Special Meeting — October 26, 2021

good evening i call to order the special meeting of the board of education tuesday october 26 2021 at 6 00 p.m with bridge cruise cruises here gagne non shaffer present leading us in the pledge tonight will be mr bridge you please stand face to for which it face one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all

okay good evening before we get started i just want to make a quick announcement it probably won't help those folks at home earlier today our internet services the hub that we go through that then connects us with the county went down because of a power outage in that neighborhood they only had battery backup for that at the time they have now put a generator

out there so it is back up and running at the moment but repairs are still pending we have put out over social media that the link hopefully will still be back up for youtube and so hopefully those at home will get the message because we just found out i found out when i got here that the link was possibly back up not saying

it's going to last the entire meeting but it is up at the moment okay moving on to item 1b staff report esther 3 plan i'll turn it over to dr enfield all right thank you very much mr schaefer so tonight i know the board requested a a an additional meeting regarding sr-3 plan and so tonight what we will be doing is first we'll review

the community engagement process and feedback and dr park will lead us in that and then afterwards we'll gather additional feedback through public comments and then the third part in the last part will be the the board study session uh and at that point as a superintendent i'll be seeking input from the board on items that they potentially would want to change and

i'll ask the board that if they make any suggestions for changes tonight that they need to be extremely specific because we are my staff has to go back with that information and make changes to the plan based on the information you provide tonight so if you provide me some information and it's not specific enough i i'm i'm not trying

to drill you i'm just trying to gather more input from you specifically what what what is it that you're looking for so i may have to have a number of follow-up questions regarding that and then any suggestions that you have to add board members i will also ask that you identify what it is you want to remove from the plan because it's a

fixed amount of dollars so it's not it can't run over so it has to be specific to that so we'll have some follow-up questions and i'll check with staff afterwards make sure we have enough information because we have a very short timeline uh we'll take this information tomorrow's staff will have to take the information tonight go back tomorrow

and re-rewrite some parts of that plan based on information that is given tonight and then we'll come back thursday night and at that point the board uh would hopefully would approve that plan so that we could submit it to the state on friday with that i'll turn it over to dr park all right thank you president schaefer

members of the board superintendent enfield and cabinet we're going to dive right in and review the process and the feedback that led to the development of the district sr-3 plan the sr-3 is emergency federal relief funding that districts can apply for to be able to supplement our in-person instruction so that we're able to provide it safely it is a one-time funding stream with all

monies that have to be spent by june 30th of 2024 the sr3 application was released on june 30th of 2021 with very specific criteria that needs to be met in order to be eligible which include a safe return plan that was already board approved on september 2nd for the first time with any federal funding a requirement for community

engagement and a plan that needs to be approved by the board and submitted to the state by october 29th which is this friday currently there is no extension to this application deadline because it is not a requirement for districts to apply for this funding if all requirements are met which include again the safe return plan community engagement

and board approval and upon application we are eligible to receive about an estimate of 34 million dollars of the 34 million dollars at least 20 percent or 6.8 million have to be dedicated toward addressing the academic impact coveted closures had on our students using inner be using interventions evidence-based intervention specifically because we know that every school is

different we feel that our schools would better assess students academic needs and as a result all of the 6.8 million or 20 percent will be directly distributed to our schools the esser plan that you received last week reflects not only the district plan but it also includes the individual priorities that were identified by every school with a really short time window of

june 30th when the application was released to the original deadline of september 30th our team went to work immediately from july 19 through the august 13 we ran a district survey to our community members which also included our employees as well then schools followed up with individual school-level surveys and that survey was administered between august 16th through the 27th and that included

families and students in grades six and up and also their staff because esther is one-time money we evaluated those areas that are of need and are considered appropriate for one-time or short-term expenditures that would benefit all of our schools and that are currently not fully funded through different funding streams so we identified as our initial set of

priorities to be one technology infrastructure indoor air quality expanding mental health services and support pandemic training and covid19 testing support as our initial five district priorities you will see that while ppe is an area that is of need it did not make it onto this list because we currently have a separate funding source that allows us to completely purchase

all the ppe that's needed on that district survey in addition to way asking our community and employees to weigh in on these five priorities we also gave everyone an opportunity to write in any idea for a proposed service that could be funded with esser the invitation for the district survey and feedback came from a letter from our

superintendent it also went out repeatedly through our use of aries communications social media posts the information was also posted on the district website and on every school website we had 1651 families weigh in and 930 employees also provide feedback the results here reflect addressing technology infrastructure as the number one priority for both groups followed by indoor air quality and mental health

services and supports as the next leading priorities with the other category coming in as the lowest priority in the next two slides you're going to see 25 major themes that were captured in the other category on the district survey that had spending implications so there are items that were noted in the other category that did not make

this list if those items were negotiable with our unions if they were statements that did not have spending implications they did not make it onto this list of the ideas captured in the other category that you are seeing today so let me walk you through the proposed ideas that were identified in that other category on the district survey starting

with number one we had seven parents and one staff member equaling a total of 0.31 percent identify additional support for students with disabilities we had one parent identify creating an additional class at cal arrow preserve academy and we had a total of three identify hiring additional nurses you'll see items one two and three they are not crossed out because they are

appropriate activities that you can fund through esser funding item number four increasing child care and after school options improving elementary school yard play equipment improving high school facilities building outside shell shade shelters and improving the physical setting inside of the classroom you will note that they are crossed off because they are not considered allowable expenses with sr3 funding

item number nine we had three people identify increasing custodial staff item number ten we had one staff member identify building additional water bottle filling stations that we currently already do have on our all of our campuses item number 11 you'll you will see that seven members indicated hiring additional counselors to support social emotional services and you'll see that it is boxed in green

with a check mark because it is an allowable expense and currently item number 11 is a district priority that we have already presented to the board item number 12 provide tutoring after school that is an allowable expense and currently each school site will be discerning their academic needs and providing tutoring services for their students item number 13 increasing security on

campus we had 11 people offer this suggestion and it is crossed off because it is not an allowable expense item number fourteen we had five parents indicate they would like improved school lunches it is crossed off because it is not an approved activity with the use of sr3 funding two parents indicated they would like to see zoom classes for students when they

are on quarantine immediately and it is left on there because it is an appropriate expense item 16 provide staff training with three parents and five staff members who provided this and the reason why this is crossed off is because training needs to be relative to covet 19 mitigation strategies or training related related to how we will address the learning loss for our

students item number 17 is an allowable expense additional academic support during the day and that is something that each school will be addressing at at their individual home schools providing classrooms with hand sanitizers masks tissue and gloves we had two people identify that as a priority and currently that is an allowable expense but right now that is fully

being funded through a different funding stream four staff members indicated an upgrade of technology for teachers and that has been kept up there because it is an allowable expense item 20 provides students with digital books we had seven indicate that as a need and currently that is an allowable expense and something that we already offer to our students

item number 21 11 indicated they would like elementary pe teachers that item has been crossed off because it is not an allowable expense it would be an allowable expense if hiring of additional pe teachers was for the use of teachers collaborating around student data to be able to provide interventions and extensions but elementary pe teachers by itself is not

considered an allowable expense increasing learning offerings during the day through electives and other specialized classes at the secondary schools is an appropriate expense item number 23 increasing extra curricular activities outside of the school day is crossed off because that is not considered an appropriate activity with the use of sr3 funding adding more hand sanitate hand washing stations

that is marked in green with an x because that is currently funded through a separate funding stream but it is considered an appropriate use with sr3 money item number 25 we had one parent request for more busing and drop-off locations and that's up there because it is an allowable expense so in addition to the district survey we also met with five other groups our

lcap advisory group our dlac our superintendent student advisory council act and csea and i'd like to review their feedback with you again we met with the lcap committee on september 7th and october 1st and here is a reflection of their priorities with mental health services as the number one priority followed by technology infrastructure and pandemic training as

the lowest priority we met with our dlac who are our families representing our english learners on august 30th and this reflects their feedback with technology infrastructure coming in at number one followed by mental health and pandemic training as the lowest priority we also met with our superintendent student advisory council also known as the sac made up of student

leaders from every junior high and high school campus on october i'm sorry on august 31st september 21st and october 19th and this reflects their feedback with mental health services as our top priority followed by technology infrastructure and pandemic training being the lowest priority here is the feedback from associated chino teachers reflecting technology infrastructure as the number one priority followed by

