Board of Education — August 9, 2022

I would like to call this regular meeting of the Board of Education, Redlands Unified School District, to order. Following our Pledge of Allegiance tonight, I would like everybody to remain standing for a moment of silence. We'll observe it for the following people. I have a statement to read. Maria Lorenzana. We are saddened to announce the passing of Maria on July 13, 2022. Maria was an employee of the Redlands Unified School District from October 2006 until July 13, 2022. She began as a Child Nutrition Services substitute from 2006 to 2010, and later became a campus monitor at Victoria Elementary School. Family and friends describe her as motherly, caring, and selfless. She is remembered for advocating for students. She was tenacious and had a fighting spirit. She was definitely an asset to the Victoria school community and her school district. We are also remembering Rachel Stark tonight. Rachel began her career in Redlands Unified School District in 1997 as one of the original staff members who opened Redlands East Valley High School. She worked her entire career at REV, starting out as a health technician, later working in attendance, and finally as a data technician. Rachel always had a customer service attitude and enjoyed working with students. While her husband coached REV boys and girls tennis, Rachel filled in as the unofficial team mom, Brownie Baker, and hostess to REV students and athletes. In her free time, she enjoyed fishing in Utah and spending time in San Diego with her husband. Rachel was loved at REV for her genuine manner, her desire for all students to succeed, and her generous spirit. Once a wildcat, always a wildcat, she will always be missed. So right after our Pledge of Allegiance, please remain standing for that moment of silence. Mrs. Renner, would you lead us in the pledge, please?

Stand. Put your hand over your heart. Ready, begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

You may be seated. And for roll, Mrs. Renner.

Present.

Gervarra. Present. Mrs. Ayala-Guntero.

Present.

I almost did it. And Mrs. Holohan. is unable to be here tonight and I am present. So four of the five board members are here. We have no minutes to approve tonight so we'll move on to item seven, public participation. This is the time that any member of the public may address the board on any agenda item before or during the board's consideration of the item provided the person submits a completed registration card to address the board form to the clerk of the board or his or her designee prior to the time the chairperson calls the item of the board for consideration. This is not meant to be a debating period. Complaints and problems relating to policy matters will be referred to the superintendent. The person wishing to address the board shall, when recognized, step up to the podium or microphone, announce his or her name, and if known, district of area of residence. The chairperson shall, in the interest of facilitating the business of the board, limit the amount of time which a member of the public may use in addressing the board to three minutes, unless the chairperson or a majority of the board determines that a different time limit is appropriate. Carrie Ann, are there any other people that had an agenda, turning in late cards or anything like that? So looks like we don't have anybody at this time for public comment on anything on the agenda. So we'll move to the public hearing. Public hearing number one. This is on the initial proposal of the Board of Education to the Redlands Education Support Professionals Association, or RESPA, for the 2022-23 negotiations. Would anybody like to address the board on this topic? Seeing none, this hearing is closed. I'll call the second hearing to order. Public hearing regarding the consideration and adoption of a statutory school fee increase in accordance with the state allocation board, statutory school fee increase for new residential and commercial slash industrial construction. Would anybody like to address the board on this topic? Seeing none, that public hearing is adjourned. We're up to item eight. Our student representative report tonight is, to meet and greet our 2022-23 student trustees and the alternates.

We're so happy that you can join us up here.

So welcome. So we'll read their names. And what we'd like you to do is pull the microphone down in front of you. And don't be shy of it so they can hear you as well. And tell us a little bit about yourself. Give us a little brief introduction. So from Citrus Valley, Haley. Welcome, Haley.

Hi. I'm Haley Nagel. I'm the trustee for Student Valley High School. I'm a senior, and I'm involved in yearbook and advanced theater there.

Excellent. Very good. Well, we're happy to have you here. And your alternate, in case something happens to you, you can't be here, Jolene Bakalova.

Hi, everyone. My name is Jolene Bacala. I'm excited to be serving as Citrus Valley High School's alternate delegate this year. At school, I'm involved with choir. And outside of it, my work focuses around youth advocacy and research. Thank you.

And the choir. Yes. OK. Maybe we ought to add like a patriotic song to our board meetings. OK. Don't worry, Jolene. Don't worry. From Orange Wood High School, we have Stephanie Schott, is it?

I'm Stephanie Shab, and I'm the student trustee for Orange Wood High School. In school, I am not in anything. Yeah, I'm into academics.

What's your favorite subject?

Definitely math.

There you go. Very good. Okay. Well, welcome. Good for you. We have Olivia Johnson from the Redlands eAcademy.

Hi. I'm Olivia Johnson. I am representing eAcademy, and I am involved in newspaper, drama, ASB, and film this year. Okay. Terrific.

You're going to be busy.

From Redlands East Valley, Maria's not here tonight, but Frankie, the alternate from Redlands East Valley is here. Frankie.

Hi, my name is Frankie Riso. I'm representing Redlands East Valley High School, where I am part of the LCAP committee, too. I've been the student representative for two years, and I'm top of my class, and I'm part of the soccer team.

Great. Hey, the soccer team might get to use a new football stadium, huh?

I'm excited. Uh-huh. Hopefully.

We are too. Hopefully the dirt will be hard enough. No, I'm just kidding. It'll be great. And then from India, we have Aditi Patlola. And yeah, she's sleeping right now, but she did send us a video. So here's Aditi from Redlands High School.

