Board of Education — July 11, 2023

All right, good evening everyone. I would like to call this meeting to order. Thank you for coming tonight. And before we do the Pledge of Allegiance, we would like to have a moment of silence for a couple of our former employees. Immediately following the Pledge of Allegiance, which Mr. Varro will be leading. So after we say the pledge, if you could just please remain standing.

With your right 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. Sylvia M. Lance. Sylvia was a former teacher at McKinley Elementary School, a longtime resident of Redlands. She passed away on June 19th, 2023. She was active in the First United Methodist Church, the AAUW, PDK, ADK, and she volunteered in several classrooms at McKinley after retiring. She was also a kindergarten teacher to all five of my children and three of my grandchildren. She will be greatly missed by the McKinley family.

David Clifton Peters spent many years repairing typewriters and copy machines for the Redlands Unified School District. He passed away on June 14, 2023 after battle with leukemia. David worked for us from 1971 to 2005.

Two seated. Okay, please note for the minutes that all board members with an exception of Patty Holohan are present this evening. Up next we have an approval of the minutes. Is there a motion to approve the minutes of the May 23rd, 2023 Board of Education regular meeting, May 30th, 2023 Board of Education special board meeting slash workshop, May 30th Board of Education special board meeting slash workshop, and the June 13th Board of Education regular meeting.

So moved. Second.

Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Michelle. Any discussion? All right, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye and so ordered. Moving on to public participation. This is a section of the agenda meant for any member of the public to address the board on any agenda item listed tonight, and we have no cards. Okay, we will be moving on to public participation. Presentations, Mrs. Buck Miller, our Executive Director of Special Services is here tonight to present an inclusion overview. Welcome. Thank you. All right, good evening.

We're focusing on all of the members of the board, superintendent for all of the cabinets. I'm Katie Buck Miller, the Executive Director of Special Services, and I'm super excited tonight to share with you the work that the team's been doing on supporting existing practices and getting ready to roll out the position at the elementary level. OK, tonight I really want you to understand both the why behind inclusion and then the what that we're going to be doing, and a little bit of the how as well. So the why behind inclusion, it's really not a new concept. It is maybe a little bit new to Redlands. But it is also something that Redlands has been doing, and I'll be sharing that with you tonight. But first and foremost, inclusion is the law. We have the IPA, the Individuals with Disabilities Act, that ensures a free and appropriate of education in the least restrictive environment. So the IDEA is one of the main laws that talks about inclusion that we're held to. But we also have 17 California special ed indicators from the CDE. And so one of those indicators is least restrictive environment. And this is where Redlands has really fallen a bit short. So in the 21-22 school year, We were at 44% of our students were in included classrooms. And the national average for that year was 69%. The state indicator by the 25-26 school year is that 70% of our students who have IEPs are spending 80% or more of their day in a Gen Ed classroom. So you can see that our 44% ranked us in the bottom 10% of the state of California.

And it also landed us in targeted systems level three. And so that is a whole set of

