Regular Meeting

Introduction

• Meeting Overview: Newark Unified School District Board Meeting held on 2024, addressing legal matters, budget updates, student concerns, technology upgrades, and program approvals. Key themes included fiscal responsibility, student wellness, and curriculum support.

Agenda Items

Closed Session & Opening Protocols

• Description:
  • Board recessed to closed session to discuss anticipated litigation (2 cases under CA Government Code 54956.9).
  • Approved a private school placement (tuition, transportation, and services ≤$150,000) for a student.
• Decisions Made:
  • Unanimous approval of private school placement.

Student Report

• Description:
  • Highlighted successful Club Rush event, fall sports, and homecoming preparations.
  • Raised concerns about broken bathrooms near the track (port-a-potties temporarily provided) and frequent class schedule changes.
• Follow-Up:
  • Facilities team addressing plumbing issues; repairs tied to track renovation project.

Employee Organization Updates

• NTA (Newark Teachers Association):
  • Filled executive board vacancies; clarified TK-8 ELA curriculum adoption (Amplify for middle school, delayed TK/K rollout).
• NEWMA (Administrators):
  • Emphasized staff retention, back-to-school nights, and student support systems.

Public Comments

• Key Themes:
  • Band Program: Lack of qualified director for 2nd year; students self-teaching. Superintendent noted recruitment efforts and interim substitutes.
  • Technology Concerns: Requests for durable devices (e.g., desktops for labs) and improved asset tracking.
  • Budget Transparency: Questions about fund commitments, ADA projections, and contract spending.

Financial Updates

• Unaudited Actuals (2023-2024):
  • Total revenues: $80.7M (+4.4% vs. budget).
  • Total expenditures: $81.2M (-1.8% vs. budget).
  • Ending fund balance: $33.8M (67% unrestricted).
• Committed Funds (2024-2025):
  • Allocated $14.1M for facilities, technology, enrollment strategies, and deficit reduction.

Technology Upgrades

• Server Refresh: Approved $131,982 for modernized servers/VMware licenses (cost-saving vs. renewal).
• Student Devices: Approved $170,116 for 370 Chromebooks for freshman take-home program.
• Concerns: Calls for competitive bidding, asset management, and prioritizing labs/desktops.

Puente Program Field Trip

• Approval: $17,000 for Southern California college tours (LCAP/ASB-funded).
• Follow-Up: Board requested future data on program outcomes and student eligibility criteria.

Public Comments

• Key Themes:
  • Urgency to address band director vacancy and ensure certificated instruction.
  • Fiscal accountability in technology purchases and contract transparency.
  • Support for equity-focused programs (e.g., Puente) while ensuring need-based prioritization.

Follow-Up and Commitments

1. Band Program: Principal to communicate interim solutions (guest artists, substitutes) to families.
2. Asset Management: Develop tracking system for Chromebooks; revise BP 6163.4 (student technology use).
3. Program Reviews: Puente and other initiatives (e.g., ELA adoption) to return with efficacy data.
4. Budget Adjustments: Present comparative analysis (budget vs. actuals) at first interim report.

Conclusion

• Outcomes: Approved technology upgrades, field trip, and financial reports.
• Next Steps: Focus on recruiting critical staff (band/choir), refining fiscal practices, and enhancing student support systems.
• Audience Focus: Parents/students assured of facility repairs; staff directed to prioritize teacher resources and program equity.

[95] Aiden Hill: Meeting to order at 6.01 PM. So roll call, Ms. Lemus.

[109] Toya Lemus: Member Thomas. Here. Member Nguyen.

[114] Toya Lemus: Member Plancarte. Here. Vice President Jones. Here. President Hill.

[118] Aiden Hill: Here. Great. OK, moving on to 1.2, meeting practices and information. Members of the public may observe the meeting via the NUSD YouTube channel or in person at the NUSD boardroom. Spanish translation will be available in person. Okay, so moving on to 1.3, public comment on closed session items. Do we have any public comment?

[141] Toya Lemus: No public comment available.

[143] Aiden Hill: Okay, great. Okay, so we're going to go move on to 1.4, recess to closed session. In closed session, we're going to be covering two items, 2.1, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, significant exposure to litigation pursuant to government code 54956.9, subdivision TD2, one case, and 2.2, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, significant exposure to litigation pursuant to government code 54956.9, subdivision D2, three cases. And with that, we're going to recess to closed session.

[4104] Aiden Hill: From closed session at 7 or 9 p.m. So we do have one item to report out. So regarding case number NUSD 2024-005, the board approved a private school placement for the 24-25 school year to include tuition, transportation, extended school year and speech services not to exceed $150,000. There was a motion to approve by Vice President Jones Member Plancarti seconded the motion, and the motion was unanimously carried. OK. So one second here, sorry. OK, so moving on to item 4.1, Pledge of Allegiance. If I could have everybody stand, please. Repeat after me. 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. OK. Moving on to meeting 4.2, meeting practices and information. Oops, hold on a second. Sorry. Okay. And as the public may recall, we as a board decided that rather than giving you a long speech, we wanted to talk about basically the protocols that we, the board, are abiding by and we hope that the members of the public that have joined us will join us in this spirit. So our protocols that we're holding each other accountable or one another accountable for are We will keep our focus on the best interest of our students, number one. Number two, we will work towards that future, learning from the past. Number three, we will stay focused on our goals and avoid getting sidetracked. Number four, we will build upon the ideas of others and look for common ground. We will paraphrase for understanding. Number five, when we have a difference of opinion, we will debate the facts of the situation and avoid personal criticism. We will address processes, not persons. And then finally, we will respect differences. We will never dismiss or devalue others. OK. So moving on to 5.1, approval of the agenda. Can I get a motion to approve? Go ahead.

[4271] Tracey Vackar: Staff would like to ask for an amendment on, one, just to be able to alert district and board that on Saturday before the 72 hour notice, we did update the unaudited actuals. So we added a revised version of that to the board agenda. And then also on number 10.4, we're going to ask that the board, at the time this item comes up, we would like to be able to amend the dollar amount. We received a quote that has a little bit of a discount to it. For which item? For 10.4.

[4301] Aiden Hill: For 10.4.

[4302] Phuong Nguyen: I was going to actually pull that one. or have questions because I added up the amount. It was different than what was being asked.

[4311] Aiden Hill: OK. Thank you. Great. OK. So with that, can I get a motion to approve the agenda?

[4317] Joy Lee: A motion to approve the agenda. I'll second.

[4320] Aiden Hill: OK. So do we want to do a roll call vote, Ms. Lemus, or do we want to do it through board docs?

[4328] Toya Lemus: We could do a roll call vote.

[4330] Aiden Hill: Roll call. OK, great. Student member Lee moves and was it member Plancarte that seconded? No, member Jones? Okay.

[4344] Toya Lemus: Member Lee? Yes. Member Thomas? Yes. Member Nguyen? Yes. Member Plancarte? Yes. Vice President Jones? Yes. President Hill?

[4355] Aiden Hill: Yes. Motion carries. Okay, moving on to 6.1, student report. Student member Lee, you have the floor.

[4365] Joy Lee: Thank you. Good evening, board, executive cabinet, and community. Last Friday, the Newark Memorial High School had our club rush, where about 60 clubs were able to participate. We had cultural clubs, hobby clubs, awareness clubs, as well as other clubs. Thank you to all the board members, if you guys were able to come, to come to this event. And also thank you to all the students who signed up and were excited to participate in these clubs. Overall, this club rush, I personally feel among not just me and many other students also feel that it was one of the best club rushes since COVID-19 because it was one of the most well-prepared. The posters were very nice. And I also wanted to recognize Kaylee Kong, a senior currently who organized this event. For our fall sports, our volleyball, football, and water polo games have all started. Any members are welcome to attend these games and support our Cougars. You should be able to find information on our website Next, tomorrow is the first race of the season for our MVAL opener for our cross country, which will be happening from 3.30 to 6 p.m. I wanted to bring awareness to our current bathroom situation where the bathrooms near our track and field have been broken now since late of last year. I didn't know if you guys were aware of this, but I just wanted to bring awareness to it. And with many more events coming with football, homecoming, soccer games, Amongst other things, I wanted to stress this problem and hope it gets repaired as soon as possible. Now for our upcoming events, this Friday the 6th, during lunch, we have our Top 40 celebration. So for those of you who don't know what Top 40 is, Top 40 is a history at Newark Memorial High School where the Top 40 students who have contributed the most to our school have are recognized and are celebrated as their loved ones are invited to walk the homecoming candidates down the stage as our activities director calls out their achievements. It's something that students who've been going since as a freshman, they look up to this moment and are really excited. So I wanted to, can we just give a moment and applaud these students? I won't call all their names because there's 40 of them, but just give an applause to them. Thank you. There are a couple in the room right now. Yes, there are a couple in the room right now. Including our student board members. Yes. Thank you. Yeah, for me personally, I'm really excited because I've been seeing the seniors do it every single year since I was a freshman. And I think it's a really great tradition. Next, on Friday the 13th is at 7 PM, 7 PM. The 13th on Friday, this 13th next week on Friday is our homecoming football game. Please, please, please show up. Where are Cougar colors, blue and yellow, so that we can show our spirit and pride. Then on Saturday is our homecoming dance, themed Be Our Guest. Tickets are on sale right now, and please buy them before they all run out. This homecoming dance theme is taking inspiration from Beauty and the Beast. And I mean, it's homecoming season. Everyone is so excited. But like our band, as you can see, there are students here. And what they'll be mentioning soon, they'll be talking about something else, which I don't want to get into it. But I also wanted to shed light on how at our high school currently, that classes for students, classes are still shifting. due to complications that students don't have control over, and they don't know why it's happening, but we're being the people that are most directly affected by it. And just to give an example, someone I know, ever since school started, their schedule has been switched three times already. And so I didn't know if you guys were aware of it, and I just wanted to use this position to share some light on that, of how it's really frustrating as a student, coming into this year and like having our schedules like switched around. So thank you for listening. Thank you.

[4629] Aiden Hill: Thank you student member. Questions from the board? So I do just have a follow-up question regarding the bathrooms. So do we know, Superintendent, if there's been a work order that's been submitted for this?

[4642] Tracey Vackar: There's not always been a work order, but there's actually been a contract that was awarded to be able to help us. The challenges have been greater than what we realized, and I think we are working on some alternative things you want to share with them.

[4655] Jose Quintana: So yes, we've addressed some of the issues dealing with the sewer, and that's basically what it is. But it's obviously something more research needs to be done, a little more trenching. So we're going to address that as this project gets underway for the track and field. During that span of time, we'll go ahead and make those repairs. But in the meantime, for any upcoming games, we'll have port-a-potties available for all students to use. But it's definitely in our crosshairs, and we'll address it.

[4686] Joy Lee: Do you guys know how many port-a-potties you guys will be providing?

[4690] Jose Quintana: We did check with Coach K, and she knows that number better than we do. So we have a work order for that with our M&O team to order that with Coach K. And a pumping schedule, because they have to be cleaned.

[4704] Joy Lee: Yes. Thank you so much. Absolutely.

[4707] Aiden Hill: Great. Okay. So, moving on to employee organization 7.1. So, do we have representation from NTAs and Ms. Villa, welcome.

[4721] Cheri Villa: Yes. Good evening school board members and Superintendent Vackar and executive cabinet. Starting off on a positive, we do have, we had some vacancies in our e-board at the beginning of the year and I'm happy to say that we have Our members are wanting to be a voice. So we have Michael Spencer from the high school as our grievance chair, Cameron Tyson and Gretchen Cava as our elections committee, and at the junior high, the middle school, sorry, we have Shaun Fuller, who is our middle school director, and Selena Cisneros is our site rep there. So very happy that we're filling our positions on our e-board. All right, and then now moving forward, I want to provide some clarification to clear up any misunderstandings or confusions in regards to our ELA adoption. Okay, this was an email that was sent to the adoption committee from one of the three admin that were in charge of facilitating the adoption. It says, first of all, thank you for your patience. interpret the results of the survey and next steps. We want to honor the concerns and the urgency we've heard at the EL adoption meeting. Given this, here's the plan of action we hope will accommodate everyone's concerns. TK&K will not adopt the curriculum this year, given the standards are currently being updated. We agree to purchase the UTLI book for TK teachers by 23-24 school year, as we discussed at the meeting, in the meantime, so students' needs are met. The middle school will move forward with the Amplify adoption. So again, there is one change. Kinder has now, they have agreed to use Benchmark as its curriculum, but in regards to TK, TK will not adopt a curriculum this year because the standards are being changed, they'll be changing. So while Benchmark is a TK5 curriculum, our adoption was intended to be first through eighth grade, but then we changed it to K through eight. Okay, so again, if I could provide any information to clarify, please let me know. As far as curriculum goes, we're still receiving it. We do have, there was a little bit of mix up with where and when things are being delivered, but we're getting there. We don't have it yet, but again, we're getting there and our teachers, man, they're doing it even without curriculum. A big thank you to our NTU members, our veteran teachers. They're holding it down. They always do. And I'm going to be speaking again later, and not in an actual scope, but that's all I have right now.

[4888] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Ms. Villa. OK, so and now we have CSEA. Do we have any representation from CSEA? OK. Moving on to NEWMA.

[4907] Jodi Croce: Thank you. Good evening, President Hill, members of the Board, Executive Cabinet. My name is Jody, and along with Christy Palomino and Ashley Acosta, we make up the NEWMA Board. Today marks the 26th day of this school year. NEWMA members have been working hard to ensure our students are in school, have nutritious food to eat, The right people are in place, technology is working, and students are supervised. We are thrilled to see so many students back to school, but we also recognize that not everyone is ready to be back. So everyone, NTA, CSAA, NEWMA, we're all working together to make sure that every student has the support that they need to have a successful year. Our NEWMA members, which include site administrators, district office administrators, directors, coordinators, the executive assistant, administrative assistants, and counselors, are also experiencing changes. There are new positions, retirements, and lots of new faces. As we move through the year, we look forward to highlighting the contributions that NEWMA members bring to Newark Unified School District. Our mission to inspire and educate can be seen daily in the actions of our NEWMA team. All schools have held their back-to-school nights, so families are now informed about their children's expectations at school, and they know how to support their children. By ensuring our schools work collaboratively with families, we are providing the support needed for student success. Thank you.

[5017] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Ms. Croce. Okay, so moving on to public comment on non-agenda items, 8.1. So, and then, Ms. Lemus, do we have additional comments there? Okay, for non-agenda? For agenda items, okay. Okay, so moving on to the comment on non-agenda items, so 8.1. So we have a speaker, David Larusa. Is it Larusa? Did I say? Larusa. Larusa. OK. And this is regarding the band and music director.

[5055] David Larusa: Yes, that's correct. Welcome. Hello. My name is David Larusa. I'm a resident here for 49 years and a father of two right here. Both of them are in the band. I'm here to bring awareness to the situation going on with the Newark Memorial Band, which is a wonderful program. But the kids do not have a qualified teacher. In some ways, it's a beautiful thing to see, because I see the kids teaching the other kids. They've organized themselves to teach each other. I love that. But I especially love that for the seniors who get to teach. But it's not the greatest for the younger students who are not getting the highest quality of education. Those kids are not trained to teach. We need a band director. To help organize the events, to help march, to help march for Newark days, to help with the civic responsibilities when we play for the school, the city events. We need help marching, we need help playing for the school football games. But the students are doing that themselves right now. We are missing a director that will help advocate for the funds they need for repairs for the instruments. for repairs for uniforms. And that is a lot of paperwork or knowing who to go to that our kids don't know how to achieve that. There's a lot of diverse educational needs by the students that are being addressed by 17-year-old kids. And nothing has happened, but it is a lot of responsibility to put on those kids. They need a director to help mentor them, to help guide them on what the program should be, on how they should perform within the educational program. They need somebody to help direct the future of the program. The younger kids are watching on the importance of how we value, how our city values the music program. This is the second year out of the last four years that they don't have a teacher. We need a teacher. We need a director to help relieve the stress from these seniors. They are getting ready to go to college, and they're spending the bulk of their time teaching. Inevitably, there will be conflict management that will come up. And that is going to also be handled amongst the peers. They need somebody to help walk them through that. And not to mention the freshman conundrum. Next year, the freshmen are going to have to decide whether they're going to go to take PE or they're going to take band. And they need somebody to help them weigh that and how to get around that, because they do have to make that decision. And that does affect the future of the band program. So I wanted to bring you guys, I wanted to bring awareness to you guys on what's happening. A lot of the band kids are here. hope for a resolution and some resources to this program. Thank you.

[5255] Aiden Hill: Thank you. Thank you, Mr. LaRusso. And Mr. Luce, if you could stay up for just one second. So I know that this is non-agenda, right? So we don't have anything formally prepared. But I'm wondering if the superintendent maybe has a little bit of additional information on this topic.

[5271] Tracey Vackar: A little bit. I can tell you that we've been working hard to be able to recruit for a band teacher. There's been a lot of outreach that's been made to the universities to be able to put some things in place. We're also looking at bringing in some guest artists to be able to help and support a substitute teacher who we're going to put in place temporarily while we still continue recruiting and doing additional outreach. We've also been working with ACOE to look at some other alternative credentialing things that maybe we can do to be able to help and support someone who might be new coming into the area that may have experience in doing both band and choir. We actually have two different programs that we're most concerned about. And we do realize that this has been an inconvenience. And we are working on coming up with solutions kind of outside the box until we can actually find a full-time recruitment to be able to successfully be able to take over the band program entirely. So we are working on some things. I'll have the principal do an outreach letter to all of you so that you're aware of what's going on. Thank you. Would that be helpful?

[5331] David Larusa: Oh, absolutely. I would love to hear what's going on.

[5332] Tracey Vackar: We want to make sure that we're being good partners with you and with our students, having been a band kid. I get it. I mean, our band's awesome. We want to make sure they have those opportunities and that we're able to help showcase what they do.

[5345] David Larusa: Appreciate that. Looking forward to hearing from you.

[5349] Aiden Hill: Thank you. OK, moving on. We're still on public comment on non-agenda. I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[5357] Joy Lee: Sorry. I just have a question in terms of funding. Does band need any funds? If band does need any funds, is there any funds that we can like help to like support them like in this time like during while they're trying to find a band director?

[5372] Tracey Vackar: So there have been additional funds have been allocated to be able to help bring in guest artists and also make sure that we're able to bring in a substitute teacher to be able to cover for that time period. So we have allocated additional resources to be able to help with that.

[5385] Joy Lee: Do you know if it's being used right now? Because if students are teaching the class then Who would be able to access those funds?

[5392] Tracey Vackar: I need to go back and go check on that. That seems to me that students are teaching the class. I need to go back and take a look at that. I don't have that answer tonight, Joy. OK. But I'll be happy to go back and go find that out.

[5402] Joy Lee: OK, thank you.

[5404] Aiden Hill: Great. OK, so moving on to the next topic. So Darius Collier, is that right? Coher. Coher? Darius Coher. Darius Coker, OK.

[5425] Darius Coker: I have come here to talk today about the current state of the program, just from a student point of view. I've been at Norfolk Memorial for four years. And this is my senior year. I've been doing music for all those four years. And I am currently the president of our student board. And I'm mainly here to talk. on behalf of myself and the students. But right now, well, as was brought up before, we do not have a director. And I'd like to mainly know if there's something that can be done currently right now, anyone that just could come in. Because right now, it's been me. my vice president and my drum major mainly just managing and teaching the class. And we shouldn't have that stress put on us, especially this senior year. There's a lot of, like, we're very uninformed on how to manage a program like this, let alone a class. Like, as students, we shouldn't be the ones doing this. We should be taught, especially, like, it's causing us to miss out on our own education. We join this class to further our music capabilities. Some people join this class because they want to do band in college, and they want, like, they see a career for themselves in this. And we're just not getting that knowledge. We're not getting anything. And I would just really like to see some support currently, like soon, because right now it's not looking like, it just doesn't seem like there's any urgency to find a solution. And we're getting closer to a point in our program where we really, desperately need someone in there to like to like be able to do all this. And I've been told that we're giving like we're being given extra support right now but I'm just not seeing it. And at this rate it's feeling like we're getting close to becoming another program that could possibly be cut from this district.

[5594] Tracey Vackar: This is not a program that we are looking to cut. It's not anywhere on any slated delivery of what we're doing is one of our core programs that we offer here at the school site. I want to make that really clear. It's one of our arts program. It's part of the fine arts program. It's not a program that's on a list to be cut. So I want to make sure I can get rid of that. Ms. Noemer, if you wouldn't mind.

[5615] Aiden Hill: And maybe just to stress, I think you were hitting on this from the last topic, but if band is a class, there has to be certificated instruction in that class. And so I think that that's why when this topic came up that we were a little bit surprised. I think the superintendent was surprised to hear that apparently kids are teaching this. I don't think that that should be happening. And so we need to be looking into that.

[5641] Tracey Vackar: I will be meeting with the school tomorrow to get some more facts and make sure that I understand all the issues. But I thought there was a solution that was coming forward that we had been working on. They asked me whether or not there were additional funds to be able to support a guest artist to be able to come in. Actually, I think there's two guest artists that we're looking to bring in to help with it. And I believe there are solutions that are being planned.

[5663] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Mr. Coker. Thank you for your time. Great.

[5667] Darius Coker: OK.

[5671] Aiden Hill: OK, so next on non-agenda items, Mr. Richard Watters.