Hi everyone, my name is Aditi and I am a senior at Redlands High School. Quick disclaimer, I am currently in India and there are 17 of us living in this house so you might hear some background noise and I apologize in advance. I'd like to start off by saying that throughout my high school years, I've wondered which career path I will end up taking. And I do admit that I have not yet decided because there's something interesting in every field and all different topics that we learn about. I can say, however, I am highly passionate about advocacy because it allows me to see different types of people within the same community working together and learning from one another. And I'm an active participant in groups such as GenUp, the Redlands Chapter, and Denise Davis's Redlands Youth Council, and also GenVocal, which is a youth-led advocacy organization, which I help run. And they all focus on aiding us, people like us students, youth, to actively create change within their community. Furthermore, access to education and career opportunities is an extremely important topic, which is why I cherish the leadership roles I hold in RHS Compact Club and Academic Decathlon because I get to increase my knowledge and also watch others increase theirs. And I definitely think this is one of the reasons the school district's step in creating the student trustee program is so beneficial for not only us, but multiple parties involved. That being said, I look forward to meeting everyone, not only the trustees, but also the board members and, of course, everyone else who participates in the city of Redlands. And I will hopefully see you all soon. Thank you.

Technology, right? So the RHS has altered it as Ariana.

Hey, I'm Arianna Stevens. I am one of the representatives for Redlands High School. I am involved in student government, and I am a Link Crew leader. I also participate in a program at Western University called Professional Health Career Ladder because I am so passionate about the dental field, and I am also a dental intern at Hof Orthodontics as well as a dental office in Claremont. So, yeah.

All right. I think it would be appropriate to give these students a big round of applause. They have no idea what they're getting into. And quite honestly, we're not sure either. But we're certainly excited about the opportunity to work directly with students and to hear what life is like on our campuses and to hear what your concerns are, what your needs are, what's great about it, what needs improvement. So having that direct link with all of you is going to be very exciting for us as a school board. So thank you so very much. We'll be meeting with you next week. The alternates, we'd like you to come to that first meeting so you can kind of get a feel for what's going to happen. You're not going to be required to come to all those meetings. But we're excited about getting to know you and working with you. And, of course, if you have any questions, we'll make sure you know how to get in touch with us. And you'll get to know the superintendent. on a personal level, which is really good. So he's the operational guy. He gets everything going that happens in the school district. So we get to kind of sit back and just kind of watch and take advantage of all the great things that are happening and praising. And you're the reason that we're doing what we do. It's all about you, the students. Thank you for wanting to participate, for applying for this and feeling a desire to be part of it. It's record setting, it's history making. Melissa looked into it in the state and it's a handful of school districts that have taken this kind of a venture. We're going to be leading out there, and we really like that. So congratulations. Tomorrow you've got an exciting day ahead of you, right? Absolutely. Last night of no homework for a while. No, I gave him homework. I gave them some homework. They have homework tonight. So I'm going to dismiss you. We have our district photographer right there, Ms. Stevens here, walking across there. If you'll head that direction, you go right next to this gentleman, this good looking gentleman right here. He'll escort you out right there. And thanks again for coming tonight. And we'll see you soon. Well, she was going to take a picture of all of them out there.

So I think we're OK. I saw her taking some pictures of her.

Well, Christine, we're talking about maybe having a quick group picture with the board up here. Is that OK?

Change of plan.

Thank you so much.

Back yet? All right, we're up to item nine. Our board committee reports. CRI-ROP, our meeting is next week. So I'm going to pass on giving any kind of discussion on that tonight. They already started up their school year, and they're going strong. I'll have a report after next week. Redlands Compact.

No report tonight.

OK. Rep Foundation.

No report.

Cultural Arts. I have no report. I think they're meeting next Monday. Parks and Rec.

The July meeting was July 14th. The schedule for field allocations for the summer and fall were distributed to all commissioners. They had some discussion about completing the remaining segments of the Orange Blossom Trail between California and Tennessee, I think it is. And the next meeting is this Thursday. And I was going to talk to him last time about the crosswalk to Chris Boatman about it. And I'll just see if he passed it on anywhere yet.

OK.

I'll check.

Thank you. Let's see, CSBA region 16 delegate assembly. Again, I've been kind of quiet this summer. I don't have any information on that. I do have on the coalition to support RUSD in the completion of a red athletic stadium, I got an email from Jill Green. And she asked me to share that she was thankful for those who have contributed to the stadium project. They are getting contributions now. Our partnership with Redlands Community Foundation has allowed them to have donations that are tax deductible because of their nonprofit status. However, check with your tax guy. We are currently looking for community partners to contribute to the stadium project to help secure funding. So she's asking if you know anybody out there in the community that would like to have additional contributions, a business or something like that, to contact Jill. They've opened a GoFundMe page. It's called Together We Will Build Rev Stadium. So hopefully they'll get some hits in the broader area for GoFundMe, and maybe some of the alums out there will see that. Let's see. Oh, the consortium is also discussing recognition opportunities like personalized bricks, a donor wall, and things like that for the entrance to the stadium. So they're an active group. Jill Green, they have their website up. They have a Facebook page. So for more information, check that social media outlets. OK, superintendents report, item 10.