indoor air quality and pandemic training as the lowest priority for act input from csea reflects addressing technology infrastructure as the number one priority followed by mental health and with pandemic training as the lowest priority the district survey results including the ideas that were noted in the other category along with the feedback from the five committee groups were presented to the esser

committee this committee was comprised of 70 members with every school principal and one representative from the school the committee after considering everyone's feedback had the opportunity to again individually weigh in on what they felt should be funded through the sr-3 funding with technology infrastructure coming in at the top followed by mental health then with indoor air quality

coven 19 testing and contact racing and pandemic training coming in at five as a result in consideration of the sr3 committee who took a look at everyone's feedback we reflected their top three priorities in the plan that was presented to the board last week it includes our tentative plan and proposal for funding three major projects technology infrastructure has a total

cost of 25 million dollars from s from sr3 we are proposing a cost of 20 million dollars and out of sr2 that did not require community input a dollar amount of 5 million dollars then to address mental health services and supports it would have a cost of 7 million dollars and from sr3 it would entail 2 million

with the remaining coming from sr2 with our third and final project all hvac units that do not currently meet the recommended standard of mirv 13 filter abilities would be upgraded or replaced and we project that project to be about 18 million dollars 5 million from sr3 and the remaining from other funds at the october 21st board meeting

the planned template for the sr-3 was agendized and presented to the board and we received additional feedback at that meeting it was one public comment to fund the district-wide family engagement program currently the family engagement program is fully funded through our lcat at the october 21st meeting you also requested that we have a board study session today where we will be seeking

your direction upon the conclusion of our board study session today this evening our team will begin writing the plan so that tomorrow we can present it to the county for their approval and make any revisions that are needed tomorrow then on thursday we will have another special board meeting will where we will present the revised plan to this board

if the plan is approved on the 29th which is the last day to submit the plan to the state we will be submitting it if on october 28th the plan is not approved we will not be filing an application for sr-3 funding and as a reminder sr-3 funding is not a requirement so we do not need to apply for the funding if

it does not get approved and that concludes our presentation to the board now moving on to item 1c where it now comments on items on this agenda we will not be hearing comments on subject matters other than s or 3. pat were there any requests to speak eleven requests to speak i'm sorry how many 11. speakers will be called the order the

request was received please listen for your name and be prepared to approach the podium additionally the board does its best to support the public's right to address its elected officials it is also important that board conduct its business in an orderly and fair fashion as provided on board by line 93 23 in the event that an unusual amount a

speaker card is submitted for any item the board will hear up to 30 minutes of comments in the case of non-agenda item support can if it chooses here the remainder after all business has been conducted mr bridge will you please explain the light system speakers you have three minutes to address the board please limit your remarks to new points

begin comments at the green light yellow light means you have 30 seconds left the red light means your time is over please adjust the microphone as necessary so that you are clearly heard by everyone in the room audience members please refrain from making comments while the speakers are at the podium the first speaker is julie santosola followed by sonia singh followed by

darice de guzman good evening board members um community i am here on behalf of the children i try to make sure i'm an advocate for as many as people as possible and right now because of the sr3 fund and the mental health issues that are going on with our children um i was i felt it on my heart that i

needed to advocate for our kids [Music] mental health needs to be the top priority i feel especially speaking with several other parents and my son and his friends and a i know it's a small group compared to the thousands of students that we do have in our community in our schools but the consensus was that the counselors

are academic counselors they are not psych counselors they are not counseling for mental health issues um the kids do not feel that they have the support that they need um prime example and i'm going to try to do this in a very vague way because i don't want to have the the person told me i could speak about this but they told me that

they did not want any identification um their child had a friend the other it was thursday i believe very concerned about their friend child had had anxiety and depression thoughts of suicide decided that they were going to take it upon themselves to go to the counselor at the school the counselor at the school blew them off handed them a piece of paper and said

here fill this out for your friend and go to chino human services didn't want to be bothered did not pull this child into a quiet room to read the text messages talk to the child figure out what was going on with this child's friend now you have two children that are discouraged and disheartened and feel that they have no one to listen to them

my children have even said even the one that has graduated there is no room there is no counseling there's nobody there to listen to them they feel ignored and i feel it's a disservice especially with the lockdown a lot of our kids and it's not just one high school it's not just one elementary it's not just one junior high

the drug use in junior high and high school is astronomical and that they feel that they are not being heard and listened to the consensus was that they need a place you need a counselor more than chino human health and services coming in once a week that cannot see all of these kids so i'm urging you to increase the budget

and put that as your utmost priority put our kids first put their mental health first because otherwise you're going to have a higher higher suicide rate amongst these kids time thank you sonya singh followed by darice the guzman followed by richard wales good evening i was asked by my school principal to be the parent representative for the sr3 committee

what brought me into this world of the parent advocacy of chino valley was the poor implementation and obvious lack of transparency and stakeholder involvement regarding the elo grant procedure i gladly agreed as i saw this as an opportunity for myself to offer my opinion also gain some insight as to how and where the sum of money could be

utilized to best support our students this was not the case before the first meeting i asked myself how would i know what our school needs without having the ability to engage with other parents in our school fortunately at the very least i was able to have face-to-face communication with my principal while attending these esther meetings as information was presented i was able to

ask her if we had certain aspects in place whether it was enough and what the mental and emotional state of these children was and how she views our school overall what i did not receive was the ability to engage with staff on many important aspects for example at least 20 percent bare minimum of the 34 million in funds had

to be spent on academics why did you choose to allocate the bare minimum when it is clear that more could be used stem music art pe all fall under this category to me at no point were we given the opportunity to ask questions or provide feedback on any of the information presented there were three days of presentation with no interaction

nor debate in fact dr enfield on day one i specifically remember you saying that the majority of funds would need to be allocated towards infrastructure which showed us that all this had basically been decided already i thought to myself and i'm sure many others did as well this was a complete waste of time and was put in place simply to appease us

the breakout group set up in the second meeting for 30 minutes or so made no impact and wasn't correlated to any of the larger sums of moneying's being allocated and again there was no real parent input seemed to be conducted in almost a childlike school-like classroom setting of a teacher-child scenario which seemed to accomplish nothing the timing of these esr meetings seemed very

convenient in my eyes you were well aware there would only be one board meeting to vote on this before the deadline which would leave no room for changes or arguments for stakeholders my biggest concern is the mental health aspect pay attention to your student representative 850 students from 7th through 12th grades responded to a survey regarding mental health 850 students out of how

many across the entire district of 7-12 that tiny amount of feedback led to your decision to allocate 7 million towards this massive issue plaguing our schools and of that only eight to ten licensed therapists will be added to the already 14 our district currently has that's not enough i'm aware there are outside agencies as part of these monies but we

need licensed therapists on all campuses daily right now counseling and covet staff should have been implemented long ago before the school year began with previous funds utilized you know what we were in for this year it was no surprise with everything these kids have gone through and are still going through that's all you're willing to give them our school

is currently one counselor one day a week at best this money will allow for a total of two and a half days per week this is unacceptable academics and mental health are a top priority in our schools right now this grant money should reflect that please use this opportunity opportunity and make the changes direct darice de guzman followed by richard

wales followed by kelly allen good evening board members and superintendent my name is darris de guzman and i was a parent participant in the esther committee while i appreciate the effort to gather input across the district through online surveys and the intent of the esser committee i didn't find the meetings as collaborative as i had hoped first the online surveys already start

with a bias and influence when the district determined the five focus areas for survey participants to vote on i do understand that this was to address areas that were not covered by separate funds however the esser does allow for multiple other expenses that i don't believe parents were aware of second while i really appreciated the inviting welcoming and positive

environment of the esser meetings they were informational in nature rather than a working collaborative session between the meetings in september and october school side administration reviewed their site's survey results and submitted their plans to the district in order to develop the draft in time to submit to the county for review parents were not involved in that process

we were provided the outcome of the results and the plan in a five-minute conversation with our school site principals during the october meeting at that point there was little room to provide any input to change the draft my expectation as part of a collaborative member of the committee would be that i would be able to review the survey results including all

comments submitted and we would work together to develop a plan before it was drafted and submitted i also think the comment should have been transparent to the entire committee i was able to view a different school site survey comments and although many were unrelated to the ester grants there was very much a concern from teachers about substitute coverage numerous

comments from parents about the additional 30 minutes to the schedule as a result of the elo grant this is still input that should have been transparent to all and followed up on by the district while we don't know that the plan would have produced different results if the process was conducted differently and i don't necessarily disagree with