special plans and things we need to do in order to get us out of that. So it's significant that that's where we're ranking because I don't see us as a bottom 10% school or district. And then nearest to my heart is that I feel like it's the right thing for kids. It's about having a seat at the table. But beyond that, it's about being exposed to grade level curriculum and academic rigor and having social interactions with all students. So it's really about what's right for the students. So that's a little bit about the why behind inclusion. And I want to share with you what we've done so far. So like I said, this is not necessarily a new concept for Redlands. And I'm also proud to say that our secondary schools are much farther along than elementary in including students at the different grade levels. So far, for preschool, we are collaborating with Universal PK and state preschool. We're going to be doing a pilot at Victoria this fall. And in a little bit, I'll share with you the pilot that we did this past year at Crafton. It will mirror that. But right now, at this point in time, when a student comes into our district and they're at preschool age and they have an IEP or special needs, they go into a separate class. And that's it, because that's all that we have if they're not going into state preschool. For middle school, moving on to middle school, like I said, they're a little bit farther beyond where elementary is at. COPE added seventh grade inclusion this last school year, and next year will be sixth grade, and they already had eighth grade. So by next school year, they will have full inclusion in all grade levels. Moore and Clement both already had full inclusion in all grade levels, but we've been working, our department's been working with them on best practices and making sure that what we call inclusion truly is inclusion. Beatty added seventh grade this last school year. They've made a decision as a site to add sixth and eighth grade next year. So also by the end of next year, they will have all the grades across the board. Also, all middle schools now have an extensive needs, which is the new name for Mod Severe, program on their site that was starting this school year. And so students can go to their home schools starting in middle school. So a student that has extensive needs will have that opportunity, and that removes a lot of barriers. For high school, the Citrus Valley opened as an inclusion campus. They have all grades, 9 through 12. Again, we worked on some best practices and what we call inclusion. REV and RHS added ninth grade. This school year was the first year they added ninth grade. They will each roll out a grade each year, so 10th grade for the next year and 11th and so on. And then all high schools now have an extensive needs field mod severe program on site that was starting this past school year. All right, so but what about plans for elementary? So I want to share with you what we've been doing with that. All of the work that we've been doing since I came into this position has been done through committee work. So while you may think that that slows down the process, it really has gone slow to move fast. So including this PowerPoint that I'm sharing with you tonight, this was developed from our committee. And we've had two kind of overriding committees. One's a bigger district inclusion committee that includes TK through 12th grade members. That group has been working on the district inclusion statement, timelines, the at least restrictive board policy that you'll be looking at soon, and what the roll out was going to actually look like. We have worked jointly with RTA and RESPA on this overriding committee, and like you can see, it's been going on for a couple of years now. We've now included parents, and this committee will be ongoing from now on for the rest of the time. This last year, we added an elementary focus group. It has representatives from each of the elementary sites, and they serve as a resource for the elementary sites. We also did a road show that involved RTA, and MKIN came out with us and presented with us as well at each of the elementary sites. And that was using a little bit longer version of this PowerPoint that the committee developed. And also, in many cases, they co-presented with us at their school site. Secondary focus group, we are adding that for the 23-24 school year. And then our piece of parent involvement, they are part of our district inclusion committee now as well. We have a committee called a CPAC, it's a Special Ed Parent Advisory Committee. The meetings all throughout this last school year have been centered around inclusion. We did a special Q&A session that was very well attended at the end of the year. And I've also done two gen ed parent nights just to make sure that that population also understands our plans for inclusion. This is our district inclusion statement. Again, this was developed from the committee. And the committee looked at our RUSD 2025 and this piece of what they wrote kind of like folds out from equality through equity. So I'm not gonna read it all to you, but it does talk about all our USD staff having a chance to engage in professional development and having the rigorous instruction and so on. It talks about that all secondary sites offering all programs at their site so that students can attend school with their gen ed peers in their neighborhood and not have to be best all across the district. Okay, and then our timeline. So this is now moving into the what for elementary. So for elementary, for this next school year, for the 23-24 school year, most of our existing mild mod separate class students are going to be returning, this is in grades TK through two, are going to be returning to their home schools in a gen ed classroom, rostered into a gen ed classroom. So what this looks like for us for next school year is 86 students are going back to their home schools to attend school with their peers. So it's very exciting for us. And then for the 24-25 school year, it's a two-year roll out, as you can see. We'll do the same thing. Most existing mild-mod students in separate classes in grades three through five will then return to Gen Ed at their home schools. So super exciting. Okay, so what about students that do need a more restrictive environment? The committee felt really strongly that we needed to really address this because there are some students whose least restrictive environment is a separate class with a smaller number of students and then maybe a higher adult student ratio. So we're going to continue to offer separate classes as needed based on the students' needs for support. So one of those would be our behavior intervention classes. Our BI classes will continue to have separate BI classes. And then we're going to continue to have separate classes that have a moderate level of support and then ones that have an extensive level of support. Like I said earlier, the mod severe title is going away. It matches the new credentials for the state of California. So the credentials that teacher candidates are coming out with right now are a mild moderate level of support or an extensive need level of support. And so we still have separate classes at this point for those. And it's also important to note that the moderate classes are going to use our grade level curriculum. It will need to be accommodated and perhaps modified. Extensive needs uses an alternative curriculum. So when you start looking at extensive needs and using an alternate curriculum, then you're looking at like a certificate of completion rather than a diploma at the end if they stay in that setting for the entire time. OK, so a picture is worth 1,000 words. So there's a picture here of our inclusion pilot at Crafton. And the caption, which may be hard to see where you're at, says, can you spot the fully included students? So one of the students doing PLATO at the table is fully included. That means they were formerly in a separate class, but now this is their class. So I hope when you're looking at it that you can say, no, I can't really tell who it is, because that's kind of the point. They're all doing an age-appropriate thing for a TK student. They're all working together, and it's not like you can tell that this child has an IEP. So we have a little video for you. It's a video that we used. Oops, can you go back one? I just did that. Sorry. We have a little video for you that we used when we did our elementary roadshow, so I want you to see. It's about two minutes.