Thank you. Well, good evening, everybody. Thank you for all being here and distinguished members of the board for all of your hard work and support. I just want to take the time to welcome all of our parents and students back to a new school year starting tomorrow. Very exciting, it's always very energetic. I want to welcome all of our staff across the district back to a new school year and looking forward to cheering on all of your accomplishments and great work that you do for our students. And a very warm welcome to all of our new staff members to the Redlands Unified School District. I had the opportunity to meet, obviously, many of our new managers. I was able to meet many of our new teachers and a few of our new support personnel. And we were very grateful and very humbled and very appreciative that they're willing to work in our district and they're going to continue to make us a great district. I also want to welcome back our union leaders, partner leaders in RTA and RESPA. We've already started our conversations and our dialogue and our commitment to continued collaborative relationship and working as professionals. We have a team building dinner exercise scheduled for next week. So we're very excited to all the three bargaining teams to get together and get to know each other just as people first before we get down to the business of collective bargaining. But we're looking forward to some great outcomes. in the collective bargaining process this year. So Sue and Gladys, thank you for your continued commitment to wanting to work as a team, and thank you to all of your supporting teams that are a part of that. So appreciate that. So tomorrow is the first day of school. A lot of excitement going across the district, a little anxiety, of course, with the first day. Cabinet members will be out. We've all assigned each other schools to be out there tomorrow, not to bug, not to interfere, but just to cheer on our kids, cheer on our staff, and cheer on our community out there. Our parents will let them know that. We're excited to have their kids back in school. Just one little caution to our parents, be real careful in those parking lots. I know those first couple of days are quite an experience as a former elementary principal that only had one way in and one way out in the parking lot. I saw a lot of near events. So parents and staff, we're asking just be very patient, very cautious. Tomorrow's not a five minute experience dropping our students off. Let's be patient for the sake of our kids and our safety, so thank you. Drive safely, drive slowly and be aware. I want to take a moment to just thank all of the personnel across the district that served this summer providing a summer school program for our kids. So our teachers, our support personnel, our administrators who after a very long and difficult year took it upon themselves to be one being involved in summer school. So thank you guys from the bottom of my heart for all of your extra work on behalf of kids. Thank you to everyone that was involved in putting together the STEM camps at UC Riverside. My daughter was able to participate in one of those events, the STEM events, and she loved it, the kids loved it. It was a great experience. So thank you for all of you who put forth effort on that. Thank you to everyone who was involved in the visual and performing arts camps that happened this summer. Again, you could have chosen to take an extended vacation, but you showed up for kids. So thank you so much for that work. And to all of our coaches who are coaching athletics cheer over the summer, thank you for your time and investment in keeping kids busy, keeping kids involved, keeping kids engaged in the school. And my final thanks goes to the Rep Foundation for the many enrichment camps that they provided on behalf of kids. So thank you to everyone who stood up this summer and was able to give a little extra on behalf of kids. I want to reassure our community, our parents, our staff, our kids, our community, our continued commitment to school safety. So you will continue to see many of the protocols that we've had in place now for many years, those single points of entry at all of our schools during school hours. You're going to continue to see the use of Raptor system to make sure that we're screening and knowing who's coming in our campuses and that they belong there. You're going to continue to see a focus on making sure that our school perimeters are closed during the school day. And you're going to once again, and I'm very happy to announce this, that we're continuing to have our school resource officers at our high schools who have been a great asset to our safety components here in the district and we appreciate all the work that they've done. We're also going to continue all of our initiatives that teach, educate, encourage everyone to know how to report. When they see something, hear something, sense something, we want you to say something. And hopefully that mantra has been something that's been ingrained in all of us across the district. Those posters will continue to be prominently placed in the front office, in the locker rooms, in the multi-purpose rooms. You'll see smaller versions of that poster in all of our classrooms across the district. So just to name a few of the ongoing protocols that will remain in place to reassure our community. Here's a few new items that will be put into place this coming year. You may have noticed when you received your parent welcome letter and the parent handbook, a new pamphlet that speaks to adult student boundaries. And as part of that pamphlet, you may have seen also the systems and processes for the three different formal types to file a formal complaint. So I want to thank you in advance, all the parents and staff members and kids, for taking the time to review that document, to educate yourself, to help us help you keep safe and also to be confident in knowing how to file a report that will be investigated thoroughly. So thank you in advance for paying attention to that pamphlet. Also what we've added this year in working with the grand jury is we're going to be doing monthly micro trainings with staff. So as we know, we have staff meetings that happen monthly. And as part of that, each month there's going to be one micro-training that involves reminding our staff of things to look for, what things are not appropriate, how to report. I'm just naming a few, but we have a menu that's already put together. And those first micro-trainings will begin in September, and there will be a menu of those for staff members moving forward. You may be asking, well, what about August? Well, August, there's also training. It's mandatory that we do every year, which is sexual harassment prevention training, child abuse prevention training, mandated reporting. Those are all mandatory trainings that all of our employees do, including the superintendent and cabinet on a yearly basis. So that will occupy the month of August. Then the micro trainings will begin after that. We will also be, we started this in the spring, but we're going to be continuing moving forward, which is doing daily inspections of all classroom and learning spaces at a school site. And we're going to be doing that using a non-predictable schedule each day. And this is just one additional feature to make sure that what gets supervised gets done and to reassure people that we're not just sitting on our laurels and not doing what we're saying we're doing. So we will be doing those schedules are done. Our administrators with the support of our security officers and a few other personnel, we must log those. I've asked that they be logged every day. We're using a software program so that we can keep track of those loggings. We can keep track of trends. We can also look at where we may need to make some physical changes of classrooms. Or you may have read in some of my letters in the past, As we're building new staff members, we're having to use more space at our school sites. And some of our classroom spaces were built many years ago. So any space where kids are working with adults, whether it's our certificated staff or classified staff, our expectation is their ability for a third person to be able to view in. So if there is a room that's being used that doesn't have a window, Our administrators have the green light to contact business services and we will, Doug and his crew and everybody in M&O will be coming in and putting in windows immediately because it is important that we keep that promise and that we maintain a high level of safety. You'll also see that we have implemented a hall pass policy. Again, this is once again to protect our students. So anytime at a secondary level when a teacher is asking to pull another student from another class for a legitimate educational purpose, that request must be pre-approved by administration or administrative staff on each campus. thought being is that a third person has to know that a student is being requested and pulled from one teacher to another teacher and that the legitimate request is there. Now, you might be asking yourself, well, what about the students that have a schedule such as speech therapy, occupational theory, et cetera? That system will not apply to that because those are reoccurring weekly schedules that we already have in the process, in the system, and have oversight over. So this is only when teacher A is asking for a student from teacher B and that it has educational purpose to that call. So I wanted to let everybody know about that. You're also going to start to see some videos pop up on our website. You may have seen the first one that's yours truly, starring in the first little micro video. But our purpose is to create little videos that people can access, whether it's students, staff, parents, or community members. to learn a little bit about some of these different features. So the first video that's already been put on the website is me talking about the See Something, Say Something poster, what it is, what the information is on there, educating people why we have that poster. You're going to see one that talks about our student adult boundary policy, that I believe that one is starring Sabine here. You'll see one that's regarding the Title IX complaint process, which will be starring Ken Wagner. But you'll be seeing these different videos. And the purpose of it is so that you can know what to do, what to expect, what this means, and how to find information. Those will all be located on our district website. The other assurance I want to give parents is we recognize that last year, coming out of distance learning, many of our students and many of our staff members, administrators, us, the adults, we struggled trying to come back into a world where we once had pretty strict parameters about how to conduct ourselves and how to respond to that at a school site. So we spent the summer with our principals and administrative system principals reviewing all board policies, ed codes, protocols and systems that deal with student discipline and how to deal with bullying on the campus. We're making sure that we're trying to calibrate some of our protocols across the district so that what happens on one school happens on another in terms of systems. Obviously, every school has a different geographic layout, different culture, different history, but we're trying to calibrate. We've put together something that we call the mastery academies for our principals and assistant principals. They will be attending. After school hours, there are two-hour trainings where some of the topics are indeed that, the laws that revolve around budgeting, the laws that revolve around discipline, et cetera. And it's to build capacity so that we're working with our parents and we're working with our kids and we're working with our staff and personnel with a level of true knowledge and calibration across the district. So you may have seen that we added some assistant principals at the elementary level. We've added some at the middle school. We've added counselors. I've made it very clear to schools that the job is not that we're going to catch kids being bad. The purpose of bringing more personnel is to have more eyes, to create more engagement, to create more conversations, to create more opportunities to help students understand that the behavior may not be where we want it. But it's also for us to understand how we're going to respond to that in an appropriate manner. and making sure that we're documenting, but more importantly, communicating with the parent. We were very inconsistent last year with that feature. So we want to make sure that communication is happening because we need to get back to working as a team with our parents, with the school, and with the teachers. So I just want to let the public know that we've been very focused on that because we want to make sure that the climate in our schools starts off positive so that we can concentrate on academics and get away from things that disrupt that. On a more exciting news, because we don't always want to talk about student discipline and rules, we're very focused again on the RUSD 2025 Excellence for All Students. As you know, we've taken a lot of pride in the steps that we've taken with innovation and technology. So I want to reassure our community members that we are back in focus to innovation. We are going to be continuing our work with the Lego STEAM activities. And if you've seen some of the information, Lego has been marketing Redlands Unified School District for all the programs and implementation that we've done in this district as a model district. So thank you to Lego, and thank you to all our teachers and support personnel that have been part of that. We're going to continue with robotics and coding across our schools. We are introducing hologram technology. We're going to be piloting that this year at Kimberley Elementary. So I'm excited about that. We continue our Garner Holt animatronic labs and experiences with 3D printers and, again, programming robots. Our digital storytelling and green screen labs are continuing to enhance. We are purchasing the latest and greatest rapid MOOC devices. So if you haven't seen those, look them up. Those of you kids in the audience. Cool stuff so that you can do video production. So we'll be ordering that. Dr. Wagon will be ordering those for schools and central office and for the different special programs out there. And we also have things like the animatage tables, which is a 3D device for anatomy and biology that's being piloted over at REV in Citrus Valley High School. So our continued focus on new cutting edge technology continues to move forward. So thank you board for allowing us to do that. And then I'll end with two thank yous for the community. I want to thank the city of Redlands, the mayor, the city council for their recent recognition of Redlands Unified School District and earning the beautification award for the work that we've done to beautify not only the district office but all of our school sites. As you know, we took a lot of time during the pandemic to to paint, redo, landscaping, cut trees, put murals, because we believe that the jewels of the community have to be the schools as well. So again, I've given much praise to our MNO personnel, and that team, they've just done an amazing job. And that award we received on their backs because of their efforts, so thank you. And then my last thank you will be to Beverly Knorr of the Relens Bowl Performing Arts for the lovely reception that they held for our USD employees. I know Michelle and Jim and I think Patty were there and it was a nice event and it was nice for them to think of us and have a night for us. So thank you Beverly for that. And that's all I have tonight everybody. Thank you.