the plan but i i do want to make sure that students voices heard for mental support i do hope that we take this as an opportunity to learn and continue to improve collaboration and communication between parents and the district thank you richard wales followed by kelly allen followed by sonia shaw first thing i'd like to do is thank you

to the board or the study session i wish we had done this back when we had the elo but best not repeat that mistake i wanted to discuss just a few things first thing i want to say is i'm sad that esther kim is not here tonight i saw a lot of passion and i saw courage i saw a young lady that was not afraid

to speak up and actually interrupt your process to make sure that you heard what was important to her those students need to be surveyed they need to be heard we've seen some teachers assignments where the teachers ask students to anonymously put down if there was something that you would most like your parents to hear what would it be

some of those things were tragic and heartbreaking because they felt that their parents wouldn't or couldn't listen to them i've talked to ms garnier about this and i would like to pursue it mr na has touched on it i'm not sure what the consent parameter for our kids is to seek help i don't know if it is

set in california law or how that works there are kids out there that feel that they cannot talk to their parents it it may merely be a feeling but that is the reality and then there are those parents that would never let their kids go talk to somebody they want to keep it in the family and those kids cannot reach out

i've talked to various parents who support the idea of trying to work out something to where students potentially in the age group of 12 to 17 would be able to reach out for some mental health support and at some point reach out to the parents make contact and help them with whatever is going on if we can't do this

if we can't figure out a way to let students be heard as bad as things are it's going to be really sad if they can't go to somebody with things that are bad to potentially life-threatening thank you kelly allen followed by sonia shaw followed by dominique skogen i kind of have a tad team situation going on here

i was one of those students that richard was just talking about um i could not talk to my parents about what was going on with me and i was able to speak with a counselor luckily they didn't have all these other things to worry about and they had the opportunity to speak with me on a regular basis

weekly basis where i let my heart out and i think this counselor mrs rose rosenthal saved my life these kids deserve that too first my comments from last week was not just about family engagement programs and my question one of my questions is what does fully funded look like because obviously family engagement is not a top priority

when i spoke about the esser last week miss kanye was right i was talking more about the process than the result i listened carefully to the presentation but to be completely honest with everything else that needed to be addressed i didn't even get a chance to read it beforehand and based on my experience over the last six months i didn't really think that

there was any possibility that our concerns would change anything so i went ahead and i read it last night one area stood out to me 20 million dollars for technology infrastructure for those of you who haven't read it yet let me read it to you the description says in previous plans cvusd purchased educational technology to support distance learning

these devices are now being used to implement one to one for student to device ratios within the classrooms inside the classrooms in order to expand the current educational technology implementation the current hardware and infrastructure across the district will need upgrading this will include cabling network infrastructure data center network security wireless cyber security and voice collaboration my child uses this laptop at school

for a very short period of time 20 million dollars is a lot of money that could be moved to some higher priorities we were stunned and very grateful that you voted to hear directly from us all that last week and even if nothing we say changes the plan at least you have heard from us directly and not just take the

word of the staff that everything was great because well i'm still a little skeptical that you'll listen the board has showed a desire to grow the relationship between home and school and desire is a start but now it's time to take action you need to direct dr enfield and his staff to make engagement a priority you need to make funds avail available for

this to happen dr enfield as for you we usually address our remarks to board members but today you're in the hot seat with ms garnier urging for more communication and engagement we now have at least three members of this board who are frustrated with your lack of attention and you have a responsibility to make this district meet all of the

requirements from the state priorities sonia shaw followed by dominique's scoggins one of those a very important one to the success of our students is building relationships between school and home we are starting to see that the picture you have been painting to the board is not realistic first the elo and now the esser you failed again to really hear

what was important to the families you are supposed to be working with meaningful input from stakeholders was a requirement for all this money you formed your committees and sent your surveys so you could check off your boxes of requirements and again you made these parents feel like they didn't matter shame on all of you dr enfield family engagement is one of

those things where you can choose to meet the bare minimum requirements or you can choose to help a connection thrive it doesn't take a lot of effort to make sure that every family is aware and has access to the support that you provide as a district there are so many programs and that the students and their families

don't even know about that could be really that could really benefit them why don't they know because they haven't done their own research they haven't went around the internet and tried to find it or maybe because they weren't lucky enough to have another student or parent or friend tell them your office is responsible for reaching out to families in a meaningful

way the parents aren't the ones responsible for asking you to engage with them because even when they volunteer for committees and they plead to be heard and they form a group of more than 1200 parents and growing every single day and they show up at every meeting you still shut us down and do not listen your actions show that you

don't value the families of these students it seems like you see them as more of a problem that you're forced to deal with than to partner in education we have been trying to tell you for months that we want to be included in the decisions that affect our children we want to partner with you not fight against you but at every opportunity we

are shut down and things are done behind our back to shut us down even further we know that students who have support at home do better in school and we know that families who know what is happening at school are better equipped to offer their support and we know that you have the ability to fill the gap in this

community as seen tonight with the technology email that went out why didn't we get one about this board meeting to engage the parents to come and actually speak kovitz brought its many challenges we have never had a time where relationship between home and school was so important it has been hard on everyone the district staff you guys the teachers

parents and especially the kids we all want or should want what is best for the students not yourselves we see the mental health is a top priority for many of our stakeholder groups so why don't we use the money more use more of the money to tell our community about the mental health services we offer or hold and

effectively promote more information sessions like the suicide prevention one that miss gagne helped organize a few months ago what if we can reach our parent community and offer them the tools for better emotional health for the whole family and knowing about the signs of trouble and where to get the help that they need it there are so many ways to support

mental health in the district and not all of them are geared towards an individual student don't get me wrong students need the support that is already allocated for the plan and so much more we look forward to seeing you guys step up to the challenge dominique scoggins followed by adele meisenheit meisenheimer followed by jim flores hello everyone thank you for having me

um i wanted to go ahead and talk about uh some things that have been a concern as i've been listening to a lot of the parents uh and some of the board members here obviously the three pillars and the subjects technology infrastructure mental health and indoor air quality um i would like to you know definitely advocate in terms of having

technology infrastructure for indoor air quality um the madame that just spoke uh before me mentioned about you know the transportation from home and school but what about technology for school buses as we all know pathogens are deeply uh infiltrated in school buses and transportation um i wanted to also uh bring up an article here from the united

states environmental protection agency um uh from epa which is basically addressing the air cleaners hvac filters and coronavirus obviously when used properly air cleaners and hvac filters can help reduce airborne contaminants including viruses in a building or a small place by itself air cleaning or filtration is not enough to protect people from people from cover 19. so i understand that there is a

tremendous budget allocation for hvac uh but there also needs to be an ancillary technology that actually kills covet and that's this is something that i would like to talk to you guys uh when that time comes given that merit so i appreciate that thank you adele meisenhot meisenheimer followed by jim flores followed by christy salazar someone didn't do their homework

my name is adele meisenheimer almost 30-year resident of chino hills privileged to volunteer in our schools and youth programs prior to last week's board meeting i had begun researching and discussing with others the topic of indoor air quality so when that was determined to be the number three concern of the sr3 panel it captured my attention however the proposed solution of

updating or replacing existing air conditioner units to accommodate merv 13 filters made me wonder if anyone had done their homework on this issue so i did a bit with a little research i found that merv means minimum efficiency reporting value as determined by the american society of heating refrigeration and air conditioning engineers and according to ashrae it's difficult

for many existing hvac systems to adapt amber 13 due to increased load a merv 13 rating filter will trap less than 75 percent of air particles that are 0.3 to 1.0 micron in size the coronavirus is 0.1 micron so the merv 13 filter does not even capture the virus particle for which schools have been closed yes california state universities are

converting lower rated merv filters to 13 upgrading or replacing hvac units perhaps the sr3 panel just looked on someone else's paper to see what they were doing and figured that was good enough for chino valley unified school district i don't think so i learned that hepa filtration can be at the highest nerve levels combined with germicidal uvc

light and ionization this method can capture 99.99 of particles 0.1 microns or larger this type of system draws in it captures air molecules filters it releases it purified molecules thus reducing the transmission of disease by destroying them or their ability to reproduce sounds good doesn't it i thought that was an upgrade from merv 13. a company in fact in minnesota isoair

has been providing portable hepa ionization filtrations to schools for about 1500 per machine for classroom and office use and that is much a much better option for health benefits and disease protection and staff at a fraction of the cost i thought then i reached out to another community member jim flores who has a commercial cleaning business asking about his systems his company