[5680] Richard Watters: Thank you and good evening. I'm coming here tonight as a parent of one of the students who's in the band. I'm fully supportive of what David, the father here, has said and the parents and the students have said as well. What I wanted to reinforce is this is an academic course. It is for a grade. And several of these kids plan on going to major in music or be in the music production field. And this course and their education throughout their four years is extremely pivotal. My son is not getting what he needs to be competitive to go to the bright college or university. And I think that's what the board and the administration needs to understand. This isn't the only program that's happening to you. You have long-term subs that are teaching subjects that they don't have any clue how to teach. Spanish, for instance. This is not a new thing. And the kids are, in fact, having to teach because the subs don't have any music knowledge. My son is using his pause period, where he should be somewhere else, to help with his drum and his other students. So this is an issue that should be solved immediately. It shouldn't even got to this point. But it needs to be done immediately, because these kids should not be having to stress teaching each other the music. They shouldn't be stressed about not being able to participate in competition that's supposed to be coming up in Santa Cruz, which I'm not even sure they're going to be able to do, because there's no instructor, no one to help them complete the application. Last year, they didn't get to compete because of money issues. This is the second year my son's not going to be able to participate, or these other kids, especially the seniors, won't be able to participate. If we really want to have a great fine arts program, music program, then put your money where your mouth is, please. Thank you.

[5778] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Mr. Waters. Okay, so we're now going to move on to public comment on agenda items. And the speakers that I call, you have a choice. You can speak now. You can also speak when the agenda item comes up right before. You can speak right after. It's been covered, so it's your choice. So, with the first speaker card for agenda items, 10.1, unaudited actuals, Mr. Carey New. You want to wait? Okay, great. All right. Sorry, we'll put that aside. So, 10.1, Ms. Cheri Villa. Do you want to wait? Okay. All right. 10.1, Ms. Cindy Parks. Okay, alright. So moving on, and then do you want to, Mr. Knoop, do you want to wait for 10.3? Okay. And 10.4, Ms. Parks? Okay. And 10.4, Mr. Knoop? Okay, alright. So we are done with, so we're not done with the comments, but we're gonna have them come at a later point. So moving on now to 9.1, Superintendent Report. Superintendent?

[5853] Tracey Vackar: Thank you for the opportunity to be able to give you an update. First of all, it's really great feedback. I really have missed being here in our board meetings, the last two meetings. And I apologize for not having felt well enough to come, but I didn't want to share what I had with all the rest of you. And so thank you for your support. I want to thank my team for standing in and for helping out to make sure that things continue to run as smoothly as possible. And I really want to thank our community tonight for coming out and speaking and sharing your concerns. Most importantly, we have been working on trying to identify solutions for some of our key positions that we're still trying to fill. Some of them were very late notice resignations and, again, some very difficult positions trying to fill. It sounds like there's been problems before in the past, which I wasn't aware that happened during the four-year cycle of our seniors. So it's good to learn that piece of information. And the principal and myself will be reaching out to you for some possible solutions as to what we've been working on. So I hope that will be helpful. With that, though, I'm really excited this evening to introduce two really special guests that we have out of the audience this evening. First is Lieutenant Sandoval, who's with us this evening from Newark Police Department. Lieutenant Sandoval, do you want to come up maybe to the speaker piece? And I want to also introduce our resource officer that has started. Today's his first day. We're super excited to introduce resource school officer Mr. McHugh. And I'm going to let Lieutenant Sandoval share a little bit more about his background and the experience that he brings and the work that he's done here in our community. So great to have you both here.

[5953] Lieutenant Sandoval: Well, thank you for having us. Let me cue up what I can talk about. Officer McCuin here. Yeah, I know. Sorry, I had it up on my phone, but I apologize. So this is Officer McCuin. He has been going to the high school as we were able to get him free from his patrol duties up until this week. Now he's starting full time. He started today full time. So he already started showing his face around the school. So let me tell you about Officer McCuin. Officer McCuin has been with the Newark Police Department for five years. He brings a lot of experience to this role. He currently is a crisis negotiation team member. He's a crime scene investigator. He's a police explorer advisor. So that's the youth program of kids who are 14 to 21 who are interested in being in law enforcement. So if anyone's out there 14 to 21, he's the guy to talk to. He's a peer support team member for our wellness program. He's also an honor guard team member. He's a first aid tactical medicine instructor. And he's an arc and instructor. Before he was a police officer here in Newark, Officer McCuin was a lifeguard and a swim instructor at the Swimming Center, Family and Aquatic Center here in Newark. And he was a program coordinator for the athletic division at Mills College in Oakland. Some of his hobbies include golfing and spending time with his loved ones. And of course, he wants to be just like Officer Lozier is what I was told. He's going to be assigned there at Newark Memorial. He's available for questions from anyone that needs his help while he's there. And he's, I'm pretty sure, happy to be here.

[6066] Aiden Hill: Great. And Officer McCuin, would you like to add anything?

[6069] Officer McCuin: I just wanted to add that I'm very excited. Today was my first day officially as a school resource officer. So like I said, I work with a lot of the explorers. So it was nice to get to see some of my students that I have in my after school program, get to see them over at the school. But this has been my number one goal since joining the police department. And now I got to reach it. And Lieutenant Sandwall was one of my mentors when it came to this position. So I'd like to thank him for pretty much all he's done for me up until this point and continue to do so. I'm excited to serve the school, keep the kids safe. Thank you.

[6109] Aiden Hill: Thank you. We might have some questions or comments from the board. So comments?

[6114] Joy Lee: I want to say welcome to Newark Memorial High School. I actually saw him today and I asked for a sticker. He had a bunch of stickers. He was already like saying hi to all the students and passing out stickers and everything. So I want to say welcome. Welcome.

[6133] Nancy Thomas: I'd just like to add welcome. We're delighted to have you at the district. And it sounds like you have a great background for working with young people. Thank you.

[6144] Phuong Nguyen: Congratulations, Officer McCuin. Thank you. I know somebody at home who's very, very proud of you. And I'm very lucky to be working with her, your mom. So congratulations, and welcome to NMHS. And whatever you need to do your job and how we can best support you, you also let us know, too, also. OK? Thank you so much. So thank you so much for being a part of our community.

[6169] Carina Plancarte: Thank you so much for joining the team. I'm really happy to see the collaboration between the police department and the school. I'm so glad that the position is filled and truly I'm really glad for the school site and for our schools as well. Thank you so much.

[6188] Kat Jones: I can't be left out. So thank you for being here. I know that when my own children were at the At the high school, it was nice to know that there was someone there. So thank you. And I appreciate hearing your background and how involved you have been with the youth overall. That'll be a wonderful asset. Thank you.

[6210] Aiden Hill: Great. And echoing my fellow board members, so yeah, we're really excited to have you on board. And it's great to have a role model that comes from our own community. So I think that means a lot. So again, we're very excited. So thank you.

[6230] Lieutenant Sandoval: In case we forgot to mention it, he also graduated from Newark Memorial. So if we can find any pictures from there. Oh, we'll see what we can do about that. Never mind, I'm sorry. I miss folk. We were picking on him. He's a Kennedy high school. I was excited for a second.

[6248] Aiden Hill: All right, great. Thank you.

[6249] Tracey Vackar: Thank you both for being here this evening, and thanks for the work that you're doing. Just to share with the rest of the audience and with our board members, Last week we had like an amazing meeting with our Newark Police Department. We started working on our safety plans and our joint work together. Things that we want to really be able to do this year to really be able to help support our students and our community with a safer set of practices that we want to be able to bring in. Also making sure that our communication between each other is right up to where it needs to be. And I will just share with you that every time I've reached out to our Newark Police Department, they responded quickly. It's been great communication. I couldn't be more pleased with the partnership that we have. I just really want to thank them for their services. We had a great team meeting last week with the district team and with Newark Police Department. So thank you.

[6301] Aiden Hill: OK, great.

[6302] Tracey Vackar: And that concludes my report for this evening.

[6305] Aiden Hill: OK, thank you, superintendent. Any additional questions or comments for the superintendent? OK, so moving on, we're now going to go to 10.1. And for those speakers that would like to come, do you want to come after the presentation or before? Is there a preference? OK. All right, so we'll do it after. All right, so moving to 10.1, unaudited actuals financial report. Superintendent?

[6333] Tracey Vackar: Yeah. So I'm excited this evening to be able to introduce this item. Actually, having stepped away from not being the CBO anymore and now having our Assistant Superintendent of Business Services, I'm going to turn this over to him for the presentation this evening and ask him and our Financial Director, Nancy Chen, to join us. Nancy, if you can come up to the podium in case there's any technical questions, that would be great.

[6363] Jose Quintana: Well, welcome, everyone, and thank you for attending tonight's board meeting and going over the actual financial report for Newark Unified School District. And going into the next slide, we're going to go into some of the, oh, yep, there you go. So this is the, I believe all the board members do have a copy of this printout that I can. So the year in our actual financial report reviews of the 23-24 actual revenues and expenditures for the period of July 1st, 2023 through June 30th, 2024. The report must be submitted to the Alameda County Office of Education by September 15th, 2024. The summary of revenues and expenditures which are restricted and unrestricted These total revenues of $80.7 million, which is 4.4% higher than the 2024-2025 adopted budget that was presented about a month ago. And these are total expenditures of $81.2 million, which is 1.8% less than the 2024-2025 adopted budget. The net decrease to fund balance is $591,000. You can tell on our columns there that our ending fund balance is $33.8 million, which is $22.5 million, or 67% that's unrestricted, and $11.4 million, which is 33% restricted. Of course, these are all funds that you can see on our adopted budget. And our difference of the actual budget and actuals is $5.5 million, right under $6 million. Enrollment and ADA average daily attendance. The 2023-2024 enrollment was 4,828 students, which is 124 less than last year. The actual P-2 ADA was 4,521, which is 54 less than last year. The ADA enrollment ratio was 93.6. significantly lower than the historical ratio of 96, 97%. The decrease in enrollment over 10 years is 1,368 students. Our 24-25 enrollment projections is 4,745. We actually do have actual numbers for that, but we're going to go right into our revenues here. Our revenues here are separated by our different actuals, our budget, and difference in budget, and percentage in difference. The total revenues is $80.7 million. 74% comes from our local control funding formula, and more than 4.4% difference between budget and actuals. Those are our revenues. And our expenditures, we have a breakdown here of our certificate salaries, our benefits, our services, and other operating expenses, classified salaries, capital outlay, all these total expenditures, once again, at 81.245. And our budget says 82721847. The difference is $1,476,836. So this here is 24% for services and operating expenses, which is water, electric, legal services, software, and professional services. But as you can tell, 72% of all total expenditures are for salaries and benefits. Contributions to restricted programs, special ed, 9.4 million, RMA, routine restricted maintenance, 3 million, and others, 64,000. So these are restricted programs at $12 million. And what we have for our budget is 15.6, which is an actual increase of $3 million, $3.1 million over the last year. Unrestricted general fund, our net increases to unrestricted general fund balance was $2.3 million. Total ending fund balance is $22.5 million. We have a breakdown here of the difference of $4.7 million, or 21.3% less than the budget here. Apologize, then, the unaudited actuals. Our fund balance. This 10% cap applies to 23, 24, and 24, 25. The reserves for economic uncertainties and assigned designations cannot exceed 10% of our total expenditures. Our committed funds do not count against the cap right here. So our budget balancing reserve is $16.8 million in 23, 24, and $14.1 million in 24, 25. Our reserves for economic uncertainties, our general fund reserve is $2.4 million. Our fund 17 reserve is $2.4 million. And our total reserves for economic uncertainties is $4.8 million, or 6%. We're required to carry our 3%. We are at 6% here. All funds at a glance, our fund one is our general fund at $34.4 million here. And our adult education, $94 million. Child development, $713,000. And cafeteria fund, $2.5 million. Special reserve for emergency, $2.3. Building fund, $13,000. Capital facilities funds, $15 million. Special reserves for capital outlay, $8.6 million. Bond interest and redemption fund, $10 million. And self-insurance fund, $4.5. Total of $78.8 million. Our Fund 21 Measure G funds, we show here a zero balance, and Fund 25 Development Fund balance is $14.3 million, and Fund 40, these are fund balance of $8.6 million. So our financial summary here, the 2023-2024 year-end unrestricted general fund reflects a net increase in fund balance of $2.3 million. The total reserve for economic uncertainties is 6%. A multi-year analysis indicates that the district will be able to maintain the 3% minimum required reserve in 24, 25, and two subsequent years. Staff recommends approval of the 22, 23, 24 year end unadded actuals financial report. Now, we will open up for questions. And we're here to answer any questions you might have. fiscal director to assist as well. So any questions with that? I think we're going to have the audience come up.

[6793] Aiden Hill: So Ms. Villa, would you like to come up? OK. Mr. Knoop.

[6815] Cary Knoop: Good evening board members, staff, superintendent, welcome back. Thank you. And good evening public. I have some comments about the unaudited actuals and that has to do with the way the end numbers look, the commitments. So I've ran some data over the last couple of years and We've never gone to a position where commitments are 17%, if you take that from the expenditure side. So our budget was planning that we were going to be short several million dollars. And now we kind of catch up, and it's about half a million dollars that we're short. But the commitments ballooned. It wasn't just going up a little bit. It's just I think it's get to a point where it's like what's going on You know what kind of commitments have we made that this amount? totals over 16 million sixteen point eight million dollars Adding to that is that the new budget shows a decrease of about 2.5 million 2.6 million dollars of these commitments and What happened? I mean, we suddenly become uncommitted for $2.5 million. And so I think it is important to be transparent about that, to see what happened to these commitments, why are they there, and what do they contain? So that's basically my question. Hopefully, it can be answered through some of the board members.

[6926] Aiden Hill: Thank you. Great. Thank you, Mr. Knoop. And Ms. Vackar, do you want to provide a little bit more detail there?

[6934] Tracey Vackar: I would like to probably just a little bit with regards to the designated certain funds. Part of what we did is, as all of you may remember, part of our strategy was to be able to continue putting in some better practices of looking at how we do our spending practices, how we look at our contracts moving into the new year, finding ways to be able to do reductions so that we could save money for our third year out in particular that was, as you may recall, in the red. Underneath our undesignated certain funds, we actually put in there a multiple year projection savings for 25 and 26, and 26, 27, because that savings of that $8 million as we closed out was actually I think 7.9, which is there, 7.937, 006. That really is a savings from our close out from one year. moving into the next year. And so knowing that we weren't sure what was going to be spent when we went off into our adoption budget until we actually closed out our books, we wouldn't have known that number. A lot of those things were open POs. We had a number of POs that did not get used. We had other ones that had new restrictions put on them for checks and balances as we sat there and looked at them. Those were things that the board had asked us to do. And we wanted to make sure that we honored those by making sure that as we continue to right-size our budget, we're able to make good to be able to get three years of a positive budget for the future. So every extra dollar that we're saving, we want to be able to be very transparent to our community and to you, our board, as to where that savings is coming from and where we're putting it back into to try to be able to make sure that continues. When you see the first interim report that comes out to you in December, you're going to see within that MYP, you're going to see some numbers start to change and start to shift. It's important to really look at that. And again, these savings are still somewhat liquid because we still have services that we have to provide for children. As you know, there was a huge contribution that was made to our special education over the last few years. We continue to look at strategies to be able to make sure that we're still offering services, but being able to do it in a more affordable manner and with partners that are not taking advantage of our school district to such a sharp increase. So those are where some of the savings actually came from as we were closing out those different elements that we had in our district. Some things were, I'm not going to say they were inflated, but there's still some bills that we have not paid for last year that we're still going to have to pay for. And we may have to come back and use some of this NYP savings to be able to pay out some of those bills as they materialize from the 23-24 school year. And we still get them as we're entering into the 24-25 school year. So those things will happen. Are there additional thoughts from our team? Mr. Quintana?

[7109] Jose Quintana: No. I think those are in line with, obviously, our committed funds here that we pointed out that NYP savings for 25, 26, and 26, 27 years is $7.9 million that we can, obviously, that will adjust. So thank you.

[7128] Aiden Hill: Great. So Ms. Parks, would you like to go next?

[7143] Cindy Parks: Good evening.

[7144] Cindy Parks: I'd like to start off by saying how disappointed I am with the fact that this agenda, when it came out on Friday night, said that the PowerPoint presentation would be posted on the agenda prior to this meeting. As of my entrance into this building at 6.30, it still was not posted. Fortunately, there was a hard copy that I was able to go through quickly when I got here. But that is not transparency. It's not. and especially when you promise something. I'd like to start off with what I left, actually what I left off with, with the budget in June, where I talked about the fact that it seemed like some of the expenditures seemed to be inflated and some of your revenue seemed to be deflated. And the ADA is one instance where it's 93.6, yet you're forecasting 92. That's money that should be recognized in your revenue column. And again, as what was stated, it used to be at 96, 97% prior to COVID. So, you know, a good campaign to get students, as I call it, butts in chairs, to increase your revenue, that's a no-brainer. It's a no-brainer. You just need to let the public know how you get your money. And I know that there's legislation that's being talked about that is going to be considered where it's on your enrollment, not your ADA, but that's not happening right now. So you need to get butts in chairs. Another item is on page 25 of your unaudited actuals, which talks about all of your contracts, your 5,000 series that we're always talking about. And what I'm not understanding fully is why you have hired staff now and you're still running high numbers. Maybe that'll change when first interim comes out, but you definitely, I'm down to a minute, you definitely have higher contract costs, which should be reduced because now you've hired people, you don't have to contract as much. I don't quite understand your, your special ed, I understand that, you know, what it was forecast to, unaudited actuals only show it at 9.4 million and you're budgeting at 12.8. There, you know, this is something that you have brought, had a discussion about is how you are above your numbers of your neighboring districts. It just seems like your revenue is down, your expenditures are up, your enrollment is down, and your staffing is down. And I hope that you'll address your fund balance sheet, what it says for future board action. It's on page 10 of the PowerPoint presentation. And I hope that you'll eventually discuss the exceptions that are identified at the very end of the report. You have a lot of exceptions there, and I hope that you'll ask for an explanation on why you have these exceptions. Thank you.

[7345] Aiden Hill: Great. Thank you, Ms. Parks. Superintendent, do you want to provide any clarification, additional clarification?

[7352] Tracey Vackar: Let me see if I can get some of the comments that were done and I'm going to ask my staff to also assist us with this. So with the exceptions, part of what you see here on the exceptions page is a piece that lets us go back as staff and actually we then correct the actual budget for the 23-24 budget and those budget corrections we've made, it needs to be checked against with our auditor to be able to make sure that those things are done. I think it's a common practice to go off and actually show this particular page and what's being done versus going off and making the movement. in advance before the board actually adopts the unaudited actuals. So that's not such an uncommon thing to see. We're actually just showing what it is that we have to do underneath that particular page for the exceptions. And you're right, there are a lot of exceptions that are on there because those are the things that we have to go back and make the actual adjustments to our 23-24 budget. So again, in transparency, I think we're actually showing you the work that we need to go back and do to be able to demonstrate that. And that really, I hope that helps for the explanation. I appreciate your comments with looking at things. As you know, the budget is based on the predictions that we know. We continue to adjust our predictions based on the knowledge that we have and based on using a very conservative figure for the most part. As we have moved forward with adopting our budget and as we move into making corrections as we look at the unaudited actuals and as we move into looking at our first and second interims, we continuously are going off and making adjustments based on the information that we know, based on tax history that comes in. There'll be many different adjustments that happen with our figures here. And truly, we try to provide you with the best information that we have at the time. that we go in and we actually do adopt our budget. But there are constant adjustments. I think what's really important to recognize is that we did use conservative figures. So there will show some, you know, additional funds in certain accounts. And it will also show that as we close out our unaudited actuals, there may have been some additional savings as we sit there and look at that. And those are all good things for us to be looking at and good things to be able to note and point out. I hope I caught all your questions. There, Ms. Parks, if not, perhaps we can have a sidebar later on. I'm happy to try to make sure I get them all addressed for you.

[7498] Aiden Hill: So moving on to Ms. Sharibella.

[7511] Cheri Villa: My comments today, right now, are in regards to committed funds. Our first resolution for committed funds It was back on September 15, 2022, and the dollar amount of $935,656. I was at that meeting, and I was asking to commit in supporting our teachers back then. For our second and third resolutions, both of those were just above $11 million. So it's getting higher. And now, when seeing in this one for the next one at $14 million, You know, when we're in regards to compensation for our teachers, you know, the response is always we need to get, we need to have higher enrollment or we need to increase the ADA. Well, the students aren't here yet, but our teachers are. And what got me thinking of this was last school board meeting, the presentation in regards to a technology refresh using ESSER funds. When in our committed funds, we've had over a million dollars committed for technology refresh. But our presentation that we had, the purchase order was 200 computers for 268 teachers. So again, we have money here for technology Let's invest in our teachers. We have some classrooms that don't have smart boards. They're still using the pull-down screen with the Elmo, I think it's called, projectors. We have 68 teachers with no computers. Some are using student Chromebooks. Absolutely, we have to get back to one-to-one computers for the students, but how can my teachers, our teachers, teach our students on these computers if they don't have it themselves? So again, my ask is to commit to our teachers. This is the first time since before COVID that we are close to being fully staffed. We're maybe five classrooms away from being fully staffed. And that hasn't happened since a couple of years before COVID. We have 72 teachers who are not permanent, meaning they're probation or probationary or they're temporary. 72 teachers in the last three years. So let's invest in our new teachers, give them the classroom management training that they need. Our veteran teachers, a refreshing is always good, but invest in so our teachers will stay here. Because almost being fully staffed, even though we're almost there, it's a different, the teachers see it and they understand, it's a good feeling, it's a good morale. So investing in our teachers, let's do what we can to keep them here. Last year, we had a lot of, you know, unfortunate things that we had to talk about, like our TOSAs and our coding TOSA. We weren't able to keep the work, the great work they're doing. My job share partner, she was a teacher at Coyote Hills last year, and just the things she showed me already, fabulous. But we didn't have the money for it to keep it going. We have LCAP carryover year after year. Last year was over 600,000. The year before that, 400,000. We plan for things to happen, but they don't for whatever reason, a lot of it because we don't have the teachers. Now we do. So let's keep our teachers here. This is one-time money, yes, but let's use it to keep our teachers here, to train them so they'll want to stay here and not leave after they become permanent to another district. So that's my ask.

[7749] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Ms. Villa. OK. So are there any additional points that staff would like to make before we open up to the board for questions?

[7769] Tracey Vackar: No, not at this time. OK.

[7771] Aiden Hill: So questions from the board?