Thank you. Obviously you didn't take the summer off. Well done. Well, we're ready for item number 11, superintendent's recommendations. We have first up, business services consent items. I don't believe we have any corrections or additions to business services. No? So I'll entertain a motion to approve all consent items 12B to 12AF. Moved. OK. Any questions or discussion? All right, I'll call for the vote. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye and so approved. We have a couple of resolutions in the action items. First one. Adopt Resolution Number 7, 2022-23, the Resolution of the Board of Education of the Redlands Unified School District approving an increase in statutory school fees imposed on new residential and commercial industrial construction pursuant to Education Code Section 17-620 and Government Code Section 65-995. Need a motion to approve.

So moved.

Discussion? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye, so adopted. Letter B, adopt resolution number 8, 2022-23, a resolution of the Board of Education of the Redlands Unified School District annexing additional territory to the Redlands Unified School District Community Facilities District number 2021-1 and authorizing the levy of a special tax within such additional territory. I need a motion to adopt.

Moved. Second.

Discussion? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye, so adopted. Letter C, adopt resolution number 10, 2022-2023. Resolution continuing authority to hold virtual meetings pursuant to AB 361. Need a motion to approve. So moved.

Second.

Any discussion, questions? All those in favor say no.

When is this going to go?

Like when does this end? It's one of those things, Michelle, that we're just Kind of a, it doesn't have any impact unless we absolutely have to go to it.

But I mean there's no set date for this bill, for this.

There probably is a sunsetting of this bill but so far it's not, you know. Oh, Steve's here. Does Steve want to say anything about any of those? No, he does, he's shaking. He's the one that can answer. Yeah, did you hear Michelle's question? Yeah, she had a question on the third one. AB 361. OK, that's no problem. Steve was on it anyway. He perked right up. Item behind. Thank you, Steve, for being here. All right, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye and so adopted. Did I answer your question, Michelle? Yeah.

