Focuses on student achievement and academic interventions. Implements high leverage school improvement actions. Directs resources where they will most directly improve student academic achievement. Ensures all resources are aligned to serve identified students' needs. Uses research-based strategies. Implements strategic coordination of resources.

Background:

The School Plan for Student Achievement (SPSA) is a plan of action to improve student academic performance by coordinating all educational services and resources. Pursuant to California Education Code Section 64001, schools that receive state and federal funds are required to consolidate all school plans into a SPSA.

It is the goal of Newark Unified School District (NUSD) to provide equitable opportunities to each of our students and school sites. Each site-specific SPSA and the district-wide Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is a roadmap created in partnership with all district stakeholders to achieve our vision and mission:

NUSD Vision: The Newark Unified School District, in partnership with the community, will be a model of world-class education that develops the unique abilities of every student.

NUSD Mission: The Newark Unified School District will inspire and educate all students to achieve their full potential and be responsible, respectful and productive citizens.

Each school site aligns its SPSA action items to six of our LCAP goals: Goal 1.1 Implement Common Core State Standards in Mathematics Goal 1.2 Implement Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts Goal 1.3 Implement NGSS and Common Core Literacy Standards Literacy Goal 1.4 Implement ELD Standards and Monitor English Language Proficiency Progress Goal 1.5 Promote College and Career Readiness for all students (high schools) Goal 1.6 Identify and address learning gaps among students, including low-income students, students with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and children in foster care Goal 1.7 Implement activities to address the unique needs of low-income children or students, children with disabilities, English learners, racial and ethnic minorities, students experiencing homelessness, and foster care youth Goal 2.1 Promote parent involvement in decision-making and participation in various advisory groups as well as other parent/family activities Goal 2.2 Promote a school climate that centers around student engagement and allows students to feel safe and connected to the school community Goal 2.3 Promote a culture that values and supports mental health and social-emotional learning (SEL) Goal 3.1 Provide access to a broad course of study (VAPA, Health, STEAM, PE, etc:)

Data Analysis: School level goals are informed by data. Each goal area includes data analysis on current measures across student subgroups, and on outcome measures to determine progress. Local and State data are used to develop each goal. I- Ready is a source of local data. The California School Dashboard is the source of State data.

Evaluating Progress: The SSC agendized a meeting to review Dashboard data and measure the impact of actions on student achievement. The principal and staff evaluate academic progress at minimum three times a year through an academic Professional Learning Community (PLC) model with benchmark data.

Role of School Advisory Committees: California Education Code Section 64001 requires that the School Site Council (SSC) develop the SPSA. The SSC's responsibilities include approving the plan, recommending it to the local governing board for approval, monitoring its implementation, and evaluating the effectiveness of the plan at least annually. The SSC must seek the review, advice, and certification of applicable advisory committees, including the English Learner Advisory Committee (ELAC).

File Attachments Newark Memorial High School SPSA 21-22.pdf (1,801 KB)

Motion & Voting Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the 2021-2022 School Plan for Student Achievement.

Motion by Bowen Zhang, second by Elisa Martinez.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Elisa Martinez, Bowen Zhang, Phuong Nguyen, Terrence Grindall, Wahhab Salemi
Nay: Aiden Hill

Minutes of the May 20, 2021 Regular Meeting of the Board of Education

Type Action, Minutes

Recommended Staff recommends the Board of Education approve the minutes of May 20, 2021, Regular Action Meeting of the Board of Education Purpose:

For the board to review and approve the minutes

Background:

The attached minutes are reflective of the May 20, 2021, Regular Meeting of the Board of Education. The exact language is available for viewing on the NUSD YouTube Channel.

18. BOARD OF EDUCATION - COMMITTEE REPORTS, ANNOUNCEMENTS, REQUESTS, DEBRIEF, AND DISCUSSION

Board of Education Committee Reports

                       DEBRIEF, AND DISCUSSION

Type Information Purpose:

The board committee members will give any updates, if available, of the committees they are members of.

Background:

Mission Valley ROP - Elisa Martinez SELPA - Bowen Zhang Newark - NUSD Liaison Committee - Phuong Nguyen & Terrence Grindall Newark Teacher Induction Advisory Council (Formally EBBIC) - Elisa Martinez Audit Committee - Phuong Nguyen & Aiden Hill Bond/Parcel Tax - Elisa Martinez & Terrence Grindall

Board of Education Requests

                       DEBRIEF, AND DISCUSSION

Type Information Purpose:

This is an opportunity for Board members to suggest items for placement on future agendas, and to review requests.

Background:

Governance Team Handbook Authority is Collective, Not Individual: The only authority to direct action rests with the Board as a whole when seated at a regular or special board meeting. Outside of this meeting, there is no authority. A majority Board vote provides direction to the Superintendent. Board members will not undermine the ability of staff to carry out Board direction.

Bringing New Ideas Forward The Board will be open to having "brainstorming" discussions, or study sessions, around any idea that a Trustee may feel merits exploratory consideration. "New Ideas" are defined as any proposal brought forward by a Trustee, at their initiative or at the request of a constituent, which was previously discussed during a board meeting. Trustees will first notify the board president and Superintendent of their interest in bringing forward a new idea at a board meeting. When initially agendized, the preliminary discussion of a new idea will not require staff research time. Initially, staff will be expected to respond to new ideas based on current knowledge. Only a majority of the Board may direct the Superintendent to conduct research regarding the exploration of a new idea. The Superintendent will decide on the delegation of assignments to District staff.

    The new idea may be agendized for discussion only. The Board majority will decide if the new idea should be further
    developed and studied by staff. The Board majority will decide if staff time should be invested in the "fleshing out" of
    new ideas.
    Individual Trustees, in the course of interactions with constituents, will be careful not to make or imply the commitment
    of the full Board to explore or proceed with implementing new ideas.

Board of Education Recognitions and Announcements

                       DEBRIEF, AND DISCUSSION

Type Information Purpose:

This is an opportunity for Board members to acknowledge or recognize specific programs, activities, or personnel.

19. SUPERINTENDENT'S CONCLUDING COMMENTS, UPDATES FOR THE BOARD, AND FUTURE AGENDA REQUESTS

Superintendent's Concluding Comments, Updates for the Board, and Future Agenda Requests

                       FUTURE AGENDA REQUESTS

Type Information Purpose:

This is an opportunity for the Superintendent to make any concluding comments, updates, agenda requests, or provide information of future meetings.

20. ADJOURNMENT

PLACEHOLDER - Extend Meeting

Type Action

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board extend the meeting to ____PM Action Purpose:

This is a placeholder, only to be used if the Board adds a motion to extend the meeting.

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board extend the meeting to 11:00 pm.

Motion by Bowen Zhang, second by Terrence Grindall.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Elisa Martinez, Bowen Zhang, Phuong Nguyen, Terrence Grindall, Aiden Hill, Wahhab Salemi

Adjournment 11:03pm

Type Action, Procedural

Recommended The recommendation is that this meeting be adjourned. Action Purpose:

No items will be considered after 10:00 p.m., unless it is determined by a majority of the Board to extend to a specific time.

This action will conclude the meeting.

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that this meeting be adjourned.

Motion by Bowen Zhang, second by Wahhab Salemi.
Final Resolution: Motion Fails
Not Present at Vote: Elisa Martinez, Bowen Zhang, Phuong Nguyen, Terrence Grindall, Aiden Hill, Wahhab Salemi

No minutes available.