uses a brand new technology that will blow your mind so i have i brought i asked jim to come here tonight to explain how this radical environmentally safe and effective system works and can be implemented for less than 8 million maybe the board can use the spare 10 million in another area of our need for in the esser funds my desire is to

create such a pure environment that students and teachers can remove math and get back one of their most treasured gifts a smile jim jim flores followed by christy salazar followed by tony flores good evening um that's a tough act to follow my name is jim flores i do have students here at ayala i have a graduate daughter and a son that's a senior at

ayala i've been coaching in this area for over close to 30 years it's been a long time i really enjoy the area that i live in i enjoy this city i enjoy i'm involved with a lot of different organizations i started a commercial cleaning company back in 1989 so that i could coach baseball and i've been able to provide that

one of the things is um my goal is always to help the community and be here and be a resource i never look at myself as a business owner but an educator and i'm always looking for technology when covet hit our company went crazy we were just inundated our labor force was exhausted and i had to come up with something

different something that could sanitize disinfect and and reduce the labor force and i met the guys over here at clear cloud who manufactured a product a machine that would will set a fog through the whole entire place completely sanitize and disinfect everything that you can't see or touch completely disinfected we provide the equipment the training the chemicals the

chemicals are non-toxic fda approved you could literally turn the machine on right in the middle of the floor right now completely sanitize everything in here without physically wiping it which you know your staff your school your janitors they're having a tough time and you still go into facilities and you still see grime and dirt and the biggest thing

is they touch whatever they touch then you tell the kids to touch their face to fix their mass the masks do not work it caused them to transport the bacteria onto their face that's why people that are still getting covered wearing the mass 24 7 are still coming down with covet because it's not the mass it's what they touch and they

put into their face and their eyes we want to be able to reduce the cost for the school we want to be able to be able to do a demo and show you how the equipment works we have a spectrometer that will tell you exactly how much bacteria is in the room right now and once the machine runs how it eliminate

99 of all the bacteria the root of the problem is the air that we're breathing the air conditioning all it does is flow it if i cough into here and the exhaust is over there we're breathing it into us that's not that's the issue we need to eliminate the air that's flowing into the kids that's a clean fresh air that's

already been sanitized and disinfected i know i only have a couple minutes we can't we can now control that environment of what they're breathing and we would love to do a demo for you guys thank you very much christy christy salazar followed by tony flores followed by joel burlingame hi i'm christy salazar i'm a parent of two students who go to ayala high school

and um during the summer i contacted the school and let them know if there were any volunteer opportunities i would be interested so they contacted me and let me know that the um sr3 committee was being formed and asked if i would be a representative for our school and i agreed to do that i was pretty excited to be on this committee

thinking that i would have a good opportunity to get involved to take back information to our school site and get more information from our parents and and provide input from the community on how we're going to use these esser funds and that didn't happen at the first sr meeting um sr3 meeting we were told it was going to

be a two-hour meeting and it was actually exactly one hour uh so i left that meeting more having more questions than answers and basically we saw a presentation like you guys saw at the beginning of this meeting it was just facts given to us but no engagement um no instructions to go back to our schools you know to ask the community what they

they wanted to see um and through all three meetings that never happened we did have a meeting at our site and it was with the principal the vice principal and some of the other staff and that was very engaging we were going back and forth trying to decide what's most needed at that school and the number one item was mental health um

everybody agreed that these kids are really struggling they've never seen anything quite this bad is affecting so many people and they just don't have enough resources to help all those kids um i know it was mentioned that the students were not really putting getting much input there was a survey out and not a lot of participation and interesting

interestingly enough my two kids came home and told me that today during their fourth period class they did a survey and it was by raise of hands so you know who thinks technology technology is a good idea raise of hands who thinks mental health you know we need resources nobody raised their hand because they didn't want to be the kid

who says i need mental health you know we need resources for that so it wasn't a really good way to conduct a survey from children who might actually really want mental health they're not going to raise their hand in the middle of a class in front of their peers so i think that this could have been a

really good opportunity to get the community involved and we we really i reached out to parents i know at the school and a lot of them didn't they're involved they're in the booster club and they're in the pta and they they were not really aware of the impact of the survey and when i asked them things that they would

like to see funded they had a bunch of ideas and i don't think they provided all that information information in the survey so i think we could really do a better job at like engaging our community in a different way thank you tony flores followed by joel burlingame followed by the final speaker clark franklin good evening dr enfield president joe

schaefer board cabinet audience my name is tony flores i have a fifth grade son at howard cattle and eighth grade daughter at magnolia and both are title one schools i've been familiar with title one living on the north side of the tracks my entire children's lives so i serve on lcap i serve on our school side council

i serve on our school safety planning committee at both of my children's schools i serve on the esser committee i serve on our family engagement network on the county level and i'm a product of our family engagement center since my children have been in kindergarten in reference to the workshops so all of this stuff works if you are a

parent engaged an engaged parent is what it's all about mr gnaw knows that mr cruz knows that mr schaefer knows that mr bridge knows that we all know that you have to be engaged with your parent your children as a parent as a single parent mom your guardians what have you with that said the family and community engagement

one of the allowable uses for this money is the family literacy act how much money does the district currently invest in family literacy and parent community engagement through programs like the family engagement center parent forums family literacy software parent engagement personnel etc the answer is less than three hundred thousand dollars for twenty eight thousand students with one and one third

personnel to support parent and community engagement across the district and i'm talking about mrs eby corderos and brenda foyer and today i'm asking what plans does the district have to increase the funding for parent engagement such as fully funding the family engagement center district school community liaison bilingual person who currently works 158 days out of the 183

student days i feel it's very important that eb and brenda brenda becomes a full-time person throughout this whole process i know so many hispanic families every time i've called her over the past two years her phone number is always full because of all these parents calling her versus calling the principal at the school that type thing so i'm

just asking right now pers i talked to mr right out today hr person he told me two hundred thousand we need to bump this up to four hundred thousand thank you joe burlingame followed by clark franklin sir i want to thank you for all your engagement this man is just a wealth of knowledge for all of us and

what a what a wonderful opportunity we have to have 27 million like what it would look like if we just took 15 million sucked it right into what you're talking about and if you look at what the students of all the study that you had up there the students was the ones that was asking for mental health

first so if this gentleman over here is aware of all these programs and only three hundred thousand dollars is being put into it what would it look like with three million dollars six million dollars what can that do to our community the students are asking for this first last week during the meeting the student representative said that one of the

schools can't even have a private meeting in there because the walls are thin what would what would a couple million dollars do to fix that problem spread it out throughout the community and let our children rejoice from this opportunity that's been given to us thank you hello school board fellow community members um i'm fairly new to this uh i barely

started attending these meetings at the last meeting you all heard the concerns of the parents at the last meeting the the majority of the parents there were concerned about covid um i noticed how this esser thing is a covid related uh funding project and so i decided to go look and see what was required with it on top of

the the whole plan that you guys are putting together i went to www.cde.ca.gov fg cr slash ar pact.asp and inside that area of the website i i went looked and it said um for a part of getting the funding that the local educational agencies will have to uh maintain the health and safety of students educators and other

staff to the extent in which it has adopted policies and a description of any such policies on each of the following ct recommendations established by the center for disease control there's things here for universal and correct wearing of masks which the masks we can argue the efficacy of the masks but there's also other pathogens like colds and stuff like that that is

also like not your the immune system is not working on but regardless of that there's uh modifying facilities for allowing for physical distancing which i think is fine and i think is great um hand hand washing and respiratory etiquette maintaining cleaning clean and healthy facilities in improving ventilation all this stuff is good but i also seen that there wanted to be

efforts to provide vaccination to school communities and you guys did see that a lot of parents are concerned about vaccinating their children now i want to know as a parent of three students in this school district on whether or not if you guys are going to be forcing this vaccine mandate for our children just to get the money

because if you're selling my children out for a buck that i'm not quite okay with so um i also saw that there's also things about contact tracing and isolation contact tracing ic looks is good in theory but uh authoritative sources will you will maximize a crisis and contact tracing could be used maliciously in of other broader spectrums not

necessarily in the school board setting but these kind of things i feel is like training our children to be uh to be basically submissive to an authoritarian state and i think that's worth for mental health of the children than anything else so thank you for your time and i really appreciate you guys letting me speak okay thank you to all the speakers of