There's no end date so far.

Not so far. OK, ed services consent items. Dr. Wagner, any corrections or additions?

Changes or additions, thank you.

OK, thank you. So I will take a motion to approve all consent items as detailed in items 14B to 14H. Sorry, 14B to 14H. Move. Second it. Any discussion?

I just wanted to say I'm so happy to see our choirs being able to go and perform.

We have amazing choirs in our schools, all of them, yes. Great leaders. Really amazing. I hope people take advantage of the great talent and the shows that they put on. They're amazing.

They're a lot of team building on these retreats.

All right. All those in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye. So approved. We don't have any other services action items tonight. We'll move to human resources. I'll take a motion to approve all consent items as detailed in items 16B to 16AF. Mr. President. Oh, yeah, that's right. You know what? And you have some corrections, don't you? Thank you. Just one. OK, go ahead.

Please, at your place, you will see a correction to item 16B. Thank you.

I'm sorry. I had it right here in front of me, and I glossed right over it. So thank you, Dr. Sabine Robertson Phillips. All right, everybody got that? So now I'll entertain the motion.

Move. Second.

Any discussion on any items? All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye, and so approved. In regard to the public employee appointment part of the agenda, I would like to report the following. In closed session, the board took action to appoint Kathleen Lopez to the position of Coordinator 1, Special Services, effective August 10, 2022, at year three of the management team salary schedule with the following vote.

It's me, Jim. Did you miss 17?

Not there yet.

Skipped.

Well, I didn't skip. That's going to come after I read this reporting out from closed session. But thanks for watching.

Oh, OK.

It doesn't mean you're paying attention, but I'm going to read this first. OK. All right. So back to Kathleen Lopez. Ayala Quintero, Holahan, O'Neill, Randler-Vara, all voting aye. Kathleen, are you here? She is. Yeah. Please stand. Well done. Did you bring any special guests, or would you like to introduce? Well, congratulations. You got a little time away, right? Very good. And gee, you're starting when? Tomorrow. August 10th, that's right. All right, very good. In closed session, the board also took action to appoint Well, I call her Katie, but Katie Lynn Geil, to the position of Administrative Secretary, Business Services, effective to be determined at year three of the management team salary schedule with the following vote. Ayala Quintero, O'Lahan, O'Neill, Renler, Varro, all voting aye. Congratulations. So I think you have a support group there. You want to introduce them? Yeah. I have my baby paper, my mom.

My oldest daughter Savannah, my Abby, who's at Valley College now, Sergio, and well of course my brother-in-law Doug, and my sister Carrie Ann.

Yes, okay great. All right. Now, Michelle, I'm going to 17. I get you. Action items, certificated. We need to adopt a resolution number 9, 2022-2023, approve employment of certificated personnel effective 2022-2023 school year based on the approval by the Commission on Teacher Credentialing Ed Code credential requirements. We need a motion to adopt. I'll move. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye, so adopted. Item B, classified. Establish position and approve job description for Child Nutrition Services Warehouse Driver 2 at range 23 of the classified salary schedule and 12 month of the classified work year calendar effective August 10, 2022. Motion to approve, please. So moved.

Second.

I think Michelle had it by a... All those in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye, so approved. We're up to discussion item number 18, comprehensive sex education. We're bringing that up. We need a consensus from the board to move ahead with the curriculum. That was approved by the committee. And passing those around. There we go. And if we had any. I reviewed the curriculum. I think a couple of you had a chance to also review the curriculum. And I think our operational people have a great plan to implement that curriculum. So as a board, we just need to have consensus to move ahead with that. So what say you? Yes.

Let's move forward.

Michelle? If you have any questions, yeah. Thank you, Julie, for coming tonight. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's kind of a review because it's been, you know, a little bit of time has passed since we've had the discussion.

March of 20... Yeah, well, whatever, it was a while ago.

Kind of the pandemic hit and everything kind of got put on hold, so. But it sounds like we're ready to move ahead, Julie, Superintendent Arellano. Everybody's ready to go?

I like this. It aligns more conservative to match our community, and it aligns with the previous curriculum a little bit better. So I'm good with it.

Well, and there's opportunities for people to opt out, which is good. And I understand that a lot of the training and everything will be online. Staff gets trained, all the rest of that. So are we good?

I think they did their homework. They did a good job.

Yes, absolutely.

No? Oh. Yeah, I mean, the curriculum itself has the opportunity for it to be done as an online program, too, that's kind of supervised by a teacher. Or you can have direct teaching instruction, too, with it. It was kind of one of the advantages of the program that we were looking at and reviewing was that you can have the ability to do that. Opt-out is the option. It's always been the option in comprehensive 6th Education, there's notification that happens at the beginning of the year. Parents get that notification and have that opportunity to opt out. Just clarifying on the opt out, you either opt out all or none. So you can't opt out of portions. Just adds a point of clarification for that.

When do we expect this to begin? I know it's going to start in 9th grade as a pilot, right?

It'll be once in middle school and once in high school. As of the year and a half ago plan, we would discuss it further to figure out if it was going to be seventh grade level, probably in PE, but we would have to agree upon that again with our teachers.

It just says here, pilot it in ninth, first, before it's rolled out in seventh.

So there's a training component still has to happen. We did a training component back then, but that was a year and a half ago, so we'll have to update any current teachers that have left anew. So there's going to be a time frame that we'll come back to you with on an implementation plan. It won't be immediate. It won't be right away. We missed notifications for this year's, you know, All the signature pages that have gone out in this year's registration timeline. So that's usually where that notification would go And so we'll have to strategize on doing that. So we'll come back to you with an implementation timeline now that we're Here from you tonight with the discussion to move forward, but definitely not this year.

It's not coming This this school year

There wouldn't be a plan in the fall as of now because we haven't had any of that in place yet. So we'd have to look at possibly second semester at the earliest. Likely fall of next school year would be a more appropriate timeline, but we'll come back to you with that.