[7781] Nancy Thomas: I guess my question is, what question should I ask? Because to me, the budget is very difficult to follow because of all the temporary employees we had last year. So we've paid those out of the 5,000 series instead of out of salaries and benefits. So I can't tell where we are. To me, it's very confusing where we are and where we're heading because of the big changes and temporary employees last year, filling slots and the turnover. I would like to have a sense of how confident are you, staff, in the fact that you have a handle on our expenditures, that we are adequately spending what we plan to spend for our teachers and for our kids. That's kind of what I'd like to know because I don't get it from reading this report.

[7846] Tracey Vackar: So, the unaudited actuals, if I can just take a moment. You know, really our reflection of where did we end up at the end of the year, because we closed out all these different accounts. And I will say it was hard to try to get your arms completely wrapped around the variety of services and contracts that have been put in place really since post-COVID. There's a number of contracts that were put in place for all kinds of services that we couldn't begin to fill. And I'm really glad to hear Ms. Villa say that we're actually almost to the point they're almost fully staffed, something that hasn't happened here in a long time. So what I will tell you is that your current adopted budget kind of aligns with that work. That if we really did have everybody here and we plan to have everybody here, that's inside of your expenditures for your staffing and for what you're paying for for recognized benefits, right, the pieces that we pay to the state government, to the federal government, you know, whether it be for social security or for our share of contributions that are made to CalPERS and CalSTRS. Those things are actually reflected inside your budget. We also try to give our very best guesstimate of where we're going to be going to for contract services based on, one, what our LCAP shows, and also what our expenditures allow for us to actually do outside of regular services. The more we can sit there and reduce off of actual contract services and put in actual staffing that can provide the services, we're gonna have more continuity. Those are things that will help us, right? And those are things that have been troubling to this district now for many years. Is this the full answer? No, it's still a work in progress. We have to monitor it closely. And that's really what your first and second interim reports are going to do. We're going to continue to monitor what needs to be done, make the adjustments where they need to be made, and make sure that we're coming back and we're sharing that information with you. But as we closed out the books and the monies that materialized were really already expended right through a number of POs that had been opened up to a number of contract services that maybe we didn't use fully across the entire district for a variety of things, whether it's their educational services, whether it's for something to do with facilities, something to do with maintenance and operations, something to do with being able to create some better health conditions fiscally that we talked about when Mr. Fine was here back in April. Our budget's in better shape than it has been in a long time. It's still not out of the clear yet. I don't want to create a smoke, a mirror. We still have work to do. And when we adopted our budget, we showed in our third year out that we were still deficit spending, and we have to work on that in order to be able to make sure that we can really invest in our people and that we're really putting our capital where we can and we start to make those shifts. But it doesn't happen overnight. It's going to take some time for us to kind of continue to work through. Again, this is not your adopted budget. This is just showing you where things closed out. We're kind of starting to make the adjustments for and how we're going to share that with the county office of education and with the state through our reporting. But our real true sign will really come between the work that we're doing now, the services that we're putting in place for our community, for our kids. for our teachers to be able to help support them, and for our other staff members that might need some help and support systems, as we continue to grow still here. We still have vacancies. We have a lot of vacancies still, especially at the classified level. But we've got some critical ones, too, also at the certificate level. You heard about a couple this evening, the fact that we don't have a teacher for our band director. We don't have a choir director. Those are things that we've been working on, other kinds of ways to help augment with that. really looking forward to talking with Mr. Murphy tomorrow because I know he had some ideas that he was trying to put in place while we continue doing recruitment. I know Mr. Williams has reached out to work on some of our critical recruitment along with our teachers union and many others here. Our ed services team, many of us have been doing reach out to a multiple number of universities to try to make sure that we have first opportunity to be able to get those that were graduating at the end of last school year from our universities to come into our programs. We were working with ACOE to be able to do some quick steps that we would be investing in to be able to help pay and help augment those services that take time to go off and clear your credentials. We're actually offering to help pay and help support some of those things. Same with our principals. We brought on some new principals and we're helping them with their program as they work on clearing you know, their credentials as well. Those are really critical pieces to investing in your staff and being able to keep and retain them here. Those are really important elements. The piece around the undesignated certain funds, because we were looking at where we're having cost savings, we're showing that to you. You can always reallocate out those funds in different kinds of ways. You just have to think about how, what the cause and effect is to your multiple year projections when you do that. And knowing that our third year out was still in the red, This is exactly what we wanted to be able to do, was to start really closing down these accounts and then start reducing the amount that we were actually spending in the past on those same accounts, reducing those numbers down. But it's not going to be a quick fix. It's something that we're going to take time and make sure. We have a lot of new team members on board. They're looking at the programming for the first time. They're looking at some of the opportunities, I think, that were used in the past and the way maybe how we use consultants and how we can continue to strategize on how we provide services more directly and try to reduce down those figures. I realize it can be difficult. Our job is to show you the numbers to the best of our abilities that we can share with you, and that's exactly what we're doing here this evening.

[8187] Aiden Hill: Other questions?

[8188] Phuong Nguyen: Number one. Thank you for the clarification. And also, I think for a lot of us, when we're looking at the unaudited actuals, it's probably best to compare them to the estimated actuals for the year. so that we can actually see the true difference between, you know, what was allocated and how much we actually spent instead of going off of the 24, 25 new budget numbers. So.

[8220] Tracey Vackar: I think those are two different kinds of reports, quite frankly, because the report that we're showing you here comes out of our SAC system based on what we closed out.

[8228] Phuong Nguyen: No, which I understand. OK. But I'm saying that you're showing like what was our Adopted budget for this year against the actuals of what we just closed in the prior year but we don't ever actually look at the Budgeted adopted budget for 2324 against the unaudited actuals to see what was actually, you know Like what the actual spending was percentage wise and and to what miss parks had mentioned about whether or not we are being really transparent if we are overestimating on some parts and underestimating on some, that gives us an actual number to be able to look at and say, hey, yes, we allocated, you know, last year $4 million to facilities improvement, but we only actually spent $3,900. So, we had a savings of $100,000 there. So, that's what I'm saying. I think for us that we can probably wrap our head around that more than what we're seeing in terms of like, you know, this is what was the unaudited actuals for the year against the new budget for this year. So, again, like, you know, and we do see a slight savings coming into based on the, what we were spending against the new budget, but that's not actually what we, I mean, to me, it doesn't feel like what we actually spent. So, it's not a true representation of what revenue came in versus what the true expenditures are. So those are just my comments. Thank you.

[8327] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Member Nguyen. Additional questions, comments?

[8332] Carina Plancarte: Well, my comment just piggybacks a little bit on what Member Nguyen just said, is that it would really make it easier to see what actually was approved to spend and then where we actually did save as well, because it is true. How can we truly know what the gains were for saving money in certain areas? I mean, it would make it easier for us if we could see that in one snapshot so that we can really celebrate exactly what we did, where the savings were. And then also I just wanted to say thank you for driving also that it appears that what we did versus what's budgeted for in the adopted budget for the 24 and 25 year is going to be adjusted in the first interim because it is critical that we really do understand, you know, why is it that we're spending, you know, we saved money in, you know, special ed, but then we are now increasing that budget in the adopted budget, you know, to more money. So thank you for clarifying that those adjustments will continue to be made.

[8415] Tracey Vackar: The report before you this evening for the inaudited actuals is a piece that as we close out the one set of books, it automatically compares it to our current budget. It doesn't really go back. Like I said, I think it's actually a different report that we'd have to provide to you. And really, you'd probably see that more in the interim. Well, actually you don't because we really don't go back to last year's report, so you really wouldn't see that. It would actually be a whole different kind of report. I have to think about what that would look like. I hear what you're asking for. I have to think about it. If you wouldn't mind, let me just give some thought to it and work with the team because it's not a report that we actually normally work with. Not to say that it can't be done, and maybe it's something that would be really helpful for us, especially as we look at in this budget cycle, is we still have to continue being very, very prudent, right? As we continue to downsize with the number of students that we have, and we have higher costs and staffing needs that we want to be able to provide to our staff. And we're going to make those kinds of adjustments through negotiations and through other ways to be able to continue to support our staff to be healthier and to be able to keep them retained. And again, one of the other board goals that we have, right, to be able to attract and retain high quality staff. We really need to think about what are those practices. And so I hear what you're saying. I don't think that's what this report actually does from a state standpoint and what we actually turn in and what they look at and what they're adjusting against. But I hear what you're saying as far as going back to, and again, you'd have to look at both the first and second interims from last year because they're always going back to the original adopted budget, just like this cycle will do too, right? When we go back and do our first and second, it's against the 24, 25 budget. It never goes back to the 23. So I hear what you're saying. I think is a, I just think like, what would that look like? And maybe it's through the NYP process. Let me just think about it. If you wouldn't mind, I'll brainstorm with the team. And let's see if we can't come back with something that might be helpful to be able to sit there and show as a starting point. I think it would also be a great conversation that as staff starts to work with and bringing back together a budget advisory committee for this coming year. I think it ends up being a helpful tool, right, to be able to help us. It's really no different than some of the forensic work that some of our experts provided to us, right, as they were digging into each of the accounts. And that's one of the things that we did, you know, here over the last, you know, six months is we've dug deep into those accounts to see, like, what were the past practices? What did it look like over multiple years? What was being used? What's being invested? What are we planning for for the future as we sit there and we develop our new budget for 24-25, which includes all those things? I don't know what you're asking for is a bad thing to ask for. It just isn't what this report is. But I really do appreciate the fact that it might, you can learn from that, right? And you can also adjust and plan for it. And then, you know, also talk about, like, what are the service needs? No different than, like, what we do with the LCAP. When you sit there and you do the evaluation of the LCAP piece, you still kind of look at those things. Like, are you still doing those services? Are they being done well? What does your data tell you? What else do you have to do to go off and go support it? So I like the idea of being able to do something. I just can't think of a state report that actually provides that particular piece, but I think we can probably create something. Maybe it would be a good helpful tool for us.

[8613] Aiden Hill: Member Jones.

[8615] Kat Jones: I think it would be really helpful because you're comparing what you said, this is what we're going to do, this is what we did, rather than this is what we did, this is what we hope to do. So you're going, you know, and then being able to see that difference, I know for me, it would just make it so much easier to kind of grasp, like, this is what we set out to do. Where did we follow it? Where were we high? Where were we low? It just would make a lot of sense to kind of see, where is it that we saved the money? Because when we've set the budget for the next year, we're not setting it Or maybe we are, but to me it doesn't feel like we're setting it against what we just spent. We're just saying this is what we hope to do.

[8666] Phuong Nguyen: Yeah. Because on the interim reports, you get to see the original budget, you get to see the approved board operating budgets, and then the actuals to date. So that makes sense. But when you get to the unaudited actuals, when it's looking like we're hope to be here instead of this is actually here. This is what we actually spent. So I think for us, there may be that confusion. You guys see it regularly, so you understand it more. But yeah, every single time I look at an interim report versus an audit actual, I have to really pay attention because otherwise, yeah, we can get lost in there. And I agree with member Thomas, what she had said.

[8711] Tracey Vackar: I think it's also, I think maybe a great point that as you're talking with your CSBA, colleagues, that maybe this is a report that would be helpful not only for us to be able to go off and go look at, but maybe something that would be a good practice. Right? And I can ask some of their colleagues, see if they're doing anything like that. But I got to say, even in all my years with having been a school board member, I don't remember ever seeing a report that kind of brings it back to that. I understand what it is you're asking for. I just know that this is not what the audit does at this point. But I get exactly what you're asking for. And I just need to think about, how can we provide you with that? But I almost think it's like another NYP against our original budget.

[8749] Phuong Nguyen: Well, I mean, I guess it just depends on the finance system. But the one we have in, of Fremont, we can run a monthly expenditure against the budget to see what has been spent. So I'm sure the finance system has that, and that's adequate enough for us to be able to understand, even, you know, quarterly or whatever. But, or even for us to be able to see it before we approve the unaudited actuals for the end of year, you know, fiscal year, or in this case, school calendar year. So, but yes. I mean, there's definitely another report that we can definitely take a look at, but.

[8788] Nancy Thomas: I think it would be helpful for staff to tell us or point out the things that surprise you. Where are you surprised? So, for example, if you budgeted so much in supplies, and all of a sudden, there's a big variance. You know, evaluate that, analyze it, and let the board know what it is and why it happened. Like when Ms. Parks talked about us underestimating, she thinks we're underestimating our ADA, and it appears we are. Why are we doing that? I mean, are we going to correct it at first interim?

[8835] Tracey Vackar: Because we would have to correct it at first interim. That's where you would correct it at.

[8839] Nancy Thomas: So yeah, those are things that, if you could point out the anomalies that you see, and what they mean to you and how you're addressing them. Special ed is a great example. It's a huge increase in special ed expenses and, you know, having you analyze and discuss those and point them out to the board about why it's happening and what you're doing to hopefully bring those expenses down in the future.

[8867] Tracey Vackar: I think one thing besides myself being fairly new to the team, we have two new sets of eyes too that are actually now looking at this from best practices, things that they bring in from their districts as well. So you've got Nancy Chen who's just come on board as being our fiscal director. So she's been here probably six, seven weeks now. Not even quite yet two months, right? So she's fairly new looking at this. It's a whole new set of lenses, which there are some surprises that we've looked at. And we said, why do we do that? What does that look like? Why was this account not fully funded when we're spending more money there? Those are things that we do recognize and see. And same with Assistant Superintendent Katana. I mean, he just joined us just a couple weeks ago. And so, again, a very set of fresh eyes looking at this. But we've had some stellar experts also helping us as we've gone back to really look at these account codes and determine like how many were spent. You know, what is, I mean, how good is our position control by making sure that all those things are there, checks and balances, working with our HR team. There were positions that were kind of a surprise to us as we were looking at some of those things that maybe weren't put into the original budget. But as we closed out the books, we did find some of those anomalies. And so I appreciate the opportunity to be able to share some of those things with you. But I like the idea of having a different report. We even talked about possibly doing another NYP at one point. With this reporting, though it's not required, to me, it still kind of tells a story, right? And that's really what you want to be able to go back and go talk about doing. So I do appreciate the thoughts, and I really do appreciate our community, too, who spends really a wonderful amount of time looking at this and doing a comparison. It is really greatly appreciated, more so than I can begin to express. I don't mind the criticism. I think it helps us to continue to improve our practices and hopefully get us healthier and stronger.

[8981] Aiden Hill: And kind of my feeling about the situation is, so Warren Buffett, who's arguably one of the greatest investors in history, he has a famous saying. He says that the Forecaster's Hall of Fame is an empty room. And what that means is that there's no such thing as a great forecaster, right? Forecasters are inherently wrong. But with that said, and not to beat a dead horse, I share my fellow board members' concerns that although a forecast is not going to be right on the spot, it should be close. And I think that what we're hearing, and again, I'm not an expert in School accounting, but I know that whenever I've looked at in similar situations It's always been that you put a budget together and the budget is an expectation of what it's essentially a financial representation of what you're going to do during the year And then really what you should be doing is over each month you should be doing a budget to actual and saying are we tracking or not and And then what are the variances? And then at some point, as you get into your budget cycle, then you're going to see, well, are we actually, you know, way over or way under? And then, you know, per member Thomas, so what's the root cause? If we understand the root cause, then we can address essentially the forecasting error there. And then that will then go into ultimately the creation of a new budget. But I think it's just sort of weird where we're looking at actuals from the past, but now we're saying, well, here's this new budget, but how do we even put that budget together if we weren't tracking actuals from the very beginning? I'm like, you know, and there's just like one thing that, again, I'm a little bit confused about, and I'm hoping maybe you could help me and maybe I'm not misunderstanding. But we're saying that, so for our 2024-2025 budget, we were projecting $77 million. But in our past year, we actually had $80 million in revenue. And so what that means is that we actually had more revenue than we're projecting actually going forward. So and so what's kind of per member, Thomas, so what's the root cause of that? Why are we all of a sudden having $3.5 million more in revenue? And I'm curious if we know the answer to that.

[9126] Phuong Nguyen: Because of the projected ADA.

[9127] Aiden Hill: It's ADA that's driving it. OK, so we're thinking that because our projections around what we're going to do in terms of the ADA are going to bring us an additional $3.5 million.

[9140] Phuong Nguyen: Yeah, because it goes from $4,800 28 to 4,745. So it's a reduction. So based on that number, that's the number they used for the 24-25 budget.

[9153] Tracey Vackar: Okay. You also have to remember you're using a three-year rolling average.

[9156] Phuong Nguyen: Yeah.

[9157] Tracey Vackar: Right? And so that average continues to reduce each year. So as you lose the one year, right? Right. So our actual, our actual ADA is 4674. Yeah.

[9172] Phuong Nguyen: So that's why I, and I agree with Ms. Parks, we really do need to educate our community on how everything is funded in the district because it is really important to get students into those seats, into the classroom, and so that we can bring more revenue in. So, and based on that, that's why. But again, but because of the way that we're allocating other areas of the budget, we overestimate in some areas and then they can do they can do an adjustment to the funding and move, you know, money from one balance to another to be able to reallocate everything at the end of the year. But at the same time, it's really, it's nicer, much nicer to be able to see month to month like what, you know, what we actually have spent throughout the school year and where we've been moving the money so that we, when we get to the end, and do this on audited actuals, we have a bigger picture and understanding of like, hey, yeah, I remember that. We covered this before. And then not have to rehash and ask why. Why is this happening?

[9247] Aiden Hill: And to remember Gwen's point, since I've been on the board, I have had the impression that money's been kind of sloshing around. And so that's scary from an oversight perspective. It's like, whoa, we thought it was one thing, and now it's something else radically different. And so I think the key is like no surprises. And I understand, Superintendent Vackar, that you've come in new, that there were a lot of irregularities that we've encountered. And as we've worked with the county, I think that they've agreed or they've noticed. And so we've been in this sort of true up phase. But I think that going forward, we really have to have this much more nailed down so that, again, there's no surprises and that you know, and that we clear, you know, essentially we can track along and see what's going on so that by the time we get to this point, I mean, we're all nodding our heads. So, and so, and I know that that's a process to get there, but hopefully, I think we made a lot of progress and hopefully by this time next year, you know, we will be there.

[9310] Tracey Vackar: Yeah, I will tell you, I think it's a, there's a report that makes me feel better than when we went into the adopted budget, quite frankly, being able to look at this and know that there's some extra money sitting out there that We didn't anticipate. I mean, honestly, it's like I kind of like playing I can breathe. Like, I was really worried about that third year out. Like, that was a huge worry, right? And I know as you were asking me questions about, you know, what's the transparency of where we have, where we're getting the savings at with some of our budget reductions, it was hard to sit there and really put your finger on it. But it's actually the things that you're talking about being able to do against the original budget. And so I actually understand what it is that you're asking for. I just need to think about how I can best show that to you and do it in a way that, honors what we're trying to do. But I'm just going to tell you, we still have work to do. We're not out of the clear. We still have work to do. And honestly, people haven't stopped working yet. They've been really good about, I think, trying to find ways to be able to save. I mean, I've heard some really great suggestions over the last seven months since I've been here. And I really do appreciate, I think, the diligence also of our board. to recognize that when we had a lot of money coming in as being one-time monies, maybe we didn't address some of the things that we probably should have addressed even as we were declining in enrollment. And you can see the sharp decline in the historic of our ADA and just how much has changed over the last 10 years. Those are what we use for our figures when we try to calculate. We try to use good data. But our data is only as good as what our system tells us. And I'm here to tell you that some of our system pieces aren't so great. And because of it, we actually got fined last year on some stuff that we still can't put our fingers on as to why we were actually even fined, right? But we got hit with some penalties, right? And so we know that happened. And those penalties actually carried over. And so, again, those are things that we have to stay diligent on and make sure that we provide a better system to be able to start and continue to track to the best of our abilities to make sure that we're using really good data to be able to support what we're doing.

[9434] Nancy Thomas: FCMAT, one of their investigations or reports to us, suggested a monthly report. But what the district gave us was static. But I was able to go back and make it dynamic by taking each monthly report and seeing the variance from month to month in the big buckets, the salary buckets, the supplies bucket, the contracts. And I'd like to share that. I'll send that to you because it would be just a matter of pulling out five major milestones in our budget each month and using a table to see where the big variances are so you can explain them.

[9486] Tracey Vackar: Board Member Thomas, was that the work that was being done by the audit committee, like when you guys were looking at things? Is that a piece that you were doing through that, or was it just something you were just doing?

[9494] Nancy Thomas: No, it was based on a FCMAT report that they suggested that they give the board monthly. So when they gave that board that report to us monthly, I was able to take each month and see the variation from month to month.

[9508] Jose Quintana: Yeah, if you could share that with us, that would be great.

[9509] Nancy Thomas: Was that 2019, thereabouts? It was probably back then, maybe even earlier. I'll find it and send it to you.

[9519] Aiden Hill: OK, other questions, comments? OK, so this is an, oh, go ahead, student member.

[9525] Joy Lee: One really quick one. I was wondering where you guys get all this information from, and if anybody can explain it to me afterwards. Yes. If someone would be willing to.

[9538] Tracey Vackar: You know, I'm going to make an accountant out of you yet, Joy. I can't wait. You know, I know this is a pie that the career shows that you want to go into accounting But I like the fact that you ask all the questions And so we'll do our best to sit there and try to provide you with that information Thank you.

[9555] Aiden Hill: And I think that that would be helpful for the public too. So so that they can really understand Yeah, there's really there's like this really

[9564] Tracey Vackar: So the state gives us a budget cycle to go through, right? And it starts off with being your adopted budget that happens in June. And then as you close out your books, you do your un-audited cycle, right? And then you start making adjustments with both your first and your second interims. And that brings you into getting your next budget. kind of like in the works and start to plan for it. So there's like this whole cycle that actually happens. And the five different reports actually work in a similar fashion, right, to sit there and kind of look at those things. But then there's some other pieces that I think this board has gone back to go look at, because they've had FCMAT in here. And so I think they've done some deeper dives on some areas, right, which were beneficial, I think, at certain times. Kind of got them out of the FCMAT, I mean, followed some good FCMAT practices. But then sometimes would slip back in, and then they'd come back. Again, with some of the practice that needed to be done, actually, they did that three different times here in this district over the last, what, seven years, maybe? Eight years? Would that occur?

