Regular Meeting

Introduction

• Meeting Overview: Regular Board of Education meeting held in 2023, focusing on asset management, academic updates, staffing concerns, and community engagement. Key themes included financial sustainability, curriculum improvements, and equity initiatives.

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Agenda Items

Property Asset Management Study Session

• Description:
  • Reviewed surplus properties (e.g., Sam Scott Field, McGregor Fields) and options for disposition (sale, lease, workforce housing).
  • Discussed legal requirements (7-11 Committee process), financial implications, and penalties for underutilized sites.
  • Highlighted leasing as a revenue-generating alternative to sale, with potential for joint occupancy or workforce housing.
• Decisions/Actions:
  • No formal action taken.
  • Directed staff to finalize an RFP for an asset management consultant to evaluate properties and recommend strategies.

Newark Junior High School Spotlight

• Description:
  • Academic Success: 12% growth in math (iReady) and 7% in ELA; 35% of students achieved 3.0+ GPA.
  • Athletics: 29.6% student participation; league championships in soccer, wrestling, and track.
  • Climate/Culture: Reduced altercations (1.6% of students involved), mentorship programs (WEB Project), and SEL integration.
  • Initiatives: Expanded electives (coding, robotics), community partnerships, and parent engagement (PTSA events).
• Decisions/Actions:
  • No formal action taken.
  • Plans to enhance lunchtime activities, hire a bilingual secretary, and expand MTSS using iReady.

Compensation MOUs

• Description:
  • Approved 10% retroactive raises for 2022-23, 2% increase for 2023-24, and 4% in January 2024 for CSCA (classified staff) and NEWMA (management/confidential employees).
• Decisions/Actions:
  • Unanimously approved.

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Public Comments

• Key Themes:
  • Vacation Pay Concerns: Classified staff criticized unresolved vacation payout policies and lack of communication.
  • HR Practices: A former HR employee alleged retaliation and mishandling of layoffs during medical leave.
  • Student Advocacy: NJHS students requested improved Wi-Fi, healthier meals, and advanced coursework.
  • Facility Management: A community member urged fiscal responsibility and criticized over-reliance on consultants.

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Follow-Up and Commitments

1. Asset Management: Finalize RFP for consultant to assess surplus properties and recommend revenue strategies.
2. Technology Upgrades: Replace wireless access points at Newark Junior High to address connectivity issues.
3. HR Review: Investigate vacation pay policies and layoff processes; report findings to the board.
4. LCAP Adjustments: Address intervention program funding removal and explore alternatives (e.g., Sylvan contract).
5. STEAM Initiatives: Develop K-12 pathways for computer science and expand environmental literacy field trips.

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Conclusion

• Outcomes: The board advanced financial planning for surplus properties, celebrated academic/athletic achievements, and addressed staffing concerns.
• Next Steps:
  • June 1, 2023: Presentation of 2023-24 budget and LCAP revisions.
  • Upcoming events: NJHS promotion (June 1), retirement reception (May 19), and STAR Lab upgrades.
• Acknowledgments: Recognized outgoing student member Diego Torres and welcomed incoming trustee Joy Lee.

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Target Audience: Parents, staff, students, and community members seeking updates on district finances, academic programs, and policy changes.

1. CALL TO ORDER

[320] Nancy Thomas: Regular meeting of the Board of Education is now called to order. Roll call, please.

1.2 Roll Call

[328] Jodi Croce: Thank you. Student member Torres. Here. Member Nguyen. Here. Member Plancarte. Here. Member Jones. Here. Member Hill is absent, stuck in traffic. He'll be joining us soon. And President Thomas. Here. Thank you.

2. APPROVAL OF AGENDA

2.1 Approval of the Agenda

[343] Nancy Thomas: So next, we move on to approval of the agenda. May I have a motion to approve the agenda?

[351] SPEAKER_28: I move to approve the agenda as is.

[354] Nancy Thomas: I'll second it. Ms. Nguyen moves. Ms. Jones seconds that we approve the agenda. Please vote. Oh, member Diego.

[365] Bowen Zhang: Yes.

[368] Nancy Thomas: Student preferential vote is yes.

[388] Jodi Croce: I can do it manually for this one, and you can switch for the rest if you'd like. So what is your vote, Member Jones?

[394] Kat Jones: Yes.

[399] Jodi Croce: Thank you. Votes are in. We have four ayes and one not present. Thank you.

3. STUDY SESSION

3.1 Property Asset Management

[405] Nancy Thomas: Next, we will be moving into a one-hour study session, and so I will turn it over to the superintendent to introduce this event. Oh, we do have a public speaker.

[415] Jodi Croce: We do have a public comment on item 3.1. My apologies, it's Ms. Cindy Parks.

[422] Nancy Thomas: Hello, Ms. Parks.

[428] Julienne Sumodobila: Good evening.

[430] Cindy Parks: No microphone? Oh, it's over there. Do I need to go over there so everybody can hear? Are we televising?

[437] Jodi Croce: Yeah. But I think you project. You just project.

[442] Cindy Parks: OK. I just wanted to talk about the asset management. As you know, with the May revise, you're going to be having a lot of financial cuts to different programs. And being financially conscious, as a board trustee member should be, I wanted to bring up various vacant facilities that you have, the upkeep that's still required for those facilities, they're not generating revenue for you right now. And so I think that this is wise that you're having these meetings, or this meeting especially, to actually look at where you need to go in your planning for the future. I want to also remind you that your pot of money again is not a, you don't have a tree to go out and pick money off of, that you spent $60,000 to $70,000 with Dominic Dutra and his DGS or DSG, whatever that organization was, to have a facility and asset management plan drawn up a couple years ago, and it was called NUSD 2030 plan, where he did look at your vacant properties at that time, granted, or he looked at actually all of your assets. Right now you have two more facilities that are now vacant that weren't included in that, but you can't keep, you know, doing this, so there needs to be a plan and then take that plan and carry out the vision. You had the AIDIS plan that cost you half a million dollars and really haven't utilized that document other than referencing it for certain things during the school consolidation. Anyhow, my whole point here is that it seems like there's a lot of talk there's a lot of consultants that are hired, there's a lot of spending that takes place, and everything doesn't always come to fruition. And so I would just encourage you to determine where you want to go with this, and then actually carry out what you're spending public funds on instead of just constantly hiring consultants. So thank you.

[587] Nancy Thomas: Thank you, Ms. Parks. I'm going to pass this along to you, Superintendent. Why, thank you.

[598] Nicole Pierce-Davis: This might not. It does work. Thank you, President Thomas. I appreciate it. So I am thrilled for us to present the following study session regarding our property asset management exactly to do exactly what Ms. Parks has suggested is to look at our properties, learn more about the various options we have. And there he is, yay.

[624] Penny DeLeon: You didn't swim.

[628] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Yay. So I would like, I need to know the will of the board. Now I understand that normally study sessions happen down at the table. Does everybody, okay, and then we project up there onto the screen. Yes, is that what we do? So at this time, if everyone would like to grab their gear and head down to the table, we'll begin our study session. Thank you.

[669] SPEAKER_19: How are you? It's good to meet you in person. Hello. OK. Wherever you want. Thank you.

[701] Jodi Croce: I don't think we had a request for anything on paper.

[704] Kat Jones: Is there anybody who would like a paper copy of the presentation?

[731] Nancy Thomas: Is this basically what was presented a year ago?

[735] Nicole Pierce-Davis: I think two or three sentences added about the option of leasing.

[742] Kat Jones: So it's the one we have in our? For the most part, yes. And I'll just look at that.

[747] SPEAKER_21: And you can see it too. Thank you.

[752] Maria Huffer: All right.

[753] Penny DeLeon: Well, everyone. Oh, yeah.

[762] Nicole Pierce-Davis: I think this is a great first step for us to take to review. The bones of this is a presentation that was presented last year about some of our vacant school properties or surplus properties and what options there were. I think the focus of this one was the option of sale. But I think there are other options out there that we wanted to be added to the presentation. And of course, with new trustees coming on board, we thought it would be good to do a study session on this so that we can discuss how we want to move forward as a district. So it is with much pleasure that I introduce to you Clarissa Kennedy, who will be discussing, basically presenting our study session.

[805] Clarissa Kennedy: Go ahead. All right. So hello again, for those of you that I met previously. As the superintendent mentioned, we dusted off the presentation that was presented last year. We added a few items for updating purposes and also to get the new trustees up to speed on what the group talked about. So some of this I'm going to go through maybe in a faster clip because I want to leave a lot of time for you all to ask questions and just really leverage me being here.

[842] SPEAKER_20: whatever you need answered. And do feel free, if you need clarification along the way or whatnot, some of these studies, I mean, just whatever you got. Absolutely.

[851] Clarissa Kennedy: All right. So once again, we'll review a little bit about some of your unused or vacant sites. We'll talk a little bit about the reasons for property disposition, and when we say disposition, In the legal world, disposition means you are not using it, right? So that can mean sale, it could mean a lease, it could mean partial disposition, where there's sort of a joint occupancy or joint use. Anything where you are yielding full control of the property to another user or purchaser. So that's a broad term as used in the education code. And then we'll do a little bit of overview about property disposition, the 7-11 process, which we talked about previously. And then we'll go through some alternatives to selling property. And the big ad here was talking a little bit more about leasing and some of the pros and cons of leasing, which we didn't necessarily touch on much in our last session together. And then we'll talk a little bit about some suggested next steps. One of the things that we did as a follow-up to the prior study session was we did create an RFP for an asset management facilities, asset management consultant to come in and do pretty much follow-up work to what the member of the public mentioned earlier. in terms of inventorying your sites, looking at what is it here now, because what happened a few years ago, COVID, finding enrollment, any number of other changing factors, you know, that can be very different today. So just making sure you have the latest and greatest sort of on the landscape of your overall inventory, and then how might you leverage not only the vacant school sites that you have, but even potentially some land on some of your larger school sites that you can carve off pieces, and if those are suitable for development for one purpose or another, that might be an option as well. And so the consultant would be able to help identify those opportunities for you. So we'll talk a little bit about their current scope of services, at least as it exists in the current RFP, and get your sense of if you want to narrow down, you want to broaden, whatever you might want to do in terms of that coming back to you for action soon. All right. So some of your unused sites include, of course, music. snow, whiteboard. I believe I heard there was at least one developer kind of snooping around the junior high and maybe there's some property along the edge where maybe the track and field is located. That might be a great location for some sort of development. And I understand that property has... Yeah, I've been here for quite a while.

[1039] Nancy Thomas: And that piece of property is called Sam Scott Field. If you look at the light standards there, they are being paid for. They have been paid for by the companies that are leasing those halls for cell phones. So that property has been recognized as surplus. I think it was discussed during a 7-Eleven committee process that we had years ago. And then, of course, the McGregor Fields is being leased to the city for $1 a year. And that's quite a big piece of property right now, too. And there might be other properties that are underutilized for the space that could be added, like MOT.

[1090] Aiden Hill: President Thomas, what's McGregor Field being used for by the city?

[1094] Nancy Thomas: They're leasing it out for sports. So they're getting the revenue for it, but they are paying for the water and the maintenance.

[1104] Clarissa Kennedy: So part of what the consultant could do is gather that underlying information about your different sites, evaluate what are the terms of that agreement with the city. Can we say, hey, we're giving you six months notice under the terms of this agreement, and we want our property back, and we want to use it for some other purpose? to raise revenue. So it's about making sure for each site you understand what those opportunities are across the district. And that's beyond the three school sites.

[1137] SPEAKER_20: And so you're referring to adding to the scope of work for a potential RFP, if we were going to have somebody do that.

[1143] Clarissa Kennedy: So the RFP isn't, doesn't really specifically say these particular sites. It does include, and I have the, I just captured the full list of the scope of services in a slide at the end here for you all to kind of chew on. But one of the tasks of the asset management consultant is to do a complete inventory of all of your sites. And really, as part of doing that, they will help identify where there are opportunities across your facilities, and then that will determine what what is currently surplus versus what could you surplus in order to make it available for revenue generating businesses. So, let's see. I don't know why we did this presentation this way, sorry about that. Okay, I think that's it. All right, so reasons for property disposition. So maybe some of the... It was on the slide and then back to this.

[1216] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Back one more. There you go.

[1217] Clarissa Kennedy: Okay, there we go. So reasons for property disposition of course include, you know, when you are operating under enrolled school sites, you are increasing your overhead across the district. Right, it's part of the process you all went through when you were looking at consolidating these schools. Making sure that you're leveraging, fully enrolling your campuses as best you can in a way that is hopefully as convenient for your families. And when you have under-enrolled campuses, you still have to pay the full cost of keeping that site. the upkeep on that site, right? And the use of that site is more intense than it's sitting there sort of empty. And if you were leasing it to someone else, we would shift the responsibility for that maintenance to that tenant, right? So we save money there by looking at other opportunities for you to shift those costs.

[1282] Aiden Hill: We also... Before we go there, do we have an estimate of how much money we're spending from an operating perspective on maintaining these unused sites?

[1297] Marie dela Cruz: I can look into that. Okay. We do a little maintaining because we do have, like snow is being used for softball, so sometimes they have to cover the fields. Okay. But not much.

[1310] Clarissa Kennedy: And then, of course, there's the non-use penalties of the state, which we talked about previously. Those can actually be pretty significant, I think.

[1319] Aiden Hill: Could you remind us?

[1320] Nancy Thomas: Yeah. It was like certain sites.

[1328] Clarissa Kennedy: There were over like 100 or $200,000 in fees for non-use. That doesn't happen for, I think you get like seven years of non-use. It's like five to seven years of non-use. So the longer you leave your site empty, the closer you get to that cut off. However, on the certification form that you complete about the use of your property, If we use it for any district purpose, then it is in our use. And so the district has done a great job of leveraging storage and softball and other ways in which we use our property to avoid triggering that five-year to seven-year start time. So you currently aren't in a non-use situation in terms of penalties within your sites.

[1377] Marie dela Cruz: I fill out, I complete this form every year. Okay. There are different checkboxes to not have to pay this penalty. And again, Ms. Kennedy was talking about how if we use the sites for any district purpose, such as storage, or we're allowing a group to use the softball fields, then it's exempt from the penalties. OK.

[1403] Aiden Hill: OK. So we don't have any properties at all?

[1405] Marie dela Cruz: We don't. Because, for example, music, we do have least one room that we're using as an office and then we have another room that we are using for storage and then snow is being used for softball and whiteford you know we use it for different things we were using it for covid testing so there's still a reason for district use.

[1437] Clarissa Kennedy: where we couldn't use them? That's when we're talking about those hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties.

[1443] Aiden Hill: So is there a formula?

[1445] Clarissa Kennedy: The state does have a formula and I unfortunately don't know it off the top of my head. I can certainly send it to Maria and she can certainly calculate it to the group. Because I do think it depends on the size of the site, how long you've owned it. I think it even has something to do with how you paid for it, if you paid bond money for it or not. There are, I think, a few factors that go into play in terms of how they calculate those fees. So I don't think that they, I mean, my sense is the state is not going after districts to collect this money. If you make the certification and you, in fact, are using it for these district purposes, then you would be able to avoid those penalties. But it still is sitting there empty, and the longer your sites sit empty, the more deterioration occurs just with non-use, and it makes it a less valuable asset in the long term, so. And of course, the biggest reason to go through a disposition process, whether it be leasing or some other alternative to that, is to generate revenue. You have capital outlay needs, you have general fund needs. Some, as we may have touched on in our previous discussion, certain funds are restricted. So if you do an outright sale or a lease with option to purchase, Those monies have to be set aside in a restricted fund and used for capital outlay purposes only. Over COVID, the state did a kind of emergency legislation that allows districts to leave up to 2025. to use those proceeds for one-time expenditures, meaning you don't have to use it for capital outlay, but you can't, like, put it into your budget and raise your teacher salaries, like, ongoing, you know, operating expense. You can't use it for that purpose. But say you wanted to pay down, you know, some kind of debt that the district might have, you can use that chunk of money for that purpose.

[1579] Aiden Hill: put it into your general fund?

[1581] Clarissa Kennedy: For sale or lease with option of purchase. Okay, all right.

[1585] Aiden Hill: Okay, but if we were leasing it out.

[1590] Phuong Nguyen: To generate revenue.

[1593] Nancy Thomas: Sure. It's my understanding, though, that there are different types of properties. So if we have properties that we paid for ourselves or something or that were gifted to us, they might not fall under that umbrella of having to be used, the sale having to be used for capital.

[1612] Clarissa Kennedy: So the Ed Code is pretty clear. Once it's in your ownership and you sell it, the funds are restricted. The exceptions are those that come up. This is the third time since I've been doing Ed Law, which is now 18 years I've been at DWP. This is the third year or the third time frame in which the state has allowed these short-term opportunities for districts to use those monies for one-time purposes. There are some trade-offs because down the line, you may lose some eligibility for funding from the state. There's a whole list of conditions tied to using that money for that one-time purpose. So I would caution. be very sure that there's a crucial need to use those monies for that one-time purpose. What's actually going to be more beneficial to you is doing something like a lease or a joint occupancy, which is essentially a ground lease, where you get revenue every month, and you can include that as a line item in your general fund, and you have a long-term lease, and it's just money coming through the door. You're just getting a check. and adding that to one of the sources of funding that you can rely on every year. So that's just my, and you also get to keep your property, right? So when that tenancy is over, you still retain your asset.

[1720] Clarissa Kennedy: So this is the slide we went through previously, and this is the surplus property disposition slide. And the first thing I put here is that step one is determine if you need to do a 711 committee or not. And we'll talk a little bit about the options available to you. You don't have to go through a 711 process. And so if you already know that you maybe want to take advantage of one of those alternatives, then you don't have to go through the 7-11 process. You can if you choose to, but you don't have to. Really, the 7-11 process is for a straight sale, a lease with option of purchase, or a long-term lease, just a straight long-term lease. Right? So those are the three scenarios where you would go through a 7-11 process. And how does the state define long-term? So long-term, well, any lease that is not within one of the other alternatives, so joint occupancy, joint use, et cetera, is a lease of your site. You can lease it up to 99 years. So there's no minimum. But actually, I take that back. There is a minimum. There's a three-month window. If you're leasing your property for under three months, you don't have to go through 7-11. So there's like a little window there. That's a very short-term lease.

[1810] Aiden Hill: So you're saying greater than three months is considered long-term?

[1813] Clarissa Kennedy: Well, it's not really. That's not how the Ed Code defines it. I'm saying long-term, because if you're going to go through the 7-11 process, then you probably want to put your property out there for long-term lease.

[1828] Phuong Nguyen: So she's saying that if we're considering leasing, then you might as well do the 711 payment.

[1835] Clarissa Kennedy: But we'll talk about an option available to get you a lease, to get you a long-term lease, to get you the revenue, and you don't have to do 711 payments. We'll talk about that. So that's the first thing, right? And so once you So for example, let me give you a different example of where you make an early determination that you don't need to go through 7-Eleven. If you want to make a property available for workforce housing, you don't have to do a 7-Eleven process for that. a project that you could move forward with without and place it on one of your sites, one of your surplus sites without going through the 7-11 process. So you can make that determination early and avoid the lengthier 7-11 process. Once you're in the 7-11 process, there's some procedural things that you all will do initially and sort of form the 7-11 committee. I understand that maybe there was a 7-11 committee before in the district. And so understanding what sites that 7-11 committee evaluated and what the board deemed surplus as a result of that 7-11 committee process, because you don't have to go back and redo it. Once you've gone through the 7-11 process for a site and you've deemed a surplus and it's remained surplus, You don't need to do the 7-11 process again. So that would be just an important factual piece to determine in terms of whether a property is ready.

[1943] SPEAKER_21: And President Thomas, do you know which sites have been surplused?

[1945] Nancy Thomas: Well, I know we discussed a lot of them, and I was just trying to remember. Of course, the Russian school was surplused, and we sold it. But I think we discussed Sam Scott Field, and do you remember any of this? Yeah, we discussed other properties, but I don't think Maybe Sam Scott Field. I don't know what else. But it would be interesting to pull up the information from that 7-Eleven committee.

[1973] SPEAKER_21: May I ask a question?

[1976] SPEAKER_20: Other than the length of time that it takes, which doesn't have to take a lot of time to do a 7-Eleven committee, is there a reason you wouldn't want a 7-Eleven committee? And my thought process is just that you're bringing a lot of community members and stakeholders together. And there's a great deal of body and about what you do with the property moving forward in a lot of support from the community versus sometimes when you surplus properties or you decide to sell them or lease them.

[2003] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Sometimes it could be an uproar about what you do with the property.