SumRise's program is just giving all students the equal opportunity to be in a general education class with their peers learning the same things, having access to the same curriculum and the same structure and just being able to benefit from positive models in their classrooms.

It helps all the kids build mindfulness and respect to each other. At such a young age, it's really valuable. It's also really beneficial to see kids working alongside kids with differences.

I will be completely honest, when I was told I would be in the Inclusion Pilot Program, I was a little bit nervous, but it has been super exciting seeing some of these kids grow.

I love seeing the kids making positive interactions with each other, socializing together, and hearing some of our kids that have speech issues are finally talking, and it is absolutely wonderful to see.

It's hard to know right now because we're still kind of figuring it out. What is the responsibility of the gen ed teacher? What is the responsibility of the SPED teacher when I come in for that hour and a half to two hours every day? Like, is there something specific I should be doing? Because in every classroom right now it looks different. Because we're still figuring it out.

We're still figuring out what's appropriate, what's not appropriate. How do we make those decisions? Like, anything new, you're going to have germs, you're going to have growth pains, you're going to have great days and you're going to have horrible days. But in the end, the kids are making growth and that's what matters.

And it is a beautiful thing. I like when we get to talk to some of the parents about the successes we're seeing and seeing just the parents take a dig. and going, wow, my kid's doing this.

PK is the best and kindergarten is the best time for it to give these kids an opportunity to be included in everything. Playing together, pretend to play, learning, songs, all the good stuff that little kids need.

Can't see that and not smile a little bit into that. Thank you to Christine Stevens too for making that nice video for us. Okay, so next time I come to share with you a little update on how things were going, I'm going to share more about the nitty gritty about our PD plan and the resources and things too that the committee has planned to support the teachers as well. So that concludes it. What questions might you have?

Thank you, Mrs. Buckmiller. Do you have any questions, anybody? Jim, all yours.

Thank you for that, Patty. I wanted you to know that even though you were showing the wonderful slides back here, probably none of us were looking at them. That's because we have this wonderful new monitor that we can actually look at you and see the monitor. So I didn't want you to get the wrong signal that we were totally- So Doug, do you have anything to do with that? Nope. Okay. Well, it's a nice addition. Thank you. So, Patty, staffing. So your special ed teachers are going to be. out and about on the campus pushing in, does that require additional staff? Because they're going to be spread pretty thin in terms of- It has required some additional staff.

I've been working with Jason and Business Services and Ed Services as well. So all said and done, I think it was approximately five more teachers that we needed to add. for the TK through second grade roll out. But remember too, some of those classes we dissolved and so we had those teachers that were there as well. So because we're doing TK through two, we are able to have some teachers be shared between two sites. And then the following year, because it's a two year plan, it will necessitate two SAI teachers at each site. So right now we've been working on having our SAI teachers push into classrooms more as well. There are some goals that students are working on where they do need to be pulled out for a small amount of time. But we want to pull out, intervene, work on that skill, and then get them back to class. So it shouldn't be that they're being pulled out for two hours at a time and missing the core instruction. That's really the point, to be there for the rigor.