[9622] Nancy Thomas: At least three times over 10 years, maybe.

[9624] Tracey Vackar: Yeah, there's been quite a few times that it actually happened. But I think it's something that we need to pay attention to, and it's something that we need to be diligent about. And I like your analogy about, you know, The assumptions are only as good as the person that goes off and makes them. And you have to use it based on some data. And that's what we tried to use. And when we adopted our budget, I tried to share with you some of the data trends that we used to be able to create some of those assumptions. But I realize it is a moving target. And Mrs. Parks is not incorrect in saying that we may have missed it a little bit. And those will get readjusted.

[9662] Aiden Hill: OK. So this item requires action. So can I get a motion? to approve the 2023-2024 unaudited actuals financial report?

[9672] Carina Plancarte: I'll make a motion. I'll second.

[9675] Aiden Hill: Member applying Cartier-Moos, Vice President Jones seconds. And are we going to do this to board docs, Ms. Lumas?

[9686] Aiden Hill: OK, manual roll call. OK, go ahead. And does the student, what member doesn't vote on this one? No. OK.

[9693] Tracey Vackar: It's the financial report.

[9700] Toya Lemus: Member Thomas.

[9702] Nancy Thomas: You ask the student board member first. Why?

[9708] Tracey Vackar: It's a financial report, so just the board votes on the financial report.

[9714] Toya Lemus: Yes. Member Nguyen. Yes. Member Plancarte. Yes. Vice President Jones. Yes. President Hill.

[9723] Aiden Hill: Yes. Motion carries. Moving on to item 10.2. committed fund balance for the 2024-2025 year. And we don't have any speaker cards on this. So, Superintendent?

[9738] Tracey Vackar: Actually, I'm going to turn it over to staff and have them present on this.

[9742] Jose Quintana: So what we have for our committed funds here that we're presenting for the board tonight is our facilities improvement. of $2.6 million, $80,000. Deferred maintenance of half a million dollars. Technology refresh and upgrades of $1.1 million. Tech books and consumables of $700,000. Furniture replacement, $50,000. Declining enrollment and ADA mitigation, $200,000. Instructional program improvements, $450,000. Strategics to increase enrollment, $200,000. Reduce deficit spending and improve fiscal health, $300,000. NYP savings for years 25 26 and 26 27 of seven million nine hundred thirty seven thousand and six dollars total committed fund balance of fourteen million one hundred seventeen thousand and six dollars Thank You mr. Katana questions from the board Remember what just a clarification on the multi-year projection savings for 25 26 26 27 is that for the

[9808] Phuong Nguyen: The 3%?

[9811] Tracey Vackar: That is to get us to the 3% and to be able to bring in a balanced budget. Remember when we showed the multiple year projection before? A third year out was in the red. So this would help to help auto correct that for those years. And we were very lean in 25-26.

[9826] Phuong Nguyen: OK. So 3% for 25-26 and an additional 3% for?

[9830] Tracey Vackar: We're not quite there, but we're almost there. Yeah.

[9833] Phuong Nguyen: OK. All right, thank you.

[9835] Tracey Vackar: I think it was eight something, if I recall from the multiple year projection. I don't have it in front of me, but I want to say it was 8.8.

[9840] Phuong Nguyen: Eight million, yeah, over eight, right?

[9842] Tracey Vackar: Yeah, so we're just slightly under that.

[9844] Phuong Nguyen: Okay, thank you.

[9846] Aiden Hill: Additional questions?

[9849] Aiden Hill: Okay, so can I get a motion to adopt the resolution 2425.09 committed from balance for 2024-25? I'll make a motion to approve. I'll second. Vice President Jones, Member Thomas seconds. And we're going to do roll call Ms. Lemus, go ahead.

[9871] Toya Lemus: Member Thomas? Yes. Member Nguyen? Yes. Member Plancarte? Yes. Vice President Jones? Yes. President Hill?

[9879] Aiden Hill: Yes. Motion carries. Okay, moving on to 10.3, technology upgrades. And we do have a couple of One, we have one speaker card. I'm imagining you want to wait till after the presentation or do you want to do it now? After? Okay, great. Superintendent?

[9899] Tracey Vackar: Yes, thank you. I'm going to turn this over to Assistant Superintendent Quintana to be able to introduce this item and to introduce our director generally.

[9912] Jose Quintana: So tonight we have two different, one presentation, but two different aligned items, 10.3 and 10.4 here. Technology upgrade for replacement of centralized servers. And the second would be replacement of 307 student devices at Newark Memorial High School. And given the presentation, it will be our director of technology here tonight, Jenny Lee, will be presenting for the board.

[9941] Jenilee Peñaflor: Thank you. Good evening, Board President Hill, members of the Board and Executive Cabinet. My name is Jenna Lee-Penuflor. I'm going to do a recap of what I presented to you a couple of weeks ago on our Server Refresh and our high school freshman take-home program. So just refreshing your memory of who your IT team is, I am the director with four staff members, Yong Lee, Andrew Herrera as our technicians, and Barbie Pagan, Maria Diaz-Mendola as our software support specialists who support Synergy and CalPath reporting. And so tonight I am presenting to you for approval our recommendation for the server refresh. At the last board meeting we presented the options for a renewal versus a refresh. The renewal would come at $171,091 versus a refresh which would allow us to take advantage of new customer pricing for VMware which is our virtual server software. These are the prices that we had at that time $136,788 and by going with the refresh versus a renewal we'd be saving $34,303. Now the current financial summary, so if we didn't do a refresh and we just renewed, the support with Dell will cost us over three years $99,691. And because VMware is changing their pricing structure from what is now perpetual to what's going to be per core pricing, The renewal alone for VMware is going to be $71,400 for a total of $171,091. So that's for three years, and that's if we kept the existing hardware. And so what we are recommending for purchase is basically a replacement of our existing servers. It's basically the newer model. We would be going from four to three node clusters. It's more dense. It's faster. It's more secure. But it would give us 96 cores versus the 80 that we have now. And then along with that is our storage solution. So you have the servers and then you have storage. And so my recommendation is that we go with the updated servers. And you will see that there's a quote added today, this morning, because we were able to secure a discount over the weekend. So instead of that $126,768 for the new servers, we were able to take advantage of a Dell discount and get the server refresh at $121,962. And then the VMware licensing, which if we did the renewal would have been $71,000, is now only going to be $10,020 over the three years. So the total investment for the VMware and the new servers is $131,982. And so just a summary of the two projects, but I'll show you this slide again on the next presentation for the high school. So this is really, oops. This is really what I am asking for your approval for today, is the purchase of new servers with three-year support and three years of VMware.

[10151] Aiden Hill: Great. Okay, thank you. Ms. Peñaflor and Mr. Knoop, would you like to come up and ask your questions on this topic?

[10166] Cary Knoop: Good evening again. You know, it's great when you see something like, you know, we have option A and option B, and let's pick option B because it's so much cheaper. But there are more things in this world than option A and option B. You know, first question would be, why don't we go for bid? You know, the new VM licensing was already known in April. So we knew what was coming. You know, there are alternatives. We can go for AMD. And just for the fact that you want to check with competitors and see what alternatives they offer, at a better price is just a good way of doing business. And so, you know, while it's nice to say, hey, we saved so much money, it's a very narrow description of reality. You know, furthermore, the servers are not, you know, the state of the art. I mean, they're faster than before. And, of course, the question is, do we actually need the additional capacity? I don't know what we're using these servers for. If we need them, well, then there's probably so much more reason Also look for AMD as an alternative to Intel. You know, this is public money. It's not like, oh, you know, let's not worry. This is Essar funds. We have it for free. So let's just spend whatever we want. And let's take the easy road. We already have this contract with Dell. They're good guys, this and that. Why don't we just, you know, they give us a new offer. And for sure, that's the best offer we can find. Well, I mean, that's not a good practice. Question one, why didn't we go for bid? Question two, have we looked at alternative options? So again, we want to make sure we spent the money intelligently. Thank you.

[10271] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Mr. Knoop.

[10273] Aiden Hill: OK, questions from the board? Remember when?

[10280] Phuong Nguyen: In terms of the capacity for storage, how much storage does that entail? Because I didn't see it in detail.

[10287] Jenilee Peñaflor: It's super small on this slide. It is about 13 terabytes.

[10295] Phuong Nguyen: That's it?

[10296] Jenilee Peñaflor: And well, it's 13 terabytes raw, 9.8 usable, and 27.25 effective for the PowerStore. Oh, sorry. Yep. And then, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I'm reading the wrong one. I'm reading capacity. The memory is 96 gigs. Yeah, that's capacity. And then 96 gigs per controller for memory, 192 gigs appliance total.

[10327] Phuong Nguyen: And currently what is the capacity that is usage right now on the current servers?

[10333] Jenilee Peñaflor: We are at about 65% on the current servers. I would have to. I mean, how many terabytes used? I don't have that number before me, but I can look that up for you after.

[10345] Phuong Nguyen: Sorry, it's okay. No worries. Okay. Yeah, and I'm assuming that this will be a sole source? I'm sorry? Is this a sole source contract? It's a non-competitive bid.

[10362] Jenilee Peñaflor: Correct. We are piggybacking off a NASPO contract.

[10367] Phuong Nguyen: Okay.

[10370] Phuong Nguyen: That's an OK way to do business also. We don't have to always go out for a competitive bid if a competitive bid has already been taking place. So thank you. Thank you.

[10380] Tracey Vackar: The other thing I think that's a little bit different too with this particular item is that if we had done the refresh, the refresh actually would have cost us more money than if we went back out and got new equipment that actually was going to be able to serve our needs for a lot longer period of time for us to be able to grow into, which would be good.

[10398] Phuong Nguyen: And thank you for making the correction, because that was one of my questions, was when I added up the numbers from the quote, it didn't add up to what was in the presentation. So I had the correct number that you had, which was 131,982. Yes, correct. I did do my own. So thank you for the presentation. I am supportive of this. solution for the district. I think that it is great that, you know, the refresh allows us more cores, at least 16 more cores. And it's a, you know, that's really good, especially for failovers and everything like that. So, thank you for the presentation.

[10448] Aiden Hill: You're welcome. Thank you. Additional questions from the board?

[10453] Carina Plancarte: You know, just for transparency for the community. So the reason we are going that you've presented this to us with Dell is because it would not require us to then acquire new equipment if we were to go.

[10470] Jenilee Peñaflor: Well, this one, I am. seeking approval for new equipment.

[10475] Carina Plancarte: Right, but I'm assuming that we've already got a relationship with Dell. Yes. That is what I meant, is not with, not because therefore if we did start a new relationship with a different vendor, then it would probably require maybe different components, right? Exactly.

[10494] Jenilee Peñaflor: with the size of the team, which is why I presented in the beginning, that would be a learning curve that we don't really have the time to handle right now. And so we're kind of just moving to the next model up, the next upgraded model up. We know how to use the equipment. We know how to use VMware. And that's really all that we can handle right now.

[10514] Carina Plancarte: Thank you for that clarification. I really appreciate it. It helps with transparency. Thank you.

[10519] Aiden Hill: Other questions? Number one.

[10521] Phuong Nguyen: I just also want to echo I think that's, you know, especially if we don't have, you know, extended experiences or with different technology other than VMware, you know, in the district, I'm okay with us not, you know, not having a competitive bid for this product. It is definitely okay to do sole source and to piggyback off of another contract. So, don't feel bad about it.

[10550] Aiden Hill: Thank you. Other questions?

[10555] Carina Plancarte: Well, I think also just to continue on, while I understand that we are short-staffed and I understand that everybody is, again, drinking from the fire hose, In an ideal world, you would be fully staffed. You would have the opportunity to really take this and possibly go out and get competitive bids from different vendors, from new vendors. So I just wanted to thank you again for all of the work that you and your staff are doing, given that you're very shorthanded and really just taking the opportunity to ensure that this is something that gets taken care of. that we do use the funds. And while I do appreciate Mr. Knoop's comment about just because we have the funds and we should spend them, it is also critical that when we can and if we do have the bandwidth that we are going out and ensuring that we are getting the competitive bids. But otherwise, thank you so much for all of your work, your team. I'm going to say it again. I'm really happy that you're here and that you chose to come to Newark. Thank you.

[10629] Aiden Hill: Additional questions?

[10632] Aiden Hill: So, I have just one comment related to this. And so, kind of echoing what Mr. Newpitt said, and then also a little bit with what Member Plancarte said, and also just from my own personal experience. So, my wife has actually worked in the Silicon Valley technology space for, it's like over 30 years. And at one point, she actually worked at VMware. And she was oftentimes in charge of what's called sales operations. And so, essentially, all the salespeople that are out there going out and doing all their deals, they had to come to my wife and her team to go and approve deals. So, and those happen every quarter, and I hear all these stories about it. And what I want you to know is that my wife loves government contracts because government never does its homework. And so, and one of the reasons why we brought Mr. Cantana in is because of his procurement experience. And so I understand, as we're all saying here, that we've been, you know, trying to work through some stuff and we're short-staffed. But I think where we're going to see additional savings is going to be in the procurement space. And I can tell you that just in the, like the software support area or any type of software, the margins are incredibly squishy. And so, because literally, there's like a one-time cost for developing that, and then ongoing, they just sell. And so, if you wait until quarter end, or particularly year end, right, sometimes you can get a 90% discount off a list. And so, again, we maybe needed to do this right now, and so, you know, and so we did it. But I would say going forward, if we can have a little bit of a longer planning horizon, and if we can think about potential competitive bidding strategies, Part of it, as Member Nguyen is saying, is piggybacking off of what other people have done. So that's a legitimate strategy. That's definitely a legitimate strategy. But again, just making sure that you've covered all your bases and you really have a strategy going in, you can get maximum bang for the buck. And then the other thing that you really want to think about is my wife is always amazed at how so many government entities will particularly buy software licenses. And sometimes it's software licenses for maybe a three-year period. and support for a three-year period, and then they will go back and they will check three years later, and they can do an audit to see how many of those licenses were actually used. And sometimes none of them were used. So we really want to be smart about this. But as I think Member Nguyen is indicating, we have confidence in you, and so we just want to make sure, again, that we all sharpen our pencils.

[10795] Phuong Nguyen: These particular licenses will be used. I mean, this is your hub of all your servers, virtual servers, and all of your data storage. So I don't have any issues with that. And I do agree, there are definitely times where we have to go out and do competitive bidding. But to say that all government, like Sheila's all government contracts because nobody does their homework, that's not necessarily true. Because if there is already competitive bid and a piggyback option, the homework Somebody's already done that, and we're in a similar situation. So, we should take advantage of it.

[10835] Aiden Hill: Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, can I get a motion to approve the proposal with redesign and Dell Technologies for data center modernization for 136, 788? No. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, okay. Sorry, sorry.

[10856] Carina Plancarte: There's a correction.

[10856] Aiden Hill: Yeah, sorry.

[10859] Carina Plancarte: I'll make a motion.

[10861] Nancy Thomas: I'll second.

[10864] Aiden Hill: So it was a member of Planned Parenthood? Yes. OK, member of Planned Parenthood moves. And sorry, member Thomas seconded. Roll call.

[10870] Tracey Vackar: And student board member can vote on this one.

[10873] Aiden Hill: OK.

[10875] Joy Lee: Yes.

[10876] Aiden Hill: We could do board docs. Oh, we're going to do board docs. OK, so you want to ask this?

[10883] Joy Lee: My preferential vote is yes.

[10885] Aiden Hill: OK, all right.

[10886] Joy Lee: Excellent.

[10893] Toya Lemus: open online voting.

[10925] Kat Jones: Nancy, did you get yours?

[10929] Nancy Thomas: No, I haven't gotten mine.

[10932] Toya Lemus: I can mark it manually. Sure. I'm a yes.

[10938] Nancy Thomas: I'm a yes.

[10944] Toya Lemus: Member Plancarte?

[10945] Carina Plancarte: Yes.

[10949] Toya Lemus: Student board member, yes. So to confirm, member Thomas, yay. President Hill, yay. Member Nguyen, yay. Vice President Jones, yay. Member Plancarte, yay.

[10965] Aiden Hill: And the student number two.

[10966] Toya Lemus: I'm sorry. Student member Lee, yay.

[10969] Aiden Hill: Great. OK, motion carries. So moving on to 10.4. And Mr. Newp and Ms. Parks, I'm imagining you want to hear the presentation first. OK, great. So superintendent?

[10984] Jose Quintana: So 10.4, technology upgrades, replacement of 370 student devices at Newark Memorial High School. We'll have Ms. Jenny Lee bring the floor, present this.

[10998] Jenilee Peñaflor: Hello again. All right. So I am bringing item 10.4 before you again for approval. The recommendation for student device refresh is that we procure 370 Lenovo 14e Chromebooks. This is the mid-level option, given the options that were presented at the last board meeting, because we wanted to give our high school students something that could grow with them with a little bit more RAM and storage. This decision was largely influenced by student board member Joy Lee and the enthusiasm of Newark Memorial High School's administration. So just as a refresh, the options presented last week for either, we used 300 at that point, but we know that the freshman class is actually 367 students. But the first option was to just purchase more Chromebooks outright to get them at 100% one-to-one. Option two was to allow freshmen a one-to-one take-home program with a PC. So the freshmen would take this device at freshman year. They'd carry it all the way to senior year. They'd be responsible for bringing it to school charged. We would have insurance policy. We would have the option for insurance warranty. The staff at the high school would help us with asset management and checkout and things like that. And then option three was similar to option two, but instead of a PC, we would be using a Chromebook. So we did go with option three. And some of the quotes that we had presented to you, I want to bring this back up so you know which ones we picked. So on the left side there, the HP 14 Chromebook was the most inexpensive option at $120,477. The specs on this are similar to the Chromebooks that we currently have in all the carts at our schools. So four gigs of RAM, 32 gigs of memory. On the right side there was a quote for the PCs if we went that route, which we decided not to. Did it change? Yes. CDW came with two quotes. I'm going to start with the one on the right, the HP Fortis. For the 300 units, it would have been 174,000. It has, these two models have the same specs basically. So 8 gigs of RAM, 64 gigs of storage. And we ended up going with the Lenovo 14E. The price for 300 is $146,035. And then we ended up getting a little bit of a discount because we had to add 70 units. I asked them to cut a little bit off the retail price. And so we're getting 370 for 170,116. And if you when you get back to your computers, this is the Lenovo part there. Oh, sorry, I didn't even switch slides, sorry. That underline red is actually linked if you want to look at the specs for that device. And so we've been in talks with the high school already to use Destiny as the asset management, or at the very least at this point, a means to check in and out that. Jose and I have been talking about the insurance portion of this and what we can Legally or with our policies due for enforcement of lost or stolen or broken devices So all those pieces for the program are in the works but this is what I'm seeking approval for today the purchase of 370 units at the discounted price of one hundred seventy thousand one hundred sixteen dollars and that the two projects This is our remaining funds after these two projects are funded. So last board meeting, the remaining dollar amount was about $29,000, but we've saved a little bit of money on the student devices. We've saved a little bit of money on the refresh. So now our leftover is about $61,210, which is basically already spent on our other tech projects that I discussed last week, like the IDFs that were in the ceiling and the cabling projects at the other schools, and our network refresh, basically. So I'm going to go back one slide. So this is what we are seeking approval for today.

[11260] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Ms. Peñaflor. So we've got a couple questions from the public. So Mr. Newp, would you like to come forward and share your comments?

[11275] Cary Knoop: First of all, I'm not picking on anybody or so. I don't want to give that impression, OK? It's just I'm a concerned citizen. And when I see certain things that maybe I know a little bit about, then I feel the urge to tell that. So this is nothing personal or related to anything. So you see an Intel N100 processor. That's a pretty old processor. And 8 gigabytes of RAM is pretty low. But, you know, these Chromebooks, to me, that seems to be like a bottomless pit. You know, it's like a commodity. It's like sugar now. We just keep buying these Chromebooks, and then they just disappear in some chasm or whatever. I don't know. We can't find them, or we never get them back. And that's just not a good model. Now, if you look at the high school, I think what the high school needs, start with the science lab. There's wonderful monitors and there's hardly any computers connected to them. Why don't we start getting some decent desktops? Desktops are actually more economical than laptops because laptops are more expensive. All the components have to be made very small. So get some decent desktops there in the science center. That's where you start with. Then maybe in our libraries we want to get some decent laptops running Microsoft Windows. It doesn't have to be high maintenance. You can flush the OS every time when a new person logs in so you don't have any, you know, maintenance problems. But, you know, we need to think about some more durable equipment rather than these Chromebooks. On top of that, the way Google is dealing with these Chromebooks of calling them out of warranty after two or three years or what is it, I mean, that's also not a maintainable model. So rather than going for, I mean, if this is what we're going for, that is pretty low end, 8 gig. I mean, you might as well just use a browser and then just use Google Docs. I mean, I don't see the advantage, honestly. And then if you actually have an option for good laptops, they don't have to be touchscreen. I don't see any reason why students need a touchscreen laptop. I mean, a keyboard is fine, and it's cheaper. So again, I would think the best way to spend the money is first in our science lab, put some good desktops there. Maybe put some TPUs in there. Kids can do some AI stuff or what have you. Then have some good laptops in the library. And then start thinking about having a system where people who really need it at home, they can move it in or out. You know, I mean, this has got to stop. Every year or twice a year, we see this, you know, we need 300, we need 500. It's just a bottomless pit. These Chromebooks keep just coming up. I don't know where they go. Thanks.

[11461] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Mr. Knoop. Mr. Parks?

