Chino Valley Unified Board of Education — September 19, 2019

The board's regular meeting on September 19, 2019 paired a rollout of two new academic pipelines with pointed public comment on facilities and technology gaps. No official minutes are on file for this meeting. Under this archive's sourcing rules, a statement can only be paired with a named individual when official minutes confirm it — so this recap describes what was discussed and by whom in general terms, without attaching any name to anything said or any position taken.

🌐 Two new instructional pipelines

The evening opened with a staff presentation on two new pathways meant to prepare students for life after graduation 2. The first is a K-12 dual-language immersion pathway beginning with two elementary sites: one will host a Mandarin program and the other a Spanish program, both chosen for their capacity to grow the program and their existing student populations 3. The district described adopting a 90/10 instructional model — 90% of kindergarten instruction in the target language and 10% in English, shifting toward a 50/50 split by fourth through sixth grade, with one credentialed teacher per language rather than co-teaching 4. The program has been in a planning phase since the 2018-2019 school year and is not expected to open until the 2021-2022 school year 3.

The second pipeline, a computer-immersion program, will launch this school year at a third elementary site using a curriculum called Code to the Future 57. The presentation described one-to-one devices in every classroom and computer science woven into daily instruction rather than taught as a separate subject, and staff cited national data on computer-science wages and parent demand as motivation for the push 6.

Board members responded positively. One member called both programs a strong step and asked whether the district had identified any specialized staffing needs — particularly finding teachers credentialed to teach in the target languages 89. Staff confirmed the district was recruiting credentialed bilingual teachers through job fairs and that each language section would have a single dedicated teacher, working alongside a partner teacher for English instruction 10.

🏊 Public comment: a missing diving board

The first of four public speakers raised a facility gap that has left Chino Valley without any diving board: the district's dual swim-and-dive teams compete at a disadvantage because they cannot host or score dive events 11. The speaker said a diving board removed from a district pool years ago was never replaced, forcing athletes to travel to a pool in another city several times a week just to practice 12. The speaker noted the district had earned more than $40,000 renting out one high school's pool to outside groups over the summer and asked why that revenue was not funding a diving facility or badly needed shower repairs 13.

💻 Technology, gratitude, and caution

A special education teacher thanked the board for responding quickly after the classroom's aging desktop computers and Wi-Fi began failing at the start of the school year: an email to the board led to five new Chromebooks within a few weeks 14. A third speaker, representing an academy that operates on a district campus, thanked the board for resolving a building-key access problem within two days, but said the site's larger issue — a lack of student internet access — remained unresolved even after district staff met on-site that same day without reaching a fix 151617. The same connectivity concern was still being raised at the district's next monthly meeting the following month 21.

The final speaker urged the board to be cautious about over-relying on technology in early grades, pointing to a large 2013 tablet rollout at another California district that was undercut by technical problems and inadequate teacher training 18. The speaker argued reading should be prioritized alongside technology and cited pediatric guidance discouraging screen exposure before age two, cautioning that whatever is true about starting language learning early may not hold for introducing screens early 1920.

🏛️ Property due diligence: a transparency debate

A due-diligence services contract tied to a potential property purchase in the City of Chino was pulled from the consent agenda for discussion. One trustee raised concern about contract language constraining how the district and its contractors could communicate any problems found during due diligence — such as archaeological findings — to the public, saying the item should move forward but that the current language left the district's hands tied on transparent communication 222324. Another trustee responded that the due-diligence process is a public one, and that any issues uncovered would be subject to a Public Records Act request 2526. The board proceeded to approve the item.

🏊 Diving board follow-up

Later in the meeting, staff gave an update on the diving-board question raised in public comment. The board's only remaining district pool deep enough to support a diving board once held one that was removed years earlier as a safety hazard, at a time when the district had no dive teams 27. Following a request earlier this year to look into reinstalling one, a consultant had just confirmed the pool has the required 12 feet of water depth, and the district was awaiting an installation quote 2829. Staff said plans for a new high school's pool, still being designed with an architect, had not yet addressed a diving board 29.

📋 Other business

In closed session, the board took action on an assistant principal appointment at Ayala High School, effective September 20, 2019 1. On the open-session agenda, the board also corrected a certificated-personnel item, changing a listed position's site from Ramona Junior High to Briggs K-8 30.

🗣️ Committee and community reports

Board members' closing reports covered routine ground: continued administrative turnover at the Baldy View Regional Occupational Program, attributed to a county office's use of "golden handshake" retirement incentives that drew away several administrators and department-level staff, which the ROP's HR team was working to backfill 31; a local Chamber of Commerce partnership launching a student internship program with area businesses and a small grant program to support student business ideas 3233; continued progress in a high school's ASL program and a request that the district consider a safety officer at one campus 34; and a renewed call to weigh the evidence on how screen time affects younger students, echoing the concerns raised earlier in public comment 35. A staff representative and two employee-group representatives had no items to report this month.