[2007] SPEAKER_20: And you do get a great deal of It doesn't have to be that long, and it can be a great collaborative committee, but is there a reason you would want to avoid, like you wouldn't want a 7-11 committee that you can think of?

[2024] Clarissa Kennedy: So I think going through the 7-11 committee process positions the district to dispose of your site in any way that you want, right? It gives you maximum flexibility. You want to sell, you want to lease with option of purchase, you are poised to do that if you go through the 7-11 process. By not going through it, you save a little bit of time. And I did three 7-11 committee processes last year at around this time. They were all completed before the fiscal year ended so that they can get going in the next school year. And one took two months, one took three months, one took three and a half months. When you have a dedicated group of individuals who are committed to attending the meetings and pushing the, you know, agenda forward, right, to come to a point where they can finalize their report and make a recommendation to you all as the board. I think you're right. You could end up with a lot of buy-in if what that committee recommends is what this board envisions, right? And sometimes those things may not align, right? So because the committee will independently say, you know, what they believe the acceptable uses of the school sites would be, right? Of the proposed surplus sites would be, right? That's in the purview of the committee as an advisory committee, right? So just because they make that recommendation, it doesn't mean that you all have to adopt that recommendation. But if those recommendations are inconsistent with what you all as a board want to see happen for the district, then I think that there could be that potential.

[2142] Diego Torres: With the three that you said that you did last year, how many of the proposals that the committee made actually went through with the board, that the board approved of? All three. OK.

[2152] Clarissa Kennedy: Yeah. They were very, very, very well-coordinated with a lot of district involvement in terms of setting the meeting schedule, doing the agendas, all the logistical things that as a district, your folks are all used to that. This is how you will operate schools. Some of the folks on these committees, they're a taxpayer or a parent or a business owner, and placing the responsibility on the committee to do a lot of that work. can be a challenge. And so I think in each of those instances, the district was an integral part of making sure that the committee was moving forward on the cadence that the board wanted. And so they sort of set out, we had the board set out for each of those committees. Here's the calendar. Can you commit to this calendar? When they were forming the committee to get that commitment up front, right? This is going, we're going to meet every two weeks We're not going to meet quarterly. Over the course of a year, we're going to meet every two weeks. And we're going to have a drop box, and we're going to put information in, and we're going to expect you to come to the meetings prepared to talk about the information that has been provided to you. And the district did a lot of background work to tee up the committee to be able to do their best work.

[2243] Nancy Thomas: Any of the 711 committees you're familiar with that have used them for workforce housing? I just have been reading different ideas or different workforce housing plans, and they seem to be taking an awful lot of time to come to fruition. Do most of the workforce housing in the 711 plans that you're familiar with? No.

[2270] Clarissa Kennedy: It goes straight into feasibility for housing development. And they typically hire specific consultants to help with the residential development component to work with the city because it's housing, right? So you're building housing under the city's rubric and not school facilities under DSA, right? So it's a different environment than most of your facilities. Folks are used to doing it as a part of their

[2300] Nancy Thomas: Is it usually a much lengthier process than, for example, to just sell property?

[2306] Clarissa Kennedy: So it is lengthier, but depending on how much you place in the hands of the folks who are the experts, right? And they're really just bringing back to you the critical decisions to make along the way. And at a certain point, those decisions will be what kind of common space do we want? Do we want collaborative space? Do we want, right, you know, what unit mix do you want? Like, do we want to build the workforce housing on top of the district office, for example, right? Which is, you know, what one district is considering, right? So there are certain key decisions that come back to you, you all, and it does take a while, Housing takes a while, but what I will say is, and you might have read this, with all the different cities and counties having to do new housing elements and increase housing by certain multitudes in different communities. Cities are under a lot of pressure from the state when they're being penalized, both financially and in the way of what they call a builder's remedy, where developers can come in and say, hey, you're not compliant with the state's regulations. We get to build our development, approve it, right? And so it streamlines the process for a lot of developers. And I think that the cities are catching up now and starting to move a little bit quicker to help facilitate a faster planning process, because that's really what's taking a long time, right? If you have your bucket of money for the workforce housing and you know how it's going to get paid for, the biggest chunk of time you're going to spend is the planning process, right? And that's not what school districts do. We don't build housing. We build schools, right? And so you put that in the hands of the experts and let them do their work, come back to you with those key decisions. I think you can make it happen. And we see many more districts going through the process, so cities are getting a little bit more comfortable with the idea of workforce housing. Because even in that framework, we still are a public agency, right? And we're a partner with the city in many ways, in that we operate within the city's jurisdiction. So we are a little bit different than a private side developer who's coming in to do a private development. And so I think from that standpoint, we are getting a lot of cooperation from cities who want to see these projects happen. All right.

[2483] SPEAKER_20: All right. So I have a quick question of the board. Is it the desire of the board that all properties would be for workforce housing, or is it worthwhile to go through that process of determining that.

[2497] Nancy Thomas: I don't know. I mean, I just thought of at least one of the properties. But that was just in the back of my mind.

[2505] Aiden Hill: I don't think we know. I don't think we know either. And I think we need to talk about it.

[2509] SPEAKER_19: Yeah.

[2512] Clarissa Kennedy: Well, certainly something that could be evaluated, like the suitability of your different sites for housing, like music, for example. you know, single family home, you know, community. You want to put a dense, you know, three-, four-, five-story apartment building there. You know, but you, I mean, if you're going to do it, you want to do it right and you want to make it last, right? You want to have maximum impact because the likelihood is you're not going to do these workforce housing projects often. Right? You may do it once, you may, you know, another board in 20 or 30 years may do another project, right? But it's not your core, you know, it's not your core business. And so I think when you're pursuing it, I think you need to pursue it with the idea that you want to maximize your opportunity right now. And that means putting it in the right location. And so some of your sites may not be suitable. But I think that that's for you all to kind of discuss and understand what those parameters might look like. All right, so I won't belabor the whole 7-11 process. I do think if you want to maximize your flexibility to do whatever with your sites, then the 7-11 committee is the way to go. If you really want to look at alternatives like workforce housing and joint occupancy or some other framework such as that, then you can perhaps punt the idea of a 711 committee unless you really need it. And of course, once you go through the 711 committee with a sale or just a straight lease, there is an RFP process. That's laid out in a code that you will go through to find a tenant for your site. You have a little less flexibility just doing a straight lease because you do have to consider the different rents that the proposers are proposing for the site, etc. So the benefit is you can frame what you think you want to use the site for. which is helpful because that will narrow your pool to the tenant pool that you're interested in. And then really it is about, you know, price, of course, but also, you know, how viable are they as a tenant, right? And so that will all be fleshed out in the RFP process.

[2675] SPEAKER_19: All right.

[2676] Clarissa Kennedy: Let's see. Okay, so alternatives, we talked a little bit about this. So these are some of the alternatives that are alternatives to sale, right? So this is not selling property, this is just you holding on to your sites and maybe utilizing it in some other way. And some of these we talked about again previously. So the straight lease agreement, which you would have to go through 711 process for, that's one option. Joint occupancy is an option where you would enter into a Brown lease, but there would also be another private site user on the site as well. Joint use really is more so for your operating schools where you might have excess space on the campus that you'd want to leverage and utilize. You can use joint use for that purpose. some pitfalls with joint use in terms of the amount of time you can enter into those agreements. There are limitations on that. So some tenants may not want to go that route if they're looking for a long-term tenancy relationship. Property exchange, if we have a site that's suitable for some developer's purpose and they have another property that may be well-suited for workforce housing for us, for example. we may want to exchange those properties. And so there's a process in the Ed Code that allows for that. And of course, we've been talking about workforce housing as well. Okay, so lease agreements. So here we have, and again, this is my vernacular, long-term lease of your existing facility. So that would be like, just leasing out music school, right, to a private school, for example, or some other tenant that can utilize the facilities in the state that we're in currently.

[2811] SPEAKER_20: I know, I know. No, I'm just teasing. I'm just teasing you. We just, you know, when we hear private, we just go.

[2817] Clarissa Kennedy: For example, joint use, you cannot lease to private K-12 in a joint use situation. So you cannot have a private K-12 operating on your operating school site. The other option with leasing is ground lease, right? So we have the facilities on our sites in terms of the schools that we've closed more recently. The question would be, do we want to maintain those facilities or do we want to allow for a developer to come in, basically demo that and use it for some other purpose? So I say here ground lease of vacant space, but your existing space could be made vacant, right, under a ground lease scenario. So those are the, and again, here, the requirements to offer to a bunch of governmental agencies are a lot less here. I think it's special education and Yeah, special education I think is one of the key ones you have to offer to, and I think it's your local SELPA you might have to offer to first. But generally, you can make it available straight away after you go through the 7-11 process and you deem it surplus. With sale, there's a lot of public offerings you have to make to other governmental agencies if you don't have one. In terms of the amount of time, ANCODE allows up to 99 years. And then here, we were talking earlier about just maintenance and that sort of thing. It's a great opportunity to shift the responsibility for not only your routine, daily maintenance, et cetera, but the big stuff, the HVAC, the roof. You know, all of those big deferred maintenance items that we have to plan for for our sites, we ship that to, particularly for long-term tenants. And it's much more palatable for a long-term tenant to take on those kinds of obligations the longer the lease term, right? Someone who's a five-year tenant just is not going to want to take on a deferred maintenance obligation.

[2963] Aiden Hill: Have you seen that really? get a long-term tenant and they're actually willing to take on, you know, physical plant maintenance improvement.

[2978] Clarissa Kennedy: I am doing right now a lease assignment, so it's an assignment of an existing lease that tenant is having challenges and can't make their business work. It's private school. And there's another tenant who wants to take that on. And as a part of that assignment, that tenant is putting in something like $4 million of not only improvements to the site, but handling a lot of deferred maintenance. So it does happen.

[3014] Nancy Thomas: So how often does a site get scraped by a developer, and it goes into a long-term lease?

[3024] Clarissa Kennedy: That one is a little bit more case by case, because really it requires the district to have a high level of confidence that you're not going to need to recapture that space for your own educational programs, right? So you're sort of making a threshold decision before you make the space available for demo, right? This is truly surplus. We're not going to need these facilities anymore. And we're going to allow a developer to come on and scrape it. If it's super old school, we need a lot of maintenance. If you were to try to recapture it and put kiddos into the campus, sometimes when you do that after a certain number of years, the state will make you bring it up to a certain level of code, right? And the cost of that can be almost prohibited. So really, I don't see it. Often, unless a district was just going to sell it and thought, well, if we can ground lease it and get that revenue and keep our ownership of the underlying fee, why not? And so I've probably seen that twice. But it's one of those things. You have the land, you built these classrooms, Do you really want to make them available for someone to come and, you know?

[3114] Nancy Thomas: I think when we have vacated schools before we have, the three I'm thinking of off the top of my head, we have sold the site to a developer. Any demographic projection that I've seen for our district, it's pretty clear that it's going to be a long time before we need more real estate or need to build a school. how long should that horizon be before you say, you know, you're going to hold on to a site because you may need it?

[3147] Clarissa Kennedy: Right. So that's just so, that's like me throwing the, you know, the trophy. But because I think it, it, it really depends. Like we were talking earlier in the week and we were talking about there are certain portions of the district where there's actually development happening, right? You might see enrollment growing. in those areas where here, where it's stable, you have a lot of historical homeowners here who, they're gonna be here, right? This is where they're gonna end their days, and so it may be a while. And so it really depends on what other assets you have available to you, how enrolled are the schools that are still operating? Do you have space on those campuses to build a new wing, right? Not just plunk a bunch of portables on it, but really add to the permanent physical structure of your existing spaces. And so I think it's a complicated determination. And of course, the demographic forecasts are as good as the paper, right? There's probably two years into the future you can maybe count on, but like who knew in 2020, you know, before COVID hit, what was going to happen, right? Like, no way.

[3239] Aiden Hill: And San Francisco real estate.

[3242] SPEAKER_20: Yeah.

[3243] Kat Jones: So, you know, even our own development, I mean, all the stuff that was developed along Cedar, We thought that was gonna bring in a lot of students, and it hasn't really. It's been in for over five years, and it hasn't really met more than a dozen kids. Yeah.

[3262] Clarissa Kennedy: Well, and also there are other trends beyond even home ownership that are tending to weigh in on these factors, right? So people, families are happening later. in folks' lives, if at all, right? Like, there's just a shift in sort of family planning and that sort of thing that is impacting enrollment. And I think that districts across the nation are seeing that, just as folks are just waiting longer.

[3300] Nancy Thomas: Well, we have about 10 minutes left. Is there something we want to talk about in terms of next steps, or where are we going?

[3308] Clarissa Kennedy: Sure, so let me go to... So, maybe just to sum up, so there's The one other structure I did want to quickly reference before we move to the asset management consultancy, and that is, so we talked a little bit about leasing, which requires that 711 process. Another option is joint occupancy. And so I think I mentioned this to you all when we spoke before, and essentially it is a ground lease where a developer would construct a facility that would be jointly occupied by the developer and the district. But what that joint occupancy is, is up to us to decide, right? So one example that I worked on over the past couple of years is a memory care facility, which could leverage the zoning of our public, quasi-public property. They build the residential care facility there for memory care. And what they built for the district is a community garden that the district can use for its educational, its outdoor ed program. And there was a portion of that community garden that the residents of the memory care facility could utilize as well. So our little piece was a little piece on the corner, really segregated and separate from the main structure of the memory care facility. But the revenue generated from that was over a million bucks a year to the district. And we were able to go out for an RFP seeking that kind of proposal. So we had two or three memory care providers who put their proposals in. And we chose one that was reputable, et cetera, et cetera. And then you enter into your ground lease. There's a lot of flexibility with who you choose to enter into that joint occupancy transaction.

[3451] Nancy Thomas: So what's the benefit of joint occupancy against a straight ground lease?

[3457] Clarissa Kennedy: You take out the 7-11 requirement. You have more flexibility in choosing who that joint occupant will be. On a leasing situation, there's a little bit more strings around you in terms of who you select as the successful tenant in just a straight lease RFP. So I think you get a little bit more flexibility. You can frame the use that you're interested in. You get the revenue. You keep the site. you get some use out of it, right? That just happened to be a use that was beneficial to that particular district. But it could be, you know, you want them to build a TMO for you, right, on a portion of the site. Or, you know, whatever it is you need, I mean, you can come up with what that project does. Joint use, it could be that as well. It could be that as well. So that, I just wanted to put that out there because it is, I think, another alternative that gives you a lot of flexibility to leverage your site. That does require a vacant property. So whether that's suitable for some of your existing sites you may or may not want to demo, you'd have to make that determination. All right. So we talked before about selecting facilities, asset management, consultant to help put some arms around your existing inventory. Now that you've gone through some closures, you're sort of on the other side of it. What does the landscape look like now? You have some development happening, there might be a need for where those kiddos want to go to school. I know that there's maybe a litigation agreement that would, or a developer agreement that gives the district the right to a piece of property over in, I think it's the Sanctuary area. So there is property there that could be leveraged, but I believe there are some strings there in terms of the district then having to go to school on that site for those kiddos to attend. who come from that development. So there's a lot to unpack and sort of at the same time bring together in a comprehensive way. So here are the seven items that comprise the scope of work for the current RFP. And so as you can see, it's broad. It does require or seek that comprehensive list for inventory of facilities. across the district, but then it does start to hone in on establishing uses for sites that are surplus or could be surplus. And coming up with budgets around how could we, you know, how could we leverage those properties? What kind of revenue could we see from those particular sites? And we did do a round of interviews with a couple of proposers to that RFP, and I don't know if you've already reported. No, I have not. No decisions, no recommendations have come forward to you yet, but since we were having this discussion, we thought we'd at least touch on the criteria that we asked the consultants to consider. So again, this is sort of, this is a comprehensive what I would call a fairly comprehensive asset management consultancy. I didn't realize it was one that was done a few years ago. You can certainly leverage, you know, if that's already there, it's already a part of your public, you know, sort of domain. It's work product, that's yours. So we could leverage, you know, the information and whatnot that was gathered as a part of that. study and build on that to come up with something that is current for today. But I do think that would be an important exercise to go through to help you all identify here are the sites so that you can come up with a plan and really start to hone in on when you want to see certain sites come before you in whatever form, whether that's a lease, whether that's just a part of the 7-11 committee, whether that's workforce housing, And that's how I like to in their work. Here are our marching orders going forward. There's a timeline within which we need to start to bring this to you all so that you see the return on your valuable assets. That's an important piece. There's a couple of these that I've been doing recently, and the districts are starting to see the money, and they realize, I mean, it took a while to get through the process, but they are very thankful that they did it. I'm happy to answer any other questions that you all have. I explained it all. Thank you. I will get that calculation of you.

[3809] Marie dela Cruz: But in looking at this scope of work, it would be good to get some feedback from the board, maybe at some point, Let us know whether you want to make some changes to that or if there's anything there that we need to add.

[3835] Clarissa Kennedy: Or leave it as is. Yeah, and you can do that. I mean, once you select the consultant you want to go with, you can refine your ask, right? So this is iterative, right? And so I think there are opportunities hone in on what it is you really need them to do and bring forward to you. Again, we cast a wider net so that we found the best fit from just who the consultant is. And then once they're on board, that kickoff can be about really establishing, here's what we need you to focus on. And that can be on the basis of your feedback.

[3878] Guadalupe Lopez: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much.

[3887] SPEAKER_20: Look at all this gasoline. It was a really great seminar. We put all the learning properties together.

[3891] SPEAKER_19: And there you are. You're an expert. Yeah, we took three months.

[3894] SPEAKER_20: You take a variety of basic classes, and then one of those is property. So now we need, now we need... Oh, we did an article about it.

[3916] SPEAKER_19: I don't know if that's how you end it. Oh, no, it's better this way.

[3920] Nicole Pierce-Davis: No, it's better this way. I don't know if that's how you end it.

[3924] SPEAKER_19: We saw, like, uh, nine photographs of it, and just like, you know, it was, uh, we, uh, we actually got a lot, and so this is why we need to be very, very careful. So I think he was a liar. Thank you.

5. REPORT OF CLOSED SESSION ACTIONS

5.1 Report of Closed Session Actions

6. RECONVENE TO OPEN SESSION

6.1 Pledge of Allegiance

[3992] Nancy Thomas: Hello, everyone. We have just concluded our study session, and we are getting ready to move into closed sessions. Is there anyone that wishes to speak to any closed session item? There were no requests. OK. So we will be talking in closed session about public employee discipline dismissal release. conference with labor negotiations, the employee group, NEWMA, unrepresented supervisors, and conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, and one student expulsion case. Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the May 18, 2023 regular meeting of the Board of Education. The board has just returned from closed session. No action was taken. Please join me in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all, Well, first on our agenda this evening is the Newark Junior High School Spotlight. Superintendent, would you like to introduce it?

7. RECOGNITIONS AND CELEBRATIONS

7.1 School Spotlight: Newark Jr High School

[7676] Nicole Pierce-Davis: It is my absolute pleasure to introduce the one and only principal of Newark Junior High School, Ms. Richelle Piechowski, who is here with her administrative team tonight to present you all of the wonderful things that they're doing. Thank you so much for coming tonight. We're looking forward to your presentation.