[11472] Cindy Parks: So, I do understand the importance of the IT department and the equipment. And of course, the IT guy is back there. He's the first one I consult. Believe me, I'm not into all of that kind of stuff. But what I do look at is process and I do look at the asset management because that has been a concern for a long time. And back in about 21 months ago, the district paid a firm to inventory the computers. And since that time, I know that there's been inquiry. It seemed to me that you asked at the last meeting, I think Ms. Thomas did, about what are you doing to tag these pieces of equipment and keep track of them? And I really didn't feel that there was a good response at that time. I'm understanding that there is a process that's going to be enforced for this, I assume. But I just think that there are holes in this whole big inventory and tracking of assets. And then, you know, and perhaps along the line of what President Hill mentioned the last time, because he said at his school they already have a check-in and check-out system. So I'm just hoping that there is some type of a discussion of how you're going to track these items purchased with public funds. The other issue is that, I mean, to go along with what Mr. Nook said is that, you know, you did spend $615,000 last year. you know, on computers. So it seems like, yes, you're constantly doing this. So you need to have that good system. But if you are going to be having these students checking out things, you're talking about insurance and all of this, then you are going to have to revise your student use of technology board policy 6163.4 that you just approved last August. So that will need to be worked on there too, is that you're going to have to put in place all of these little steps that you're talking about. doing. And then also I just think that, you know, it just seems like we're constantly seeing these purchases for students to be one-to-one, one-to-one. We're always talking about that, yet I hardly ever see a good discussion about giving the staffing what they need. And then Ms. Villa actually talked about it earlier, is that there are teachers that don't have good laptops or don't have the smart boards and stuff in their classrooms. So I think that it's a broader spectrum than just making sure that there's one-to-one Chromebooks that just do seem to rotate in and out of the hands of the students or they just seem to disappear or I hear about keys breaking off and there is so many different stories and they seem to not take very much abuse and are very abused. So thank you very much.

[11645] Aiden Hill: Thank you, Ms. Parks. And then before we have the board ask questions, I just want a couple of clarifications. So these 370, so are these going to be given to specific students? Or are they going to be going into Chrome cards? Or so how is that going to work?

[11664] Jenilee Peñaflor: These would be going to members of the freshman class. And then we would take out the Chromebooks equivalent to leave the remaining junior, senior, sophomore classes at one to one in cards. but these would be take home for the freshman class.

[11679] Aiden Hill: And then they would return them at the end of the year?

[11682] Jenilee Peñaflor: At the end of senior year.

[11684] Aiden Hill: OK, that's really risky.

[11687] Jenilee Peñaflor: Tell me your concerns.

[11690] Aiden Hill: I'll let the board ask questions. Go ahead.

[11693] Nancy Thomas: Well, I took the opportunity because my daughter teaches across the bay in the San Mateo Union High School District. And so they have a Chromebook. loaner agreement, because they use this process, give it to the freshman, they keep it for four years and turn it back in. But they have real strict guidelines, and they have parents and the students' amount of money that they have to spend if they lose it or misuse it. So I made enough copies, at least for up here, but in the back, I think I can get more copies. If we do this, we have to have a robust tracking system and a robust system to hold students and their parents accountable. If they are willing to take the Chromebooks and be responsible for them. I think we need to have definitely have asset tags. Like last week, I was kind of shocked or last meeting that really we have not followed through and we don't have a robust asset management system. And so now we're going to be giving all of our freshmen computers and we have to be able to manage that. We have to be able to have a process for those that get damaged or lost and so forth. So I think if we can have a system to manage and track these I think that's imperative. Otherwise, I don't know if I could support this.

[11796] Jenilee Peñaflor: No, we totally agree. We've been in conversation about building a program around this, so it's not going to be your standard. Here's a bunch of Chromebooks. We really want to build a program so that students feel a sense of accountability to these, but also the asset management and making sure that we can track them like you said. So destiny is what we use for our textbooks already and that's the immediate viable option for us because it's it's already at the high school. They know how to use it and it's an easy way for us to track assets for this. But we are in active conversations for getting an asset man. Yes an asset management system and ticketing system for technology.

[11834] Jose Quintana: I did want to add to that board member Thomas that generally the floor and I have been in contact with the technology director of San Mateo High School District, and he alluded to this program here. So we're doing some research before these laptops are issued.

[11853] Nancy Thomas: I mean, I hope that if we do this, that no student gets a laptop or a Chromebook until he and she or she and the parent sign an agreement.

[11867] Jenilee Peñaflor: Absolutely. Yes, and we do have resources from other districts around the state who are doing similar things. So our plan is to pool these resources and pull the best parts of them to build our own program around it.

[11878] Nancy Thomas: Also, having said that, I do want to listen to Mr. Knoop. I think Mr. Knoop makes a lot of sense. in what he says and these things and what we heard about equipment disappearing and walking away. We owe it to the taxpayers to be responsible in the way we manage our equipment.

[11913] Jenilee Peñaflor: Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with that. And so one of the things that I came in the door kind of spearheading was an asset manager. and a help desk system so we can better track this. I can't really speak to them not coming back. Maybe it's because I'm new here. But I do know that they're not tracked as well as I've seen in other districts. So it is high on our list, definitely. And to address the obsolescence, the planned obsolescence of Chromebooks, It's not that we want to spend money on this every year, but really they've been given a life cycle of four years before the operating system is obsolete and we can't use them anymore. As long as we stay with Chromebooks, it's just something we have to deal with. Now, if we go with PCs, we addressed it last week, we have to build a program around that too. We can't just roll out devices that we don't have a plan for, because then it's just a Chrome browser, which is exactly what our Chromebook is. And so at this point in time, this is our best option. This is the best we can do at this point.

[11977] Aiden Hill: Other questions, comments?

[11981] Phuong Nguyen: I'm also in agreement with Mr. Noob's comment in terms of like, if this is going to be lasting for four years, I mean, 8 gigs of RAM and 64 gigabytes of onboard storage, the kids, I mean, if we're supposed to build out Steam in the district and this, they can't write code on here and be able to store it and to run any programs if they're in a computer science program on these Chromebooks. I mean, they're not. They're not made to do that. And so for me, that is a concern. But if the understanding is to use ESSER funds because these funds are running out for us to be able to get to a one-to-one for our students, I say, okay, but at the end of the day, this isn't the solution that if we have technology money set aside to do technology refresh, this is not what I would want us to use it on. And so my second question, and this is to our executive team, is the 1.1 committed funds, is none of that ESSER money is in that bucket, correct?

[12059] Jose Quintana: That's correct, it is not. Okay.

[12060] Phuong Nguyen: All right. So, okay. But yes, just to be clear, I think that long-term plan, and I hope that everybody has a bigger picture in terms of what technology we want to build out for our students, and also for the district to be able to have capacity, to be able to have, you know, for them to be able to do these amazing innovative things with the use of technology. We need to be able to think bigger and not, you know, so little on these terms, especially if they're going to be assigned a computer moving forward for four years, you know.

[12097] Jenilee Peñaflor: Yes, thank you. And we do agree. I know Superintendent Vackar and I do agree, which is why the PCs were an option at all, because we wanted to go in that direction. But I mean, you nailed it on the head. Like, we need to use the ESSER funds. So unfortunately, that timeline prohibits us from building a program that would really do justice to putting PCs in the hands of freshmen at this point.

[12118] Tracey Vackar: Other questions? Something else that we can do, though, quite frankly, and I have done this in other districts, is as you build the lab, and I think Our friend out in the audience, Mr. Newp, said this very well. You need to invest in your labs. And if your labs have the substantial tools to be able to help you with whether or not you're doing something with coding or whether or not you're doing something with the science or STEAM programs that require a more higher end device, to have a desktop that actually helps and supports you with that is great. I know generally is very much so aware that I'm not a big fan of using Chromebooks, especially at the secondary level. I think just to be college and career ready and be prepared, I think really you need a different device, quite frankly. But we also are looking at what supports our current curriculums that we have and to make sure that students have the tools so that they can continue their education. And most importantly, we want to make sure that right now they've got a device that will get them through the next four years as we continue to rebuild our technology department and really start to make that real investment in there, which, quite frankly, hasn't been invested in for many, many years, other than we had to make some quick decisions during COVID. We had to go to one-to-one devices. We grabbed what we could grab. Some of the stuff that we had wasn't really the best stuff. Some of it had some garbage components to it. I can't say I'm excited about the Chromebooks here in particular, because I'd like to see us with a different device at the secondary level. But I think it's a bigger discussion on what does our technology plan look like for our students to be that college and career ready in addition to really strong and competitive labs.

[12213] Aiden Hill: Other questions? Member Lee.

[12214] Joy Lee: Go ahead. I had a couple of questions. So in regards to the Chromebook, I just wanted to say this. For a computer science and our coding, I'm pretty sure that we already have desktops already available. So that wouldn't really be a problem. It's not like the whole school takes takes computer science and the whole school takes coding. For me personally, like in my AP classes, I would just, I just need a Chromebook because I just need to use my Google Drive and my Google Classroom. But back to the question, I think, so I love this program and I think it's a really good program, but while I was talking with my peers, like a concern that they brought up was that what about like The freshmen will get the Chromebooks, but what about the rest of the school? What will happen to the juniors? Do they have to keep on using the same old Chromebooks and stuff? Or is there anything like, I mean, the freshmen right now, because then that means the next couple of years they would need to be content with how the school is running right now. So that. was my question. Did that make sense? Yes.

[12294] Tracey Vackar: I think I got part of that.

[12295] Jenilee Peñaflor: Do you want to go ahead and address it? Sure. I'll start. You can jump in. So the vision is that we would start by giving the freshman class these 367 devices. They take them to senior year. So the next year's freshmen would get a new lot of devices too. So yes, the juniors and seniors and sophomores would be left with the Chromebooks that are in carts right now. That's just how the program is going unfortunately ramp up for the rest of them, but we will, you know, continue to do our best to support those devices as they are the same devices that we use across the district. So there are, they are fine. They are not subpar devices. They just won't have them to take home.

[12339] Joy Lee: And I feel like just like from a student point of view that like that would need to be communicated well or else like students would be very upset and like somewhere, like, be like, why is it that these freshmen are getting these nice Chromebooks, but we're not getting these nice Chromebooks? And that's just like a concern that I wanted to bring up that, like, my peers were, like, telling me about, which was why they, like, actually preferred, like, having the just, like, the equal Chromebooks to everybody, because it would be, like, equal. It would be fair.

[12376] Tracey Vackar: So I think one of the things that I think we need to look at is, as you do a refresh cycle, oftentimes you will start with your freshman class, right, with whatever your refresh is, and then each year you're building on top of that. And really, as you start to wind down, your other program kind of gets substituted with something else. I mean, that's a pretty common practice, whether it be for replacement devices for teachers or staff. I mean, we do the same thing. And a lot of times we end up sharing devices, especially at the end of a cycle. Because one, we don't want to go off and invest in the old stuff. We want to make sure that we're really investing in the new stuff as we move forward. So kind of like one program's kind of sunsetting and a new one's kind of coming in. And then I think we really need to look at what are the real needs of the schools. And I think one of the things that we had talked about was having an ed tech committee that actually looks at some of these specs and really will dig into it as to what the future really looks like. You know, as students have more access, especially through some of the new curriculum things that we're doing also with ed services, we want to make sure that they have access to having these things in their hands as quickly as possible. But we are starting with one year so we can start building upon it to get there. But I think your point's well taken, that we need to make sure that we communicate that out and that students do have access. Actually, I wrote down a couple of questions, too, that I want to ask you about just to see, like, how do you get access to devices if you don't have something at home? Like, how do we help and support our students? Like, I've got a couple of questions on that that I just want to chat with you about independently.

[12470] Joy Lee: OK. That sounds good. And also, like, these Chromebooks would last, like, four years. Like, their life cycle is four years. OK. And then also that, like a suggestion would be like maybe we can take the Chromebooks that we already have at our school sites, like the ones in the carts, and then maybe we can also like redistribute them, like maybe have a count, and if possible, like redistribute them to the classes if we like have enough.

[12503] Jenilee Peñaflor: I don't think we have enough. What do you mean the classes? Like the grade levels?

[12507] Joy Lee: Yeah, the grade levels. I don't know if that would be possible, but that is a suggestion.

[12512] Jenilee Peñaflor: What do you mean? So. No, so like.

[12515] Joy Lee: No.

[12517] Jenilee Peñaflor: So that the rest of the students can take home a device as well?

[12522] Joy Lee: Yeah, if they wanted to.

[12525] Aiden Hill: So as a teacher on the front lines at a different high school, I don't have a problem with us taking ESSER funds right now and buying 370 laptops because I know that they're going to be used. But I have strong opinions about what will and will not work. And again, I deal with this every day as a teacher. So going back to Mr. Knoop's point about desktops, for people that really need the horsepower, you have dedicated labs to provide the desktops. The problem, though, with providing desktops in every classroom, a lot of times the classrooms are not big enough. The desks are not big enough. Oftentimes, they require hardwire. And then also they create a barrier between the teacher and the student And so literally and I tell you I mean the reality kids can tell you whatever you want to hear But if if kids have a screen in front of them and you can't see what's going on on that screen There's a high probability. It's not related to classwork. So that's why you need laptops. Okay, whether it's a Chromebook or something else but One of the things I will tell you is that in my classroom, I heavily use technology. And so literally, Every single kid has a device. But what I think that we need to be thinking about is it should not be a push, right? So this is not giving government cheese to everybody. This should be a pull. This should be, who does not have a personal laptop that they can bring to school and that who has need? And then they go and identify with the front office to say, I have a need for some type of laptop. But we shouldn't be going and distributing out all these laptops. And here's why. And doing it on a four-year basis is insanity. And literally, I have kids that bring expensive $30 to $50 water bottles in my classroom, and then they leave them there. And then they never come and pick them up. And then at the end of the year, we have a whole part of our one area in our college and career counseling where we have all the stuff that students leave behind in our classrooms that then gets auctioned off to people. And I will tell you that even with kids who've checked out Chromebooks, sometimes they will end up leaving it in my class. Because our model is we do not have Chrome carts. We do have a one-to-one model. So either it's your own personal device or it's a school-issued Chromebook. However, I have like three to four backups in my class in case a kid's device dies or whatever. But I will literally sometimes go into my Chromebook card, and I will find not my Chromebooks, but other kids' Chromebooks that somehow they've forgotten and left there. And sometimes they never get picked up. And so my sense is if we are going to do this model, it should really be issue it based on need, It should be for one year. Because trying to track this over four years, I mean, it's going to be crazy. Stuff's going to get broken. And then also, you can more easily refresh the technology on a one-year basis versus a four-year basis. And by the way, we use Destiny to actually not only check out our textbooks, but also to go check out our are Chromebooks. So all you need is an asset tag and a scanner. And so you don't necessarily need a super sophisticated, you know, asset tracker, right? You can, you could at least for right now use... And they still sign a contract for a year. And you would sign a contract, right? And so literally, you know, so like that's my recommendation and I think that, like, I think that the students would initially get excited with the idea of everybody getting a new Chromebook, but I promise you that the bloom will be off the rose in less than a month. I promise you. Stuff will get lost, stuff will get broken, right, you know, and so my suggestion is go to a one-to-one model, but have it really be pull, meaning that there's a lot of kids, because the other thing that desktops don't address is there are times when kids need to do work at home. And they may or may not have a device. And so we need to make sure that they have a device. But let's have it be a poll where, you know, they identify, you know, I can't afford it or my parents don't support it or whatever. I need one. We issue it out. We track it over the course of a year. We have it checked back in so that at least, you know, we have some control. And then maybe the next year, maybe we issue them the same one or maybe we issue a different one. But the key is is that they have the tools that they need to do the work that they need to do. So that's my two cents. Maybe a report.

[12830] Jenilee Peñaflor: Do your students, can they check out at any point?

[12833] Aiden Hill: Or is it all at the beginning of the year? Yes. They can check out at any point. So I will literally have kids that sometimes they might start out with a laptop, and maybe it's an old clunker of a laptop. And then one month in, it's not working. And so I say, go up to the library, because that's where we check out all this stuff. And I say, go get a Chromebook out there, and they can check it out.

[12851] Jenilee Peñaflor: OK. Good to know. Thank you.

[12853] Kat Jones: And you're also getting 10 weeks less wear and tear if they don't have it over the summer.

[12858] Joy Lee: Yeah. I hear you. I would agree with that like having a one-year like check-in so like just for this just having it for the school year and then like if students actually need it for the summer they can come to the library and ask to check it out over the summer like it doesn't need to like because a lot of students at our school have their own laptops already. Yeah I like the idea of a pull model.

[12883] Aiden Hill: Member Wayne.

[12888] Phuong Nguyen: In terms of licensing fees for the Chrome suite, I mean for the Google suite, so I know my daughters use their own personal devices and they log into Google. So they would never, I mean even though there may be one-to-one Chromebooks for them to be able to check out and use. So in that sense, I know that the licensing part of it in here is included. Do we pay a licensing model for all of the students to use Google Classroom separate from?

[12926] Aiden Hill: OK. Go ahead. Go ahead, member Nguyen

[12927] Jenilee Peñaflor: Yes. So we have a institutional license for Google Workplace and Google Education. And then each Chromebook has its own license as well.

[12936] Jose Quintana: OK. Got it. So we are paying $33 for 370 of those licenses.

[12942] Tracey Vackar: Right. Thank you. You're welcome. And your daughters? They're also signing in with their new account as well, right? So we would have to go out and provide that licensing through that because it's being used in combination with other kinds of educational resources that we're putting together.

[12962] Phuong Nguyen: I think what I was getting at is that it's not tied to the licensing that's already built into the Chromebooks. It's separate from that.

[12973] Jenilee Peñaflor: Yeah, two separate licenses. So every time we buy a new Chromebook, we also have to get a license for that device. in addition to the institutional ability just to use Workspace and Google for Education.

[12989] Phuong Nguyen: Yes. So I would agree that it should be like an on-demand kind of need for kids to be able to check out the Chromebooks instead of issuing the whole class individual for four years. OK.

[13008] Tracey Vackar: So one of the things I think I'd like to do is I'd like to go back and revisit board policy 6163.4 along with some of the usage things. We've been talking about that anyway. So I think this is an ideal time for us to bring that back between the time that we ordered the devices and we actually push them out. And I think we can come back and talk about what does that model look like a little bit deeper based on this conversation.

[13031] Phuong Nguyen: But tonight, can we approve the 370 purchase of the device?

[13037] Aiden Hill: It's in your hands.

[13039] Joy Lee: Yes. I also have another question. Are we, like, every year, are we going to budget, do we budget, like, Chromebooks every single year?

[13049] Tracey Vackar: Yes.

[13050] Joy Lee: OK. And then, oh, and then is it?

[13054] Tracey Vackar: So let me just say, have we done it for every single year? The answer is no. No. Have we started doing that as of December of 2023? Yes. The answer is yes.

[13063] Joy Lee: OK. OK, that's good. And then my next question was going to be, oh, is it possible for us to get an overview of how this will work, the process of it? Will we be getting an overview?

[13080] Tracey Vackar: That's what I'm suggesting underneath the board policy 6163.4, that we bring that back along with the documents.

[13085] Joy Lee: That's perfect. All right, thank you so much.

[13087] Tracey Vackar: You're welcome. Remember that when you get the forms. She's going to go back to the YouTube. Yikes.

[13100] Aiden Hill: OK, so.

[13100] Tracey Vackar: Joy's going to help me get this messaging out to students.

[13104] Aiden Hill: If there aren't further questions, if I could get a motion to approve $170,000, $116.75 for the purchase of 370 student devices for Newark Memorial High School from the CDW quote.

[13125] Kat Jones: I'll make a motion to approve.

[13127] Phuong Nguyen: I'll second.

[13129] Aiden Hill: So Vice President Jones moves. Member Nguyen seconds. Are we going to do board talks?

[13138] Toya Lemus: Yes. It's now open.

[13151] Kat Jones: I'm a yes. It's not coming up.

[13154] Nancy Thomas: It's not coming up for me either.

[13160] Tracey Vackar: Got to love technology. Don't say that. Yes.

[13167] Tracey Vackar: Board docs is not your fault. True. We're not blaming the technology department or board docs.

[13174] Nancy Thomas: I'm a yes. I'm a yes.

[13180] Phuong Nguyen: Student board member.

[13183] Nancy Thomas: Yay.

[13188] Aiden Hill: I mean, yes, too. And since we've saved some money here, could we redeploy that money to the technology up here in the dais?

[13197] Phuong Nguyen: Yes. We're working on it. No, it's functional. It works fine. Windows 7? Yes.

[13205] Kat Jones: We just have to do roll call out loud.

[13210] Kat Jones: You've got to do that for the consent agenda anyway, because she's got a hand new at me, just step one.

[13218] Aiden Hill: OK, so motion carries. Right, motion carries. OK, so thank you, Ms. Pettifor.

[13225] Tracey Vackar: Appreciate it.

[13225] Aiden Hill: I hate to do this, but we're at 940. Theoretically, we could get done until 10, but oh, it didn't. Just now.

[13235] Kat Jones: But that's a huge long way.

[13238] Aiden Hill: Sorry. So theoretically, we might be able to make it before 10, but just to be on the safe side, can I get a motion to extend the meeting to 11?

[13247] Kat Jones: I'll make a motion to extend the meeting to 1030. I second.

[13252] Aiden Hill: Sorry. That's all right. OK, so can we just raise our hands?

[13258] Phuong Nguyen: Yeah.

[13259] Aiden Hill: All right. OK, so it's unanimous. So we're extending it to 1030. OK, so moving on to 11, consent agenda. Does anybody want to pull the personnel report? Can I get a motion to approve 11.2?

[13277] Phuong Nguyen: I move to approve 11.2.

[13279] Aiden Hill: I'll second. OK, so member Nguyen moves, Vice President Jones seconds. Should we just do roll call? OK, try one more time.

[13307] Nancy Thomas: I support close.

[13309] Kat Jones: I didn't get it.

[13340] Phuong Nguyen: Board member does not vote on personnel.

[13360] Aiden Hill: And member Lee, so again, I will be in spirit with you for your clubs day. And I think you know that I am the chapter advisor for FBLA. But the one thing that you don't know is I'm also the co-advisor for our Bollywood dance team at my high school. So.