the time to join us tonight and have your voices be heard right now moving on to section two esther study session dr enfield before we start the discussion at the board can you please explain tonight's study session process just a reminder as i stated earlier any suggestions that the board has mrs kaler she will capture those they need to be very specific

on what you're requesting to add to the plan and then also what is it that you want to remove from the plan and then we'll have to budget that out to everything any changes tomorrow but we need to just be very specific so i may ask you follow-up questions uh to any suggestions that you bring forward thank you dr hemfield and just a

housekeeping and pat for the record i did fail to ask for consensus the 30 minute mark my apologies to the board okay moving on item 2a1 discussion board members if you have any recommended changes to the plan please be specific and clear as to what the changes are as a reminder because this is a study session the board will not take any

action that said you can't take items off of the proposed plan but you can recommend a change to the funding allocation and the board will vote on on it at thursday's meeting the light system is working so um please push your light if you didn't need to go mrs ghania i saw your first mr cruz you'll be next yes thank you mr shaffer

um so i have a series of comments and then questions and if you've asked me to watch questions before board meetings these go on for a moment so um but they're with good intent my first question dr enfield is one of my concerns with mental health is renewable funding sources um my concern is that even with an investment that we

are making from the seven million dollars mental health is a continual need um and i want to make sure that we have money outside of these funds to persist whatever programs not that i'm saying this number shouldn't be enhanced but in terms of our our other available funds that are part of the district budget what can we commit to mental health

services beyond the request and these esser funds the board sets the priorities so if the board wants to make that a priority that they can add those funds it's just there's i like to it's there's x amount of dollars and you determine what those priorities are so if you want to allocate more then it just it's a takeaway from someplace else

so there's funds to do whatever the board's priorities what those priorities are mrs gagne so so the answer is there's funds there you just probably we just prioritize them in those areas my next question is around our family engagement um in in analyzing the current budget um and the needs of the community um and i have some comments on

this so every you know there's lots of my background people don't know about i worked in civic and family engagement for years um and people need to be met where they're at um and things have changed and maybe the way we communicated 20 years ago worked 20 years ago but it doesn't work now someone also just made a reference to

a big part of our community that is not techno technologically engaged and that's a major issue is that we have to meet them from a language perspective and oftentimes they don't want to come into district facilities they need to be met out in the community or as mr flores just identified there's individuals that they trust they'd rather go to and so

you know i am concerned that we should put more funding into this um into these programs and into staff because i think now more than ever the reality is this is not just a cvusd issue you know we have lost engagement with families throughout the district we've lost engagement with a lot of our low-income families i think there's a need uh to to reengage

the extent possible but the reality is that as disconnected as probably all of us feel over the last 19 months there are families in this community that are even further disconnected and so we really need to make sure that we are meeting them where they're at and that requires more boots on the ground which requires more staff and so

one of the things whether it's out of these funds or again and i understand that we have a pie we've got to cut up the pie in the district budget um you know i do think this is something we need to focus on um the other thing that i want to see us focus on in tandem to

the technology budget and and we can debate the veracity of the budget in these current esser funds at another time is that digital literacy is also another issue so we have many families who the kids have some technology skills the parents do not and so there is not the support for those families at home to get digital literacy training i know the

cal state pta and other organizations have tried to bridge this gap but i think this is something that can be very efficaciously also dealt with at the district level to bring those families into our communication pathways and i think that would also help to alleviate some of the larger communication issues many of our communications today for good reason are happening over social

media they're happening over social applications if we have a let's say the low number 25 of our families who don't use technology we're not reaching 25 of our families that's a major problem in a district this size so i would like to see whether from these funds or separate funds again us funding more positions in the family

engagement center to make sure we have those boots on the ground to do so in terms of my questions now that i'm going to start my actual questions [Music] in terms of the items that were listed and i'm on page four of the powerpoint presentation that we received at the beginning of this there were items that were identified

that didn't have they weren't crossed off either because they were not allowable expenses under the grant funds or they had a little green check mark of like we already had it covered my first question is on item number 10 i've had parents and students alike contact me about water bottle filling stations for covet and environmental reasons my impression was we were

already installing these across the district is that correct mr stutter can you answer that yes that's correct we've installed one at every single school site at least one and in relation to item 15 um live zoom classes for students during quarantine my understanding is that the legislature in their not so infinite wisdom really sort of cut us off at the pass on

distance learning this year that's the reality the legislature made every incentive possible to go back to in-person learning which i totally support but then totally overlooked any distance learning opportunities um is is that the reason why we could not offer live zoom classes if we have students quarantined currently live zoom classes are offered at day 15 of quarantine consistent with

legislative recommendations and in terms of item number 19 my impression is that some of the funding that is provided under the technology budget and the larger esser supports includes upgrades to technology for teachers is that correct so my additional q additional questions are related to the actual funding so somebody brought up um a great point and that point is

sometimes grant applications just by their essence we're sort of providing generalities about programming and not providing specifics and either that's because there weren't specifics requested by the grant making agency um or that's just not a requirement so you know for example with indoor air quality um we're making a request and i see that in the requests that we

are potentially making for indoor air quality that 5 million for indoor quality indoor air quality is coming or 3 which we're talking about now and that 13 million is coming from s or 2. have we already invested the 13 million from s or 2 into indoor air quality no we have not um so in making this grant proposal are

we wed to the technology listed here or could we amend it to generally make a request for whether it's uv lighting or other types of air filters can we amend our requests to be more general as to this need versus specifically identifying technology and then go out through the procurement process in the community and figure out what the best fit is

i'm not understanding the question okay so i'll go page 9 of the the budget which the board has a copy of and one of our speakers identified this and another speaker supplemented it with a discussion we identify you know certain you know reporting filters and certain reporting and certain um air conditioning units and capabilities right so we are

ascribing to a particular technology so my question is can we just make this more general so that we're able to once we receive the funds evaluate what the best fit would be to improve indoor air quality the merv 13 recommendation is a cde recommendation which is what we were looking at there are other options to explore hepa filtration

the uv lighting that is also an option but yes there are other things we could consider so can we could make a request then to just amend the description here because i'm guessing that the cde like many regulations they make a floor there can be a ceiling so my guess here is that if we just amended this language

we could go back and then figure out what the best technology fit would be and we were able to clearly exceed the cdc guidelines or the cdc floor correct that's correct um and then finally back to mental health i have spoken to a lot of students um i don't know maybe i get a little more student outreach than other board

members but i tend to get a lot of students calling me and emailing me and social messaging me and everything else mental health is a number one priority but also is engagement and i think that we have to value and i frequently am in contact with our student board member she's a very dynamic young woman she's very committed

to representing her fellow students let me tell you that um mental health is a number one priority and i think that while as adults we can sit here having conversations about what their needs are and i think that parents are clearly in tune with what their children's needs are someone made a very astute comment kids are not going to raise their hand and

wave around and say what their problems are they're just not going to do that and so i think that we need to one i want to other funds in the see which um you know i think is something we should be investing in um i think we need to go back to students and figure out with this budget what we should be

putting the money into and from my conversations one of the big things uh is counselors and not just counselors that are doing double duty but actual counselors on campus is is a major concern so one thing i would like to see whether it's out of these funds or you know i think we can go commit funds um from elsewhere in our budget

and i also want to make that clear you are absolutely right we do have the ability to look at our entire budget and make decisions and decisions our value statements and so um i i don't this is not the end-all be-all of us making an investment in this um but i will say that we do need to go back to our budget and

we do need to be more malleable and iterative and now that we're hearing certain things from the community um i really think we need to reflect that in our larger budget so whether or not we make a change here today i just want to make clear that i am committed to providing more funding to family engagement i'm committed to

providing more funding to mental health services and i can't underscore the impact that mental health services can have on our students we have students that sometimes just need to go talk to somebody for a half an hour and that makes all the difference we have other students who have a lot of mental health needs and just need continuous support but one of my

concerns with mental health funding is that we have renewable funding because i would hate to start these great programs and cut them off three years later because we don't have renewable funding resources to to continue all of that so i'll stop there for now but um you know whether we do this today out of these funds you know i think that we can

certainly come back at our november uh 19th board meeting and and make some decisions about this mr cruz okay [Applause] pat i'm going to go ahead and just just free thought of the things that i've been thinking about i've been um i'm just going to say things you just tell me indoor air quality based on what what i'm looking you take