[7701] Richelle Piechowski: Thank you. Good evening, board members of the board, Board President Thomas, Superintendent Dr. DeLeon, and the cabinet members. I'm so grateful to be here today. My name is Richelle Piechowski, and I am the principal of Newark Junior High School. And I would like to, of course, introduce my team that is with me today. I have Miss Maria Avila who's our assistant principal and Miss Jin Kim who's our assistant principal. So we are honored here today and I am greatly supported and I feel fabulous. So I would really love to provide our highlights of Newark Junior High School for the 22-23 school year. First of all, I'd like to start off with a reminder that this was our first year of integrating 6th grade on our campus. So we have started the foundation of ensuring that we have a collaborative, collective 6th, 7th, and 8th grade school. And so because of that, when the students came, the sixth grade students came on our campus, they had their own mission statement. And so the seventh and eighth grade had their own mission statement, a separate one. And so that doesn't work very well. when we're trying to be, you know, one culture. And our amazing instructional leadership team got together and they have been working diligently this year on our climate and culture. And they made our new mission statement that has been approved and I'm excited to roll it out here today. As, if you'll notice in blue, we are a vibrant, inclusive community who actively engage in opportunities to grow as lifelong learners. Together, we create a safe, responsible, respectful learning environment. And so I think that's wonderful and amazing, and I'd like to share that today. Okay, she told me how to do this, and no. Oh, thank you. All right, I first want to start off by looking at the total data. And so as of May 15, our total student enrollment is 1,094 students. And you can see the breakdown of the students there for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. And I also, besides the team behind me, I do want to recognize our team at the school. I think it's important to recognize that we do have three counselors, we have three full-time campus monitors, we have three full-time office staff, we have one athletic director, and we have two very visible faculty personnel that work beside us. And we have gelled this year and really come together in order to become a driving force, a positive driving force, in our community. And so I'm really excited about that. As we look at our academic success, which I really want to tote here today, i-Ready has been our sixth grade intervention platform. And it is a data-driven collective tool. And so what we can see from the i-Ready data that's on this slide is that when we're looking at this, they are doing this intervention tool. And what we're looking at is the green. We want all the students to be in green, which is at grade level or above grade level. Yellow is one grade level below and red is two or more grade levels below. Now looking at this, you can see our diagnostics from the fall to our recent diagnostic in March. And the amazing part of that is the green has shifted over and we have a 12% increase growth in math. And I think that is amazing and something to be celebrated. We also need to notice that they have data that shows that if the i-Ready correlation correlates also with SBAC scores. So we have been diligently testing our SBAC this last three weeks. And so we would like to see that to see if that works out with us. And I'm excited for that data as we get it. Our next slide is our English Language Arts diagnostic data. Again, with the increase in the green, and this is for reading, and we have increased a 7% as well. So again, amazing growth in this area. This has really triggered that, you know, we would, that's part of our initiatives that we'll talk about later. For our academics in action, again, we want to celebrate that we had three quarters where we celebrated students for their academic excellence. Of those academic excellence, we have 35% of our students between a 3.0 and a 4.0 GPA. And we honored them in our academic excellence. But I just want to make sure that the data is there that 35% of our students are high performing. Continuing on, we do need to talk about altercations because that is something we don't usually highlight and spotlight in these things, but that is something that has been talked about greatly this year. And so I do want to make sure that the data is reflected here because what this data reflects to us is that we have a very small population that needs additional support. What we're looking at here is that out of 1,094 students, 1.6 of them have been in more than one altercation and 1.55% has been in one altercation this entire year. So why am I highlighting this? Because number one, we do realize that this is an issue that we need to grow in and our initiatives show that for next year. We also want to ensure, again, on our team, with our three full-time campus monitors, our two APs, myself, our three counselors, our visible custodians, that we are out and we are doing this driving force in order to become more proactive than reactive. And that's what our commitment is to this community. I would remiss if I did not talk about our athletic program. I think it's imperative that we do. Athletics is a driving force also in a positive culture and environment. We have four seasons of athletics. And if you'll notice into the right columns, we have an amazing amount of numbers of students participate in our athletics. In fact, we have 324 students in total, which is 29.6% of our population that participates in our athletic programs. And we would like to shout out to, for example, all of our athletes because they did an amazing job. But season two, we have boys varsity soccer. We're our league champions. In season three, we have Three young ladies that placed in the Girls State Wrestling Championships. One received first place and two received second place. In season four, I was at school when we had our league championship finals for co-ed track. and our girls won the championship finals the first time since 2005 and so we are super excited about that and our boys placed third. Currently as we speak right now we haven't got an update but our girls soccer team is playing right now today because for the championship title and so You know, we have amazing, oh, we had to put that in there. So we have an amazing group of students that are athletes and a lot of them tried out and we want to continue to further that growth. And we also, you know, participate with, you know, working with the high school so that our athletes can move up to there and to their amazing program. So we're excited about that. In addition to all these wonderful programs that I've already mentioned, we do have a robust elective department, and we have a lot of offerings for our students, such as Intro to Coding, Robotics, Leadership, Band, Choir, Visual Arts, Spanish, and Yearbook. And again, this was last year and this year is our foundational classes. We're really, especially with the integration of the sixth grade, working to make sure that we're starting pathways for these electives, which again, align with the high school. And what did we do this year? Well, on school climate and our culture initiatives, as I discussed, we have an amazing teacher instructional leadership team. We also have our student leadership that this year was devoted on developing mentorship skills. For health and wellness, we have our social emotional learning with character strong curriculum. We have our information sessions for students on tobacco use and prevention. We have our cost team that coordinates additional services for our students. We have a group called Where Everybody Belongs. It's called the Web Project. And basically, it's set up like Link Crew. So the eighth grade students learn how to be leaders. They learn how to be mentors. And then this year, they've been mentoring our sixth and seventh grade. Next year, we'll continue with the summer LEAP program that was initiated this year in our integration of sixth grade. And that's where our web leaders work with our rising sixth graders in the summer and begin their transition into the junior high. We also have our positive behavior incentives to encourage and reinforce our school expectations. We had a large amount of activities on campus. These aren't all of them. But we had our sixth grade, our entire sixth grade, go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. We had our Puente groups go to two different college campuses. We received brand new Vextech robotics equipment for our electives. We received a grant and have a club about girls who code. We have the bike mobile. from Alameda County Bike Repairs that came out to show our students different techniques of bike riding, but also repaired all their bikes that they needed. bike safety seminars for our sixth grade students. We had, of course, our honor roll awards and assemblies that we've already talked about. We had an amazing multicultural week, again, aligning with the high school, really doing that articulation with them and having our group learn from them. It was amazing. And our band and choir concerts and events are always solid. and a great, great asset to our school. This year, as our first year of a three-year grant that we received from Reading is Fundamental, and what that means is that this group supplied enough books that students were able to choose three books of their choice, and every year they're able to choose three different books of their choice, you know, for active fun reading. And we've had two book fairs on campuses and then a variety of student dances. Our parents are amazing. I just want to put that out there. Our community is wonderful. We had a campus beautification group that came out and really worked within our planters and made our campus beautiful. It's still beautiful and we appreciate them. We just had last weekend our PTSA pancake breakfast. where PTSA aligned with the fire department. And it was wonderful. If you came out for breakfast, it was completely wonderful. We have our monthly groups of Coffee with the Principal, School Site Council, and our English Learner Advisory Committee. And we hope to continue to grow all these groups next year on campus. So what have we learned from this year? And where are we going next year? Well, these are initiatives that we would like to complete for the 23-24 school year. First of all is more parent participation nights. We would like to have PBIS assemblies both in-house and contracted out. We would like to have more field trips. Our focus remain on technology. We have that small group that we talked about. It's not just them. I mean, our students need more engaging, exciting lunchtime activities that they want to engage in. And so we are looking forward to that, because if they're excited and engaged during lunch, then less activities are doing that aren't positive. And so we really want to create that. culture and climate on our campus where students want to come because they are safe, because they learn a little bit, and they have a lot of fun. We would like to have our bilingual secretary in order to support our increasing access for multilingual families in the front office. And we would like to continue to build on our MTSS structure by using the i-Ready platform for 6th, 7th, and 8th grade across the board. As we see, the data is viable. It does work. And so we're excited to use that program. Our upcoming dates. is we have five rising sixth grade tours from each of the elementaries. We've completed three of them, and we have two more to go next week. We have our eighth grade promotion social, which is tomorrow. We have our Puente Promotion Night, which is May 22nd. Our Band and Choir Concerts, May 23rd and May 25th. Our 8th Grade Field Trip is planned on May 26th. And our 8th Grade Promotion is June 1st. And I hope that all of you can attend at Newark Memorial High School. And so I just want to wrap up this highlight by telling you that this school year has been amazing. Yes, it has been challenging, but I do believe that we've had a great, a great growth and really looking into where can we grow? What can we do? What initiatives do we need to do? It's my honor to serve the community this year, and I am looking forward to next year in the 23-24 school year. And at this time, I'm happy to respond to any clarifying questions.

[8646] Nancy Thomas: Thank you very much.

[8653] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you, President Thomas. I just wanted to say thank you to you and your staff for the amazing hard work that you guys have been doing, not only I know that you came on board and there was a transition period, but on top of that, we had the sixth grade transition and also Ms. Avila to transitioning into her new role and then also the sixth graders. And to Ms. Kim, she's always been solid. So thank you for your hard work and I really appreciate everything that you guys have been doing. And recently I've had, the privilege of, you know, everybody here, working parents, and I'm one of them. And I carpool my kids and help my friends out. And I was lucky enough to pick up one of my friend's daughters. She's a sixth grader. And I had some time to be able to chat with her in the car. And I had asked her about her experience being sixth grader and how the transition was for her. And what she had said to me was, you know, I really, really like this experience. And I loved that. how we were able to be able to build on changing classrooms so that next year we're more prepared. So the model that you guys have built and had put in place for the students, I think that they really appreciate that and that they're building confidence over the school year to be able to go into seventh grade with a much more confident and And the test scores are showing that right now. So I really appreciate the hard work and dedication that you guys have been trying to streamline. And we didn't start out great at the beginning of the school year. But what matters is how you finish. And you guys are finishing strong. So I really appreciate that.

[8759] Richelle Piechowski: Thank you. Thank you very much.

[8764] Nancy Thomas: So I would just like to say, oh, sure. I was kind of looking for, I was looking to see if anyone raised their hand. We're going to have to get that system where we have people hitting a button and saying we want to speak.

[8777] Aiden Hill: Ms. Piechowski, thank you for the great presentation. Three questions. So first question is on the iRated data. So great improvement, 12% increase. Just curious what people think that can be attributed to. What were sort of the things that we were doing that helped to achieve that? That's question one. Question two is the altercation data. So it's great to see that we're looking at this. And it's also hopeful to see that maybe it's maybe 1% to 2% of the students that are having behavioral issues. And that seems to me to be a manageable size that we can. work on, and so just curious what the thoughts are to hone in and further make improvements there. And then the last question is the girls' soccer team. So is the championship for all of California? And then who are they playing? So just curious.

[8830] Richelle Piechowski: It's a championship for our league. And I understand it's a middle school league, but it's still important to them. Sure. No, that's great.

[8838] Aiden Hill: Creekside. Creekside. Yes. OK, great. So those are my, well, you answered my third question. So first one's our i-Ready data, the 12% increase. And the second one is, what are we doing now that we've identified the population where there are some behavioral issues?

[8851] Richelle Piechowski: Right. So on our i-Ready data, could you restate the question? I'm sorry, I had the answer, and then we moved on. So I apologize for that. Oh, what do we attribute it to? Yes. So we attribute it to the fact, two things. Well, three maybe. One is that it was only for the sixth grade and so the fifth grade teachers coming up had already used the program and so they were, you know, they knew how to use it and to make it theirs and to really optimize performance. The second thing is the sixth grade flex and the flex schedule was really, I still think, instrumental and we want that definitely is going to stay for next year. Getting those kids in the smaller groups, working with them in small groups and one-on-one when needed, but also the i-Ready program itself leans to that because it's a interactive program So that means that it's in real time. The students answer this question. And if it's right, it goes to this place. Or if it's wrong, it goes over here. And then they keep building on those answers as they go. So it is clearly and definitely an individual program. You can use it as a group. Because there's a lot of data in there. That's why it's a data collection group. What you can use with that data collection is you can narrow down and say, OK, these students here are having difficulty understanding what main idea is. So we can pick these students out. There's a lesson on main idea. And then you can work on it individually. And it will help the students through that. So we can hone in data that way. And so I think that that is very imperative to that as well. And so having the time, having the small group and having, you know, understanding of how the program works really is working well in those groups. And that's what we want to initiate with our 7th and 8th graders as well.

[8973] Aiden Hill: Great, thank you. And then if you could provide a little thought on the altercation data.

[8979] Richelle Piechowski: So we are very committed to starting out strong next year. And strong means, as board member Phuong Cho said to us when, sorry, is that there was a little unraveling at the beginning of the year. And so we are now a committed team, and we are a committed team that is positive and driven, okay? So number one, we're working hard for every aspect of these students. and in partnership with our parents. And so I do want to appreciate that. Number two is, what do I mean by going strong? Well, we have now laid the foundation. So as I say to my teachers all the time, when the students come in first, We need to have your policies and procedures in place. You practice those, you practice those, and you get those down before you introduce content or curriculum. Because by the time March rolls around and everybody's exhausted, those policies and procedures will really help you out. So that's what we need to do as a school as well. So what are our policies and procedures? How do we make them clear? How do we make sure everybody's on board? Does that make sense? And getting that from day one, this is what we believe in, this is where we're going, this is what we're structured to do. Making sure those structures are in place. Secondly is the activities. So our leadership group did very well, but then next year, you know, we learned from them and we're able, our student leadership, and we're able to then further that. Having that collaboration with the high school, Sara Canales and her group of leadership students really worked out well as well, and we want to continue to foster that because our leadership students will then also move up to the high school as well. Having our leadership group restructured. So we have, instead of all eighth grade, we have seventh and eighth grade. So the seventh then will be the foundational leaders for the next year, you know, so keeping it rolling. Those lunchtime activities are extremely important, in my opinion, for middle school students. Structuring our schedule. Our master schedule didn't, work out that the sixth grade were able to use the backfields as much as we needed them to. So having those activities, making sure those activities are structured. So we're looking at things like intramural sports, board games, and things like that in the cafeteria. The library is always fascinating and wonderful for students because we have computers in there as well as books and board games and things in there and also then lunchtime activities that our leadership group runs and those things like tabling experiences those were really accepted and driven at our school this year, having outside groups come in for tabling experiences, music in the quad. I mean, just things that students like to do and activities that they like to be part of. I'd like to also increase our clubs on campus and making it accessible that they can meet at certain times and develop that type of relationship also. So there's a lot of variety of different ideas. Having more intensive character strong helps out, that's in our SPSA, making sure that our students know how to use words instead of actions. Middle school students are very action driven. And so we want to have them understand how to use words, how to use words productively instead of in an emotional state. And so we are working on those initiatives for next year. Great, thank you very much.

[9210] Kat Jones: You're welcome. I have a question regarding the I-Ready. So my understanding, I think, from what you're saying is that you not only have the ability to test, but the lessons are part of what the sixth graders are using. Is that going to move when you move into seventh and eighth? Are you going to be providing or are we going to be providing the lesson component or just the testing component?

[9237] Richelle Piechowski: So the platform itself has that in there. It's not an additional cost. And so it's up to the teacher how it's used. So it can be, most of the time, i-Ready, in my opinion, is used as an intervention platform. And so it's an individual one-on-one where the kids are going. But it can be used by the teacher, like I said, to develop those lessons. But the lessons are already in i-Ready. It's just part of the program.

[9266] Kat Jones: Yeah, no, I actually taught in the district, so I'm very familiar with i-Ready. And the lesson portion of it, I found, for high or low students was really beneficial. So that was why I was asking, are you going to have the kids have access to the lessons as well as the assessments?

[9283] Richelle Piechowski: Yes, we would love to structure it that way, absolutely, 100%. Good. That's our thoughts and initiative, absolutely.

[9291] Carina Plancarte: Member Plancarte. I just wanted to say thank you so much for the presentation. It really gave me a good overview of all of the amazing things that you guys are doing over at the junior high. I'd love to see the improvement of the IREDI scores and it's great that there's such a huge involvement in the athletics and that you're working alongside of the high school so that the transition is there once these students are going into the high school, that's great. And I very much appreciate also that you've included the altercation data. As you mentioned, it's not what we want to, you know, what we generally want to hear, but this is important and we need to understand it. And this is the only way that we're going to get ahead of these situations and make improvements at our site. So thank you so much.

[9336] Richelle Piechowski: I appreciate that. We really want to be proactive next year instead of reactive. And I think that a lot of that falls on me because I'm not a, we don't have time, we didn't have, we don't have anybody to do the social media ourselves. And so I love Parent Square. I'm thankful to our executive cabinet for getting that out to us. And so we're able to then highlight more of the stuff that did happen over the year, which we didn't do. And we do need to sell ourselves with that sort of thing. And a lot of people didn't see that, but when the students were posting other things, they saw that. And so, yes, we are working hard to turn that around because our students deserve it. Our students are amazing. Our community is amazing. And it's important that we highlight and celebrate that every single day.

[9386] Nancy Thomas: And I'd like to add that I'm impressed with the parent involvement. The parent group, including member Wynn, who was flipping pancakes last weekend. Yes, she was. Do you have pictures of that? Yeah. Celebrating the honor roll and seeing all the parents come out, they want to see their students succeed. And when they can be in that audience watching their child go across the stage and getting a certificate, that's really a wonderful thing you've added this year. Thank you. Thank you. I do appreciate that.

[9423] Phuong Nguyen: Member Hill, we are partnering with Alameda County Fire next year and moving forward, so you're welcome to come and flip pancakes.

[9433] Aiden Hill: I'll pour the batter for you.

[9434] Phuong Nguyen: Okay, thank you. No, but in all seriousness, I just really want to thank you, Principal Piechowski, for also bringing back the D.C. trip for the eighth graders. I know that you took upon yourself to go on that trip and make that happen for the eighth grade students. And I know that part of that we initiated and then my daughter ended up pulling out because she got a better offer to go on a summer trip. But needless to say, I think that the families who participated and the students who participated had an amazing experience. And that is all due to you and your hard work. So thank you so much. Thank you.

[9473] Richelle Piechowski: I do appreciate that. Thank you very much. And those students hopefully did have a good experience. I mean, it was a lot in a small amount of time, but it was really fabulous. And those were really great kids, so appreciate that.

[9494] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Next, do we have any employee organizations?

[9504] SPEAKER_28: CSEA.

[9514] SPEAKER_19: Sports update, Newark won three to zero.

8. EMPLOYEE ORGANIZATIONS

8.1 Employee Organizations

1. NTA

3. NEWMA

[9525] Olivia Rangel: Good evening, Board President Thomas, board members, executive cabinet and Newark Unified Community. I come to you tonight on behalf of NEWMA. Last month you approved a historic raise for our NTA teachers. This raise was well deserved as our teachers triumphed during the pandemic. They rode the waves that came when we closed and graciously surfed to them when our students returned. They continue to be the direct support on our main clients. Tonight you will consider matching that raise with the other two vital labor partners of the district. Our CSEA members are NUSD's boots on the ground. They are integral partners in ensuring our students come to school in a safe and clean environment with the support that they need. Our NEWMA partners, including teachers, department chairs, administrative assistants, and leaders are critical in supporting the goals and the visions of this school district and ensuring that our kids are obtaining the support they need. So this evening we thank you for the consideration because steps like this allow us to move forward as a united front and continue the work that we love doing for this community. This time of year is also celebratory and I look at you Diego. NEWMA wants to recognize and acknowledge all of the students who so deservingly are moving through promotion, graduation, and on to their next chapter of education. The three labor partners of Newark Unified have essential jobs in the service to our students that help them cross these monumental finish lines. We should all feel proud of the work we do in helping students toward their goals and feel accomplished as we are a part of their progress. So on behalf of NEWMA, congratulations to the students and staff, not just for making it towards summer, but also on their accomplishments this school year. Promotions, graduations, but especially congratulations to the class of 2023. Thank you. NTA.

2. CSEA

[9651] Chery Villa: All right, good evening, everybody. My name is Cheri Villa. I'm vice president of our Newark Teachers Association. I would like to start out. First, Superintendent DeLeon, a little gift for you.

[9665] SPEAKER_19: Oh, yeah.

[9671] Chery Villa: You're welcome. On behalf of all of our members, welcome, and we look forward to working together. in consultation, collaboration, whatever you want to call it, to changing the direction and making things the way they should be. Yep. Okay, second, in regards to intervention. At last night's LCAP meeting, the decision to not continue funding for intervention. NTA, across the board, we're not in support of that at all. We're asking for intervention during the school day. And while it's been said that it's hard to fill or teachers aren't interested in it, well, let's look at last year, having postings for 0.5 or 0.3 in the lowest paying district around, it's going to be hard to fill. After school intervention, teachers are being asked to in-house cover for other teachers, help create lesson plans for classrooms that aren't filled. That's a hard ask of someone for only $40 an hour, and then it increased to 55. So is that no interest from the teachers? No, I wouldn't say that. So if we are going to not invest in that, teachers doing intervention during after school or intervening teachers during the school day, the Sylvan contract didn't even think together. To be in support of that, which, you know, let's have the conversation. We'd like to see some data on if those two, the way we're going is in the best interest of our students. Because at the end of the day, it's what's best for them. So, again, intervention across the board from primary to secondary. Thank you.

[9796] Nancy Thomas: Before we move on to public comment, I understand the superintendent would like to speak.