[13378] Oh, you're a Bollywood? Wow. Yeah, they try. Yeah. How's that work for you?

[13386] Aiden Hill: Oh, my god. OK. All right, moving on to 12, item 12, non-personnel items. Does anybody want to pull any of these items?

[13405] Kat Jones: I'd like to pull 12.14.

[13406] Aiden Hill: OK, so we're going to pull 12.14, field trip, Newark Memorial High School, Puente, to travel to Southern California College visit. Any other items we want to pull? So can I get a motion to approve 12.2 through 12.13?

[13424] Jodi Croce: I'll make a motion. I'll second.

[13428] Aiden Hill: Member Plancarte moves. Member Thomas seconds. And we will have to do this manually. So, go ahead.

[13442] Toya Lemus: Mr. Member Lee? Yes. Member Thomas? Yes. Member Nguyen? Yes. Member Plancarte?

[13451] Carina Plancarte: Yes.

[13451] Toya Lemus: Vice President Jones?

[13452] Aiden Hill: Yes.

[13454] Aiden Hill: Yes. Okay, 12.14. So, I'm sorry, motion carries. So, 12.14. So, do we want to have Superintendent provide background first or did you just? Okay, Superintendent.

[13470] Tracey Vackar: So on this item, this is an annual item that typically comes before the board with regards to the Puente program. This is to be able to cover their field trips. There is a three-year agreement with Puente that's been out there. This is in our third year of the three-year contract with them. It's for matching funds. This actually exceeds the amount of matching funds that we are allocating each year. And one of the things I've asked the site to do is to start working on some data to make sure that we're able to come back to the board. So I think I heard two meetings ago there was a request to bring back a variety of programs and start looking at the analysis of the programs who who was able to be in various programs that we offer. And I think I heard five different programs, I think, that were mentioned that evening. I had to go back and look at my list. But there were a number of programs that were mentioned that the board said they wanted to go back and review. And then we also look at the data. Like, what were the outcomes of the students that were enrolled? Did they meet the qualifications of how the program was actually designed to be able to enter into this, and one of the things that this program does is that, let me see here, Puente is for, supposed to be of students who would be first time in college going, and the idea is to be able to help the disadvantaged who, who haven't had access to knowing about four-year college, like their parents haven't gone. They may be socially disadvantaged or socially economically disadvantaged. They may have some other barriers that might qualify them for this particular piece, right? And so we want to make sure that students that are enrolling in the program actually meet the demands of what the program actually requires for us to be able to do this. But this particular program here this evening is to be able to ask you to cover the additional dollar amounts Some of it's coming from LCAP, some of it's coming from ASB funds, in order to be able to help and support this program.

[13612] Aiden Hill: Member Jones, you're the one that pulled this item, so.

[13616] Kat Jones: So the reason that I pulled it is not because I'm opposed to it. I think it's a fabulous opportunity for students to be able to go, especially since my alma mater's first on the list. But my concern is that There are a number. First of all, it is a large expense. Even though we are in partnership with the program and we get funds through them, which is fabulous, I still feel that it's a lot of money. And there are students that are in Puente who, if we divide it out, I'm not sure how many kiddos are going on this. I had to find that out. There was no information on how many students are attending. 40 students. 40 students. So if we divided out the cost for the 40 students, I think the students who are UPP kiddos and would not have this opportunity in any other way, I would love to see their number of total students, 40, about five inches down the page. I think it's really important for them to have this opportunity because it is an exciting time to be able to go to the college campuses, see what's there, get the feel, entice them to be interested in going to college by having this opportunity. But there are probably some students that could afford to contribute to the fair for the bus and for lodging and food and things like that. And that would then in turn allow the district to use those funds perhaps towards other programs or kiddos or another more local trip to some of the colleges around here that they wouldn't otherwise have the opportunity to go and visit. So I'm not going to say no to this because I think it's a really powerful opportunity for our students. But I do want us to think about who are the kids in Puente and are they there because they might be the first one in their family that's going to college because their parents couldn't afford to take them on a trip during spring break of their junior year or the beginning of this year couldn't afford to do that for them and so this is their only opportunity. But I'm guessing that there are more than likely some students whose parents could afford to help them to support it to support them going on a trip like this. So I'm not saying it's a bad thing. I just really want to make sure that we are using these funds towards kids that really need the funds need the funds in their direction. pointed in their direction.

[13807] Aiden Hill: Other questions comments from the board?

[13812] Joy Lee: I wholeheartedly agree with your statement and but I think like the thing with like what they program is like it's so good but like when I see it at my school it's like the students have to choose to take that class so like they can get that opportunity and so like I think but they does a really good job of advertising to the middle school and to the high school. But, I mean, I still see some students who may not be in their program because they're not as informed. But, yeah.

[13852] Aiden Hill: Okay. Member Thomas.

[13856] Nancy Thomas: I agree with Member Jones's comments, I think they're spot on. I think we should look at the program knowing it should be for students that, to encourage them to go to college, who maybe don't have that role model at home because their parents or siblings, older siblings, haven't gone to college, who don't have the resources to, you know, see a college campus like parents that are more well-to-do can take their children to, like my daughter has taken my grandsons to multiple colleges when they're junior year in preparation for where they want to go to school. Okay. Member Wendt.

[13906] Phuong Nguyen: I think there's misunderstanding that this is an economic program and it isn't. It's also a cultural program and it is for all students. who is interested in learning about different cultures, especially in this case, the Hispanic culture, Hispanic literature, and a bunch of other opportunities. One of the trips, yes, it's to be able to go to a college, university. And majority of the program could be said that it's for underserved students, meaning they've never been able to go to college, or their parents have never been able to go to college. But it's not exclusive. It's an inclusive program. And so I just want to emphasize that. And I do agree that, to some extent, yes, I believe that we should allow students who cannot, who don't have these opportunities to be able to go, whether it's economics or if their parents aren't able to take them, that they're able to do that. It shouldn't be a disservice to students who want to join the program because they want to learn about another culture or different aspects of literature from a different lens. And so for me, that's what Puente is. That's what my, both my kids are in Puente, and they both enjoy the program. And again, you know, I, my daughter did not go on these trips. I was able to take her on, So, I understand that aspect of it. But I do think that these are great opportunities and we have to separate the trip from what the actual program is. So, I just wanted to reiterate that. Thank you.

[14021] Kat Jones: And I hear what you're saying. And I think that's where I was kind of, you know, my thought of maybe there's a sliding scale. you know, of kids who can help to fund towards. That's the place I was going.

[14037] Phuong Nguyen: Yeah, and Puente does ask for parents to donate to the program, monetary, if they can. So, you know, in the past I have been able to, and I'm happy to support, you know, the program, because it is a great program. And I wish that a lot of our kids who don't know or understand that, you know, all these other benefits come along with the Puente program could also help foster, you know, numerous opportunities for them to be able to take advantage of it. And yes, and then, but that is also something that internally our process, maybe we need to reevaluate in that sense, but I just want to reemphasize again that we need to keep those two things separate. Thank you.

[14087] Aiden Hill: Other questions or comments?

[14088] Joy Lee: Yeah, I also wanted to add on, like, this trip in particular, like, the people who go on this trip, like, it's hand-selected also. So it's like, I'm pretty sure, like, it's prioritized. So, like, the counselors, they know all these students because, like, all the students go to one counselor, right? Ms. Torres, yeah. And she's able to, she knows them. She knows their economic situation. She knows their family and all these other things. And so through that, it's a priority basis.

[14125] Kat Jones: So my question would be priority based on what? Her familiarity or the need of the students?

[14134] Joy Lee: The need of the students. Yeah. Not on the familiarity. Yeah.

[14142] Phuong Nguyen: Because that's definitely true. I mean, there's, you know, and a lot of our kids, you know, they have so many commitments. A lot of them are student athletes. They're able to go on this trip in the fall and in the spring. And if they are committed to, a lot of them have to even, they have to get everything signed off by their teachers. There's a formality, there's a process. And so it's definitely, something that is well thought out of. And I would agree with student member Joy's comment that it is not based on familiarity. It is definitely based on need. And students who haven't normally have access to be able to go on these trips are prioritized.

[14191] Aiden Hill: Other questions?

[14192] Joy Lee: And this trip is very, very important. I feel like our school is very unique. in the aspect that we have a lot of people whose parents have never been to college before, and we have a lot of, we're really special and unique in the fact that we get to offer all these amazing, potentially life-changing and family-altering opportunities to these students, and this program, this college program, is one of them. And I think it's one of the, like one of the best programs, because it allows students to dream.

[14229] Kat Jones: And that's one of the reasons I love the program. I just want to make sure that it really is helping those students who would not have the opportunity to go and visit these colleges. That's where I'm coming from. I want them to have the absolute first priority to be able to do that.

[14251] Aiden Hill: What I think would be good here is as I'm looking at this agenda item. So it says the trip is going to be October 16th through October 18th. So I don't think anybody's saying like we don't want to approve this trip. But I think it would be good maybe that we have the pointing program come back in our very next meeting. and just provide an overview. Because I think that some people here are more familiar. So obviously, student member is more familiar. And member Wen, I'm not super familiar. So it would be helpful to understand that and how the trip intersects. And the other thing I think that member Jones is raising is, at my school, so I'm the FBLA advisor. And we take two major trips in the year. So we have a state competition that we have to go to. And then we have a national competition And sort of the rules are that if parents can afford to send their kids, the parents are going to pay for it. And so in my school, usually almost all the parents, not every single one, but many of them that are in FBLA, they can afford it. But if there is a kid that is having challenges, the state law says that we need to make, that we need to give them that opportunity But that's not for me as the advisor to make that decision. And so literally, once that situation comes into play, it goes up to the principal and maybe even to, ultimately, the board for approval. So I think we just want to make sure that we understand the process for how this works.

[14346] Phuong Nguyen: Yeah, but that's also the same with science camp. We do fundraisers for all of those. For the science camps, we get donations. We try to cut as much cost as possible. And we prioritize students who can't pay for science camp. And the district is obligated to pay for students who can't afford it. So, yeah.

[14370] Aiden Hill: Right. But I think we just want to see, again, what's the process for actually making that determination. And then one clarification, too, is so did you say that the $17,000, that that's matching And so this is the total amount?

[14386] Tracey Vackar: I just said that in the contract it talks about a matching dollar amount inside the contract. Oh, OK. And I don't have the contract in front of me to speak on that tonight. OK. I've just read the contract before in the past. OK. And so I don't remember the amount being $17,000 that had to be a match. I want to say it was more like, I can't remember, it was $5,000 or $10,000. I'd have to go back and go take a look at it. But there's actually a dollar amount that's inside the contract. And we'll bring that information back.

[14411] Nancy Thomas: Is there another trip that? happens in the spring, so this $17,000 would be just a portion of the budget for the program.

[14421] Tracey Vackar: I'm sorry, say that one more time. I'm sorry.

[14423] Nancy Thomas: Someone mentioned another trip. There's a spring trip. So $17,000 would be part of a budget that's probably twice that much or more.

[14436] Tracey Vackar: It's probably more than that, because this is only, I think, for the fall trip that we're talking about. Yeah.

[14441] Nancy Thomas: Yeah.

[14443] Tracey Vackar: Which comes out, if there's 40 students going, comes out to what, $425 a student, roughly?

[14458] Aiden Hill: OK. So I'm hearing kind of a consensus that we'll ask just Puente to come back and give a quick overview about the program, some specifics about the TRIC, and that we could then fast track it in the next meeting. Am I hearing that correctly? Yes. So you're pulling this item? Yes, so I'm saying that we would pull this and have them come back in the next meeting to present. No, I don't think we're pulling it.

[14485] Nancy Thomas: No, I don't think so.

[14486] Kat Jones: I mean, I don't want to pull it. I would say I just wanted to have this discussion, have them come next time. But I would not vote no on it, and I would not pull it, because they need to know that we're going to give them the money now.

[14503] Joy Lee: I think if you were to pull it, it would cause a lot of... Yeah, my intention was not to pull it.

[14509] Kat Jones: My intention was to have a discussion about it and to be able to kind of voice my thoughts and to ask for Puente to come and present.

[14520] Aiden Hill: Okay, so your request is that we approve this this evening, but that we have Puente come back for more detailed discussion of the program and how this intersects with the program.

[14534] Kat Jones: Yes and then as we move forward with the next contract we have a discussion about about this before we approve the next contract.

[14545] Aiden Hill: Okay do we agree? Okay so can I get a motion to approve item what's the 14th through 12.14? 12.14 I'd like to approve

[14558] Kat Jones: make a motion to approve 12.14. Second.

[14561] Aiden Hill: Okay, so Vice President Joan moves, and Member Plancarte seconds. And this would be a roll call vote, right, Ms. Lemus?

[14573] Phuong Nguyen: Oh, it worked. It worked.

[14576] Jenilee Peñaflor: Oh, I don't know.

[14577] Phuong Nguyen: For me it did.

[14577] Jenilee Peñaflor: I don't know.

[14578] Nancy Thomas: I just got excited.

[14579] Phuong Nguyen: Not me.

[14590] Kat Jones: I'm a yes, just so we don't hold up the meeting anymore.

[14593] Toya Lemus: Yes. Yes. Yes. All yeses.

[14599] Aiden Hill: Motion carries.

[14600] Phuong Nguyen: Motion carries.

[14601] Aiden Hill: OK, great. So now we're moving on to 13, Board of Education Committee Reports, Announcements, Requests, Debriefing, Discussion. Student member, do you want to kick it off, please?

[14617] Joy Lee: So. I have one thing like just regarding like students at the school and like with all our new teachers, I think it would be really good and I really wanted to advocate for like for having teacher trainings that's focused on like how to develop a closer relationships to their students. So Like if a student is having trouble, like for example, like students who don't go to class, I feel like incentive, giving them like incentives, like that doesn't really help, but rather like making sure that our teachers are equipped in a way that they can create that one-on-one relationship with their students so that the teachers know that they want to keep their students, that they really do truly do care for these students. And maybe we'll be able to become an influential figure in their life in a more positive way. And so that was just something that I was talking about with a teacher, which I thought would be really good at our school, because we have a lot of new teachers, and also we have substitutes, long-term substitutes, who may have this mindset of, oh, I'm just going to be here for a year, and then I can go. But I think maybe having that talk would have it in the front of the teacher's minds to actually try and create those bonds with their students.

[14736] Aiden Hill: Well, let me ask you a question about that, Memberly. So like at my school, one of the challenges, because we're talking about high school, is that I have a kid that takes my class, but I only have them usually for one period, rarely two. But they're attending a variety of other teachers' periods. So we only see a part of the equation. So what happens is there's a kid with an issue. Maybe there's something going on with the family. or maybe they're ill, or a variety of things, we as an individual teacher may not always see what's going on. But how it works at my school is that usually that's where the counselors come in, because they actually see the entire, across all the periods, across all the teachers. And so they'll identify, and they'll see trends, and see, OK, this student has missed this period, this period, this period. It could be maybe it's just one teacher, so maybe it's a class issue, or maybe it's all the teachers, and so maybe there's something else going on, or maybe it's time of day. But usually the counselors are the ones that sort of stay on track or on top of that. Then they reach out to the teachers to actually say, hey, here's this student, here's the issues. Sometimes we have a Zoom meeting to discuss it. And so I'm not sure if that process is happening at the high school, but I think it would be a really good process if it's not happening.

[14825] Kat Jones: Or I'm going to take the flip side on that, which is the teachers, when they see that a student isn't coming or they look like they might be depressed or they can just kind of sense something's going on, that they should be contacting the counselor to say, hey, It would be really great if you could pull so-and-so in. I noticed this in class. I've noticed it over the last week. And so it's a two-way street. It's the teachers being aware of getting in touch with the counselors and the counselors being actively involved in really helping the student.

[14862] Aiden Hill: Correct. And I mean, I literally had that situation last year where I had a student, she was a freshman, and she seemed to be very bright. But then as we got in and we started studying personal finance, she started to really fall behind. Homework wasn't getting done. And I thought, well, there's something going on here. And I would try to talk to her, but I wouldn't really. It didn't seem like I was breaking through. I reached out to the counselors, as well as her dad. And I said, hey, look, there's some problem. And then it became sort of a cross-functional effort. And then ultimately, we found out that actually there was a math issue. So she had where she was doing well in parts that were not math related. There was a math issue, but then with the right intervention, we were able to solve that problem. But that's where just like one teacher, we can be the early warning alert system, but it really kind of needs, there needs to be coordination kind of more at the administration level.

[14923] Joy Lee: But that's what I wanted to talk about.

[14929] Phuong Nguyen: Yeah, so recently, just a bit You know, like just to coach the high school tennis team, we had to sit through a bunch of videos. And that really, like, reemphasized, you know, it's a training video and it reemphasizes, like, you know, how we should interact with students, how to best motivate them or to really empower them to be better. But just like techniques, right? So I think like those kinds of refreshers, individual professional development, if we can make that mandatory for new teachers to be able to take so that they know that, hey, these are the warning signs. How can you best intervene? And just like steps to be able to do that. And I think that that really helps, right? Joy, do you like my coaching? OK. I just want to make sure. No, just kidding. But I think that all of those, and it really like sparks our.

[14990] Kat Jones: Are those the Keenan classes? No.

[14993] Phuong Nguyen: Yeah, different training. But a specific for coaching, athletics. But the concepts are the same, right? But any of those kinds of things, just so that we can clue in as a reminder to say, hey, you know, and not leave any of the students behind.

[15014] Kat Jones: I think it is important.

[15016] Aiden Hill: And that kind of connects in with curriculum development. And I don't know whether we have PDs that are sort of associated with, I mean, I'm sure we did.

[15025] Tracey Vackar: We actually do have a PD coming up, and our guest speaker in the morning is going to be talking about how to make connections. So I'm excited about that on the 7th of October.

[15035] Joy Lee: And also one more thing. The example that I wanted to use was like last year with Coach Brown and Coach Kelly. I think what they did was very powerful. And if possible, we should try and bring it back.

[15058] Aiden Hill: Member Thomas.

[15060] Nancy Thomas: Well, I was asking for quite a few things a couple of weeks back. I know they're on the list. I guess what I'd like to say is it's It's kind of having an X by Y. You know, if there's no X by Y, there's no commitment. And so when we have a list of requests, if they're not put together on a calendar, if they belong on a calendar, if they don't belong on the calendar, we can't do them all. You know, decide what's the priority? What do we put on our calendar for our board meetings? then put them on the calendar, because that's a commitment. That's the X commitment by a time Y. Maybe it's next February that it's on the calendar. So it's just the idea of information that I think the board should get every year ongoing on certain topics. And some of them are dictated by law. So we have to do the interim reports. We have to do other reports. But the other stuff in between, you know, Monitoring programs part of our goal or responsibility as board members is to monitor monitor results. And so It's kind of like those monitoring reports that keep us informed about the status of programs and like we talked today about Puente that that's my Sort of encapsulating the requests I've asked over time And maybe

[15158] Aiden Hill: To add to that, Member Thomas, and maybe if the board feels comfortable, maybe we make an agreement and a unified request. I would say that if during board comments, if one of us makes a request, and we all agree that it's a good request, that it really should be somehow put on a list and then, like you say, some type of calendar or some type of of projection to say this is when staff is going to be able to present it. Because I've certainly seen over the years that there's a lot of requests that come through, but then sometimes they make it in terms of a follow-up and sometimes they don't. But my sense is that if we all agree that there's something that we want to hear about, then that should be a priority for future meetings.

[15210] Kat Jones: I'm going to add on that also that because Member Thomas and I were talking about this earlier, when we when we do make a request that we follow it up with an email to be fair so that we're sending it you know we're it's what's that because that's what I'm setting the agenda with right I mean as we're looking at priorities for the year

[15238] Tracey Vackar: I mean, it needs to come to both of us here.

[15239] Kat Jones: Yeah. No, no, no, no.

[15241] Tracey Vackar: I agree. I agree. But I think that's who the message needs to come back out to.

[15245] Kat Jones: But having a written reminder, at least for my old mind, is critical.

[15250] Tracey Vackar: Because I did make a list of all those things that you talked about two board meetings ago. And I want to say there are five different programs that I have. And I've already had a discussion about three of them with principals already about timelines that we could actually bring that back so that we can actually provide you with the report and the data. And when do we look at that information? And what do they have for past history? I don't even know what they have. So I wanted to go back and see what they might need from us. What kind of support systems we might need to do here internally to be able to help them with knowing some of that information, whether it's enrollment in the programs, who the students were. Were the students socially disadvantaged? I mean, we're seeing that 44% socially disadvantaged, economically disadvantaged students now in our district. You know, does that have a play in what we're looking at here as we continue to grow that, you know, that, recognizing that our students have some greater needs, right? And making sure that's sitting out there. So I took to heart what you had to say. I think, like I said, I think there were five different programs I think I heard about over the last two meetings. I have listed them down. I think one of them will probably just be a staff report, and this will be my recommendation to you. So I don't know that we're going to have the baseline needed to be able to get you what you need. But I think the rest of them very much so we need to be sure that we're bringing those back and sharing that information with you.

[15322] Aiden Hill: Yeah, I don't think it's a criticism. Right. So I think I think the challenge and what member Jones is saying is that like we come up with requests and they may be on your radar screen or staff's radar screen. But like in order to see sort of a comprehensive rolling list I don't think we have a comprehensive rolling list that's published, right? So if we were going to go and try to reconstruct it, we'd have to go through the minutes for each one. And so could we have, you know, get help from Ms. Lemus or somebody else to say, okay, here's our rolling request of board requests. And then as we have our agenda setting meetings that we can then tee it up and we can say, okay, here's the list. Here's when it came in. You know, here's the level of effort. Here's where we think we can slot it. So that, you know, or what we may find is that maybe we, the board, are actually, I know, oh yeah, we have 15 minutes. All right. But maybe we, the board, are asking for too much, and so we need to maybe dial it back. But until we can see that list, I think it's hard. And I'm done with my comments, or with those comments. And I have no other comments to make. All right, so number one.