80 out of that and then 20 out of technology okay that's that's what my head's telling well how much did you say mr cruz well whatever i'm going to bring up you take 80 out of 80 out of indoor quality and you take 20 of technology now you know i've been in education for a while so i'm going to shoot out some numbers

when i think of what does a third grader desire at school we know what other greater desires and that is be with his buddies play music all that artsy stuff socialization interacting with teachers have lunch and we do notice that there are some big issues that have had that have occurred a lot of anxiety the mass wearing the

anxiety they see in the teachers their friends their parents the society that they're living in and um it's very unfortunate that our children are going through all this what i what i want is this i'm thinking of a number 500 to 2 2 1 for emotional therapists in each in each school site the reason why i picked 500 was because 450 to 700

is the range for school counselors per you know per counselor for 450 or 700 kids so 500 to 2 one at the local site you let the site take responsibility what they want to do rather than top at the site the principal is engaged with the family so that's that's cool another thing that i'm thinking of is on

music i i really believe music is a healing and it's it's really high up there i want music to be part of our children's lives more frequently maybe right now it's once a week sometimes it's twice a week i like it to be i wish it was three times a week for music music is a beautiful thing for our

students so i would like i would like i would like to like it to have three three times a week if not then twice a week definitely twice a week but three times a week of music now as for the emotional therapy that should be at the general pub the general kids but at the special ed they should have specialized therapists

for special ed students with ieps makes sense what i'm saying right right so you're writing these things now no not yet okay well this one was 500 to one so let me let me let me see right now right i have mr cruises you're looking at a counseling ratio of 500 one counselor for five every 500 students

yes okay and then you want music i like to have music definite twice a week but i would prefer three times a week that will depend on my colleagues how they feel about that but i think it's so essential now for what what grade levels are we at the elementary level from i forgot what dr park what is it from

third first to fifth that they have elementary that they have music it's second through sixth grade second through sixth grade so you're wanting to move that down to kinder through first is that what you're looking at adding kindred the first all the way to sixth grade yeah because we're currently second through six yes so you're adding the k through first i

want to just be very specific yes okay so k through first for music so essential at this moment of time and and overall it's great it's great for the kids and as and as for special ed therapists we need specialized special therapists for our special ed population now that one i have to i have to work at

it i don't know what the ratio should be but that we cannot be using our psychologist or the emotional therapist for the general population so um this is something that i have to reflect on so let me let me think of that in about five minutes okay so but i'm not over you what uh mr flores stated i think it is a

good idea let's bump it up to um 500 000 budget 500 000 budget whatever the budget is now bring it up to 500 000. okay parents are so ideal it's so critical that our parents are involved and we should have more parents that we that we had on this sheet so five hundred thousand you can can you

specifically what are you looking at with that five hundred thousand dollars one he brought up there's one particular person that should be full time and i think it's important to be part of that to be part because that woman's involved so 500 and whatever programs that could be initiated there'd be money that could be utilized for the parent engagement

that's how i'm looking at it okay so you're looking at a full-time employment yes are you that because there's one individual that you wanted to move full-time yes and then did you want to add additional staff if if that team needs additional staff i say yes so obviously i i say yes yes do you know what specific do you want

the additional staff for mr cruz may need to support the parent engagement okay that's that's the goal the goal is to bring more people involved in our education system that they're just as part of this whole entire experiment that we're doing right now that we've been doing for decades and then you want when you talk programs you want more um trainings for parents

yes yes thank you um as for the special ed mr you bring that up how you feel about the special ed how many we should get how many we should have and so forth but that's critical to have a special ed their best for for our special kids i know i'm talking too much but uh let me see i'm missing anything and you

know something she should have been here too she should have been here the our us our student rep should have been here because she was very effective what she was saying so it's very unfortunate she's not here um i think that's it okay thank you mr cruz are you done for now yes i'm done mr naught please

first of all i'd like to thank our parents to uh coming to our meeting and sharing your thoughts uh this was a great opportunity for for everyone to listen and just thank you um let me tell you about my experience with the children um when outside contracted licensed therapists came into one campus i had seen a kids literally breaking

down sometimes banging on the wall sometimes just sheer tears coming down their eyes but when the lessons were done kids felt much better they were relieved and they were able to go back to classrooms and learn so i believe the licensed therapists do work uh they're more effective to to support uh student population than just having anybody including counselors or teachers

or staff members trying to counsel them or help them so i would support having licensed therapists between all in campuses i know it costs more but for the student's sake it's so worth it we can say one life don't matter out of 28 000 students but for me that one life matters to me so i really believe that we need to have

uh licensed therapists in all campuses every school site so uh is that additional to the counselor to the 500 to one counselors on top of that yes okay so and um i have a question for the staffs about the 18 million dollars that we're going to spend for air quality i trust and i believe that uh the survey

had gone out to talking about uh air quality in classroom had uh direct reasoning behind the kovit 19. if our filtering system does not prevent and support the health of our children from covet 19 what would be the use for that being effective 75 percent doesn't tell me so much of spending 80 million dollars when we're undercutting the budget for the

academics as our parents said our mental health does not make sense um so i want that to be very flexible uh look into different terms of of protecting our children from the bad air quality or contaminations but i think 80 million dollars if it's not not effective it's always too much yeah it could be a dollar but it'll be

always too much when it's not effective uh it's like when you go hunting you can waste a thousand bullets but you haven't aimed for one then that's all waste yeah so i like to see it uh our funds to go in a very effective way to to do the right thing um listening to our students uh including

esther she was talking about cooldown rooms therapeutic rooms whatever you call it and i had spoken with one of our parents and she had a very terrible experience with one of the sites i don't know which one but she felt like she was in a closet and then we called it or someone else had called it a uh

cool down room i think that's a terrible thing i think it should serve its purpose if it says cool down rooms uh it should be a professional space uh really helping out our student body so i like to allocate uh maybe uh twenty thousand dollars per site because i think it's one-time use and it could go a long way uh uh

to support uh our students for many many years if we have spent twenty thousand dollars for thirty five schools for instance would cost us seven hundred thousand dollars but it's gonna go a long way to help our student body and they would feel relieved and they'll feel converted instead of in a closet setting former uh school oppa

where they had a peer support program and they had actually a program director on the site where they're able to a kids with some problems but they were given certain responsibilities to for instance help out younger children lower grade students and they said the outcome was great so i'd like to see peer support program director set aside

for our junior high schools and high schools intervention counselors will do one thing but when you have a peer support program director they could really bring out children's uh their self-esteem but they can change their lives i think that's crucial now family engagement center i have attended a father's dance uh it's a great thing many students don't have

that type of support for many homes and sometimes let me tell you the truth that i've been telling the kids they asked me why adults are confused um everybody wants to have safe loving household but many cases it's not so i told them the truth to drive a car you have to be an 18 years old and you need to pay the drive

driver's test to have a kid sometimes you don't need any license it just happens so actually parents are learning to to be how to be a parent so i think having a family engagement center will educate our parents to be a good parent for good for their children i have said it many many times the good experiences in the past and also the

the bad experiences in the past should be all our teachers so we could become a better person um the family engagement center for for dads moms and grandparents or people that who's in charge of their children uh really needs to be communicated needs to be supported and also needs to be encouraged to be positive uh adults for their children

i remember when i visited one elementary school the complaint about one child that he had used bad words 32 times in one day so the principles could set him up and he she said so did you know you have used this word for 32 times just in one day all your friends are complaining and guess what his answer was

no he didn't know so then the second question was did any of your parents use this type of language at your home and he said all the time all the time so it starts with family a family engagement is a very important tool that we need to commit it to sometimes we have high technology and all these things but we need to go back

to the basics when cowboys would shake your hand it means a promise commitment and respect means something so i think we have a great community here at concerned parents that who cares about our children and we could do that together that'll be my comment for right now thank you mr cruz mr cruz i see you but mrs gone you had

her light on first so mrs garnier please uh yes i'd like to make an actual amendment to the proposed grant budget and then i'll make a request for the november 19th meeting um so i'd like to amend based on the feedback from the audience here that on page nine we just make our request in regards to safe school environment be

agnostic so we eliminate the inscription to a particular technology those edits can be made in whatever way um district staff wants to make those edits but that way it's an agnostic request and the agnostic request can then later we can figure out what that technology looks like and take community feedback um as well as through the procurement

process figure out what the best of breed technology should be for that line item so to be clear i want to amend the line item that reads in plan alignment lcap goal number one action 14 action title facilities i want to amend the action description to not make in a specific ascription to a technology but just to reference