Thank you.

All right. 19, public participation. This is the time that any member of the public may address the board on any agenda item before or during the board's consideration of the item provided the person submits a completed registration card. I'll skip the part that I had read earlier. So when I call you up to the podium, please state your name and the area, trustee area, if you know it. In the interest of facilitating the business of the board, we'll limit the amount of time to three minutes, although the chairperson or a majority of the board can determine a different time limit if it is appropriate. So we do have a couple people who wish to address the board on open topic of our jurisdiction. Nicole Prasad. Welcome.

Welcome back from all your summers. I'm here. I'm back again. You have a choice here on out. As elected officials, listen to the concerns of your constituents and take action and create dialogue. If not, we will actively seek and elect new board members. As part, as of this month following vaccination, 32,426 deaths were reported by our government on the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System website. COVID is a virus that attacks your immune system. If your immune system is robust, it will be fed nutrients to support the fight. You will survive with minimum symptoms. Neither our school district nor our government gave us any nutritional advice to assist our immune system in staying healthy. In fact, I am yet to hear one agenda item regarding health of any of the many board meetings I have attended. If we shut down schools because we were dying, but there are thousands who caught the virus and were fine other than mild cold-like symptoms, Why aren't schools teaching health as part of education? Why are we not feeding our kids better meals? I know my kids get home-cooked meals every day. Healthier children excel in school, and we would see a decline in mental health problems like depression, anxiety, and suicide. Large amounts of our kids than ever before are susceptible to cancer and diabetes, both of which are related directly to overconsumption of sugar and also carbs because they are broken down into sugar when in our bodies. After meeting with teachers, principals, and our director of CNS at RUSD, we all agreed that these meals lack nutrients we need to stay healthy. Omega 3s are essential to your brain functioning at the highest level. If we want to help our kids thrive in education, better meals is a must for our USD. My whole family got COVID, and while I was comforting and cooking homemade soup for my kids, I realized eating better foods made a huge difference in me being able to function with simple foods my kids would eat and like, and also can treat nutrient-dense like spaghetti or chicken vegetable soup. At the private event hosted by Old Grove Farms, I met with the Secretary of Food and Agriculture of California, Karen Ross, and also met with many local directors of CNS. When having conversations about our meals provided by school, there was a consensus they do not supply children with enough nutrients. We had a health emergency for two years, and the one thing we could do to make our kids stronger than a virus is providing foods with vitamins, minerals, and herbs. I'm calling on you to be the leaders in creating a healthier environment at our schools. I'm looking to support and advocate for those leaders on this board that will build a kitchen to support that goal and bring vitamins, minerals, and herbs to our meals to support and prevent a health emergency in the future.

Thank you. Paul Blashley.

Good evening, board members, Superintendent Arellano and cabinet. My name is Paul Blatchley. I live in trustee area five. I was just interested in, I appreciate what you were saying about trying to build community or coming back and wanting to focus on how kids are interacting with each other. And I'm wondering how many instructional minutes we have dedicated to teaching the kids to interact with each other after being out with COVID, being kind to each other, being able to relate to each other. It seems like that ought to take quite a bit of instructional time. Again, I know you guys are focused on this A through G, but how many instructional minutes do we actually spend? And I'm not talking about in kindergarten or in first grade, I'm talking about in high school, in middle school especially. The other thing is at the high school level, Have we done something to remove interactive things that go on at the high schools? When I was in high school, we would have regular pep rallies, not just one pep rally per quarter or whatever, one pep rally for homecoming. And so what is that? Is that about instructional minutes? Is that about budget, funding? I just think those whole school communities, community participation events are important to building better relationships among the students. The same was, it would be true for the intra-district. What are the events or things that the district is doing to build community for the whole district, not just the individual high schools? So that you don't have a sense of, well, Redlands is better than Revs, better than Citrus Valley or whatever, right? The last thing, and I don't mean any disrespect to the student representatives, good on them for representing their schools. You're missing something in the representation, right? This is a district that's focused on equity, and you're missing something in the representation. So I'll leave that for you guys to figure out.

All right, thank you.

Thank you. I will just make one comment. They weren't all here tonight. But thank you. All right. Board comments. Let's see. Who would like to go first? Michelle, would you like to go first? OK.