[9805] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Thank you so much. This is actually part of public comment. So we do have the ability for people to send in written comment. And as per board policy, which was pointed out to me by Ms. Croce, thank you, they're not read aloud. But in this particular case, not only will I be giving you copies, but I did want to tell you about these comments. Oh no, they're gone. I should have had them stay. Oh, darn it. I am particularly proud of these written comments, and I will tell you why. We received written comments from students from Newark Junior High School who are advocating for the improvement of their school and their educational program, things like not just facilities and landscaping, but their food. They like their food to be more healthy so they can learn better. They would like to have more opportunity for advanced coursework in preparation for the high school and things like that. And so they would like newer Chromebooks because their Chromebooks break a lot and the Wi-Fi is not very good. So these are all things that are important for the educational program. And I am always proud when our students take leadership, and they come forward, and they say, you know what? We're going to use the democratic process, which is we're going to use public comment. We're going to come up and tell the board how much we love our school, and we love it so much, and we love being here so much that we want it to be the best that it can be. And so I just want to express my pride in our Newark Junior High students who sent these comments. I'm going to make copies for the board so you can read them all. They are wonderfully written. They are articulate. And many of these things are things that we've planned anyway and that we're working on for them. So to all of you who are watching out there, if you are a Newark Junior High School student, I'm very proud of you. And we are going to get to work on this right away. You got it. So thank you.

9. PUBLIC COMMENT

9.1 Public Comment on Non-Agenda Items

9.2 Public Comment on Agenda Items

[9932] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. So we have two members of the public that wish to speak. Araceli Lozo.

[9949] SPEAKER_15: Good evening, everyone. My name is Araceli Lozo. I'm here again trying to get an answer about my vacation situation that everybody is aware about. And not only me, it's all you 12 mile employees. That's not my fault. That's not us fault that you guys never implement your contract for more than 20 years. And now you're playing as a hot potato, hot potato, hot potato, emails back and forth. This is not fair. With the respect, here we have Mireya from New Bern Memorial High School. We have Maria from Newark Memorial High School. We have Jesus Loza for BGP. And mommy here from Kennedy Elementary School. Us, we work around 20 years or more in this district. And we deserve respect. I called this morning to Rochi. I left a message for her. Try to get an appointment with the superintendent. Because this, for me, this is not funny. This is embarrassing. You can tell. This is not my first language. And I tried my best. And Katherine sent emails and emails and emails and memos and saying, you have to work with your supervisor. How I can work with my supervisor? When she just say it, they not paying. They will not pay you vacations. I cannot approve your vacations. You can use only 30 days a year from your vacations. What happened with my another nine months that I have? Jesus Loza, get 11 months more. What happened with us? We will lose it. We will lose those vacations because we are responsible for 23 years in this district. We're loyal to you ladies. And we will, what happened with us? We are in the air. We need a guide. We need a meeting. We need to see face-to-face. We need answers. These ladies in here, we are in here tonight because we work without substitutes. Susan Condon was asked to take Friday's off like they already doing in the high school. One custodian, two custodians, three custodians absent. They have to pick up everything behind. We reported all the time to you and to my supervisor what happened when we are absent. by emails, with pictures, with apples and pears because our English is not the best. But they read the contract the way they want. Maybe we have to have more studying sections to learn how to read others' contract. It's not my broken English. It's because they want to interpret the way they want it. And this is not fair for us. This is not fair for us that they cannot find the money. As money is supposed to be in the door, waiting for us for 20 years. not have to come over here as a clown and make these, if you guys respond to me with just one meeting. Thank you.

[10144] Nancy Thomas: Thank you very much. Ms. Julie Radcliffe.

[10172] SPEAKER_05: Good evening, President Thomas, board members, and superintendent. After much consideration, I must address the longstanding issues by countless employees standing at the podium who bring forth concerns only to feel ignored. There are some issues which should be transparent and the board can and should respond publicly. Unfortunately, the last time I respectfully expressed my views in a previous board meeting, I faced bullying from the former superintendent. This mistreatment reflects a larger pattern within the organization. Just like the public does not know what goes on in closed session, the board does not know what goes on behind district office closed doors. Members of executive cabinet can control the narrative as needed and have no qualm about misrepresenting employees. I have witnessed and experienced this often becoming their scapegoat. It's worth noting the HR department has lacked an experienced leader since Diane Manske left in 2018. Consequently, Ms. Romero and I have struggled with the revolving door of inexperienced individuals, leaving us to shoulder additional critical responsibilities that we had to learn on our own while also keeping up with our own desk. At times it was difficult and sometimes not enough hours in a day. We were not perfect, yet we remained dedicated to the employees and student success. During my current medical leave, I felt shamed and dehumanized learning about my layoff through a posted agenda without prior notification. I'm sure I will be labeled a disgruntled employee. However, I do not believe the full facts surrounding the HR reorganization process, layoffs, and hearing have been disclosed. I do not believe this action was solely about saving the district money. It appears personal due to my medical leave. At the March 2nd board meeting, the executive director stated there was no decrease in workload and three new positions would be created. The illusion given of the layoff was a cost savings to the district. Please ask for the financial analysis. This is clearly a smokescreen. When the HR department needed restructuring, and it does, and additional help, the opportunity was missed when the classified manager position was vacant twice during the previous school year. During my layoff settlement negotiations, in spite of my experience in seniority, I offered to step down to one of the new CSEA HR positions. This would have saved Debbie Platko from being bound from her job as the Newark Junior High School office manager. The executive director refused several times, telling my attorney she can interview. These new positions, job tasks, and responsibilities align with those I've been performing for 12 years. Therefore, I have the right to bump into these positions without having to interview. Additionally, school services report recommended reclassification rather than layoffs, a solution I was willing to consider. In the two previous school years, two principals were laid off and similarly instructed to interview for positions if interested. I witnessed these experienced administrators purposely and repeatedly overlooked in favor of candidates with no experience. We advised leadership this was an unfair hiring practice. I know this is exactly what will happen to me if I subject myself to interviewing for these new HR positions since I was already denied them. What is going to change now? I have been subjected to mental and emotional abuse already, and to exacerbate that willingly would be cruel and cost myself undue stress. While stress is bad for everyone, for me, it can cause flare-ups to my medical conditions. Other employees have publicly expressed that standing up for what is right or blowing the whistle on what is wrongdoings resulted in retaliation as well. Their accounts at board meetings are accurate based on my personal knowledge spanning at least five years. Let us not forget one of the biggest is the pending FPPC investigation concerning a previous hiring practice. Again, there were some of us who know what happened and we've been bullied into silence. While we can't change the past, we can hold the leadership team accountable moving forward and demand better and transparent communication, respect and support for employees. Our students are our customers, but without the employees to service them, our future is doomed. I will close with this. The biggest compliment I received in HR was I cared too much about my teachers, and that comment I will take with me always. Thank you. Thank you.

[10449] Nancy Thomas: Is there any further public comment from online?

[10453] Jodi Croce: There was none.

[10453] Nancy Thomas: OK. Next, we move on to the superintendent report.

[10462] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Thank you, President Thomas, trustees, staff, and our wonderful community and friends. Well, oh, I'm sorry.

[10474] Jodi Croce: Is there something? I'm sorry. Did you want to make a comment? Oh, I'm sorry. We did have a student. I'm sorry.

[10480] Nancy Thomas: Oh, well, please come forward. Oh, OK.

[10492] SPEAKER_35: Hello, esteemed Board of Trustees. My name is Gianna Hernandez, and I am a leadership student at NGHS. I'm speaking to you because at our school, we need better internet connection. There have been some days where in my language arts class, which is not very far from our library, which is where we keep the servers for internet, we just don't have internet that day. And for that class specifically, it caused me personally a lot of stress because for the assignments that that teacher teacher of science, they usually do by the end of the day. And since I do sports and after school activities, by the end of the day, I need to get all my work done in school. And so when we don't have internet that day, it just completely throws off my schedule. And this is not the only class that this happens in. It happens in my science class, in my social study class. We just have the internet drop out and then come back. And it completely throws off our schedule for that day. giving students less and less time to complete their work. And I know that I will be leaving this year, but I don't want to have the seventh graders and the sixth graders coming after me, coming later after me next year, having to experience the same stress and panic from not getting to get your work in, causing your grade to drop, causing your GPA to drop, not getting the right honor roll you wanted, all kinds of things. So I hope you will take into account my public comment and give the NJHS school better internet. Superintendent, would you please respond?

[10585] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Right now? Yes. We absolutely have better internet. It sounds to me like what we call a WAP or a router problem. So in other words, we have internet, but the funnel that it goes through to get to classrooms is not sufficient for the amount of bandwidth that we have. And go ahead.

[10608] Marie dela Cruz: We actually do have a project in progress where we're going to be replacing all of your access points. Perfect. So those will all be upgraded.

[10616] Nicole Pierce-Davis: I think you can remember this. I think a WAP stands for what? Wireless Access Point. So you reminded me. That's what it is. That's what it is. And so thank goodness we have a project going. So you heard it. So it's coming. So thank you for your advocacy. It's exactly what I was talking about earlier. I really appreciate that. You're thinking about the kids of the future. And I'm so sorry that you went through that this year.

10. SUPERINTENDENT REPORT

10.1 Superintendent Report

[10640] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. So next, we move on to the superintendent's report.

[10644] SPEAKER_20: No worries.

[10645] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Absolutely. Well, President Thomas, members of the board, our staff, and our wonderful family and friends that are here tonight. Well, I am delighted that I am giving my first superintendent's report as superintendent of Newark and I just love being here and I entitled it Newark New Beginnings because I think this is an opportunity for all of us to have new beginnings for our district and really take our district to the next level. We have so many great things going on in this district and I think I think if we all work together, all of us work together, we can make great things happen. So first of all, I wanted to express my appreciation to the Board of Education for selecting me, for the support that you've given us, and for the support I know that you will continue to give us moving forward so we can get this good work done because it does really take a village, as you know. I want to give my sincere thanks to Dr. Milliken for the superb work that he did setting this district up for success. Anytime you're switching leadership, it can be a very stressful, difficult transition. From everything I heard and from working with him, I think he made it as smooth as you can imagine and absolutely wonderful transition for everybody. And he really set me up for success. And if he set me up, I know he set a lot of people up for success. And not to mention that, but the moment we discovered we needed him to help us at Newark Memorial High School, he said, I'm there. I'll go over there and serve at that school till the end of the year. So now we have our catch-up meetings, our transition meetings over at the high school. And he's doing a great job there. So if you're watching, hopefully you're not. But if you are, thank you for all of your help, Dr. Milliken. I want to thank the entire Newark Unified School District team, everybody who's been bearing with me as I get my bearings in the district. It's been really great. I've had a wonderful welcome and everybody has been so accommodating and allowing me to ask a million questions and hoping for answers, and it's been great. And also, I wanted to, well, the next slide's a good one, We'll do that. But next, I also want to talk about what I've been doing this week. So if you listen to Plato, he said that the beginning is the most important part of the work. And I think what he's referring to is the foundation that's laid at the beginning of anything that you do. Yeah, there he is. We were going to really talk about you here in a second with your own slide. So yes.

[10819] SPEAKER_19: Yes. Wow.

[10825] Nicole Pierce-Davis: We have something for him.

[10828] Chery Villa: Yes.

[10832] Nicole Pierce-Davis: It's so cute. Isn't that awesome? Well, you want to do it now?

[10838] Penny DeLeon: Well, OK. Go ahead. Go ahead.

[10843] SPEAKER_21: Well.

[10845] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Thank you to board member Diego Torres, who has been phenomenal. I hear you've been phenomenal this entire year. We got your mom to give us this wonderful picture of you. And thank you for your service. Speech. Speech. Go ahead.

[10873] Diego Torres: First of all, my mom did me really dirty with this photo. She got you good. Yeah, she did. I don't even know what the context of this photo was, but I guess I'm standing next to a watermelon with the word Puente in it. That's awesome. Yeah. Being on the board has been a really interesting experience. I came in here having very little knowledge of anything that went on in the district. I didn't know what any of these acronyms were, NTA, CSEA, whatever. There's too many to list. I was very, very lost. And so coming in, I was very nervous because I felt like I was going to do the best job that I could if I was so uneducated. I learned a lot in the first couple months. I learned from the previous board members and the student ones. I learned from Ms. Canales who's been like one of my biggest helpers this year and helping me learn how to be the best person for this position. I also would like to thank Ms. Coach K too because she's been a really good advocate for me and she's helped me along a lot throughout this journey and also like the principal and then the administration at the school too. They have been really helpful with me and helping me come up with my school reports. helping me learn and just about the process. And I feel like I've gone through a lot in this district. Sitting here like what I'm looking at now is a lot different from the beginning of the year. A new superintendent, a lot of new board members. I think we had like three new ones. And I got to learn about the superintendent process. I learned about how to appoint a new board member was, the interview process. I've just learned so much this whole year, and I'm so thankful for all of it, and I'm so grateful to have this opportunity to be up here. I'm not gonna take it for granted because I know I had a special role at this district, and we've accomplished so much together as a team, and I know that this district's gonna accomplish a lot more in the future, and it's just saddened that it's gonna be without me, but I know my mom won't be here, so we'll still visit every once in a while, and I'm just so thankful for this opportunity to be on this board and work with all of you. And it's been a really wonderful year. So I appreciate everyone. Thank you.

[10986] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Yay. OK. OK.

[10996] SPEAKER_21: Could you just go back to my slide real quick? Thank you.

[11001] Nicole Pierce-Davis: So I just wanted to mention that. that this week has been all about the listening tour and listening to people. And I wanted to go back and talk about this, because this is what people are asking us to do. They're asking us to listen. And that's what's needed, right? And so this week has been all about listening to the team, community members and parents. And I think I've met with maybe 100 people or so this week, but that's sort of how I operate. And so I just wanted you to know that that's what we're in the middle of doing is the listening tour. So those of you who have concerns and want to meet with me, please do call or email Ms. Croce so that we can sit down because that's what I'm here for, and it's a very important part of our work and for building a foundation as a team. And then lastly, I just want to give a shout out to the Newark Junior High School PTSA for their pancake breakfast. It was amazing. The fire department was there. It was 1,000 degrees outside, but the pancakes were delicious, and they raised a lot of money. for the school, so that was fantastic. Also, shout out to Newark Memorial High School Theater, who put on the Snow White musical. It was hilarious. I didn't get to stay for the whole thing, but it was a melodrama, and so the audience participated. It was great. And then lastly, on Tuesday, Trustee Thomas and I got to attend the DELAC and the LCAP committee, and listen to the input and celebrate our wonderful parents who've been participating on those committees, one of which is now a board member, Trustee Plancarte. Anyway, we got to celebrate them and it was just great to be there. And so I just wanted to let the board know that we have a lot of really good things and good people in this community and I'm thrilled to be here. Thank you. And so also it is also my practice to have my superintendent report really be a district report. And so I ask our cabinet members to also report out about what their various departments are doing and various schools are doing. so that we can keep everybody up to date. So we will briefly go through and each of them have something.

[11140] SPEAKER_30: So I'm up first, and I wanted to talk just a little bit about our substitute recruitment success we've had this year. In the fall, we increased our daily and long-term substitute rates, $220 a day for single-day absences and $250 a day for long-term absences starting at day six. We collected some data now that we're nearing the end of the school year and we have onboarded 50 new substitutes for this year, which is pretty significant. We are finally enjoying the fruits of our labor and we're starting to see decreases in our unfilled absences, except for those you can't really prepare for first thing in the morning, but we are seeing an overall decrease. Subsequently, we're starting to see some decreases in our in-house subbing spreadsheets. I would also like to introduce Tina Pressley. She has been supporting Human Resources for quite some time. And we recently revised the substitute placement clerk with a revised job description and title, simply Clerk Human Resources. And so Tina became an official member of Human Resources in the position of Clerk Human Resources the day after the last board meeting. And so I thought I would share that with the community. So for all of our teaching and all of our classified staff, if you need any support with absences, Tina will be here to support you. And speaking of substitutes, we're continually recruiting for substitutes. And so we've done posters and half sheets and trying to embed our substitute recruitment options for parents or community members who may be willing and have a flexible schedule to do such. So a bachelor's degree is required and actually if you have 90 or more units towards a bachelor's degree, we can support you with moving forward in our recruitment process. Like I mentioned, more competitive rates with our nearby districts and we will support you every step of the way to secure your emergency substitute permit with CTC. So if you're interested in looking and applying, we use the platform called EdJoin. You can also call, look up EdJoin yourself, or hold your phone up, and there's a QR code that will take you right to EdJoin.

[11304] Marie dela Cruz: I guess I'm next. So as part of business services and facilities this week, We met with our superintendent, Dr. DeLeon, and our MOT director, Diego, another acronym, Maintenance Operations and Transportation. We discussed plans to beautify our schools, because we know how important it is to have a really good-looking learning environment, and a couple of priority items. In particular, at Newark Junior High School, we have A couple of projects in progress. We know that the track and field needs some work in terms of some maintenance items, the mowing and the landscape, some grading and leveling of the track, and repairing and upgrading the long jump run and the pits. So we're working on that. And also the plumbing repairs that they've been experiencing with the restrooms. And we know that year-end activities are coming up. We want to make sure that our schools are prepared and they're all looking nice and welcoming for all of our parents and students. And lastly, the 23-24 budget is on its way. It will be presented at the June 1st meeting. And our business staff is busy working on finalizing all the details of that report.

[11396] Nicole Pierce-Davis: All right, as part of a joint effort, May is Appreciation Week for both classified and certificated staff. So as a joint effort, we did celebrate our staff. The board also participated in some of this as well, delivering goodies to schools throughout the week. And we continue, we know this is a small gesture, but we continue to show our gratitude every single day. We also have, I have a series of slides, but I have to be honest, May is a celebration month. And so these are just a small selection of really a ton of celebrations that are happening at all of our school sites. So I just want to encourage families to check in with their school sites, their principals. This is just one celebration where we had about 40 countries, 361 schools participated in an art contest. that integrated environmental literacy, and we had winners from Kennedy that we wanted to showcase tonight. So one of them, and their statements are available for the board to read later, but one of them was a fourth grader, Santiago, with Mother Fly. We have the Woodland Sunset, by Eleanor B. in third grade. We have Mahika S. as the clouds pass by in third grade. We have Forest in a Glass. by Fiona B. and Kaia K., Simple But Special. And I took just one snip of her statement. She said, the theme indicates how some moments are so simple, but the time and place you are in makes it so memorable. And I thought, how much more perfect of a quote for May. So we just wanted to share our winners again and give them a round of applause, not right now, but later for all of their hard work. We also have Mission Valley ROP announces there. We have another photo of Member Torres tonight. They announced their student of the year scholarship winners. So we have Ryder Kendall from Advanced Manufacturing Program and Shane Tavares from Construction Technology. So I believe Member Thomas was there. And so I thank you for those photos so we can share those tonight as well and celebrate their amazing accomplishment. Oops. We also had our induction colloquium. So these are our new teachers who are our mentors. So both mentees and mentors of new teachers who are, they have their preliminary credentials and are now working to clear their credentials. It's about a two year process. And so we celebrated them at the end of the year and we wanted to showcase them and celebrate their hard work as well. We have Family Science Day at the park with our Lincoln Leopards. We had Bayside, Alameda County Water District, Don Edwards, Ohlone Humane Society. We had a rep from Assemblyman Lee's office as well as Tim Orozco. We had a series of fun events and we have one coming up for Kennedy soon. Our College and Career Fair. We had 150 families participate, 28 booths, and 30 workshop opportunities. Again, we had member Thomas there with opening remarks, along with our mayor of Newark. And so really want to give a shout out to Heather Decker and her team for putting on this event with amazing counselors at Newark Memorial High School as well, who really put in all of their time and effort to make this a success. We also have our, this is for our parents, our parents also graduated. So we want to recognize some of our parents who participated in Project to Inspire workshop. It is put on by CABE and they've done a series of workshops coming in once a week. And so they were also celebrated just last night. We have, again, some upcoming STEM events. But trust me, there are so many more events. We've got athletics awards, scholarship awards at the high school next week. There's just a ton of amazing things. But these are a couple that we'd love to showcase. One is Family Night at Kennedy. And the other one is Student Code Showcase at the STAR Lab at Newark Memorial High School. So we hope that everyone can come celebrate with us. And we appreciate your time tonight.

[11654] Nancy Thomas: Thank you.

[11660] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Can I add just one more quick thing? In terms of all of those many things that Ms. Pierce-Davis just mentioned, all those events, we met with our social media. Wonderful person, Jennifer Sachs, is going to be working with us beginning July 1st, but she is now. And she's going to be posting all of those on social media in the next day or two. So if you want to check out our Facebook, our Instagram, you can find a list of dates of everything that's going on. So thank you. Great. Thank you.