generally filtration abilities and upgrading our systems further again because if you again we're dealing with pies here the esser funds are a pie the district budget is a pie we have to cut a piece of the pie off to have a larger piece of the pie somewhere else the family engagement center should not be something that is just coming out of

one-time grant funds it should be a continual commitment so i would ask that a resolution be brought at the november 14 19 19 board meeting where we look at our general budget and i will work with superintendent and staff to figure out actually funding this out of our general budget not out of these funds and the reason for that being is that

this these things are not all mutually exclusive um you know we need to upgrade our facilities we have some very old schools and for a variety of reasons not just covid these are great upgrades our technology um this is not just sort of the the one to one and some of the things that we've seen you know we are an older school district

and i think one of the things a lot of school districts deal with is that they've patched together all these different systems that don't talk to each other and that impacts school safety um you know not covered related but general school safety it impacts the ability for our campuses to communicate with one another it impacts our ability

to communicate with law enforcement and then just generally the workability of the district if we want to be a 21st century district we should be making technology investments um so my third request is again and the same thing with mental health services you know this is something we should certainly be asking for federal funds for to sort of jump start new

programming in a new vision for the district but we also need to embed this in a renewable renewable um a recurring excuse me expenditure out of our budget so if we want to actually make a commitment to this i would also suggest and again i will take the time to work with staff and do this that our november 19th

meeting we evaluate adding more district funds to mental health services and work with the mental health advisory committee i've mentioned before as well as our students who are invested in this to figure out what those expenditures should be and those expenditures could include things my colleagues have listed which are more counselors on site and other services but i do think that is a

better place is to go to our general budget and to make those expenditures because then they are part of our budget and we are doing those things every single year not just relying on grant funding um and so yeah those are my requests so i actually have one edit to the actual budget we have here and then i have

requests to make sure that we get funding out of our general budget for the other things that have been mentioned as priorities finally i want to say you know i know there's places in our budget we can find funding because i've asked before two years ago i asked to cut the board budget to put into the general fund when we

thought we might have to fire teachers because we had no idea where the state budget was going so you know i think if we want to look long and hard we can also go into the board budget line item by line item and cut things that we don't need i am mr cruz for the special ed department

i speak to um is there somebody there yeah um real quick how many um psychologists are there here at our school district currently we have 20 school psychologists 20 school psychologists okay um remember i stated the 500 to 1. um we should add and how many special ed students do we have right now we're about 3 200.

i like to add seven seven specialized educated um therapists that are specializing in special ed okay and let me say one thing about the general budget you know i've been here for many years it is difficult to add more stuff within the general budget it's not that simple i'll just share that with you this is an opportunity that we have to increase

what we need at the moment because our children they need they need emotional support right now so um would you take this opportunity to use this also i want to note what the gentleman over there that you stated can you repeat what you stated about not the contact tracing but the other part what was it that you stated

well like i said the general budget it's very difficult to add more counselors within it within we we have struggled to add more and more and um it'll be i don't know it'd be a little bit difficult to add more stuff but this is the opportunity that we have so you know we should take this advantage it was it was

it showed that um along with the plan yeah things that were put in and one of them was efforts to provide vaccinations to school communities okay now if it's voluntary i think it's great yeah but it is mandatory well the the question that i find very interesting is that if it's mandatory does and if anything happens to people

within within our school district are we liable for that because sometimes they put conditions in these [Music] cbc is not things as much and that these the corporations that have made these vaccinations they have a release of liability they're not held responsible for this stuff we become responsible the parents are responsible for their children's health gentlemen just a

quick point of order this is about s or three funds um and i would i would invite the gentleman back to our november fourth major part to make other calls is that part is there anything within that about contact pressing of all this that we've been discussing is there anything having to do with vaccinations or contact tracing just curious

not with sr3 but those general themes of making sure that we're addressing contact tracing and the community efforts we took to provide vaccines for staff and advertise for students is in our safety plan currently in our safety plan it does not require there is no mention of a requirement it just mentions the efforts we have taken to advertise and provide it to

employees and students who have wanted them exactly but it's part of this it's part of this discussion so what he's bringing up is something you know part of it correct it's not out there that he's talking about that's all i want to know okay that's all because you know well like i said dr anfield this is an

opportunity that we have to utilize this this um money for priorities that are really needed for our children because this ain't going anywhere and i think things going to get a little bit worse as as the months go by so in terms of not not having this part of this would be a real real real sad a real sad day

rather than taking in our budget there's an opportunity we should take it and the things i brought up it'd be really great to have that but we definitely should have some of the stuff and i hope the things that i brought up should be added to this budget so thank you board i do see everybody's lights i'm

going to take a moment to just make a couple of comments and then i'll get back on track with mr gnaw um i agree with a lot of what has been said tonight as far as adding additional counselors the need for mental health my biggest concern is this is one-time money so what happens in a year or two

when the money is no longer there and we can't afford to keep all of these counselors we started to provide something and now we're trying to take it away and so i would rather see when you talk about adding staff talking about adding counselors talking about adding therapists and that kind of stuff a psychologist those are structural

changes to our budget not one-time monies but structural changes to our annual budget that we need to address to add those if that's what's important to the community and i think there's a huge need for it and i really do but i have a hard time justifying using one-time monies because i would hate to see these extra staff

members put in place for a year year and a half two years you know because we have up to three years to spend this money and then the money's gone what what do we do now you know and i'm not one of those that's gonna say let's let's worry about that when we get there that's that's not

fiscally responsible we need to take a look at the our financial situation now and mr cruz is right it's very hard to add stuff to the budget because the budget's very very narrow and very tight but if it means moving some things around and pre pre prioritizing some other issues then that's what needs to be done but i'm

very leery about using one-time monies for those structural types of changes because those changes then theoretically need to be ongoing so that goes for the counselors and everything that everybody's discussed dr info i would like to us at some point and i support mrs gagne's idea to bolster our family engagement center i think at minimum the clerk there

we need to if we need to work with our our unions or whoever i think that needs to be looked at as a potential full-time position um to to service that center i also agree uh if with mrs garnier's assessment that if we can in uh the air quality section if we can change that to be a

little more benign so that we have flexibility to look at different technologies as they become available um i hate to see us get tied to something now and maybe five or six months from now uh before we've even really initiated anything something else becomes available that's a better option um so i i would like to i would like to

look at that change um i think i will leave my comments right there for now mr gnaw you are next please okay um since we're talking about the one-time money i have seen a music program uh suffering due to covet 19 and um i think we could use these funds to support our music programs especially junior high school levels

i like to have that money spent there located and also stem and arts those would engage our students back to the campus and bring families together and let me make a comment about licensed therapists and and these are one-time money but it's ongoing expenses but if this ongoing expenses would save our students lives it's worth it the people come first student comes

first before the buildings before electricity anything else students have to come first thank you thank you and just a uh clear uh clarification with mrs garnier um you've cited a couple of times november 19th i think it's actually november 18th meeting just for the record is that sure if we're not supposed to be here friday let's be here thursday just for

the record so that that's accurate uh in the notes so pat if you've got everything that's been november 19th change the 18th thank you um mrs gania you're next please uh so i i do want to uh just stress the fact that um you know i'm very familiar with large organizational budgets and i'm familiar with constraints but um

one thing that somebody said to me especially in a public entity is budgets are mission statements budgets are something that is communicating outwards to stakeholders in the community of what the the values are and what the investments are and so i do think there is an opportunity the the ask on the family engagement center that's not a deep dig

to provide some more staff there i mean that's something we can certainly do and bolster that up so i i don't know how that would remotely be controversial of us going into our budget and figuring that out i think that we're capable of doing so i think with mental health services i'm saying that we augment the investment that we're making out of

these esser funds so we have seven million dollars we normally don't have and now we have an opportunity to get innovative and i think that we can use this opportunity to leverage that 7 million and then go find what else we can do in our budget to augment those innovations and again i think that we can reasonably look at our budget and do

so my concern again is that these one-time funds some of these things are one-time investments and they truly can be one-time investments clearly technology iterates but you know we are using really old infrastructure clearly we will have to upgrade indoor air quality and sanitization you know years from now i mean clearly those are things that are ongoing in the sense

that at some point they need to be upgraded but mental health services that is ongoing that is every day every minute of the time that we have students on our campuses and even outside of our campuses so i do think we do have to go and if we're truly going to listen to the community we need to go to our