[15399] Phuong Nguyen: No, I just, chop chop. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone. We are in September officially, and this is our second month of school, or heading into our second month of school. And I just wanted to really appreciate all the staff, all their hard work and dedication to our students and our families. And I know our students are really working hard. I've been really privileged to be able to coach some amazing girls on the tennis team, and they are 100% dedicated to being a part of school, and really academically driven, and also practice really hard. And that goes for all of our students, whether they're in athletics or not. I know that they're very dedicated. Ms. Ortiz, AP World History, has been kicking their butt. Just shout out to her and also a shout out to Mary Sayers. I had a meeting with Ms. Paxton today. She's heading the green team at Coyote Hills and she had wonderful things to say about Ms. Sayers for getting all of the things that they needed. to promote being green at Coyote Hills. So I just wanted to also appreciate her and say thank you to our executive staff for all their hard work and my fellow board members too. I know that the last two months has been fun to reset and to move forward. So I just want to appreciate everyone and especially our student board members. Thank you.

[15513] Joy Lee: Thank you everyone for having me on the board.

[15517] Carina Plancarte: I don't have any updates, but I did just want to say thank you to all of the teachers and the staff that continue to drive our district forward. And even though there's still some kinks to be worked out with some still working off of not receiving certain curriculum materials that Ms. Villa talked about, And then also, I really just want to emphasize that I heard what she also mentioned about some of our teachers not having the appropriate laptops or PCs. And if we could really make that a priority to make sure that we are fully supporting them because they do so much. And if we can support them in the ways that we are able to, while I understand some things have to you know, some things are the larger picture, you know, such as, you know, giving them more money and whatnot. But if we can really support them with the materials that they need so that they're successful with their teaching, I think that would be extremely appreciated. And thank you.

[15597] Aiden Hill: And so I can't top that, so I guess I have to follow it. So I yield my time. All right. So Superintendent, party comments?

[15610] Tracey Vackar: Nope. Good night, everyone.

[15613] Aiden Hill: Can we get a motion to adjourn?

[15615] Carina Plancarte: I'll make a motion. I'll second.

[15617] Aiden Hill: All right. Member Plancarte moves. Member Jones seconds. Roll call vote. Aurora, what are we going to do?

[15631] Tracey Vackar: I counted six.

[15639] Phuong Nguyen: Thank you everyone.

[15640] Aiden Hill: Okay meeting adjourned at 1020.

1. CALL TO ORDER

1.1 Roll Call

   Type                        Procedural

TRUSTEES:

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

STUDENT BOARD MEMBER:

Member Joy Lee

1.2 Meeting Practices and Information

   Type                        Information, Procedural

IN-PERSON MEETING INFORMATION:

Please see the attached meeting information in English and Spanish.

OBSERVE THE BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING:


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

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.

  File Attachments
  Board Meeting Protocols_ENG(1).pdf (69 KB)
  Protocolos de la Reunion de la Mesa Directiva_ESP (1).pdf (65 KB)
  Original Board Meeting Guidelines.pdf (259 KB)

1.3 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

  File Attachments
  Board Meeting Protocols_ENG(1).pdf (69 KB)
  Protocolos de la Reunion de la Mesa Directiva_ESP (1).pdf (65 KB)

1.4 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.

2. CLOSED SESSION

CONFERENCE WITH LEGAL COUNSEL � ANTICIPATED LITIGATION: Significant exposure to litigation pursuant to Gov. Code �54956.9, subd. (d)(2): one case

   Type                        Action, Discussion, Procedural

   Preferred Date              Sep 03, 2024

PURPOSE:

To discuss significant exposure to litigation pursuant to paragraph (2) of subdivision (d) of �54956.9 of the California
Government Code: one case; Student vs. Newark Unified School District, Reference No. 2024NUSD005.

Motion & Voting

2.2 CONFERENCE WITH LEGAL COUNSEL � ANTICIPATED LITIGATION: Significant exposure to litigation pursuant to Gov. Code �54956.9, subd. (d)(2): 3 cases

   Type                        Action, Discussion, Procedural

   Fiscal Impact               Yes

   Budgeted                    No

PURPOSE:

To discuss significant exposure to litigation pursuant to paragraph (2) of subdivision (d) of �54956.9 of the California
Government Code: Update on Case Reference No. 000182024. Update on Anticipated Litigation (2 cases).

3. REPORT OF CLOSED SESSION ACTIONS

3.1 Report of Closed Session Actions

   Type                        Action, Procedural

PURPOSE:

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

Motion & Voting

4. RECONVENE TO OPEN SESSION

4.1 Pledge of Allegiance

   Type                        Procedural

PURPOSE:

The Governance Team will recite the Pledge of Allegiance

4.2 Meeting Practices and Information

   Type                        Information, Procedural

IN-PERSON MEETING INFORMATION:

Please see the attached meeting information in English and Spanish.

OBSERVE THE BOARD OF EDUCATION MEETING:

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

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.

  File Attachments
  Board Meeting Protocols_ENG(1).pdf (69 KB)
  Protocolos de la Reunion de la Mesa Directiva_ESP (1).pdf (65 KB)
  Original Board Meeting Guidelines.pdf (259 KB)

5. APPROVAL OF AGENDA

5.1 Approval of the Agenda

   Type                        Action

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

PURPOSE:

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

Motion & Voting

6. STUDENT REPORT

6.1 Student Report: Student Board Member, Joy Lee

   Type

PURPOSE:

The Student Report gives the Board of Education and the public an opportunity to hear the highlights, achievements, and initiatives from
the viewpoint of the student board member.

BACKGROUND:

The information will be provided by the Student Board Member, Joy Lee.

7. EMPLOYEE ORGANIZATIONS

7.1 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

8. PUBLIC COMMENT

8.1 Public Comment on Non-Agenda Items

   Type                        Procedural

PURPOSE:

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

BACKGROUND:

Please see the instructions on the link below for public comment information on non-agenda items and agenda items.

http://go.boarddocs.com/ca/nusd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C4Q2D4019F40

  File Attachments


  Board Meeting Protocols_ENG(1).pdf (69 KB)
  Protocolos de la Reunion de la Mesa Directiva_ESP (1).pdf (65 KB)

8.2 Public Comment on Agenda Items

   Type                        Procedural

PURPOSE:

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

BACKGROUND:

Please see the instructions on the link below for public comment information on non-agenda items and agenda items.

http://go.boarddocs.com/ca/nusd/Board.nsf/goto?open&id=C4Q2D4019F40

  File Attachments
  Board Meeting Protocols_ENG(1).pdf (69 KB)
  Protocolos de la Reunion de la Mesa Directiva_ESP (1).pdf (65 KB)

9. SUPERINTENDENT REPORT

9.1 Superintendent Report

   Type                        Information

PURPOSE:

The Interim 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 Interim Superintendent

10. NEW BUSINESS

10.1 2023-24 Unaudited Actuals Financial Report

   Type                        Action, Discussion, Information, Procedural


   Fiscal Impact               Yes

   Budgeted                    Yes

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board approve the 2023-24 Unaudited Actuals Financial
   Action                      Report.

PURPOSE:

The purpose of this item is for the Board to review and approve the 2023-24 Unaudited Actuals Financial Report.

BACKGROUND:

Assembly Bill 1200 requires that the prior year's unaudited actuals of revenues and expenditures be approved by the Board of Trustees
(EC 42100). The unaudited actuals will be reviewed by independent auditors and presented in an annual independent audit report. The
report includes the actual results of 2023-24 operations for all funds of the District and includes various supplemental schedules used to
convert the District's fund-level statements into entity-wide statements in compliance with Governmental Accounting Standards Board
Statement #34 (GASB 34).

The District must close its books for the 2023-24 fiscal year by September 15, 2024, and submit the financial statement to the Alameda
County Office of Education which will review the information and forward it to the state. This report is prepared using the state software
in a format approved by the California Department of Education (Standardized Account Code Structure, known as SACS). Individual
SACS report forms are prepared for each of the District's funds. The financials present the 2023-24 revenues, expenses, assets,
liabilities, and fund balances by the fund.

*PowerPoint presentation by staff will be uploaded prior to the Board Meeting on September 3, 2024.

** Unaudited Actual Book was revised on 8/31/24 #5:35 pm. Please see attached document 2023-34 UA Final Rev 8_31_24

  File Attachments
  2023-24 UA Final Rev 8_31_24.pdf (5,604 KB)

10.2 Resolution 2024.25.09 Committed Fund Balance for 2024-2025

   Type                        Action, Discussion, Information, Procedural

   Fiscal Impact               Yes

   Budgeted                    Yes

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education adopt Resolution 2024.25.09 Committed
   Action                      Fund Balance for 2024-2025.

   Goals                           4. Fiscal Health

PURPOSE:

To approve the commitments to fund balance as presented in the resolution.

BACKGROUND:

As a result of the balance in the Public School System Stabilization Account, the statutory limitation on school district
reserves has been triggered for the 2024-25 budget period, pursuant to Education Code (EC) section 42127.01(e).


For the 2024-25 fiscal year, the district reserve cap requires that a school district's adopted or revised budget shall not
contain a combined assigned or unassigned ending general fund balance of more than 10 percent of those funds. Assigned
and unassigned balances within the Fund 17 Special Reserve Fund for Other than Capital Outlay and the General Fund may
not exceed the 10 percent reserve cap. Committed fund balances are not included in the 10 percent reserve cap.

  File Attachments
  Resolution 2024.25.09 Committed Fund Balance for 2024-25.pdf (14 KB)

Motion & Voting

10.3 Technology Upgrades: Replacement of Centralized Servers

   Type                        Action, Discussion, Information

   Fiscal Impact               Yes

   Dollar Amount               $136,788.00

   Budgeted                    Yes

   Budget Source               ESSER

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education to approve the proposal with [re]Design
   Action                      and Dell Technologies for Data Center Modernization for $136,788.00.

PURPOSE:

The purpose of this item is for the Board of Education approve the proposal of $136,788.00 with [re]Design and Dell
Technologies for the replacement of centralized servers that serve all school sites.

BACKGROUND:

The replacement proposal results in a significant cost savings compared to the annual refresh. The District is using the
remainder of the ESSER funds that must be spent by Sept 30, 2024, to support the need for technology upgrades that
support student and staff devices.    This proposal provides for the replacement of centralized servers and VM Ware Licensing
that serves all school sites.

9/3/2024: Additional quote added to agenda.

  File Attachments
  IT-Board Presentation- Server Refresh.pdf (929 KB)
  ReDesign Data Center Refresh Quote (2).pdf (577 KB)
  [re]Design_Servers, Storage and VMware Quote - 3 YR - 9.3.24.pdf (429 KB)

Motion & Voting
The recommendation is that the Board of Education to approve the proposal with [re]Design and Dell Technologies for Data
Center Modernization for $136,788.00.

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

10.4 Technology Upgrades: Replacement of 370 Student Devices at Newark Memorial High School

   Type                        Action, Discussion, Information

   Fiscal Impact               Yes

   Dollar Amount               $170,116.75

   Budgeted                    Yes

   Budget Source               ESSER

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education to approve $170,116.75 for the purchase
   Action                      of 370 student devices for Newark Memorial High School from quote CDW-G NZXC914.

PURPOSE:

The purpose of this item is for the Board to approve the purchase of 370 student devices for Newark Memorial High School
from CDW-G in the amount of $170,116.75.

BACKGROUND:

This proposal provides for the purchase of 370 student devices at Newark Memorial High School. The original presentation
forecasted 300 devices. The actual 2024 Freshman class is 367 students.

A percentage of existing Chromebooks from the high school would be repurposed to support the needs of other NUSD
schools. This number will be calculated to ensure remaining high school inventory meets a 1:1 student to device ratio for the
sophomore, junior, and senior class. The recommended device is the Lenovo 14E N100 Chromebook. CDW-G was able to
provide a discounted quote for 370 devices.

  File Attachments
  CDW Quote NZXD056_300 Chromebooks.pdf (91 KB)
  CDW Quote NZXC914_300 Chromebooks.pdf (91 KB)
  Trafera Estimate No E000124386_300 Chromebooks.pdf (97 KB)
  Trafera Estimate No E000124390_300 Chromebooks.pdf (68 KB)
  CDW Quote NZXC914_370 Chromebooks_7-30-2024.pdf (76 KB)
  CDW Quote NZXC914_370 Chromebooks_Recommended.pdf (76 KB)
  IT-Board Presentation- HS Device Recommendation.pdf (456 KB)

Motion & Voting
The recommendation is that the Board of Education to approve $170,116.75 for the purchase of 370 student devices for
Newark Memorial High School from quote CDW-G NZXC914.

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

11. CONSENT AGENDA: PERSONNEL ITEMS

11.1 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-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.

11.2 Personnel Report

   Type                        Action

   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 09.03.2024.pdf (355 KB)

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

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

12. CONSENT AGENDA: NON-PERSONNEL ITEMS

12.1 PLACEHOLDER - One Consented Vote

   Type                        Action

   Fiscal Impact               Yes

   Budget Source               Various Budget Sources


   Recommended                 It is recommended that the Board of Education approve 12.2 through 12.10, under one
   Action                      consented vote, the agenda items under Consent Non-Personnel.

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.

12.2 Resolution 2024.25.07 Adopting the 2023-24 and 2024-25 Gann Limit

   Type                        Action

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education adopt Resolution 2024.25.07 Adopting
   Action                      the 2023-24 and 2024-25 Gann Limit.

PURPOSE:

The purpose of this item is for the Board to approve Resolution No. 2024.25.07 Adopting the 2023-24 and 2024-25 Gann
Limit.

BACKGROUND:

The Gann limit was established by Proposition 4 in 1979. Simply put, the purpose of the limit is to keep per-person
government spending under 1978-79 levels, adjusted for changes in population and inflation. For school districts, ADA is
used to determine population. The limit is based on local property tax revenues and state aid received. If a school district's
Gann limit is reduced, they do not lose funding.

School districts are required to adopt a resolution and file a Form GANN every year. Form GANN is part of the Unaudited Actuals SACS
report submitted to the Alameda County Office of Education every year.

For reference, a School Services of California article and information from the California Department of Education (CDE), including FAQs,
are attached.

  File Attachments
  Resolution No. 2024.25.07 Gann Limit.pdf (233 KB)

Motion & Voting

12.3 Report: Monthly Purchase Order Report

   Type                        Action

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education receive the Monthly Purchase Order
   Action                      Report as presented.

PURPOSE:


The purpose of this item is to present a monthly report on Purchase Order transactions per Board Policy 3300, Expenditures and
Purchases.

BACKGROUND:

Based on the discussion at the Board's Study Session on January 6, 2022, staff is providing a monthly report on Purchase
Order transactions per Board Policy 3300, Expenditures and Purchases. The policy states that "The Board shall review all
transactions entered into by the Superintendent or designee on behalf of the Board every 60 days."

This month's report includes 248 PO's dated 7/17/2024 through 7/31/2024 for a total of $2,783,099.95.

  File Attachments
  Monthly Purchase Order Report 09-03-2024.pdf (81 KB)

Motion & Voting

12.4 POLICY UPDATE: Board Policy 5145.6 - Parent/Guardian Notifications

   Type                        Action, Procedural

   Fiscal Impact               No

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board
   Action                      Policy 5145.6 - Parent/Guardian Notifications

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

PURPOSE:

The purpose is for the Board of Education to review the recommended changes and approve the updated board policy and administrative
regulation.

BACKGROUND:

This is the FIRST reading of the attached policy. The language is sanctioned by the California School Board Association.
California School Board Association notations can be seen in the documents for the benefit of the Board. These notations will
be removed from the final, Board approved policies.

The Ad Hoc Policy subcommittee and the administration have reviewed the recommended updates for accuracy and made
revisions to reflect district practice. If any revisions are recommended by the Board, the policy will be brought back for an
additional reading

Board Policy 5145.6 - Parent/Guardian Notifications
CSBA Last Update: 2024-06-01       |  NUSD Last Update: 2023-08-15-09-17
Policy updated to clarify the importance of effective communication from the district and/or school to families, and that a
parent/guardian's signature acknowledging receipt of the annual notifications is not required. Additionally, policy updated to
delete a portion of the material related to how notifications are presented, due to redundancy.

  File Attachments
  BP 5145.6 Parent-Guardian Notifications.docx.pdf (75 KB)


Motion & Voting

12.5 POLICY UPDATE: Board Policy and Administrative Regulation 5145.7 - Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment

   Type                        Action, Procedural

   Fiscal Impact               No

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board
   Action                      Policy and Administrative Regulation 5145.7 - Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment

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

PURPOSE:

The purpose is for the Board of Education to review the recommended changes and approve the updated board policy and administrative
regulation.

BACKGROUND:

This is the FIRST reading of the attached policy. The language is sanctioned by the California School Board Association.
California School Board Association notations can be seen in the documents for the benefit of the Board. These notations will
be removed from the final, Board approved policies.

The Ad Hoc Policy subcommittee and the administration have reviewed the recommended updates for accuracy and made
revisions to reflect district practice. If any revisions are recommended by the Board, the policy will be brought back for an
additional reading

Board Policy 5145.7 - Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment
CSBA Last Update: 2008-03-01       |  NUSD Last Update: 1996-09-17
Policy updated to include material related to sex discrimination, in addition to sex-based harassment. Additionally, policy
updated to reflect NEW FEDERAL REGULATIONS (89 Fed. Reg. 33474) which (1) clarify that discrimination on the basis of
sex, including sex-based harassment, for the purpose of Title IX includes sex stereotypes; sex characteristics; gender
identity; sexual orientation; pregnancy, childbirth, termination of pregnancy, or lactation, including related medical conditions
or recovery; and parental, marital, and family status, (2) require employees with knowledge of conduct that reasonably may
constitute sex discrimination or sex-based harassment in a district education program or activity to notify the Title IX
Coordinator, (3) require a district with knowledge of alleged conduct, which occurs in a district program or activity on or after
August 1, 2024, that reasonably may constitute sex discrimination under Title IX, including sex-based harassment, to follow
Title IX grievance procedures when investigating and resolving a complaint based on the alleged conduct, (4) require the
Title IX Coordinator to offer and coordinate supportive measures when notified of conduct that reasonably may constitute sex
discrimination, including sex-based harassment (5) require specified training related to sex discrimination for all district
employees, as well as additional training for investigators, decisionmakers, and other persons who are responsible for
implementing the district's grievance procedures or have the authority to modify or terminate supportive measures;
facilitators of an informal resolution process; and the Title IX Coordinator(s) and designees, and (6) require specified records
to be maintained for seven years. In addition, policy updated to reflect NEW LAW (AB 1955, 2024) which prohibits a district,
including a Governing Board member from retaliating or otherwise taking adverse action against an employee, including by
placing the employee on administrative leave, on the basis that the employee supported a student exercising rights specified
in certain Education Code provisions, performed work in a manner consistent with the district's legal obligations related to
educational equity, or provided instruction to students consistent with current content standards, curriculum frameworks,
instructional materials adopted by the state board, and state law. Policy also updated to (1) provide that employees are
required to report incidents of prohibited discrimination within one workday, which may be modified to reflect the district's
timeline, in order to maintain consistency of such reporting requirements across the policy manual, and (2) delete material
related to requirements for posting and publishing the district's sexual harassment policy which are located in Administrative
Regulation 5145.3 � Nondiscrimination/Harassment, and the accompanying administrative regulation by reference.

Administrative Regulation 5145.7 - Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment
CSBA Last Update: 2008-03-01       |  NUSD Last Update: 1996-09-17


Regulation updated to include material related to sex discrimination, in addition to sex-based harassment. Additionally,
regulation updated to emphasize that the district does not discriminate on the basis of sex in any of its programs or
activities, prohibits such conduct, and complies with Title IX. In addition, regulation updated to include definitions of sex
discrimination and sex-based harassment, and reflect NEW FEDERAL REGULATIONS (89 Fed. Reg. 33474) which (1) clarify
that discrimination on the basis of sex, including sex-based harassment, for the purpose of Title IX includes sex stereotypes;
sex characteristics; gender identity; sexual orientation; pregnancy, childbirth, termination of pregnancy, or lactation,
including related medical conditions or recovery; and parental, marital, and family status, (2) require a district with
knowledge of alleged conduct, which occurs in a district program or activity on or after August 1, 2024, that reasonably may
constitute sex discrimination under Title IX, including sex-based harassment, to follow Title IX grievance procedures when
investigating and resolving a complaint based on the alleged conduct, and (3) provide that a district (a) may not exclude a
student from participation in, deny a student the benefits of, or otherwise subject a student to discrimination on the basis of
sex in any education program or activity, (b) that in the limited circumstances in which different treatment or separation on
the basis of sex is permitted, a district may not carry out such different treatment or separation in a manner that
discriminates on the basis of sex by subjecting a student to more than de minimis harm, and (c) that preventing a student
from participating in an education program or activity consistent with the person's gender identity subjects a person to more
than de minimis harm on the basis of sex. Regulation also updated to provide that employees are required to report incidents
of prohibited discrimination within one workday, which may be modified to reflect the district's timeline, in order to maintain
consistency of such reporting requirements across the policy manual. Additionally, regulation updated to (1) include material
formerly in Administrative Regulation 5145.3 - Nondiscrimination/Harassment related to issues that are unique to intersex,
nonbinary, transgender, and gender nonconforming students, (2) reflect NEW LAW (AB 1955, 2024) which clarifies that under
existing law a district, including a Governing Board member, may not require an employee or contractor to disclose any
information related to a student's sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression to any other person, or enact or
enforce any policy, rule, or administrative regulation that would require the same, without the student's consent unless
otherwise required by state or federal law, and (3) reflect NEW LAW (SB 760, 2023) which requires, beginning July 1, 2026,
each school with more than one female student restroom and more than one male student restroom to provide and maintain
at least one all-gender restroom for student use that meets the requirements of law.

  File Attachments
  Policy 5145.7 - Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment.docx.pdf (118 KB)
  Regulation 5145.7 - Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment.docx.pdf (220 KB)

Motion & Voting

12.6 POLICY UPDATE: Administrative Regulation 5145.71 - Title IX Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment Complaint Procedures

   Type                        Action, Procedural

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the updated Administrative
   Action                      Regulation 5145.71 - Title IX Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment Complaint
                               Procedures

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

PURPOSE:

The purpose is for the Board of Education to review the recommended changes and approve the updated administrative regulation.