Well, welcome back to school, everybody. I was able to visit Clement Middle School during summer school to see what the students in the C-STEM robotics class were doing. It was amazing. I witnessed some fabulous projects. They had a likeness of an army tank that looked really real and a car that could raise up and grab something from a shelf. And these students were 11 to 13 years old. I was pretty amazed, pretty amazed that our teachers can teach these skills to these kids. I attended the CSBA's Leadership Institute in Los Angeles and networked with many other district board members about what this new year is going to look like and what worked well over the past and what didn't. We heard Dr. Victor Rios, the author of My Teacher Believes in Me, give a motivational talk about OutPromise students. It was pretty Pretty neat. Citrus Counseling Service had an open house in July. It was a great evening that began with a tour of the facility. We're able to see the new trauma center that they have. For those stakeholders that don't know, CCS is one of the facilities that RUSD partners with to help students in need obtain counseling and mental health services. And now we just approved tonight to have counselor oversee some interns that are going to be helping. I want to thank Roger Umansky, the CEO and the board and the staff for what they're able to do for all our RUSD families. I attended the CNS open year meeting with six different districts from around San Bernardino County. It was at RHS. Redlands, Palm Desert, Fontana, Yucaipa, Calamesa, San Jacinto, and Upland was there. All those schools. It was a really fun day. Ron Clark gave a very inspirational speech to the group. Maybe you wanna be a teacher. Talked about how important the nutrition workers are to the students and the school. It was a really good day. Dr. Vanessa Gomez, she's from San Jacinto, gave a motivational talk about the importance of mental health for adults, which before that, didn't see that I needed it until she started talking about it, and I was like, oh yeah, I do need that. So we all need to take care of our mental health. I also attended along with my colleagues and Superintendent Arellano, members of Cabinet. We went to the State of the City address, and you have already heard that RUSD was awarded the 2022 beautification award. I'm really proud of all our schools and the district office. Thank you Mauricio and your whole staff for the vision that you had and maintenance and operations for making all of this happen. I want to thank all our custodians each and every day at each school site they keep our schools so beautiful. If you had a chance to go to any school sites they're all just amazing. My granddaughters who graduated this past June returned to RHS to help distribute textbooks last week, and they said it went very smoothly and it was really fun and they wish they had done that previous years. My incoming ninth grader said that orientation at RHS was pretty fun, and when I asked him what the best part of the day was, he said, the food. And I said, oh well, kudos to CNS. The groundbreaking ceremony for the new step up housing for homeless men and women at the former Goodnight Inn was very inspiring. So many people came out to support the efforts of the city council, step up, and many partners and community members. I heard it on good authority that it may be open by the end of the year. This past weekend, I had the privilege of helping give backpacks out to students at Micah House on Chapel Street. It was so nice to talk with the students and their families. The kids were all smiles, even in the heat, standing in long lines. And they're looking forward to a new school year. They received backpacks with school supplies. They received two big food boxes from CNS. Students from Moore could obtain their schedules. And I had many kids from Clement and Beatty. Even asking why they couldn't get their schedule and I didn't have an answer. I didn't know why the other schools weren't there. I told them I'd try and find that out. The Common Vision Coalition was there. They got it, received a donation of girls shoes and they passed them out to kids that were in need. Yesterday, I stopped by Clements Open Campus Day for parents and students. And I was amazed how many people came. It was a great turnout. Great job, Wes Cullen, Natalie Johnson, and Jeff Ray. You all did an amazing job. Today, I attended Franklin's Back to School Day. It was during the afternoon. Parents could come to campus and meet their child's teacher. They had pizza and sandwiches. Thank you, CNS and Domino's. And thank you, Dr. Acosta and Tony Kaiser and all the volunteers that were there to help. They had a group of church volunteers there taking parents around. It was pretty impressive. And all in all, it's been a great couple weeks. I look forward to being back on our campuses to see what our amazing and wonderful teachers, staff, and administrators have planned for all our students. I hope you all have a great start to what promises to be a great school year. Thank you.

Thank you, great report. Mr. Barra? I had the opportunity of being invited by Betty Crocker, thank you very much Betty, to an awesome group of employees from different districts that got together uh... nutrition service workers and uh... it was just amazing to see and i love their slogan together we make a difference if i remember correctly yes we're better together we're better together and uh... I was so impressed because in education, one of the hardest things that is difficult for us, believe this or not, is the teamwork. And when I'm talking about teamwork is when we work together and collaborate teams by grade levels, you know, or in our departments at the secondary schools. Because once we close our doors, everybody does their own, they do their own magic. but seeing that being able to work with several districts to come together to ensure that we all work as a team to make sure that all of our babies throughout different districts are fed is just amazing work and I appreciate you doing that Betty. And it just speaks to the volumes of work and everything that you do to make sure that we have an awesome program here, like feeding our students during the summer at the Boys and Girls Club, AK Smiley Library and other sites. Throughout the pandemic, nutrition services, our child nutrition services, never stopped working. I helped them out one time at a turkey giveaway where we had to show up at three o'clock in the morning in order to make sure that we were all ready and people were lining up and it's just amazing how much Our nutrition services department has done so many amazing things for our community. Betty, thank you, but also have to give a, and they also had that, you mentioned Ron Clark. Ron Clark is a dynamic, animated, enthusiastic, powerful speaker. I've personally visited his school site. I wish I could duplicate it at my school site and here at Redlands as well. But I hope that sometime in the future, I don't know how expensive he is. But it would be awesome if we can have Ron Clark talk to all of our teachers before the beginning of a school year just to, you know, give us a little extra excitement and enthusiasm before we start the school year. He did an excellent job and I was wondering how he was going to be able to Mix education with nutrition services and let me tell you he did a good job of blending where we need to be as a team I also want to the before I forget I was I want to give a shout out to our classified staff and Let me explain why 30 years ago I started working as an instructional aid and I would do everything that was asked of me, work in small groups, sometimes they were more flexible back then. I would even cover a class when you know you weren't really supposed to because you're not certificated but I would assist. I would help build and connect computers together and we would do just all of the odd jobs that came up because we just needed to do anything we could to make sure we met the needs of our students. So I want to give a shout out to all of our classified staff and our security staff that's here right now that's constantly protecting our babies, our students, our staff. And I appreciate what you guys do on a daily basis. You know, continue to be of service to our students. Be kind, loving, caring. And I know that you are. And I hope that you continue to treat our students as if they were your own children. I also like to give a shout out to, and I have a list right here. I wrote a list on my phone so I wouldn't forget. During the summer, let's not forget everything that all of our classified staff do. For example, our transportation. During the summer, they normally don't work, but now we had several summer school events. So we had our transportation department working. MNO just received recognition from the city, the City Beautification Award. Thank you for all that you do. Our office staff, our payroll, our purchasing department, our accounting and technology departments. You make everything happen and you support our schools. As a principal, when I place an order and I need something right away, and I put in the requisition to get something. And I love that the fiscal department does whatever they can to ensure that they finish up everything that they need to finish up so that we get whatever supplies are needed to be able to maintain our schools. Thank you very much. Our technology departments that make everything happen and you support our schools on a daily basis. The deep cleaning by our custodians, the outside cleaning, the paraprofessionals that work during the school year, during the summer school. There are extended school year programs, our special education aids. It's just, did I forget anybody else? As well as our SAI and Gen Ed instructional assistants, you have all done an excellent job. We appreciate everything that you do. And I just want to give a shout out to the students that were here tonight. They did an excellent job. And I was impressed by two or three of the young ladies that said that they want to advocate. It's not easy being an advocate. I want to say about six years ago when I became a board member, like nobody really wanted to do it, nobody really cared. I went around and knocking on doors, letting them know that I wanted to be a board member. I remember an older gentleman said, you know what, I just want you to know after talking to you, I want to let you know that I'm going to vote for you. And I said, why is that? He's all because You're running for a position that nobody really cares about, and you're running for a position that you feel passionate and deeply about. So I'm going to go ahead and vote for you. But nowadays, it's a different story. It's a lot more challenging and difficult, but I still love what I do. I will continue advocating like the young ladies that were here tonight. I will continue advocating for our students' needs. for our teachers needs and for the needs of our parents. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Mora.