general budget and figure this out because that's sustainable mr schaefer you said uh what what my mind was thinking uh several minutes ago there's been a lot of good comments here tonight but the fiscal side of my brain when i hear positions and knowing we're getting one-time money that's difficult to put together because i don't want to see positions

get get hired have one-time money go away have difficulty in our general budget and have to start start cutting what we put in so if we're going to have a very interesting budget session and i think we should we should look at those things but i think with this and i know we're under a deadline with this grant and i

hate to see this money go away if it's not in by friday that's a that's a hard deadline they're not they're not going to say oh well if you got it in next next monday it's okay no they've got to have it friday so i would like to see us you know do what we can with some of the limited comments

and get what positions we we possibly can work into this but realize that that whatever we do with this we're going to have to look seriously at the budget we've heard that and i'm willing to certainly look at that i've looked at school budgets for a number of years and so that's what that's i just want to get

that comment out that uh and i've when we finally got around to one-time money because i hadn't heard it through the first part of this conversation that that's what we need to look at but i i do see the the need for it uh for some of these things and i'm hoping that we can do whatever we can to get the

budget to to work it out but as i said it will be a very interesting board budget study session when we get to that point that concludes my comments thank you dr anfield uh board is that all the uh one more thing to add yeah okay you know there's such an epidemic of suicide it just shocks me this one time money

all this all these all these words that they say just doesn't make sense to me i've been here for 10 years let me tell you there's always one time money that comes comes and goes our children need help it ain't gonna get any better for the coming year or next year one time money we're gonna find it in

our budget i'm telling you it's crazy it's the crazy times and so at the same time we got a lot of crazy folks on the board too so it's really sad but but your parents will do a great job taking care of your kids and do what's best for them yeah uh again i'm going to talk about my

priorities right now um need to rescuing our students who's in trouble and that's mental health needs that's not a negotiable item and second family engagement center supporting that throughout the year and that is also not a negotiable item for me because it directly affects our students well-being and i think that is the single most important thing in

everything that we're talking about we could talk about any programs anything but if we cannot safeguard our students then we're failing so that's my comment mrs kanye okay um doctor yeah dr enfield i have a question um actually probably a couple of questions there were a lot of potential changes and asked for additions but there were no

delineations as to where the money's coming from so what happens if we end up now with 40 million dollars in esther uh wants but we still only have the 30 something million what what what is staff supposed to do with that well first let me get clarifying questions from from the board so i can clarify that and then i'll take we'll

come back to that so mr cruz i just because i want to make sure i have everything correctly because steph has to go and start tonight to get everything down so you're requesting uh a 500 to one counselors for mental health yes okay um and that they go to each school site based on that and then the school site will determine

how to use those counselors with their students especially at the secondary kids at the junior high and the high school work with them to develop what that looks like to deliver those services at that school okay and and then the other one you wanted to add music uh for k through first grade now and looking at this

it may not be a an allowable expense but but but if it's not if it is allowable then we'll leave it in but it but it may not be a allowable expense then uh special education you want seven uh special ed therapists for the for our special education students for mental health services for additional mental health services for for our special ed

students that didn't okay and then you looked at five hundred thousand dollars for the parent engagement center and we're looking at a part-time employee to make sure that she's full-time and then to look at adding additional full-time staff because we want to use the rest of the money to add additional training for parents at that to use the rest of money to do

that that that the training there okay thank you and now mr na let me make sure with you so you wanted to add a licensed therapist at every school site for mental health services okay and then you wanted twenty thousand dollars per school site for a cool down room um to add at every school and then uh a peer support director for

the junior high in high school so this is a district director position what exactly is this person going to be doing i just need that clarification to put into the plan yeah it's a leadership position where the director would engage students uh that are um could be going through you know their you could say troubles or or misguided

students and bring them and and engage it engage them and give them some responsibilities of leadership uh helping out uh younger student body okay so is this for leadership yeah so we got leadership uh students that are a plus students all over the place but we don't have the kids that that who has potential to be a leader

but they're side attracted and they're under the radar so we could recruit them and bring up them to the light build their self-esteem and give them some directions okay i may have to call you tomorrow to get more information okay okay and then junior high miss gagne and then msganya you're on page nine you're looking at uh again

that flexibility uh in the description that's correct for uh the air quality rather than just focusing on the the merv 13 to give us flexibility for new technology so did i capture all the changes board okay and so we'll make those changes and then mr shaffer your question um mr cruz gave me to do a reduction of 80

in the air quality and the 20 into the technology so based on that we will we'll take a look at what those numbers are and i will deduct it predominantly from the air quality and the rest from technology if i have to dip into more it could become a 90 30 but we'll look at those in that order

okay again that's to cover all the requested positions yes okay okay this is gagne so i want to just kind of come back to the entirety of the process that went into all of this and i appreciate that there's getting feeling the feeling of getting talked at versus talk to and and the process being engaging and i think that we can

get some lessons learned out of the process but i also don't want to invalidate the entirety of this process and the outcomes by gutting something that parents in surveys the esser committee regardless of the interactivity of it again that's an issue we can address that i'm happy to address um but we had a variety of stakeholder groups that

identified these needs and we've gotten some feedback specifically on these needs that was more of a either a critique of how they were being described and whether we were using best of breed technology or what is the commitment going to be beyond uh these one-time funds so i i do take objection with the fact that we're just saying that we're going to slash

things like dramatically um and throw them somewhere else um and that's not really reflecting the entire process and i don't think that's what anybody was asking for when they wanted feedback i think that if i'm i i endeavor to hear people as much as i possibly can and understand and i try to be a good listener that's

not what i believe was communicated i think that parents felt like they wanted another chance if there were things they wanted specifically to be addressed or they wanted to come in and be heard in a more permanent capacity and i think tonight even reflects that people made requests that are about a more permanent change they're not about

a one-time change they're not about a three-year change they're about a commitment to a multi-year change which is a commitment to changing some of the strategic goals and focuses of the district and so i don't agree with just going in arbitrarily and saying slash this much of something when that invalidates the entire process completely that basically says that

everything that everybody else said was not valid and i don't think anybody wants that because what i'm hearing is people want to feel validated like they're being heard so by just going in and arbitrarily throwing out numbers we're invalidating the opinions of a bunch of people and we're in a worse position than we were before we had this board meeting so

you know i just want to put it out there that this is one of the reasons why i'm trying to be solution oriented and look to the general budget and get commitments in the general budget so that we have these things persistently and look for things that we can change i mean i think people came in here this

evening and had good feedback about things and some of that was addressed that's great but i i don't think we can just arbitrarily say to invalidate the results of all these different methods we went through to to get feedback i think that just basically tells people we went out to get your opinion and then said no we don't care

which i think again really you know the theme is engagement that that basically says that we refuse to listen to whoever was engaged in whatever capacity which i think kind of stinks mr naw yes uh i was shocked too when i have heard i don't know we have to find the facts that our filtering system that's proposed for 18 million dollars would

not actively protect our children from cov19 i'm sure all these meetings that we had with the parent group they were just told that it would and we might have different facts so if those facts are uh discovered tonight then so be it we need to make the adjustments to serve the righteousness to to support the kids first

then some thoughts and programs that's not going to work in an effective way and cutting 20 technology it may be doable it's like a solar system that used to be so highly costly a product but it gets cheaper um down the road and so there may be a way a room to adjust that so i think uh this situation we need to be

fluid and keep focusing on serving our children and most of you have mentioned and so are people that who had surveyed talk about the mental health and talk about the family engagement it's just common sense so let's concentrate on that and and serve our students thank you mr cruz your light was coming on and off would you like to speak no

mrs gagne i just want to clarify that an amendment was made to the effect i think that the for the indoor air quality the point was we should be using the most efficacious technology so not making a dumb investment i think that was the point you're nodding so i think that was the point you were trying to make and the

gentleman coming after with his expertise um and you know i i think that was you know something that is important like we should not we should evaluate what is the best thing to do and that was amended so we are not ascribing to any particular technology but there may be good reason because we may be introduced to

a variety of technologies like one thing that someone mentioned but i know that i've heard a lot about for example is you know lighting that cuts down on some of this stuff well i that's not my expertise i have no idea how much that cost so i don't know that we wouldn't make this investment in a smarter way

just knowing that there's other choices so i'm going to leave it there but i just want to very very clear that that's one of the reasons i made that amendment and so that we have the flexibility to regardless of the spend make the spend in the best way that's the most efficacious okay seeing no more lights i now adjourn

the special meeting board study session of the board of education at 801 pm