[11692] Nancy Thomas: Next, we move on to staff report. And again, I will call on the superintendent to introduce us.

11. STAFF REPORT

11.1 STEAM Initiative Update (STAR and NewGO!)

[11700] Nicole Pierce-Davis: It is. That's a good idea, because I'm not sure I know everybody yet. At this time, I'm going to introduce our assistant superintendent, Nicole Pierce-Davis, who will introduce her science team. Excellent. So we have quite a few teachers here to support. But first, I'd like to introduce Leonor Rebosura, who is really supporting our STEM component of our STEAM initiative. And I'm going to allow her to introduce her team.

[11733] Leonor Rebosura: Welcome. Thank you. I'd like to just point out first and foremost, kudos to both schools for their work, feedback, drawings, stories, from her kinder to second grade students who went on field trips. But these are the hard copies. I just wanted to leave this in here with you if you want to enjoy some really cute, sweet, inspiring stories. So with that, good evening, President Thomas, Superintendent DeLeon, Executive Cabinet, members of the board. I'm Leonor Rebosura, and I present the staff report as the Program Administrator of Science. The Newark USD... Do you want to click it? We will do this in seven minutes. The Newark USD STEAM Resolution of 2018 is the foundation of the STEAM Initiative represented here. It has two components, computational thinking, or the STAR initiative, science, technology, aerospace, and robotics, and environmental literacy, or NUGO, Newark Goes Outdoors. Over the past two years, led by the district science leadership team, we've defined and identified the vision, goals, and activities of these two initiatives and presented this to the board. We are so excited to present what happens when the shared vision and goals come to life in the classrooms. Four teachers are here with me today to share their experiences with you. I will introduce them to you now, and then we will move on. They'll get to share later on. First is Pauline Kim, the technology TOSA and an ELD intervention teacher at Lincoln. Brandi Wex teaches kinder first grade at Keohokalole Hills. Amy Hawkson-Ramirez is a third grade teacher at BGI. And Julian Sumidabula is a K2 moderate to severe STD teacher at Coyote Hills. My star teachers. The vision and the goal of the STAR initiative is to establish a TK12 computer science pathway. In 2020, we realized that if we were to improve the 5% enrollment in CS courses at Newark Memorial, and encourage more girls, students of color, and underrepresented youth to enroll in these classes, we need to begin in elementary, and that's what we have the building blocks for. Makerspaces in elementary become the venue for exploration, discovery, innovation, goes on to the integrated STEM in the middle school, and then the STAR Lab at the high school. Tonight, we would like to report back on the accomplishments of STAR at Newark Memorial and elementary schools to increase awareness and knowledge about computational thinking, which will ultimately lead to more students feeling confident to enroll in these courses. I will report about the STAR Lab on behalf of Jacob Goldsmith, the STAR Lab coordinator. These are his These are the goals for the STAR initiative at the high school. Full opening of the Newark Memorial High School STAR Lab, which happened in December, and it has been utilized by 200 students during and after school. Establish a certificate of code. We will be graduating eight seniors with a certificate of code in June, and 15 juniors are working towards this for next year. And the last one is the progress towards CS for All. And that means expanded recruitment into APCS courses with a focus on growing equity and diversity, and completion of first lessons integrating programming into math, mainstream math courses. And I'll talk to you more about that later. Pauline's going to talk about the Elementary STAR initiative goals.

[11983] SPEAKER_09: Good evening, President Thomas, Dr. Leone, Rickram, and everyone else in the board and the executive cabinet. I'm Pauline Kim, and I've had the honor of being NUSD's technology TOSA for computational thinking and computer science. I've been able to demonstrate lessons and collaborate with our trailblazing staff on computational thinking and computer science lessons that use a problem-solving approach that integrates across all subjects. We have 28% participation amongst all our TK through five classes in the district. Out of that 28%, 58% of them have multiple lessons. And we are very excited by this. This year, our main focus on creating algorithms to solve problems. Algorithms are the heart of computational thinking because the solutions to problems are not simply an answer, they are algorithms. And algorithms are step-by-step instructions that solve a problem or complete a task. You'll see examples from our students later in this presentation.

[12061] Leonor Rebosura: A focal objective of the STAR initiative at Memorial is progress towards Yes for All, the goal that all Newark Memorial graduates will learn some amount of programming. They use two approaches to work towards this goal. a student-driven recruitment for APCS classes. A diverse team of current CS students volunteered to visit all appropriate math classes and deliver a presentation encouraging enrollment in APCS, along with showing off their own projects, they delivered a message of, I could do this, so can you. The second approach was to introduce smaller programming lessons into mainstream math classes, specifically algebra and geometry. This year, two teachers volunteered to audition these lessons in their classes of students who had zero previous programming experiences. These lessons were taught by Jacob Goldsmith. Sessions were done during block days of 90-minute class time. Exit survey shows that 96% of students described the lessons as slightly or super interesting, 85% of the students state that this activity increased their interest in learning programming in the future, and Four students, all from the demographics, underrepresented in STEM, went directly to their counselor to change their schedule and to enroll at APCS next year. With continued support, our vision is to expand these to a larger audience next year with a goal of reaching 100% of Memorial students. The code on the top of this slide is from the student-facing portion of the lesson that was delivered to mainstream math classes with no prior programming experience. The code on the bottom was created by a student in response to a challenge, write a program to calculate values from the compound interest formula. I'll let you sit on that. This was presented at the end of that lesson to combine programming with math science content knowledge. It gives us the ability to teach programming while also covering content air standards instead of allowing programming lessons to feel like additional demand on instructional time. Seeing the impact of one introductory lesson at Newark Memorial, we wonder what would have happened if those students were introduced to competitive thinking earlier. Here are four teachers to tell us what that might look like now. First off, Brand UX.

[12215] SPEAKER_26: Hi, I'm Brandi Wex. I taught kindergarten and first grade at Coyote Hills this year, and I've been both previously at Snow and then previously at Graham teaching kindergarten and first grade. Let's see, I was really grateful this year to have the support of all of our elementary TOSAs in my classroom for math, and for SEAL, and then for our computational thinking. I really pushed myself this year to fully implement SEAL strategies when I asked for I completed the training last year. So I was working to fully implement SEAL strategies and incorporate language development strategies throughout my classroom. With Mrs. Kim's support, we introduced programming and debugging using storytelling in a unit about space, And we progressed to having my class complete more than 60 lessons of introductory coding from code.org. She helped me to build lessons that fit in with my existing SEAL units to use in our maker space, including this week's final engineering task with biomimicry. It was invaluable to have Mrs. Kim's support in planning, preparing, and implementing these lessons. I greatly appreciated having a thought partner to troubleshoot with, and loved seeing the way that hands-on learning made STEM accessible to my young students. Our latest projects will be on display at the final gallery walk from my class, which you've all been sent an invitation to. And you can come and have kindergartners explain biomimicry to you. Thank you.

[12308] SPEAKER_03: Hi, I'm Amy Hawkson-Ramirez. I teach third grade at Birch Grove Intermediate. With the support of Leonor Rebosura and Pauline Kim, I was able to bring more CS lessons and activities into my classroom this year. The pictures you see here are from an unplugged activity in which my students used algorithms to program their robotic classmates to stack cups. They learned what bugs are in a program and what it means to debug. Beyond the computational thinking, my students practiced communicating and working together, as well as showing perseverance and respect. Working with Ms. Kim was essential in bringing CS lessons to our BGI campus. She gave ongoing support to one of our fourth grade teachers, and because of Ms. Kim, all of our third grade classes received lessons in computational thinking. These interactive and engaging unplugged lessons included using algorithms to move their classmates through a maze, following a sorting network to put information in order, and using binary numbers. Most importantly, though, she's helping us teachers learn and realize that we are all capable of bringing CS lessons to our classrooms when we are given support and training. Thank you.

[12385] Julienne Sumodobila: Good evening, everyone. My name is Julianne Sumudibila. I'm the K through 3 moderate to severe SDC teacher at Coyote Hills. It was, I'm sorry, let me find my notes. It was an absolute pleasure to work with Mrs. Kim and Mrs. Rebasura to introduce a lesson on programming and coding to my K through three SDC students. Mrs. Kim helped incorporate familiar motivators such as, as you can see in the pictures, Kat in the Hat and Tot on the Pot, they're very, motivating characters in our classroom. She helped incorporate those familiar motivators into our lesson, and we were able to facilitate a meaningful first experience. There are many opportunities for learning, so it wasn't just a computer science lesson. There are many other learning opportunities for other important skills. that are common in IEPs such as language development, turn taking, following one to two step directions, and problem solving. Mrs. Kim was very helpful throughout the process and helped modify her lesson as needed. Our collaboration was a testament of the possibilities that can come out of a collaboration with a moderate to severe SDC classroom. Thank you.

[12467] SPEAKER_09: Following up after I worked with Ms. Julian, I went into Ms. Alicia's SDC class, grades three through five at Coyote Hills. Her students decided to write a program for her to become the robot in this lesson. Please enjoy this video of the students and Ms. Alicia, the robot. So, our next year's goals, oops, too cute, oops. All right, in the 23-24 year, our district leader science team for the STAR will be Ms. Rachel Bloom, Mr. Jake Goldsmith, myself, Mr. Sandeep Kundra, And sorry, I have my glasses on. And Maria Avila and Vanessa Lujan from Bayside. We hoped to develop our star print. We are going to meet at the beginning of June to create a star print that, like our green print that we have created for environmental literacy. We also hope to increase enrollment at the AP Computer Science principles. And they also have AP Computer Science A, which I don't know what everything's in there. And then we want to increase the collaboration of the elementary teachers in schools with myself. We hope that doing this collaboration, we build competence and understanding in computational lesson planning. For example, we've actually started this with the SEAL units at Coyote Hills. We want to also build a strong foundation for students that as they move on to the secondary levels, they can see themselves as computer scientists, see themselves earlier and build a strong foundation that is not just for certain groups of people, but inclusiveness to all of our students. I would like to leave you all with this final definition of computational thinking as designed by Digital Promise. Computational thinking is an interrelated set of skills and practices for solving complex problems, a way to learn topics in many disciplines, and a necessity for fully participating in a computational world. Thank you.

[12624] Leonor Rebosura: So for you, Go, this is where the Environmental History Plan goes that we presented to you last year. And we would like to just go through the slides and share more of this. These were the outdoor learning activities that we promised we would send their students to. All of the classes have gone except for the ninth grade and that's scheduled for the next year. Next to that, these are the new GOAT district science leadership team members who are looking into and evaluated all of this feedback. K2 feedback is right in front of you in the binders. The rest of the feedback are in surveys, and they're all linked to this. We analyzed that, and these were some of the things that, oops, sorry. All right. Oh, this is another data set that we'd like, wanted to look at, because it's a new thing. We needed to make sure that we had enough data to evaluate the work so that we know how to proceed on. And these were the analysis of the new GO team. The biggest pattern here is we realized that a big overarching sentiment that was expressed was that the real world experience and the hands-on activities had a profound impact on students' learning, which is something that we had hoped for. There will have to be some more work with the green print, more work with coordination, but in the big picture, considering this was the first time we did this for all of the classes, we feel that we were very, very lucky to have worked with really good partners. We'd like to say thank you to Maria Huffer, MOT staff secretary, who coordinated 45 trips, 91 classes to 12 destinations. This is the environmental literacy component, the components of the environmental literacy plan that we attend to. And in the next slides, we're going to present to you some examples of this. And again, what happened after you just create the vision for about half a year, talk about the plans. It's really nice to see what it actually did to the students. And I hope these pictures, I think the pictures will just tell more than the words can really say. So you have the Kinders, and I think this is Ms. Wecker's class, at Reinhardt, Redwood. And in Crabbe Cove. Shout out to the naturalists Felicia Walker, Michael Sharnofsky, and their admin specialist Selena Connor for helping design and organize trips to Reinhardt Redwood. They really work with us to come up with a program for students because they don't usually bring students there. Now this is Crab Cove and one of our teachers said, my kids and I loved going to Crab Cove. Thank you. I will submit my teacher survey right away because I want to return next year. This was Ardenwood Historic Farms. Thank you to naturalists Sonia Gomez and Christina Garcia and Bernadette Cruz at Ardenwood. Feedback from a teacher, our students really enjoyed this learning experience. Some of them have never been on a farm and had no idea how farms function. This was eye-opening experience for most of our second graders. Oops, sorry. Our third graders went to Coyote Hills. And one of the feedback we got was every aspect of this trip was relevant to what we've been learning. They understood and examined the need to preserve indigenous language, culture, and knowledge to pass on to future generations. They were also concerned about the effect of people on marsh. Thank you to naturalists Chris Solitz and Erin Blackwood and their administrative assistant Amita Prasad for making this, the coordination really easy. And then our fourth graders went to Tule Ponds. And one of our teachers said, it was nice for the students to see actual changes in the land from earthquakes. It tied in nicely to our landforms science unit and extreme hazards writing unit. Thank you to Joyce Bluford for organizing really strong programs for our fourth graders. This is one of the science camps that our BGI students went to. Our seventh, no, the Monterey Bay. So this is a clown of the classes that went, and all the sixth grade classes went in December. Thank you to Carol Rose for organizing that, so all the classes, including STC, was able to go. For the seventh graders, the team from Alameda County Water District actually visited them during National Groundwater Awareness Week and taught them about aquifer construction, connections between surface water and groundwater, porosity and permeability and contamination and remediation. So all the seventh graders were involved in that. And that's it. It's been a most interesting and exciting year of implementation of STAR and UGO. Again, from just seeing it on paper, talking about it, to seeing this and reading those stories. has been so very encouraging and motivating. We're also very grateful to all the teachers who said, yes, I will try teaching computational thinking in my classroom, but with Pauline, because I've never done it before. And yes, we'll go on a field trip to a new destination. We'll trust that you actually organized this well for us. So yes, a simple word that allowed us to open the world of our students to new possibilities and adventures. As we look forward to 23-24, we're guided by the first steps we took this year towards a stronger district-wide steam and truly prepare our students for the world beyond.

[12969] Diego Torres: So thank you. Well, I want to start off by saying I liked the video you showed where the teacher was a robot. That was really enjoyable. It was like, oh, Touched my heart right there. Made me cry.

[12990] Leonor Rebosura: Yeah.

[12991] Diego Torres: I was almost about to, but I was like, no, not right now. Can't. I also like the science camp one, because I was actually there with the BGI. I was probably somewhere hitting that photo. And it was actually a lot of fun. And it's just wonderful to see that students are excited to learn about the environment and care about the stuff, because it's a really important topic. And with computer science, I took computer science principles last year, or two years ago, and I'm in computer science A right now. And it's really difficult because I jumped into high school having no prior knowledge of this. And it's really good to see that students are starting off with knowledge, coming into the high school with having this great knowledge of computer science because with our world right now, everything is coming more on the computers, on the phone, so it's really nice to see that students are starting at a young age to learn how to stuff, to learn how to code, because it's really difficult. It is really, really hard. And it can be challenging at some times, so to have that prior knowledge is really nice, and it will make their lives a lot much easier when they get into high school and have to take these classes. And I'm glad that these classes have been expanded, and people who never really knew about them are now having the knowledge of them, because they're really fun classes. They're interesting to learn about, and I think it's important that everyone gets involved in some sort of coding. So I thank you for your efforts that you put in, and the rest of the team over here. So thank you.

[13066] Leonor Rebosura: Thank you.

[13070] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you, Ms. Robisora and Ms. Kim and the rest of the team for leading the way. I know that when I was initially invited to one of the very first meetings in 2020, I didn't have expectations for you guys to be able to have so much progress in such a short amount of time. And to see this, it really truly warms my heart how much work and dedication every teacher who's involved in this saying yes to trying new things and making sure that, you know, to make a positive impact for all of our students. Because yes, computational thinking, building algorithms, those are all components that are going to help develop our math skills and help drive up the development of our students and to improve the test scores that we're trying to do. And I think that these programs that are being implemented and especially also with environmental literacy, just seeing you guys kicking that off and listening to it and being a part of that the last two years and really seeing starting to shine and all of the students being able to have tangible connections to the environment and where they're and where they're living and how and they can learn from it. And then also tangible results in computer science when they create something on the back end and they'll be able to see it on the front end. So all of that stuff is wonderful. And I just really wanna thank the team for driving it. And then also a special thank you to Ms. Kim for really inspiring and motivating our elementary school teachers Oh, there you are. To do this work and to really help them thrive and really grow in progression from the elementary school over to the junior high and then on to the high school. So thank you for your tremendous hard work. I really appreciate it.

[13197] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Ma'am Burhill.

[13206] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Ms. Trevisore, for the great presentation. So two questions. One was, on a slide earlier, you were talking about the certificate of code. And I'm just curious what the requirements are to get the certificate of code. So that's question one. And then question two is, what are our thoughts around how we take these programs and, where applicable, align them to state standards? And this is under your STAR planning section. And then also, what are our thoughts around how we ourselves measure the success of the program? I guess I need to work on my STEM.

[13248] Leonor Rebosura: My recollection about the certificate, the code, it had to do with attending at least some coursework, internship, and leadership. So there's very specific criteria that they had to thank you. Complete each semester of advanced placement computer science A and advanced placement computer science principles. Participate as a member in good standing in the robotics, rocketry, or learn to hack club for at least two years. But for this year, it's just one year because we just started it this year. Attend at least six to eight plus NMHS team events each year for at least two years or at least one year for this group. And complete at least one STEAM leadership Individually or with a team, complete and present a significant CS project beyond class assignments. Individually or with a team, teach a lesson or series on a CS programming topic beyond class content. And individually or with a team, organize a youth community coding education outreach program. So you see it's academic, there's leadership, and there's community participation.

[13315] Aiden Hill: And that's for the certificate of code. Yes. Great.

[13317] Leonor Rebosura: Wonderful. And we have eight this year, and 15 working towards next year. And then the question about STAR standards, that's actually the focus of the STAR print. Now that we've figured out the strategies to recruit more students into the APCS courses, with Jacob Goldsmith leading the way at the high school, and with Miss Kim leading the way in the elementary of getting more students aware of it, We have decided we recognize the need for a K-12 star print, which basically is like an academic map. So we are going to build that and part of that would be standards. We're going to use the CS frameworks, which are usually written in grade level spans. We will also be looking at resources and to the usual question of like, we're going to start doing something else different. Are we adding something else? We're also going to find connections to what the teachers, especially the elementary, are already doing and build on that, which is basically literature. So we are looking at the frameworks and making the connections to the courses that are being offered so that we can address assessment and really look at academic measures.

[13396] Aiden Hill: Great, thank you.

[13398] Leonor Rebosura: Did I answer all your three-year questions? OK, thank you.

[13402] Nancy Thomas: Anyway, I wanted to mention that I enjoyed visiting Cherry Hills Room 18 for their coding showcase. Yes, Ms. Sepulveda's class yesterday. And Ms. Kim, for the great job you did with the students and the great job they did with their music. What was it called? The dance party. Dance party, that's what it was.

[13422] SPEAKER_09: accumulation of six lessons that we've done in a short period. It took us maybe about eight weeks, meeting once a week. And they had some basic commands and coding, and they built a dance party.

[13435] Diego Torres: Wait, can you do a little demo for us? Do you have it memorized?

[13439] SPEAKER_09: No, we can do a little this and that. I've learned this is a this and that. Oh my god, it was top down. So yes, it was amazing what they can do.

[13445] Nancy Thomas: It was fun, amazing, engaging. It was a great day for the kids and their parents Yeah. A lot of them came to watch. It was great.

[13453] SPEAKER_09: And thank you for coming and watching their hard work.

12. NEW BUSINESS

12.1 POLICY UPDATE: Board Policies and Administrative Regulations Title Changes

[13456] Nancy Thomas: OK. Thank you. Thank you. Nice. So next, we move on to new business. 12.1, policy update, board policies and administrative regulations, title changes.

[13480] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Assistant superintendent Pierce-Davis, would you like to take this item? So this is a Relatively simple one. There are no changes to any content in any of these board policies However, it was really important to the board that we change the titles so that our community can access these policies online Quickly and efficiently and they align with other districts. So that is simply what this is This is an opportunity for us to switch those titles over however, we still have some work ahead of us and specifically this summer around really updating the content. But in the meantime, it's important that our community has access. So that is what this agenda item is. I'm happy to take any questions.

[13523] Nancy Thomas: I would suggest that unless there's no questions, that we approve it on the first reading. So I would entertain a motion for that.

[13537] Kat Jones: I'll make a motion to approve. This agenda item. Do I need to state it? And waive the second reading. Thank you.