Alrighty. I also want to thank our new student trustees for coming out. It was very nice to meet them, and I look forward to working with them throughout the school year. A special shout-out to our hardworking students and our USD staff that worked all summer long, whether it was credit recovery, credit advancement, or even summer sports. It was really rough giving up your summers. But we really appreciate that you did do that. A special shout out to Coach Stangle for running a very rigorous, but fun, my son said it was very fun, football program over the summer. It seems like it's going to be a really good football season for RHS. So really looking forward to that. For everybody starting school tomorrow, teachers, staff, classified staff, everybody, CNS, Try to get some sleep tonight. I know it'll be pretty hard. Everybody's nervous and anxious, but get as much sleep as possible and leave in the morning with plenty of time. Whatever you budgeted for yourself, add another 30 minutes because it will not be enough. So I'll see you all tomorrow. Thanks.

Wow.

How do I follow all of that? Well said, board members.

My sentiments exactly? I had quite a bit written down here, but I think most of it got covered. I'm always amazed at the beginning of a school year, even when I was an educator myself, you don't realize how much is really going on in the background. You just kind of show up when school's starting and everything's ready to go. You're a part of that, of course. But certainly, you know, every department, classified, certificated, everybody is working hard for this moment tomorrow and to have everything to be ready for those doors to open and welcome those students. You know, our ed services department doing all the preparation with the curriculum and all of the things, the training for the staff and everything that's going on there, our maintenance operation people, they're working hard to get everything set up and, you know, They're doing their job, but it's really nice to be recognized for the job, and so the city recognized, wow, schools look absolutely sparkling, they're unbelievable. So, you know, my hat's off there, and then I was able to go down to the warehouse a couple times this summer, They helped me out a little bit on a couple of projects for Kiwanis, and it was a buzz of activity down there. The warehouse, I mean, it's like going into Costco. It was unbelievable. Maybe more like Amazon. I don't know. But they were moving things, delivering things, trucks in and out. You know, it's an amazing thing to see, and I felt privileged to be able to watch those things in action. Because the logistics, the equipment, the books, and all those things. And of course, as Alex said, none of that happens without fiscal responsibility. You've got people that are ordering these things, and you know, our purchasing department is working feverishly to get the best deals and get all the materials ordered for all of our schools. Not just one school, but all the schools. Child Insurance and Services, again, you know, they're cooking their hearts out for everybody all summer long. And it's an amazing endeavor. And then HR, my goodness. We have to find people to fill these positions. And I know that we have some positions that are in dire need. We have need for paras. So anybody here tonight want a little job to get a paraprofessional? It's a great job, pays well. there you go great experience it's a great start in education but to find all those people and I think Sabine you told me tonight that you hired the last two You're down to about two vacancies in the teaching ranks, right? That's unbelievable. That's fantastic. And then the tech department, you know, boy, they always come through. We're all technology-based now. It's all about the technology and about computers and having them operate. Hats off to you. Salute you for all of the things that you do and your team. It's amazing now compared to when I was in education. You know, it was like we had computer labs. We send the kids to the computer lab. Now everybody's got a computer or two. Yeah, it's amazing. And then we have all those other areas that are ready to go. The counseling support. All of our new managers are taking their place. The experienced managers are finding new positions for themselves. And they've been gearing up for that. All of the departments that reach out for our community and communicate with our community. our summer programs. I don't know. It's just a very impressive thing when you stop and reflect about the machinery that it takes and the support and everything that's happening in our district. It is astounding. It's no wonder that Our district is an amazing place to work and to learn and to teach. So on behalf of the board, as you already heard from each of these board members, I know Patty would echo the same thing. We so much appreciate and are proud of all the work and accomplishments of each and every person that's involved in this endeavor. I want to remind the board members That for back to school nights, make sure you call Carrie Anne or Rose. Let them know what schools you're going to so that you don't, you know. surprise them. And are you going to any school openings tomorrow, Michelle? I know you have kids going to school, so you're going to be somewhere.

Tomorrow, no, no, no elementaries for me tomorrow, but I'm going to Kingsbury, and then I'm going to head over to McKinley, because they're not doing a MP, anything in the NPR, so I'm just going to pop in classrooms. Okay.

And I know Alex is at his own school, so he's got, he's up and rolling. Melissa, are you able to get out tomorrow morning? That's OK. Maybe back to school nights or something like that. I'm going to try to cruise. I haven't decided where to go yet. But the first day of school is so exciting. And I can't wait to see it. And so I wish everybody a great start to a great year. We have a lot to look forward to. Got a lot of great programs. I'm excited about that expanded learning opportunity for our students. Get some of this post-pandemic things. Restart our engines and get kids caught up. I think that's really important and critical for us. And I really appreciate the effort that your staff, Superintendent Arellano, has put in to to make that a reality, to do all the things in terms of mental health and learning and everything that's involved there. OK. I think we've talked enough tonight. So if there is anything else, we'll go to the order. I'll adjourn this meeting. Thank you very much. Thanks for coming. Congratulations. Thank you. Katie. OK. You're still here. Congratulations. OK. Come up and shake our hands. All right.