BACKGROUND:

   This is the FIRST reading of the attached policy. The language is sanctioned by the California School Board Association. California
   School Board Association notations can be seen in the documents for the benefit of the Board. These notations will be removed
   from the final, Board approved policies.


   The Ad Hoc Policy subcommittee and the administration have reviewed the recommended updates for accuracy and made revisions
   to reflect district practice. If any revisions are recommended by the Board, the policy will be brought back for an additional
   reading.

   Administrative Regulation 5145.71 - Title IX Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment Complaint Procedures
   CSBA Last Update: 2024-07-01      | NUSD Last Update: 2023-08-01
   Regulation updated to reflect NEW FEDERAL REGULATIONS (89 Fed. Reg. 33474) which make extensive and significant changes to
   the title IX grievance procedures including that they (1) require a district with knowledge of alleged conduct, which occurs in a
   district program or activity on or after August 1, 2024, that reasonably may constitute sex discrimination under Title IX, including
   sex-based harassment, to follow Title IX grievance procedures when investigating and resolving a complaint based on the alleged
   conduct, (2) require district's to follow "basic requirements" when implementing the Title IX grievance procedures, (3) modify the
   definition of a "complaint" and who may bring a complaint, (4) modify the Title IX Coordinator's responsibilities related to the
   initiation of a complaint when the alleged victim chooses to not bring a complaint, (5) modify the requirements related to the
   offering and coordination of supportive measures, (6) expand the requirements related to the dismissal of complaints, including the
   appeal of dismissals, (7) expand the requirements related to the informal resolution process, (8) amend requirements related to
   notice of allegations when a formal investigation is initiated by the district, (9) expand requirements related to the investigation
   procedures, (10) modify requirements related to the written decision, (11) alter the process for the appeal of the decision, (12)
   provide for extension of timelines, and (13) amend requirements for remedies, disciplinary actions, and record-keeping.
   Additionally, regulation updated to delete material defining sex-based harassment as the definitions for sex discrimination and sex-
   based harassment are contained within Administrative Regulation 5145.7 � Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment, and to
   delete material in regard to reporting of sex-based harassment as such material is contained within other related policies.
   Regulation also updated to add a section on Consolidation of Complaints, and material related to record-keeping requirements for
   complaints containing allegations of childhood sexual assault.

  File Attachments
  Regulation 5145.71 - Title IX Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment Complaint Procedures.docx.pdf (308 KB)

Motion & Voting

12.7 Board Bylaw 9320 Meetings and Notices

   Type                        Action, Information

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board
   Action                      Bylaw 9320 Meetings and Notices.

PURPOSE:

The purpose is for the Board of Education to review the recommended changes and approve the updated Board Bylaw 9320 Meeting and
Notices.

BACKGROUND:
Bylaw updated to reflect NEW LAW (AB 2449, 2022) which (1) requires Boards to maintain and implement a procedure for
receiving and resolving requests for reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities, to resolve any doubt in
favor of accessibility, and to give notice of the procedure for receiving and resolving requests for accommodation in each
instance in which notice of the time of a meeting is otherwise given or the agenda is otherwise posted, and (2) adds
procedures for "Teleconferencing During a Personal Emergency" and "Teleconferencing for `Just Cause'". Bylaw also
updated to reflect NEW LAW (AB 2647, 2022) which provides a procedure for complying with the Brown Act when
distributing materials to the Board less than 72 hours before a regular meeting and outside of regular business hours.
Additionally, bylaw updated to reference the expiration of the California COVID-19 State of Emergency on February 28,
2023 and to clarify that a Board may utilize "Teleconferencing During a Proclaimed State of Emergency," if all terms are
met pursuant to Government Code 54953, until January 1, 2024.


  File Attachments
  Bylaw 9320 - Meetings And Notices.pdf (205 KB)

Motion & Voting

12.8 Board Bylaw 9321 Closed Session

   Type                        Action, Discussion, Procedural

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board
   Action                      Bylaw 9321 - Closed Session

PURPOSE:

The purpose is for the Board of Education to review the recommended changes and approve the updated Board Bylaw 9321 - Closed
Session.

BACKGROUND:

Bylaw updated to reflect appellate court ruling in Fowler v. City of Lafayette, which clarified that when an item is
agendized in closed session based on a threat of litigation made by a person outside of an open meeting and a district
official or employee receiving knowledge of the threat made a record of the statement before the meeting, that statement
is required to be made available to the public. Bylaw also updated to reference accompanying Exhibit (1) for specific
agenda descriptions for closed session items and accompanying Exhibit (2) for descriptions to report out of specified
closed session items. Additionally, Bylaw updated for clarity, precision, and consistency.

  File Attachments
  Bylaw 9321 - Closed Session.pdf (217 KB)

Motion & Voting

12.9 Board Bylaw 9323 Meeting Conduct

   Type                        Action, Information, Procedural

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board
   Action                      Bylaw 9323 Meeting Conduct.

PURPOSE:

The purpose is for the Board of Education to review the recommended changes and approve the updated Board Bylaw 9323 Meeting
Conduct.

BACKGROUND:


Bylaw Updated to reflect NEW LAW (SB 1100, 2022) which authorizes the Board President to remove an individual for
disrupting a Board meeting, establishes a procedure for warning the individual prior to their removal, and defines
"disrupting" and "true threat of force."

  File Attachments
  Bylaw 9323 - Meeting Conduct.pdf (136 KB)

Motion & Voting

12.10 Board Bylaw 9324 Minutes and Recording

   Type                        Action, Discussion, Procedural

   Budget Source               The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board
                               Bylaw 9324 - Minutes and Recording.

PURPOSE:

The purpose is for the Board of Education to review the recommended changes and approve the updated         Board Bylaw 9324 Minutes
and Recording.

BACKGROUND:
NUSD Last Update: 11/05/1996           CSBA Last Update: 12/1/2018
Bylaw updated to current CSBA language.

  File Attachments
  Bylaw 9324 - Minutes And Recordings.pdf (71 KB)

Motion & Voting

12.11 Board Bylaw 9400 Board Self Evaluation

   Type                        Action, Discussion, Procedural

   Fiscal Impact               No

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board
   Action                      Bylaw 9400 - Board Self Evaluation

PURPOSE:

The purpose is for the Board of Education to review the recommended changes and approve the updated Board Bylaw 9400 Board Self
Evaluation.


BACKGROUND:

NUSD Last Update: 11/05/1996           CSBA Last Update: 05/07/2013

Bylaw updated to current CSBA language.

  File Attachments
  Bylaw 9400 - Board Self-Evaluation.pdf (50 KB)

Motion & Voting

12.12 Athletic Trip, Overnight, Round Trip Distance Over 125 Miles Field Trip: Newark Memorial Cross Country Team to Fresno, CA.

   Type                        Action

   Fiscal Impact               Yes

   Dollar Amount               $1,834.00

   Budgeted                    Yes

   Budget Source               NM Boosters

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve Newark Memorial High School
   Action                      Cross Country Team trip to Fresno, CA.

PURPOSE:

The Newark Memorial High School Principal and Athletic Director request permission to take students on an athletic and overnight
trip to Fresno, CA for the Cross Country Clovis Invitational.

BACKGROUND:

The Clovis invitational is the state championship preview cross country meet with the best teams in the state.    We have been
selected to participate due to our performance over the last 3 years including 2 top 15 finishes as a team at the state championship
at Woodward Park.
       Date: October 10, 2024 - October 11, 2024
       Location: Woodward Park, Fresno CA

According to Board Policy 6153, all trips in excess of 125 miles, athletic trips, and overnight trips require Board approval. The
Newark Memorial High School Principal and Athletic Director requested permission to take students on an athletic and overnight trip
to Fresno, CA for the Cross Country Clovis Invitational.

Requirements met:

       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)
       Overnight trip supervision must be gender appropriate
       No student will be denied due to a lack of funds

Motion & Voting

12.13 Athletic Trip, Overnight, Round Trip Distance Over 125 Miles Field Trip: Newark Memorial Girls Basketball Team to Roseville, CA.

   Type                        Action

   Preferred Date              Sep 03, 2024

   Absolute Date               Sep 03, 2024

   Fiscal Impact               Yes

   Dollar Amount               $3,400.00

   Budgeted                    Yes

   Budget Source               Athletics ASB, NM Boosters

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve Newark Memorial High School
   Action                      Varsity Girls Basketball Team trip to Roseville, CA.

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

PURPOSE:

The Newark Memorial High School Principal and Athletic Director request permission to take students on an athletic and overnight
trip to Roseville, CA for the Oakmont High School Tournament.

BACKGROUND:

This is a competitive tournament, which provides our athletes with an opportunity to compete at a high level.
       Date: December 5, 2024 - December 7, 2024
       Location: Oakmont High School, Roseville, CA.

According to Board Policy 6153, all trips in excess of 125 miles, athletic trips, and overnight trips require Board approval. The
Newark Memorial High School Principal and Athletic Director requested permission to take students on an athletic and overnight trip
to Roseville, CA for the Oakmont High School Tournament..

Requirements met:

       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)
       Overnight trip supervision must be gender appropriate
       No student will be denied due to a lack of funds

Motion & Voting

12.14 FIELD TRIP: NMHS Puente to travel to Southern California College Visit

   Type                        Action

   Fiscal Impact               Yes

   Dollar Amount               $17,000.00


   Budgeted                    Yes

   Budget Source               LCAP and ASB Funds

   Recommended                 The recommendation is that the Board of Education approves the NMHS Puente Southern
   Action                      California College Visit curricular and overnight field trip.

PURPOSE:

The Newark Memorial High School Principal and Puente Advisor request approval of a curriculum and overnight field trip to be
taken by the Newark Memorial High School Puente students to visit colleges in Southern California.

BACKGROUND:

The Puente Project is a national award-winning program that has improved the college-going rate of tens of thousands of
California's educationally underrepresented students since 1981. Its mission is to increase the number of educationally
disadvantaged students who enroll in four-year colleges and universities, earn college degrees, and return to the community
as mentors and leaders to future generations. The program is interdisciplinary in approach, with writing, counseling, and
mentoring components.

According to Board Policy 6153, all trips in excess of 100 miles, non-curricular trips, and overnight trips require Board
approval. Newark Memorial High School Principal and Puente Advisor request permission to take Newark Memorial High
School Puente students on a trip to visit colleges in Southern California.     Transportation will be by chartered bus.

       School: Newark Memorial High School (Puente Program)
       Dates: October 16 - October 18
       Location: Various College Campuses in Southern California

Motion & Voting
The recommendation is that the Board of Education approves the NMHS Puente Southern California College Visit curricular
and overnight field trip.

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

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

13.1 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 2023-24

  Board Adopted on 12/18/2023                                              Representative              Alternate

  Mission Valley Regional Occupational Center/Program (ROC/P)           1. Nancy Thomas         1. Carina V. Plancarte
  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. Carina V. Plancarte

  Audit Committee                                                       1. Nancy Thomas2. Katherine Jones1. Phuong Nguyen

  Bond/Parcel Tax Committee                                             1. Phuong Nguyen2. Carina V. Plancarte1. Aiden Hill

  City of Newark � NUSD Liaison Committee                               1. Phuong Nguyen2. Aiden Hill1. Katherine Jones

The following derives directly from the Board approved "Governance Team Handbook"

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

Bringing New Ideas Forward
The Board will be open to having "brainstorming" discussions, or study sessions, around any idea that a Trustee may feel merits
exploratory consideration. "New Ideas" are defined as any proposal brought forward by a Trustee, at their initiative or at the request of a
constituent, which was previously discussed during a board meeting.
        Trustees will first notify the Board President and Superintendent of their interest in bringing forward a new idea at a board
        meeting.
        When initially agendized, the preliminary discussion of a new idea will not require staff research time. Initially, staff will be
        expected to respond to new ideas based on current knowledge.
        Only a majority of the Board may direct the Superintendent to conduct research regarding the exploration of a new idea. The
        Superintendent will decide on the delegation of assignments to District staff.
        The new idea may be agendized for discussion only. The Board majority will decide if the new idea should be further developed
        and studied by staff. The Board majority will decide if staff time should be invested in the "fleshing out" of new ideas.
        Individual Trustees, in the course of interactions with constituents, will be careful not to make or imply the commitment of the
        full Board to explore or proceed with implementing new ideas.

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

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

                                AGENDA REQUESTS

   Type                         Information

PURPOSE:

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


   Subject                     14.18 MINUTES of the August 20, 2024, Regular Meeting of the Board Education



   Type                        Action, Minutes

PURPOSE:

For the Board to review and approve minutes of the August 20, 2024 Regular Meeting of the Board of Education.

BACKGROUND:

The attached minutes are reflective of the August 20, 2024 Regular Meeting of the Board of Education. The Meeting may be viewed on
the NUSD YouTube Channel HERE

  File Attachments
  August 20 Meeting Minutes.pdf (184 KB)

14.19 New Agenda Item

   Type                        Action, Minutes

PURPOSE:

For the Board to review and approve minutes of the September 3, 2024 Regular Meeting of the Board of Education.

BACKGROUND:

  File Attachments
  September 3 Meeting Minutes.pdf (238 KB)

15. ADJOURNMENT

15.1 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.

Motion & Voting

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

1. CALL TO ORDER

Procedural: 1.1 Roll Call

• Nancy Thomas
• Aiden Hill
• Phuong Nguyen
• Katherine Jones
• Carina Plancarte
• Student Board member Lee

Information, Procedural: 1.2 Meeting Practices and Information

Procedural: 1.3 Public Comment on Closed Session Items

Procedural: 1.4 Recess to Closed Session

2. CLOSED SESSION

Action, Discussion, Procedural: 2.1 CONFERENCE WITH LEGAL COUNSEL - ANTICIPATED LITIGATION: Significant exposure to litigation pursuant to Gov. Code §54956.9, subd. (d)(2): one case (not specified)

Action, Discussion, Procedural: 2.2 CONFERENCE WITH LEGAL COUNSEL - ANTICIPATED LITIGATION: Significant exposure to litigation pursuant to Gov. Code §54956.9, subd. (d)(2): 3 cases

3. REPORT OF CLOSED SESSION ACTIONS

Action, Procedural: 3.1 Report of Closed Session Actions

1 item to report out-Case 2024005- Board approved a private school placement for the 2024/25 school year.

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

4. RECONVENE TO OPEN SESSION

Procedural: 4.1 Pledge of Allegiance

Information, Procedural: 4.2 Meeting Practices and Information

5. APPROVAL OF AGENDA

Action: 5.1 Approval of the Agenda

The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the agenda for this meeting as presented.

Motion by Student Member Lee, second by Carina Plancarte Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yea: Katherine Jones, Carina Plancarte, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Nancy Thomas

6. STUDENT REPORT

Joy Lee- NMHS held Club Rush. Thank you to all Board Members and students who attended. Fall sports have began and information is posted on the web page. Bathrooms located to the Track & Field are inoperative. Top 40 Celebration- history at NMHS. Friday, September 13, 2024 Homecoming Football Game. Saturday, September 14, 2024- homecoming Dance. Called attention to NMHS classes shifting.

Assistant Superintendent, Jose Quintana submitted a work order to have portacabins delivered.

7. EMPLOYEE ORGANIZATIONS

Information: 7.1 Employee Organizations

Cheri Villa, NTA-All E-board vacancies are filled. Provided ELA Adoption meeting update.TK will not adopt the curriculum. Curriculum still being delivered to sites Jodi Croce, NEWMA-Not present

8. PUBLIC COMMENT

Procedural: 8.1 Public Comment on Non-Agenda Items

• David Largusa- Concerns of not having a NMHS Band Director
• Darius Coker- State of the Band Director and program
• Richard Watters- Concerns of not having a Band Director

Procedural: 8.2 Public Comment on Agenda Items

• Carey Knoop- 10.1 Concerns of actual discrepancies and new budget
• Cindy Parks- 10.1 Concerns of ADA, revenue, and contracts
• Cheri Villa- 10.1-Concerns of compensation for teachers, technology refresh, and smart boards
• Carey Knoop- 10.3-Replacing 370 Chrome books
• Carey Knoop-10.4 Concerns of purchasing additional chrome books, suggested desktops and laptops to purchase for school sites
• Cindy Parks- 10.4 Concerns of spending funds and tracking chrome books

9. SUPERINTENDENT REPORT

Information: 9.1 Superintendent Report

Interim Superintendent Tracey Vackar- Apologies to the community for not being present at the Board Meeting. Thank you to the community for expressing concerns. Introduction to NPD Leiutenant and SRO Officer. Safety plans in progress between NUSD and NPD.

10. NEW BUSINESS

Action, Discussion, Information, Procedural: 10.1 2023-24 Unaudited Actuals Financial Report

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

Assistant Superintendent, Jose Quintana and Director of Fiscal Services presented

Action, Discussion, Information, Procedural: 10.2 Resolution 2024.25.09 Committed Fund Balance for 2024-2025

The recommendation is that the Board of Education adopt Resolution 2024.25.09 Committed Fund Balance for 2024-2025.

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

Action, Discussion, Information: 10.3 Technology Upgrades: Replacement of Centralized Servers

The recommendation is that the Board of Education to approve the proposal with [re]Design and Dell Technologies for Data Center Modernization for $136,788.00.

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

Action, Discussion, Information: 10.4 Technology Upgrades: Replacement of 370 Student Devices at Newark Memorial High School

The recommendation is that the Board of Education to approve $170,116.75 for the purchase of 370 student devices for Newark Memorial High School from quote CDW-G NZXC914.

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

11. CONSENT AGENDA: PERSONNEL ITEMS

Action: 11.1 PLACEHOLDER - One Consented Vote

Action: 11.2 Personnel Report

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

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

12. CONSENT AGENDA: NON-PERSONNEL ITEMS

Action: 12.1 PLACEHOLDER - One Consented Vote

Action: 12.2 Resolution 2024.25.07 Adopting the 2023-24 and 2024-25 Gann Limit

The recommendation is that the Board of Education adopt Resolution 2024.25.07 Adopting the 2023-24 and 2024-25 Gann Limit.

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

Action: 12.3 Report: Monthly Purchase Order Report

The recommendation is that the Board of Education receive the Monthly Purchase Order Report as presented.

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

Action, Procedural: 12.4 POLICY UPDATE: Board Policy 5145.6 - Parent/Guardian Notifications

The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board Policy 5145.6 - Parent/Guardian Notifications

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

Action, Procedural: 12.5 POLICY UPDATE: Board Policy and Administrative Regulation 5145.7 - Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment

The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board Policy and Administrative Regulation 5145.7 - Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment

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

Action, Procedural: 12.6 POLICY UPDATE: Administrative Regulation 5145.71 - Title IX Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment Complaint Procedures

The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve the updated Administrative Regulation 5145.71 - Title IX Sex Discrimination and Sex-Based Harassment Complaint Procedures

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

Action, Information: 12.7 Board Bylaw 9320 Meetings and Notices

The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board Bylaw 9320 Meetings and Notices.

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

Action, Discussion, Procedural: 12.8 Board Bylaw 9321 Closed Session

The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board Bylaw 9321 - Closed Session

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

Action, Information, Procedural: 12.9 Board Bylaw 9323 Meeting Conduct

The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board Bylaw 9323 Meeting Conduct.

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

Action, Discussion, Procedural: 12.10 Board Bylaw 9324 Minutes and Recording

(not specified) Motion by Carina V Plancarte, second by Nancy Thomas. Final Resolution: Motion Carries Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Carina V Plancarte, Joy Lee

Action, Discussion, Procedural: 12.11 Board Bylaw 9400 Board Self Evaluation The recommendation is that the Board of Education discuss and approve the updated Board Bylaw 9400 - Board Self Evaluation

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

Action: 12.12 Athletic Trip, Overnight, Round Trip Distance Over 125 Miles Field Trip: Newark Memorial Cross Country Team to Fresno, CA.

The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve Newark Memorial High School Cross Country Team trip to Fresno, CA. Yea: Nancy Thomas, Aiden Hill, Phuong Nguyen, Katherine Jones, Carina V Plancarte, Joy Lee

Action: 12.13 Athletic Trip, Overnight, Round Trip Distance Over 125 Miles Field Trip: Newark Memorial Girls Basketball Team to Roseville, CA.

The recommendation is that the Board of Education approve Newark Memorial High School Varsity Girls Basketball Team trip to Roseville, CA.

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

Action: 12.14 FIELD TRIP: NMHS Puente to travel to Southern California College Visit

The recommendation is that the Board of Education approves the NMHS Puente Southern California College Visit curricular and overnight field trip.

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

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

Action, Discussion, Information: 13.1 Board of Education Committee Reports, Announcements, Requests, Debrief and Discussion

Joy Lee - Suggested teacher training on how to develop closer relationship with students, becoming a positive influence and creating a bond. Phuong Nguyen-Suggestion to provide mandatory refreshers, techniques, and coaching for new hire educators in response to teacher training. Appreciates all staff, students and family for hard work. Shout out to Child Nutrition, Green Team and Mary Sayers. Nancy Thomas- Requests to calendar - ongoing certain topics and time lining (monitoring reports) Aiden Hill- Request to create a rolling request to calendar projection and when staff will present it. Katherine Jones- Suggestion for teacher to follow-up with counselor in response to teacher training. Request to have Puente come and present at a future Board Meeting. Follow up with request by email from the Board of Education. EA to create rolling request from Board of Education Carina Plancarte- Thank you to all the teachers and staff.

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

Information: 14.1 Superintendent's Concluding Comments, Updates, and Future Agenda Items

Superintendent Vackar- No comments made.

15. ADJOURNMENT

Action: 15.1 PLACEHOLDER - Extend Meeting

Action: 15.2 Adjournment

The recommendation is that the Board of Education adjourns this meeting. Meeting adjourned at 10:23 P.M.

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