[13550] Nancy Thomas: I'll second. Miss? Who's going to second it? OK. Diego? No, no, no. Phoung seconded it. Phoung seconded it. Oh, well, first I need to repeat the motion. It was, motion was made by Member Jones and seconded by Member Nguyen. And just so I don't forget, Student Member Torres, how do you vote?

[13581] Bowen Zhang: Yes.

[13582] Nancy Thomas: Please vote.

[13587] SPEAKER_19: Thank you.

[13601] Jodi Croce: Thank you. Votes are in. Five ayes.

12.2 Memorandum of Understanding between CSEA and NUSD Concerning Compensation

[13604] Nancy Thomas: The next item is a memorandum of understanding between CSEA and NUSD concerning compensation.

[13615] Nicole Izant: Hello.

[13616] SPEAKER_28: Hello.

[13619] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Executive Director Ingham-Watters, would you please take this one?

[13623] SPEAKER_30: Sure. Thank you. So back in November, we came to an agreement with CSEA regarding all of the articles, but in particular, compensation. However, just this past April, we settled with our Teachers Association for a higher compensation package. And so this memo of understanding reflects our meet and confer and an increase to their compensation package that aligns with NTA. So just for review, a 10% salary increase this year, retroactive to the beginning of the year, a 2% salary increase July 1 of this upcoming school year, I mean school year, and an additional 4% in January of 2024.

[13677] Nancy Thomas: May I have a motion?

[13681] SPEAKER_28: I move to approve.

[13683] Kat Jones: I'll second.

[13684] Nancy Thomas: Member Nguyen moves to approve. Member Jones seconds, approving the MOU with CSEA and NUSD concerning compensation. Please vote. Oh, member, that's come. Is this personnel? Can he vote on that? No. OK, so please vote.

[13713] Jodi Croce: Thank you. Votes are in. 5-5.

12.3 Memorandum of Understanding between NEWMA and NUSD Concerning Compensation

[13714] Nancy Thomas: Okay. Next item, 12.3, an MOU between NEWMA and NUSD concerning compensation.

[13727] SPEAKER_28: Oh, I'm sorry.

[13730] SPEAKER_26: Go ahead.

[13732] SPEAKER_30: Similarly. We, the district, met and conferred with our NEWMA leadership, and so we have a memo of understanding, also with an increase to compensation that matches NTA, and as of a few seconds ago, CSEA.

[13754] Nancy Thomas: May I have a motion?

[13756] SPEAKER_28: I move to approve.

[13757] Nancy Thomas: I'll second. Member Nguyen moves to approve. Member Jones seconds. Item 12.3, MOU between NEWMA and NUSD. Please vote.

[13780] Jodi Croce: Vote's are in. Five aye.

13. CONSENT AGENDA: PERSONNEL ITEMS (Approved on Consent)

13.1 Personnel Report (Approved on Consent)

[13782] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Next, Consent Agenda Personnel Items. Item 13.1 is the Personnel Report. May I have a motion?

[13795] SPEAKER_28: I move to approve.

[13799] Nancy Thomas: I'll second. Member Nguyen moves to approve. Member Plancarte seconds. Please vote.

[13823] Jodi Croce: Votes are in. Five aye.

14. CONSENT AGENDA: NON-PERSONNEL ITEMS (Approved on Consent)

14.1 PLACEHOLDER - One Consented Vote (Approved on Consent)

14.2 Wellness Together Contract Extension (2023-2024) (Approved on Consent)

14.3 Agreement with Curriculum Associates, LLC for I-Ready Services (2023-2024) (Approved on Consent)

14.4 Service Agreement between NUSD and BaySci (2023-2024) (Approved on Consent)

14.5 Addendum to the Contract with Shalom Staffing (Approved on Consent)

14.6 Updated School Lunch Prices 2023-2024 (Approved on Consent)

14.7 Adult Education Community Classes Fee Increase (Approved on Consent)

14.8 Signature Card - Mid Year Revision (Approved on Consent)

14.9 FIELD TRIP: Non-Curricular Trip for Coyote Hills Elementary Kinder through Fifth Classes to travel to Newark, CA (Approved on Consent)

14.10 FIELD TRIP: Curricular and Non-Curricular Trip for Kennedy Elementary Fifth Grade Class to travel to Newark, CA (Approved on Consent)

14.11 REPORT: Warrant Report for April 2023 (Approved on Consent)

14.12 MINUTES: Minutes of the May 4, 2023 Regular Meeting of the Board of Education (Approved on Consent)

[13824] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Next, we move on to the consent agenda, non-personnel items. I would ask for, unless any member wishes to pull or any member of the public is asked to pull any of these items. Seeing none, I would ask for a motion to approve item 14.2 through 14.12. I'll make a motion to approve. Member Jones makes a motion to approve. I'll second. And member Plancarte seconds. Student member? Yes. Please vote.

[13877] Jodi Croce: Votes are in. Five aye.

15. STUDENT EXPULSION

15.1 Readmission of Student Expulsion (Ed Code. § 48918) Case# e2122-017

[13881] Nancy Thomas: Next, we move on to student expulsions. discuss this in closed session, and I would ask for a motion to approve the staff recommended placement.

[13897] Phuong Nguyen: I move to approve the recommendation to re-admit the student into NUSD as it relates to the expulsion case E2122-17. I second.

[13912] Nancy Thomas: I'll make some motion. Member Hill seconds. Please vote.

[13932] Jodi Croce: Votes are in. Five ayes.

16. BOARD OF EDUCATION: COMMITTEE REPORTS, ANNOUNCEMENTS, REQUESTS, DEBRIEF AND DISCUSSION

16.1 Appointment of Board Representative to Committees

[13934] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Next, 16, board. of Education Committee Reports, Announcements, Requests, and Debrief.

[13944] Maria Huffer: Pardon?

[13949] Nancy Thomas: Oh, I'm sorry, 15.1. Oh, that's right, sorry. 16.1, Appointment of Board of Representatives to Committee. And I can understand why you are interested in this one because Member Plancardi's vote or name is not on this list. So we have a list of committees, and we certainly would like our newest member to be on one or more committees. So how should we proceed on this?

[13993] Carina Plancarte: I mean, I see that there is no alternate for the Mission Valley ROP. So I mean, I can be an alternate.

[14003] Nancy Thomas: I would think that would be a good idea. Thank you.

[14006] Aiden Hill: Are there any people who want to give up any position?

[14012] Kat Jones: I would like to give up, I'm on three different as the representative in the first category. There's not much to do at this point, but the bond parcel tax committee, I would be happy to give that up so that she has one, so that member Plancarte has a representative and an alternate position. It's not much, but.

[14037] Carina Plancarte: I'm OK with that. OK.

[14041] Nancy Thomas: It may become a big, important one.

[14044] Carina Plancarte: Thank you for the gift. Thank you for the gift. You don't have to take it.

[14048] Kat Jones: It's OK. I won't force it on you.

[14052] Carina Plancarte: It's OK. I'll take it, blindly.

[14056] Phuong Nguyen: Are there any other changes? Would you consider taking any alternate positions for either SELPA or EBIC, member Plancarte? either SELPA or the Regional Policy Board of Special Education, or the Newark Teacher Induction Advisory. There hasn't been any meetings so far. Would you like to be an alternate for any of those?

[14083] Kat Jones: We don't have to take any since that other one's potentially really big.

[14089] Carina Plancarte: Which one?

[14090] Phuong Nguyen: The bond partial tax.

[14090] Kat Jones: The bond one, if it becomes really, you know, I'll take another alternative if the induction one's

[14101] Carina Plancarte: OK, I'll take the induction for $1,000.

[14109] Phuong Nguyen: Well, since you're trying to remove me from the alternate, I can't give you $1,000. So I'll just stay on the committee.

[14117] Carina Plancarte: I'll take the induction for $0.

[14119] SPEAKER_19: Thank you.

[14120] Nancy Thomas: Ms. Croce, have you figured all that out?

[14128] Jodi Croce: I believe I have. Thank you. So it feels like everybody's got three, a couple of alternates and at least one committee.

[14134] Nancy Thomas: OK. Could you read them and then we can make a blanket vote on it just to make it official?

[14140] Jodi Croce: Sure. So you want me to cover the entire chart so that it's updated? Sure. So what we have now is Mission Valley, the ROP. We have the representative will be Nancy Thomas and the alternate will be Carina Plancarte. For the Regional Policy Board Special Education, SELPA, that will remain the same. Katherine Jones is the representative, and Phuong Nguyen is the alternate. For the Newark Teacher Induction Advisory Council, formerly EBIC, the representative will remain, Member Hill. The alternate will be Member Plancarte. For the Audit Committee, there are no changes. Member Hill and Member Jones remain the representatives. Member Nguyen remains the alternate. For the bond parcel tax, the representative will remain Member Nguyen and Member Jones. Wait, no, no, no, I got it. You're good, you're right. So for the bond parcel tax, excuse me, Member Nguyen will remain. And member Plancarte will replace member Jones. And the alternate will remain member Hill. And for the city of Newark liaison committee, the representatives will remain member Wynn, member Thomas, and the alternate will remain member Jones.

[14231] Kat Jones: I would just like to state that if the bond parcel tax becomes too much for a mother of small children, and I don't have small children to work with. We'll do some adjustments if the time arises, because I have more free time.

[14251] Carina Plancarte: OK. Thank you for being so thoughtful. I appreciate that.

[14255] Kat Jones: No problem. I wasn't thinking about that when I suggested it.

[14258] Nancy Thomas: OK, Member Nguyen.

[14259] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you, President Thomas. So for the City of Newark liaison committee, we had just temporarily decided to hold off on meeting until our new superintendent has been appointed. So we have appointed our new superintendent. So we would like to make that reconnection with the City of Newark.

[14288] Nicole Pierce-Davis: We can absolutely do that. In fact, they've invited me to their next meeting. So I think I'm going to that. And so I think that is just going to happen. So we'll start to get some dates.

[14297] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. Thank you. So could someone move that those appointments that were just read out be approved?

[14308] Aiden Hill: I move that the appointments that we just read out be approved.

[14313] Nancy Thomas: I'll second them. Member Hill makes the motion and Member Jones seconds. Please vote.

[14320] Jodi Croce: We'll do this one as a roll call. It wasn't set up. So my apologies for that. So roll call vote. Member Torres, how do you vote? Yes. Member Nguyen, how do you vote?

[14332] SPEAKER_28: Yes.

[14332] Jodi Croce: Member Plancarte, how do you vote? Yes. Member Jones, how do you vote? Yes. Member Hill, how do you vote? Yes. And Member Thomas, how do you vote? Yes. Thank you.

16.2 Board of Education Committee Reports, Announcements, Requests, Debrief and Discussion

[14343] Nancy Thomas: OK, we move on to 16.2, Board of Education Committee Reports, Announcements, Requests. We'll begin with Member Torres.

[14358] Diego Torres: To start off, the College and Career Center person who's in charge of it, Dr. Mr. Rich, I think he goes by. Sorry, he's very new. I met him a couple of times. He wants to invite all of you to the award tonight on May 23. I have no idea what day of the week that is. Let's see. May 23rd. That's Tuesday. So next Tuesday, and it starts at 6.30, and it's going to be the old gym. He says to arrive at 6 o'clock, and you won't be required to do a speech. I guess he wanted to make that clear. And so that will be next Tuesday in the old gym. And so also, I would like to request, like, as this is my last board meeting, to everyone have a great summer, have a great time in the nice weather, enjoy the weather. I feel like we're always stuck in here, so let's go outside. Let's get some nice weather. Ms. Kochi, I hope you get some fresh air. You've worked so hard over there with the computer typing away. And so I hope everyone just has a really good time. And I hope to see all of you at graduation.

[14417] Phuong Nguyen: Member Nguyen. Thank you. I just wanted to really appreciate our student board member, Diego Torres, for all the hard work and dedication that he's put into being on the board with us and as a member of our team. And like you said, there was a learning curve and I think that you've surpassed it and you have been very complimentary to the rest of the board members and your student perspective And your advocation for the students is something that I truly admire about you, Diego. So I'm super proud of you. And I'm super proud of where you're going to be headed next year, wherever you decide. And I know that you definitely work hard with your schooling and academics. And you will be a huge success wherever you land. So I have total confidence in that in you. And I'm super, super proud. But I do have two requests. The first request is I would like information regarding employee evaluation process and policies related to each bargaining unit. So in addition, it's a request for information about training processes provided to classified staff, including maintenance, recess monitors, and our paraprofessionals. For the request is that I as well as the community members would like to be more aware of the process the district is following with regards to providing our staff the tools they need to provide a safe environment for all of our students. This information can be sent to the board via email or if staff would prefer to do a staff report. But that's my ask and I hope that our fellow board members are in agreement.

[14535] SPEAKER_21: Could I ask for clarification? Sure. Training for, could you list the training again? Training for who?

[14544] Phuong Nguyen: For classified staff. I know that we talk a lot about PDs for certificated employees, but we never really talk about training for our classified staff. So I just want to make sure that all of our staff have proper tools to be able to do their work and also to be able to keep our site safe. So that's the request.

[14569] Nancy Thomas: OK. I think there's a consensus. Depending on how much time that takes, we'll be flexible with when staff has to get back to us on those things.

[14580] Phuong Nguyen: Yeah, there's no, I just, it's a flexible request. And again, it doesn't need to be reported out. It could just come to us. Yeah, emails. Thank you. Did you have a second request? That was an add-on. Yeah, sorry.

[14596] Carina Plancarte: Ms. Blanco. Thank you. I just really want to thank Olivia. I see you there. I attended, along with Member Jones and Nancy, the Special Olympics event. And that was just so great to see. It just made me feel so good that we are so active in ensuring that we're providing such program and participation to our students. It really does. increase the equity for all, which is so important. So thank you so much for the invitation. It was great to see that, see the community members, the students, the families. It made me so proud and it warmed my heart. And then just to recap on the Staff Appreciation Week, it was so great to see, you know, the teachers really being appreciated and it was so fun. My kids and along with their friends, they had such a fun time with that. So that's wonderful. And then also the, as a mom, I went to the Ardenwood field trip with the first graders just yesterday, and that was so great to see the participation and, you know, I guess it's not really, I don't know if it's a request, I'm not quite sure where this lands, but during the presentation, and I apologize, I didn't ask during, while they were here, the presenters, but it really just, I guess what are the barriers that are in place and how can we overcome them so that more of the elementary schools are participating in the field trips? I noticed that the upper levels there's 100% participation. I didn't see that with the lower grades. And I know that our community is very much wanting to see these initiatives more and more for all students. So I'm not sure if this falls under a quest or not, but it's just really just to get more information about really what the future looks like and really implementing it and providing access and what are the barriers. And then another thing that I I would also like to, you know, there's some flexibility there is I understand that the intervention funding was removed from the LCAP. And really, I just want to understand like what is going to take place. You know, I have a son who's participated in intervention. And it's really just a matter of wanting to understand like how that's going to impact our families and our teachers. And so, again, I'm not sure exactly how that ties into a request, but just what's going to happen. What does the future look like with LCAP not having approved intervention funding and how that's going to impact our students and our teachers and overall the equity for all the students who need that the most.

[14771] Nicole Pierce-Davis: That's going to be a board report, the whole LCAP huge reduction in funds, but you'll find all that.

[14781] Kat Jones: I too would also like to thank Olivia for the opportunity to come to the Special Olympics. I had Delilah with me and she thoroughly enjoyed being there and watching the kids and playing with Miss Rangel's son. So I appreciated that very much. It was a fabulous day and I wish we could have stayed longer because it was a lot of fun. So thank you for that. I have two, I have a question. I'm not quite sure if it's really a request or a question. I know that we have robotics at the 8th grade level and then the STAR lab is really, or the STAR program is set up for 11th and 12th grades. What are we doing to bridge 8th grade and 11th grade for those kids who take robotics in 8th grade? And then what is there for them to keep them on that pathway in 9th and 10th before they can get into those upper division classes? So that's something that I would really like to have us look into. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm yeah, I know it's going to take some time, but I think it's important to to really to build that and to make that happen for the students that gets, you know, really hooked in in the junior high level, and then they have to wait two years. And that's such a letdown.

[14873] Diego Torres: Well, I'm sorry, I'm at our school, we do have the rocketry club and robotics. So I know those are very active clubs, because there's some clubs that aren't very active. So if they want to, they could join those clubs, because they're very cool and they can continue that foundation. As for classes, though, they have to continue to wait. So I think we can look for room for that. But for clubs, there are rocketry and robotics at our campus.

[14894] Kat Jones: OK. And any grade level? Yeah, anyone can join. Fabulous. That's great. That's a good start to keep those kids motivated. The other thing that I have been thinking a lot about is, The name, what is going to be our name? What are we thinking about in terms of the middle school? We call it Newark Junior High, but it's a middle school. And I feel like we've gone for a year now, and it seems to me that it would be really important to have a new name for that school. I don't know if we can do it for next school year, because I think it's important to get student buy-in. With that, our community buy-in, but I really think we need to move forward on this. It's not something that we should wait too much longer to do.

[14946] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Then on here, I'll send everybody the board policy around school naming and then we'll have a conversation. Great. Thank you. You're welcome.

[14957] Aiden Hill: So, committee reports? None. Announcements? Diego, just want to thank you for your service this year. So as you've noted, it's just in general hard being a board member, but I think particularly so if you're also a high school student with a full course load and APs and applying to colleges. And so thank you for all of your service. And I hope that you will proudly wear this swag at UCLA next year. It's UCLA, right? Yeah, there you go. OK. All right. Excellent. So that's my announcement. And then my request, I have two requests. So the first one is we've had members of the public come and speak about the vacation issue. And this is the second time that this issue has come up. And I know that we've briefly discussed it in closed session. But I think it's a really important issue. And I'd like for us to take a second look at it in closed session. So that's my first request. OK, and then my second request is piggybacking on member Plancarte. So over the past year, maybe even longer, I've had a number of teachers reach out to me through email and talk about the intervention issue and needing additional support. And I know that in some of the presentations that we've seen where we've looked at i-Ready data, and we've looked at the fact that over time, we have We have challenges with maintaining performance. And anecdotally, I know that a lot of the teachers are feeling that at least one root cause could be language. And I certainly know from my own training that there's a lot of studies out there that talk about how there's a difference between playground language and academic language. And that if you don't have that acquisition, and if the only place that you get it is at school, and you're not able to get it, that's one of the reasons why kids fall further and further behind. And so I'd like to make sure that we really, at the end of the day there could be multiple root causes, but I don't want us to just maybe ignore this because I've heard this from a number of different sectors that this could be an important differentiator in helping our kids stay on track and help them thrive and succeed. So that's my second request. And it's not really an urgent issue, but I think that we, I just want us to look at it.

[15125] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. I would like to also mention Ms. Rangel's work to get all of our students to the Special Olympics. It was fun. I enjoyed it. Congratulations on that. I went to college and career night. I enjoyed that. And ROP student awards this week. And we just had an ROP meeting. Can you come and tell us what experiences you had at ROP and about the award?

[15170] SPEAKER_12: For ROP, it was actually a really good experience. I got to meet a lot of new people. I really like that program because I got to meet people from other schools, so expanded some new people. I personally take the construction course. A lot of people like think it's funny to me, like they all make fun of me. But it's actually really good for learning life skills that you need. And so far, it's been a really good experience. I was honored to get not just the student of the year, but I got the scholarship as well. So that was really great.

[15201] Nancy Thomas: Thank you. By the way, there were very few scholarships given, given the number of students that were given awards. So that's really a nice achievement and a nice recognition. Thank you.

[15215] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you. Congratulations, Shane. And trade skills are in demand, so I think you're doing the right thing.

[15226] Diego Torres: Wait, Ms. Thomas, I'm kind of upset that you didn't include the photo with us in the presentation. You were in one of the photos, so you can include that.

[15235] Nancy Thomas: You were in the photo.

[15236] Diego Torres: I was, but so was Ms. Thomas. There was another photo. You should have been in that one, too. I got to spread the love, you know, got to enjoy the photos too.

[15246] Nancy Thomas: Okay, anyway, so anyway, I was just at an ROP meeting today and we approved the superintendent's evaluation. He gave us a real detailed list of all of his accomplishments or the ROP's accomplishments over this year and their budget and it's looking good, but he wants me to lobby the district for pass-through funding, COLA, to give COLA in the pass-through funding. But that's another thing.

[15282] SPEAKER_19: She's like, oh no, no, no.

[15287] Nancy Thomas: Actually, ROP has a very healthy Reserve and its finances are in very good shape because of its CTIG grant and workforce grant that it's gotten. So it's not urgent or anything. But maybe in the future, if those grants don't come through, we'll be in trouble. But anyway, so hey, thanks, everyone. It's been a great end of year so far and still more to come. And I'm looking forward to all those celebrations and promotions and graduations. awards ceremonies.

[15326] SPEAKER_28: One more request, sorry.

[15328] Phuong Nguyen: Sure. So I know that when we look at calendars for the end of the year, we have a board meeting and I have eighth grade promotion, so I'm going to be late to the June 1st meeting, but I think when we have dates that are coming up for any of the, you know, promotional stuff and graduation that it, or even big events, you know, like music events at the junior high or any important event that the board would like to come or go to or be present at. I think it's really important that it doesn't coincide with our board meetings. And I know that we're going to be moving them to Tuesday, so hopefully it will have lesser of an impact for next year. But just something to keep in mind. So it's really not a request, And then lastly, I just really want to appreciate all of our parent participation, all of our parent groups, the PTSAs and the PTOs at all of the sites, the elementary school and the junior high and the high school. There are so many things that they do all year long, fundraising and helping volunteering in classrooms and and then also helping out at the end of the year and really making this month really special for all of our teachers during teacher appreciation and staff. And I just wanna really wanna just to say thank you parents for all the hard work that you are committed to throughout the school year for your student, not only for your own child, but for all of the kids that are at the sites and throughout the district. So thank you for that. And then lastly, thank you to our executive staff and our teachers and all of our staff. Thank you for all your dedication and hard work. And we're almost there at the end.

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

17.1 Superintendent's Concluding Comments, Updates, and Future Agenda Items

[15446] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Superintendent, your final thoughts. Since we were speaking of big events, I do want to remind everybody that our retirement longevity reception is tomorrow. If you're watching at home, it's going to be at the Newark Community Center on Cedar at 430, from 430 to 6 tomorrow. And come help us celebrate all of our amazing employees who have dedicated sometimes your entire life to a school district. And let's celebrate them and also those who have put in different terms of longevity, five years, 10 years, 20, 25. You might know some of those people. So come on out tomorrow, Newark Community Center at 430. And then also, Nicole has an answer about the question about the field trips and the difference in the number of kids going to field trips. So, oh, yes. Oh, you want to do it in a board report? We can do a board report? OK. All right. Then that's it for me. Everybody, thank you for a wonderful meeting. Thank you to everybody who's, I'm sorry. We're pointing this up.

[15515] SPEAKER_21: I'm sorry. Oh, yes. The switch. The switch, yes. I don't. Oh. Come on up.

[15543] Joy Lee: Hello, everybody. My name is Joy. And I'll be the new board member next year. I look forward to working with each and every one of you. And I'm attending meetings every Tuesday.

[15555] SPEAKER_19: All right. Yay.

[15558] Nicole Pierce-Davis: Thank you. Well, welcome aboard, Joy. Welcome. We're excited to have you.

[15563] Joy Lee: Thank you.

18. ADJOURNMENT

18.2 Adjournment

[15565] Nancy Thomas: That is it. All right. With that, may I have a motion to adjourn?

[15570] Diego Torres: I will motion to adjourn the meeting.

[15572] Nancy Thomas: Diego motions to adjourn. I'll second. And Kat seconds. Please vote. Members, Torres? Yes. Give me a second. Can you do a roll call vote, please?

[15591] Jodi Croce: Yes, we can do a roll call vote. So, uh, Member Torres, how do you vote?

[15597] Diego Torres: Happily, yes.

[15600] Jodi Croce: And, uh, Member Nguyen? Yes. Member Plancarte? Yes. Member Jones? Yes. Member Hill? Yes. Member Thomas? Yes. It's unanimous.

1.1 Meeting Practices and Information (Not Found)

4. CLOSED SESSION (Closed Session)

4.1 Public Comment on Closed Session Items (Closed Session)

4.2 Recess to Closed Session (Closed Session)

4.3 PUBLIC EMPLOYEE DISCIPLINE/DISMISSAL/RELEASE (Gov. Code, § 54957, subd. (b)(1)) (Closed Session)

4.4 CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATORS (Gov. Code, § 54957.6, subd. (a)): Employee Group - NEWMA, Unrepresented Supervisors (Closed Session)

4.5 CONFERENCE WITH LEGAL COUNSEL ­ EXISTING LITIGATION (Gov. Code, § 54956.9, subd. (d)(1)) (Closed Session)

4.6 STUDENT EXPULSION (Ed. Code, § 48918) (Closed Session)

18.1 PLACEHOLDER - Extend Meeting (Not Found)

[320] 1. CALL TO ORDER

[328] 1.2 Roll Call

[343] 2. APPROVAL OF AGENDA

[343] 2.1 Approval of the Agenda

[405] 3. STUDY SESSION

[405] 3.1 Property Asset Management

[3992] 5. REPORT OF CLOSED SESSION ACTIONS

[3992] 5.1 Report of Closed Session Actions

[3992] 6. RECONVENE TO OPEN SESSION

[3992] 6.1 Pledge of Allegiance

[7676] 7. RECOGNITIONS AND CELEBRATIONS

[7676] 7.1 School Spotlight: Newark Jr High School

[9525] 8. EMPLOYEE ORGANIZATIONS

[9525] 8.1 Employee Organizations

[9525] 1. NTA

[9525] 3. NEWMA

[9651] 2. CSEA

[9932] 9. PUBLIC COMMENT

[9932] 9.1 Public Comment on Non-Agenda Items

[9932] 9.2 Public Comment on Agenda Items

[10640] 10. SUPERINTENDENT REPORT

[10640] 10.1 Superintendent Report

[11700] 11. STAFF REPORT

[11700] 11.1 STEAM Initiative Update (STAR and NewGO!)

[13456] 12. NEW BUSINESS

[13456] 12.1 POLICY UPDATE: Board Policies and Administrative Regulations Title Changes

[13604] 12.2 Memorandum of Understanding between CSEA and NUSD Concerning Compensation

[13714] 12.3 Memorandum of Understanding between NEWMA and NUSD Concerning Compensation

[13782] 13. CONSENT AGENDA: PERSONNEL ITEMS (Approved on Consent)

[13782] 13.1 Personnel Report (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14. CONSENT AGENDA: NON-PERSONNEL ITEMS (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14.1 PLACEHOLDER - One Consented Vote (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14.2 Wellness Together Contract Extension (2023-2024) (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14.3 Agreement with Curriculum Associates, LLC for I-Ready Services (2023-2024) (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14.4 Service Agreement between NUSD and BaySci (2023-2024) (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14.5 Addendum to the Contract with Shalom Staffing (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14.6 Updated School Lunch Prices 2023-2024 (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14.7 Adult Education Community Classes Fee Increase (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14.8 Signature Card - Mid Year Revision (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14.9 FIELD TRIP: Non-Curricular Trip for Coyote Hills Elementary Kinder through Fifth Classes to travel to Newark, CA (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14.10 FIELD TRIP: Curricular and Non-Curricular Trip for Kennedy Elementary Fifth Grade Class to travel to Newark, CA (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14.11 REPORT: Warrant Report for April 2023 (Approved on Consent)

[13824] 14.12 MINUTES: Minutes of the May 4, 2023 Regular Meeting of the Board of Education (Approved on Consent)

[13881] 15. STUDENT EXPULSION

[13881] 15.1 Readmission of Student Expulsion (Ed Code. § 48918) Case# e2122-017

[13934] 16. BOARD OF EDUCATION: COMMITTEE REPORTS, ANNOUNCEMENTS, REQUESTS, DEBRIEF AND DISCUSSION

[13934] 16.1 Appointment of Board Representative to Committees

[14343] 16.2 Board of Education Committee Reports, Announcements, Requests, Debrief and Discussion

[15446] 17. SUPERINTENDENT'S CONCLUDING COMMENTS, UPDATES FOR THE BOARD AND FUTURE AGENDA REQUESTS

[15446] 17.1 Superintendent's Concluding Comments, Updates, and Future Agenda Items

[15565] 18. ADJOURNMENT

[15565] 18.2 Adjournment

[99999] 1.1 Meeting Practices and Information (Not Found)

[99999] 4. CLOSED SESSION (Closed Session)

[99999] 4.1 Public Comment on Closed Session Items (Closed Session)

[99999] 4.2 Recess to Closed Session (Closed Session)

[99999] 4.3 PUBLIC EMPLOYEE DISCIPLINE/DISMISSAL/RELEASE (Gov. Code, § 54957, subd. (b)(1)) (Closed Session)

[99999] 4.4 CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATORS (Gov. Code, § 54957.6, subd. (a)): Employee Group - NEWMA, Unrepresented Supervisors (Closed Session)

[99999] 4.5 CONFERENCE WITH LEGAL COUNSEL ­ EXISTING LITIGATION (Gov. Code, § 54956.9, subd. (d)(1)) (Closed Session)

[99999] 4.6 STUDENT EXPULSION (Ed. Code, § 48918) (Closed Session)

[99999] 18.1 PLACEHOLDER - Extend Meeting (Not Found)

1. CALL TO ORDER

Meeting Practices and Information

Type Procedural IN-PERSON MEETING INFORMATION:

NUSD has opened its boardroom for in-person meetings and will follow the State's and Alameda County's safety guidelines for public gatherings. Please refrain from attending in-person meetings if you have any of the following symptoms: Loss of taste/smell Difficulty breathing Vomiting Diarrhea Fever Cough Headache Sore Throat Runny Nose For additional COVID-19 information please go to https://www.newarkunified.org/covid-19 or https://www.acoe.org/guidance

OBSERVE THE BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING:

Members of the public may observe the meeting via the NUSD YouTube Channel, live transmission on Comcast Channel 26, or in-person at the NUSD Boardroom. Spanish translation will be available via Zoom.

PUBLIC COMMENT:

The public will have the opportunity to address the Board of Education regarding non-agendized matters and agendized items with a live audio-only comment via Zoom with advance notice requested by email at PUBLICCOMMENT@newarkunified.org, a written comment by submitting a speaking card via email at PUBLICCOMMENT@newarkunified.org, or with live in-person comments by submitting a speaker-card with the Executive Assistant.

Roll Call

Type Procedural TRUSTEES:

President Nancy Thomas Vice President/Clerk Aiden Hill Member Katherine Jones Member Phuong Nguyen Member Carina V. Plancarte

STUDENT BOARD MEMBER:

Member Diego Torres

2. APPROVAL OF AGENDA

Approval of the Agenda

Type Action

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

PURPOSE:

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

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

Motion by Phuong Nguyen, second by Katherine Jones.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte
Not Present at Vote: Aiden Hill

3. STUDY SESSION

Property Asset Management

Type Discussion, Information PURPOSE:

To (1) review the process and options for considering how best to manage District real estate and (2) to provide the staff guidance regarding next steps.

BACKGROUND:

On June 16, 2022, the Board held a study session on the topic of managing , and Clarissa Canady from the DWK law firm presented the process and options for disposing of unused school properties. At that study session, the Board gave staff direction to pursue consulting services. Attached is the Request for Proposals (RFP) generated by staff in February 2023. This RFP is being shared as a point of reference only, and we are not asking the Board to approve it at this time. Given that nearly a year has passed since the Board has discussed this topic and there are now three new members of the Board, we are expecting to "start over" with a presentation from Ms. Canady and a preliminary discussion of board member questions and interests. We have asked Ms. Canady to broaden the scope of last year's presentation to include leasing options and potential agreements/partnerships with non-profit organizations.

As further background, in the fall of 2018, the District hired Plum Architects to examine the prospect of moving the District Office to the Whiteford Building on the MacGregor Campus. At the April 4, 2019, board meeting, Plum Architects shared preliminary plans and an estimate of $4.2M in costs for the relocation. Staff believes that this cost estimate discouraged future pursuit of this course of action. Staff does not recommend moving the district office now or in the foreseeable future.

File Attachments RFP_02-2022-23_Property_Asset_Management_Consultant.pdf (236 KB)

4. CLOSED SESSION

Public Comment on Closed Session Items

Type Procedural PURPOSE:

The Board of Education encourages the community's participation in its deliberations and tries to make it convenient for members of the community to express their views to the Board.

If a constituent wishes to address the Board on any agenda item: In-Person Comment: please submit a completed speaker card to the Board's Executive Assistant before the start of the meeting, or prior to the calling of the section for public comment. Audio-Only Virtual Comment: please fill out a virtual speaker card via email at PUBLICCOMMENT@newarkunified.org by 1:00 PM the day of the meeting. Please label your email as " AUDIO-ONLY PUBLIC COMMENT" and include your name as it will appear on Zoom, your phone number, email address, and the agenda item number related to your comment.

Please see detailed instructions for public comment on the link: http://go.boarddocs.com/ca/nusd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C4Q2D4019F40

Recess to Closed Session

Type Procedural PURPOSE:

The Board will recess to Closed Session, and reconvene to Open Session on or about 7:00 p.m.

PUBLIC EMPLOYEE DISCIPLINE/DISMISSAL/RELEASE (Gov. Code, � 54957, subd. (b)(1))

Type Action, Information, Procedural

PURPOSE:

Information will be provided by the Superintendent and Executive Director of Human Resources.

CONFERENCE WITH LABOR NEGOTIATORS (Gov. Code, � 54957.6, subd. (a)): Employee Group - NEWMA, Unrepresented Supervisors

Type Action, Discussion, Procedural PURPOSE:

Information may be provided by the agency negotiator, the 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 � EXISTING LITIGATION (Gov. Code, � 54956.9, subd. (d)(1))

Type Action, Information, Procedural PURPOSE:

To discuss the following case(s): Byrd vs NUSD Case No. ADJ14828663.

STUDENT EXPULSION (Ed. Code, � 48918)

Type Information, Procedural PURPOSE:

For the Board to review expulsion case that is eligible for readmission.

BACKGROUND:

The following expulsion are up for readmission. Staff recommends the following actions:

e2122- 17 - Re-Admit.

5. REPORT OF CLOSED SESSION ACTIONS

Report of Closed Session Actions

Type Action, Procedural

PURPOSE:

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

6. RECONVENE TO OPEN SESSION

Pledge of Allegiance

Type Procedural PURPOSE:

The Governance Team will recite the Pledge of Allegiance

7. RECOGNITIONS AND CELEBRATIONS

School Spotlight: Newark Jr High School

Type Information PURPOSE:

The School Spotlight gives the Board of Education and the public an opportunity to hear the highlights, achievements, and initiatives at each school from the principals.

BACKGROUND:

The presentation and information will be provided by Newark Jr High School Principal, Richelle Piechowski.

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

2. CSEA

3. NEWMA

9. PUBLIC COMMENT

Public Comment on Non-Agenda Items

Type Procedural

PURPOSE:

The Board of Education encourages the community's participation in its deliberations and tries to make it convenient for members of the community to express their views to the Board.

If a constituent wishes to address the Board on any agenda item: In-Person Comment: please submit a completed speaker card to the Board's Executive Assistant before the start of the meeting, or prior to the calling of the section for public comment. Audio-Only Virtual Comment: please fill out a virtual speaker card via email at PUBLICCOMMENT@newarkunified.org by 1:00 PM the day of the meeting. Please label your email as " AUDIO-ONLY PUBLIC COMMENT" and include your name as it will appear on Zoom, your phone number, email address, and the agenda item number related to your comment.

Please see detailed instructions for public comment on the link: http://go.boarddocs.com/ca/nusd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C4Q2D4019F40

Public Comment on Agenda Items

Type Procedural

PURPOSE:

The Board of Education encourages the community's participation in its deliberations and tries to make it convenient for members of the community to express their views to the Board.

If a constituent wishes to address the Board on any agenda item: In-Person Comment: please submit a completed speaker card to the Board's Executive Assistant before the start of the meeting, or prior to the calling of the section for public comment. Audio-Only Virtual Comment: please fill out a virtual speaker card via email at PUBLICCOMMENT@newarkunified.org by 1:00 PM the day of the meeting. Please label your email as " AUDIO-ONLY PUBLIC COMMENT" and include your name as it will appear on Zoom, your phone number, email address, and the agenda item number related to your comment.

Please see detailed instructions for public comment on the link: http://go.boarddocs.com/ca/nusd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C4Q2D4019F40

10. SUPERINTENDENT REPORT

Superintendent Report

Type Information

PURPOSE:

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

BACKGROUND:

The presentation and information will be provided by the Superintendent

11. STAFF REPORT

STEAM Initiative Update (STAR and NewGO!)

Type Information PURPOSE:

Present the highlights of the activities of NUSD's STEAM Initiative, specifically updates on STAR and NewGO! initiatives in 22-23.

BACKGROUND:

The STEAM Resolution of 2018 laid the foundation for the STEAM Initiative established in 2020. Two components of the STEAM Initiative are: STAR & NewGO!

Newark Goes Outdoors (NewGO!) is grounded in the Newark USD Environmental Literacy Plan. Its vision states: All students will have access to high-quality environmental literacy learning experiences based in inquiry, reflection, and real-life applications, utilizing safe and available outdoor spaces (e.g. school gardens, parks adjacent to schools) that engage students in engineering and design thinking to prototype solutions for real-world environmental justice issues in the community.

Science Technology Aerospace and Robotics (STAR) is focused on the establishing a TK-12 focus on computer science by developing computational thinking and engineering. In 22-23, the STAR Elementary Cohort was established. It's main goal was to support the teachers who enrolled in "Creating Conditions for Equity through Computer Science" and provide on-going professional learning opportunities elementary classroom teachers. Through this school year, the Tech TOSA under the supervision of the Program Administrator for Science, provided group and/or individualized mentoring to elementary classroom teachers. They both presented at all six elementary staff meetings, and collaborated with teachers who showed an interest in integrating computational thinking, unplugged computer science activities, and/or coding into their classroom instructional design. Three teachers will share their experience working with the Tech TOSA and describe the impact of the unplugged computer science activities and coding on their students. By supporting students in accessing computer science principals early through elementary activities and makerspaces and middle school robotics and coding classes, Educational Services aims to reduce gendered and racial disproportionality in students who enroll in classes such as AP Computer Science and who ultimately earn their Certificate of Code in high school.

File Attachments

Highlights_ STAR & NewGO! 22-23.pdf (32,551 KB)

12. NEW BUSINESS

POLICY UPDATE: Board Policies and Administrative Regulations Title Changes

Type Action, Procedural

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Board Policy and Action Administrative Regulation title changes, as presented, to align with California School Board Association titles. PURPOSE:

The purpose is for the Board of Education to review the recommended title changes and approve the updated titles for the board policies and administrative regulations as presented.

BACKGROUND:

This is the FIRST reading of the attached policies and regulations. The title changes are sanctioned by the California School Board Association (CSBA). It is important to note that staff is proposing changes in titles only, not changes to any of the content of these policies and administrative regulations.

In October of 2020, CSBA announced a transition to a new Board Policy platform, GAMUT Policy Plus. This platform is an upgrade to and replacement for our previous Manual Maintenance service. GAMUT Policy Plus includes new features that make it simple, fast and effective to manage and update board policies.

The GAMUT Policy Plus platform relies on consistent policy titles and numbering across all districts. This allows CSBA to push updates directly to us, makes it simple for us to edit and adopt policy updates into our manual and allows CSBA to maintain consistent Legal references and citations.

The titles presented here are from our old manual and do not match the titles that CSBA assigned to that policy number in the codification system that underpins GAMUT Policy Plus. As a result, the system did not recognize these policies when they were transferred from the old platform. These policies were imported as drafts and now need to be retitled to match the title that CSBA uses. (Note: Policy and regulation titles that begin with a "^" designate them as unique to Newark and will be updated with the symbol in the title).

The language and/or content of the policies and regulations presented here are not being updated at this time. Should any of these policies or administrative regulations need content updates, those policies will be reviewed by staff and brought back at a future meeting with recommended language changes.

File Attachments Board Policies and Administrative Regulations Title Changes-Pending Board Approval 05-18-2023.pdf (65 KB)

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Board Policy and Administrative Regulation title changes, as presented, to align with California School Board Association titles and waive the second reading.

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Phuong Nguyen.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

Memorandum of Understanding between CSEA and NUSD Concerning Compensation

Type Action

Absolute Date May 18, 2023

Budgeted Yes

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Memorandum of Action Understanding between CSEA and NUSD concerning compensation. PURPOSE:

The purpose is for the Board of Education to approve the Memoradum of Understanding (MOU) between CSEA and NUSD concerning compensation.

BACKGROUND:

The attached MOU between CSEA and the District changes CSEA's former salary increase agreement to align with NTA's salary increase.

On November 3, 2022, the Board of Education ratified the Collective Bargaining Agreement with CSEA, which included the following compensation:

Effective July 1, 2022, the CSEA bargaining unit salary schedule shall be increased ongoing by 6.5%. All retroactive amounts shall be paid by the second pay cycle following Board ratification.

Effective July 1, 2023, the CSEA bargaining unit salary schedule shall be increased ongoing by 3.5%.

In addition, CSEA members will receive a one-time off-schedule payment as follows:

     2022-2023 - 3% paid August 31, 2023.       To be eligible a bargaining unit member must be in paid status
     as of June 1, 2023
     2023-2024 - 3% paid August 30, 2024.       To be eligible a bargaining unit member must be in paid status
     as of June 3, 2024.

On April 20, 2023, the Board of Education ratified the Collective Bargaining Agreement with NTA, which included the following compensation for NTA members:

2022-2023 School Year: 10% increase retroactive to July 1, 2022. 2023-2024 School Year: Effective July 1, 2023 all bargaining unit salary schedules shall be increased by 2%. Effective January 1, 2024 all bargaining unit salary schedules shall be increased by 4%.

File Attachments Signed MOU RE CSEA Compensation April 2023.pdf (405 KB) NUSD 2022-23 AB1200 Collective Bargaining Board Letter FINAL.pdf (328 KB) AB1200_CSEA and NEWMA 22-23-24.pdf (799 KB)

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Memorandum of Understanding between CSEA and NUSD concerning compensation.

Motion by Phuong Nguyen, second by Katherine Jones.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Carina V Plancarte
Abstain: Diego Torres

Memorandum of Understanding between NEWMA and NUSD Concerning Compensation

Type Action

Absolute Date May 18, 2023

Budgeted Yes

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Memorandum of Action Understanding between NEWMA and NUSD concerning compensation. PURPOSE:

The purpose is for the Board of Education to approve the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between NEWMA and NUSD concerning compensation.

BACKGROUND:

On April 20, 2023, the Board of Education ratified the Collective Bargaining Agreement with Newark Teachers Association (NTA), which included the following compensation for NTA members:

2022-2023 School Year: 10% increase retroactive to July 1, 2022. 2023-2024 School Year: Effective July 1, 2023 all bargaining unit salary schedules shall be increased by 2%. Effective January 1, 2024 all bargaining unit salary schedules shall be increased by 4%.

The attached MOU between NEWMA and the District will grant the same compensation.

File Attachments Signed MOU Re NEWMA Compensation May 2023.pdf (181 KB) NUSD 2022-23 AB1200 Collective Bargaining Board Letter FINAL.pdf (328 KB) AB1200_CSEA and NEWMA 22-23-24.pdf (799 KB)

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Memorandum of Understanding between NEWMA and NUSD concerning compensation.

Motion by Phuong Nguyen, second by Katherine Jones.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Carina V Plancarte
Abstain: Diego Torres

13. CONSENT AGENDA: PERSONNEL ITEMS

Personnel Report

Type Action

Absolute Date May 18, 2023

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education ratify the personnel report as presented. Action PURPOSE:

The purpose is for the Board of Education to ratify the Personnel Report as presented.

BACKGROUND:

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 05-18-2023.pdf (173 KB)

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education ratify the personnel report as presented.

Motion by Phuong Nguyen, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Carina V Plancarte
Abstain: Diego Torres

14. CONSENT AGENDA: NON-PERSONNEL ITEMS

PLACEHOLDER - One Consented Vote

Type Action

Recommended It is recommended that the Board of Education approve, under one consented vote, the Action agenda items under Consent Non-Personnel, except for agenda 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 the Consent Agenda are considered routine and will be approved, adopted, or ratified by a single motion and action. There will not be a separate discussion of these items; however, any item may be pulled from the Consent Agenda upon the request of any member of the Board and acted upon separately.

Motion & Voting It is recommended that the Board of Education approve, under one consented vote, the agenda items under Consent Non- Personnel.

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

Wellness Together Contract Extension (2023-2024)

Type Action

Fiscal Impact Yes

Dollar Amount $251,465.76

Budgeted Yes

Budget Source LCAP and MHSSA Grant Funds

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Wellness Together and Action HearYou.org Contract for 23-24. PURPOSE:

Staff is seeking the approval of Wellness Together contracts in alignment with the LCAP Goals and Actions (LCAP 2.8).

BACKGROUND:

As a result of engagement with numerous educational partners, LCAP PAC and District identified mental health and wellness as a priority for continued support in our LCAP for the 23-24 school year. The Community identified the following in their feedback:

 1. Ensure that ALL students in need have access to mental health services (vacancies, health insurance barriers, etc.) and
    increase the frequency of support from academic counselors.
 2. Continue to fund (increase and/or address vacancy issues that we experienced this year) in order to provide mental health
    services for ALL.
 3. Increase frequency of counselor-student conferences.

As a result of ESSER III funds in 2021-22, we developed a partnership with Wellness Together, a non-profit that places qualified Mental Health Clinicians in schools to provide 1:1, group, and classroom support for students. Schools, with Wellness Together clinicians, have reported positive impacts resulting from these services, and we hope to continue and expand this service in our schools. The following contract provides details about the contracts for Wellness Together for the 2023-24 school year.

File Attachments Wellness_Together_-_N.pdf (303 KB)

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Wellness Together and HearYou.org Contract for 23-24.

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

Agreement with Curriculum Associates, LLC for I-Ready Services (2023-2024)

Type Action

Fiscal Impact Yes

Dollar Amount $140,683.00

Budgeted Yes

Budget Source LCFF (LCAP & SPSA)

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the agreement with Curriculum Action Associates, LLC. Goals. PURPOSE:

This 2023-24 school year agreement will provide diagnostics and student licenses in English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics for Kindergarten through grade 8, as well as licenses for English Language Learners to use at the secondary level, grades 6-12. LCAP funds will be used to maintain I-Ready for grades K-6 as provided during the 2022-23 school year, and NJHS will contribute SPSA funds to pilot I-Ready in grades 7 and 8.

BACKGROUND:

I-Ready is a part of the district-wide progress monitoring assessment program. This is the eighth year of implementation of I- Ready; this continuity allows staff the ability to identify trends in student data results and adjust instructional planning accordingly at the site level. The cost for the district will be $140,683.00.

File Attachments Newark USD_updated_RepQuote307955.5.pdf (786 KB)

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the agreement with Curriculum Associates, LLC. Goals.

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

Service Agreement between NUSD and BaySci (2023-2024)

Type Action

Fiscal Impact Yes

Dollar Amount $55,000.00

Budgeted Yes

Budget Source LCAP Funds

Recommended The purpose is for the Board of Education to approve the Serivce Agreement between NUSD Action and BaySci for the 2023-2024 school year. PURPOSE:

The purpose of this item is for the Board of Education to approve the Service Agreement between the Regents of the University of California, Berkeley - Lawrence Hall of Science and Newark Unified School District. This Service Agreement outlines the services to be provided by BaySci for 2023-2024 to support district Science initiatives and curriculum development and implementation.

BACKGROUND:

BaySci at the Lawrence Hall of Science , University of California, Berkeley supports the development and deepening of district- wide capacities for equitable, high-quality science education and environmental literacy. BaySci is dedicated to leadership, innovation and excellence in STEM education and learning, and has a long history of addressing the needs of groups who are

situated at the margins of equitable, high-quality instruction in science, math, engineering, and environmental education.

In 2023-2024, BaySci will:

        1. Provide support for the Newark Unified School District (District) science/environmental literacy leadership team to
           develop an implementation plan for District wide coherence across these disciplines and in connection to other
           district initiatives and efforts overseen by the District Educational Services department.
        2. Provide support for partnerships with community-based organizations as part of a Districtwide, coherent
           science/environmental literacy program.
        3. Provide support for meaningful teacher collaboration, building off        District structures and lessons learned during
           COVID to sustain teacher collaboration around science, environmental literacy and computational thinking.

File Attachments Newark Issued PE5_5_23.pdf (239 KB)

Motion & Voting The purpose is for the Board of Education to approve the Serivce Agreement between NUSD and BaySci for the 2023-2024 school year.

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

Addendum to the Contract with Shalom Staffing

Type Action

Preferred Date May 18, 2023

Absolute Date May 18, 2023

Fiscal Impact Yes

Dollar Amount $48,960.00

Budgeted Yes

Budget Source Resource 6500 - Special Education

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education ratifies the addendum to the contract with Action Shalom Staffing. PURPOSE:

For the Board of Education to approve the addendum to the contract with Shalom Staffing.

BACKGROUND:

This is an addendum to the contract with Shalom Staffing adding a special education teacher for case management services for the Moderate Severe Program at Birch Grove Primary. While we were able to staff the class with a guest teacher, the case manager needs to hold the appropriate credentials to manage Individual Education Plans (IEP). The original contract was approved by the Board of Education on 8/4/22. An amendment to the contract was approved by the Board of Education on 8/18/22.

File Attachments Shalom Staffing_NUSD Contract 22-23 8-4-22.pdf (292 KB) Shalom Amendment 8-18-22.pdf (59 KB) Addendum Shalom Staffing 5-18-23.docx.pdf (49 KB)

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education ratifies the addendum to the contract with Shalom Staffing.

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

Updated School Lunch Prices 2023-2024

Type Action

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the updated fees for school Action meals, effective for the 2023-2024 school year, as presented. PURPOSE:

To increase school lunch prices in order to be in compliance with the 2023-2024 USDA Paid Lunch Equity Requirement. At this time, NUSD Child Nutrition is not meeting the required weighted average of $3.56.

BACKGROUND:

Regulation 7 CFR 210.14 (e) requires school food authorities (SFAs) participating in the National School Lunch Program to ensure sufficient funds are provided to the nonprofit school food service account for meals served to students not eligible for free or reduced-price meals. There are two ways to meet this requirement: changing the prices charged for "paid" meals, or through other non-Federal sources provided to the nonprofit school food service account.

Although students will continue to receive free meals based on the current California Department of Education guidance which allows for free meals to all students no matter their status, they are required to pay for their second meal. We are requesting to increase the prices for school lunches in order to remain in compliance with the USDA guidance from the Paid Lunch Equity tool. We are requesting that the all school second meal prices increase, which will put us in compliance with the current guidance.

Elementary School Second Lunch Prices will increase from $3.00 to $3.25 ($0.25 increase) Newark Junior High School Second Lunch Prices will increase from $3.50 to $3.75 ($0.25 increase) Newark Memorial High School Second Lunch Prices will increase from $3.75 to $4.00 ($0.25 increase)

Increasing lunch prices will increase revenues in the National School Lunch Program and that will ensure more monies to the nonprofit school food service account and allow them to avoid impinging on the general fund.

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the updated fees for school meals, effective for the 2023-2024 school year, as presented.

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

Adult Education Community Classes Fee Increase

Type Action

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Adult Education Community Action classes fee increases as presented. PURPOSE:

The purpose of the fee increases is to balance the budget.

BACKGROUND:

The majority of the Adult Education classes are free to students. The free classes are covered by the state's Adult Education Block Grant.

The Adult Community classes are the Adult Education program's fee-based classes Our Tole Painting is recognized as the longest-running adult education program in the country. Our Taiko program has entertained and educated our community for decades.

Measures are needed to make Adult Community Education fiscally solvent. Staff recommends a three (3) year fee structure that increases fees 5% over three years.

The last Adult Education Community Classes Fee Increase was approved by the Board of Education on November 6, 2018.

File Attachments Adult Ed Fees Increase_FY24 - 26_5 per cent over 3 years.pdf (19 KB)

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Adult Education Community classes fee increases as presented.

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

Signature Card - Mid Year Revision

Type Action

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Signature Card Mid-Year Action Revision for the Superintendent as presented. PURPOSE:

To update the Signature Card of Authorized Agents as required by the Alameda County Office of Education (ACOE) for the following: Payroll, Warrants, and Disbursements Official Documents and Reports

BACKGROUND:

The Board approved a contract for the District Superintendent of Schools at their May 8, 2023 meeting.

A mid-year revision to update the signature for the Superintendent of Schools is required by the ACOE.

The "Signature Card" is kept on file at the ACOE

File Attachments Signature Card_Mid Year_Payroll Warrants and Disbursements_Official Documents and Reports_Penelope DeLeon.pdf (124 KB)

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Signature Card Mid-Year Revision for the Superintendent as presented.

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

FIELD TRIP: Non-Curricular Trip for Coyote Hills Elementary Kinder through Fifth Classes to travel to Newark, CA

Type Action

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the non-curricular trip for Coyote Action Hills Elementary (kinder through fifth grade classes (Special Day Class) to Newark, CA (Mayhews Landing).

PURPOSE:

The Coyote Hills Elementary Principal requests permission to take Coyote Hills Elementary kinder through fifth graders on a non-curricular trip to Newark, CA. This will be a walking field trip for an End of Year picnic / transition activity for IEP.

     School: Coyote Hills Elementary
     Dates: May 22, 2023
     Location: Newark, CA (Mayhews Landing)

Additional requirements include the following:

     Grade K-3, one adult for every 5-8 students; Grades 4-12, one adult for every 10 students; Board Policy requires at least two adults
     on every trip regardless of the number of students (BP 6153 and AR 6153)
     No student will be denied due to a lack of funds

BACKGROUND:

According to Board Policy 6153, all trips in excess of 100 miles, non-curricular trips, and overnight trips require Board approval. Coyote Hills Elementary Principal requests permission to take Coyote Hills Elementary Kinder through Fifth Grade Classes on a non-curricular trip to Newark, CA.

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the non-curricular trip for Coyote Hills Elementary (kinder through fifth grade classes (Special Day Class) to Newark, CA (Mayhews Landing).

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

FIELD TRIP: Curricular and Non-Curricular Trip for Kennedy Elementary Fifth Grade Class to travel to Newark, CA

Type Action

Budgeted No

Budget Source Family Donations

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the non-curricular trip for Action Kennedy Elementary fifth grade class to Newark, CA.

PURPOSE:

The Kennedy Elementary Principal requests permission to take Kennedy Elementary fifth graders on a non-curricular trip to Newark,CA.
The students will be transported by private vehicle.

        School: Kennedy Elementary
        Dates: May 31, 2023
        Location: Newark, CA (AMC Theater)

Additional requirements include the following:

        Grade K-3, one adult for every 5-8 students; Grades 4-12, one adult for every 10 students; Board Policy requires at least two
        adults on every trip regardless of the number of students (BP 6153 and AR 6153)
        No student will be denied due to a lack of funds

BACKGROUND:

According to Board Policy 6153, all trips in excess of 100 miles, non-curricular trips, and overnight trips require Board approval.
Kennedy Elementary Principal requests permission to take Kennedy Elementary Fifth Grade Class on a non-curricular trip to Newark,
CA.

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the non-curricular trip for Kennedy Elementary fifth grade class to Newark, CA.

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

REPORT: Warrant Report for April 2023

Type Action

Fiscal Impact No

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Warrant Report as presented. Action

Purpose: The purpose of this item is to present warrants, for the total amount of $2,605,500.46, made from District funds for April 2023.

Background: The warrant registers represent a complete listing of all payments made from District funds for a month. Because Newark Unified School District is a fiscally dependent District, each warrant must pass through two separate audits; first by the District's Fiscal Services department, and second by the County Office of Education. No warrant can be paid until such time as it is examined and approved by the County Office of Education.

File Attachments Warrant Report April 2023.pdf (361 KB)

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the Warrant Report as presented.

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

MINUTES: Minutes of the May 4, 2023 Regular Meeting of the Board of Education

Type Action, Minutes

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the minutes of the May 4, 2023 Action Regular Meeting of the Board of Education.

Minutes View Minutes for May 4, 2023 - Regular Meeting of the Board of Education PURPOSE:

for the board to review and approve minutes of the May 4, 2023, Regular Meeting of the Board of Education.

BACKGROUND:

The attached minutes are reflective of the May 4, 2023, Regular Meeting of the Board of Education. The meeting may be viewed on the NUSD YouTube Channel HERE.

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the minutes of the May 4, 2023 Regular Meeting of the Board of Education.

Motion by Katherine Jones, second by Carina V Plancarte.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

15. STUDENT EXPULSION

Readmission of Student Expulsion (Ed Code. � 48918) Case# e2122-017

Type Action

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education readmit the student into NUSD as it Action relates to the Expulsion Case e2122-17. PURPOSE:

For the Board to take action on expulsion case e2122-17.

BACKGROUND:

California Education Code Section 48916 requires that "an expulsion order shall remain in effect until the governing board orders a
readmission of the pupil."

Motion & Voting The recommendation is that the Board of Education readmit the student into NUSD as it relates to the Expulsion Case e2122-17.

Motion by Phuong Nguyen, second by Aiden Hill.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Carina V Plancarte
Abstain: Diego Torres

16. BOARD OF EDUCATION: COMMITTEE REPORTS, ANNOUNCEMENTS, REQUESTS, DEBRIEF AND DISCUSSION

Appointment of Board Representative to Committees

                        AND DISCUSSION

Type Discussion PURPOSE:

To nominate and appoint a representative and/or alternate to committees that may not have one.

BACKGROUND:

Since last setting committee participants, the Board has appointed a new trustee, Member Carina Valencia Plancarte. Board Bylaw 9140:The Governing Board recognizes that effective performance of its community leadership responsibilities may require its participation in district or community committees on matters of concern to the district and its students. As needed, the Board may appoint any of its members to serve as its representative on a district committee or on a committee of another public agency or organization of which the Board or district is a member or to which the Board is invited to participate.

Board Committees 2022-23

Board Adopted on 12/15/2022 Representative Alternate

Mission Valley Regional Occupational Center/Program (ROC/P) 1. Nancy Thomas 1. Executive Board

Regional Policy Board of Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) 1. Katherine Jones 1. Phuong Nguyen

Newark Teacher Induction Advisory Council (Formally EBIC) 1. Aiden Hill 1. Phuong Nguyen

Audit Committee 1. Aiden Hill2. Katherine Jones1. Phuong Nguyen

Bond/Parcel Tax Committee 1. Phuong Nguyen2. Katherine Jones1. Aiden Hill

                                                                     1. Phuong Nguyen

City of Newark � NUSD Liaison Committee 2. Nancy Thomas 1. Katherine Jones

Board of Education Committee Reports, Announcements, Requests, Debrief and Discussion

                        AND DISCUSSION

Type Action, Discussion, Information

PURPOSE:

COMMITTEE REPORTS: The Trustees will provide an update, if available, on the committees of which they are members.

ANNOUNCEMENTS: The Trustees may acknowledge or recognize specific programs, activities, or personnel at this time.

REQUESTS: This is an opportunity for the Board of Education to suggest items for placement on future agendas and to review Board requests.

          Approval from the majority of the Board will be required for direction to be provided to the Superintendent.

DEBRIEF AND DISCUSSION: The Trustees may debrief and discuss items.

BACKGROUND:

Each year the Board of Education members liaise with schools and committees in order to build relationships, hear from staff, students, and families, and act as a conduit for information to and from the schools.

Board Committees 2022-23

Board Adopted on 12/15/2022 Representative Alternate

Mission Valley Regional Occupational Center/Program (ROC/P) 1. Nancy Thomas 1. Executive Board

Regional Policy Board of Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) 1. Katherine Jones 1. Phuong Nguyen

Newark Teacher Induction Advisory Council (Formally EBIC) 1. Aiden Hill 1. Phuong Nguyen The following derives directlyfrom the Board approved "Governance Team Handbook" Audit Committee 1. Aiden Hill2. Katherine Jones1. Phuong NguyenAuthority is Collective, Not Individual: Bond/Parcel Tax Committee 1. Phuong Nguyen2. Katherine Jones1. Aiden HillThe only authority to directaction rests with the Board asa whole when seated at a regular or special board 1. Phuong Nguyen meeting. Outside of this City of Newark � NUSD Liaison Committee 2. Nancy Thomas 1. Katherine Jones 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.

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

Superintendent's Concluding Comments, Updates, and Future Agenda Items

                        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.

18. ADJOURNMENT

PLACEHOLDER - Extend Meeting

Type Action

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education extends the meeting to ____ P.M. Action

PURPOSE:

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

Adjournment

Type Action

Recommended The recommendation is that the Board of Education adjourns this meeting. 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 the Board of Education adjourns this meeting.

Motion by Diego Torres, second by Katherine Jones.
Final Resolution: Motion Carries
Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Diego Torres, Carina V Plancarte

No minutes available.