So as a follow-up to that, obviously the program allows for some kind of a safety net. So if a kid's really having a rough day and is just not working that day for that particular kid, what does a safety net look like where they can go and kind of recoup and get ready to reengage?

That's a good question. We do have extra adults. We are going to be using paraprofessionals in the classrooms that have students that were formerly in a separate class. But in terms of like, will they have a separate classroom to take them back to? Not exactly, but they do have their RSP-SAI room, and so they could take them to a smaller space. They might have other smaller spaces on campus that they need to, but they will have extra hands for that as well.

So they'll still have the classroom available for those kinds of things?

They'll have the SAI classroom available too.

Okay. Question is, what's been the parent reaction to this new program?

Yeah, I have to say, the parents are super excited. I mean, for the most part, they're really excited about students returning to their home schools. There is a little bit of fear about that because they maybe have started at one school and then are going back to their home school. But they're getting to attend school where they play with kids in the neighborhood. Right now we are best seeing kids all over the place. Some of our students are on the bus for the day, upwards of two to three hours. So they're excited about that opportunity. But yes, there's some fear and trepidation, but I think it's been mostly excitement.

Well, I'm sure the regular ed teachers too are feeling a little bit of the unknown coming and certainly feeling that pressure too. But yeah, it'll be fun to watch. And I think it's well worth the effort. Thank you.

That's kind of why I wanted to show you the video. I feel like there's a lot of fear out there. But when you watch that, and the craft and pilot has a lot more kids than most schools are getting back. There's 12 students in those three classrooms. You can't tell. It's all TK and kindergarten students that are learning and interacting and socializing and that's kind of the point.

They're like I see it as a win-win too. I mean, you've got your regular ed kids, your special ed kids, and for them to interact. And they're kids, kids first. And so everybody's going to learn from it and be better for it, I think. Well done, thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead, Michelle. Hi, Patty, thank you. That was a great presentation. Two questions. The busing situation, so when the kids go back to their home school, they no longer will be bused to their school, right?

When they go back to their home school, they will no longer have transportation. Unless it's something that the IEP team feels like is needed for the safety of the child.

So have you had any parents that are kind of worried about that, like how that's going to look for them?

No, for the most part, parents have been pretty excited about that. Yeah.

And then the students that still need the more restrictive kind of classroom, will they be at their home school or still where they were, whatever school they were at?

OK, that's another good question I will share with you next time I come as well. I've divided up the whole district into pods. There's four pods. And within each pod, there's an extensive needs class. and a moderate needs class. And so it's less travel for students, but some of them are not, we don't have all programs at everybody's home school. So there still is some traveling, but it would be a lot less. Instead of going all the way across from Smiley all the way to Cram, it's like a pod of the schools in that geographic area.

Yeah, I'd love to when school starts to go over to Victoria or Crafton and just see that in action. Thanks.

All right, thank you. Any others?

Yes, I have a few questions. The TK pilot at Crafton, what's the total number of students in there?

Okay, so that one's a little bit artificial only because we took, and as you know, I was the principal there, so it was logical for me to use Crafton. We took the mild mod separate class, the TKK separate class, and that's the kids that we took into the TKK. So the most we had at one point was 14 students, at the end they had 12. There were two who it didn't work out for them. The IEP teams met and those students went back to a more restrictive environment.

So at Crefton, the class was about 12 students. How many total SAI students at the school site?

For Crafton? Well, they have three separate classes, so that was like dissolving one of their separate classes. So there still is all the other students that have IEPs that go like to SAI, the RSP model, that have less minutes on their IEP.

So in total- So this was the only class that was created. That's the only class we did the pilot on. We just took that one, yeah. Okay, so then we have the 12 students, and then we have one teacher, the regular ed teacher, And then we have how many paraprofessionals?

Okay, so we have the SAI teacher, Katie, that you saw in the video. Each classroom had their own gen ed teacher. She went between the three classrooms. And each of those classrooms had a paraprofessional. One of her base pairs was in that classroom all day the entire time. And then Katie be bopped between the three rooms. So she spent about an hour and a half to two hours in each of the classrooms.

And then the three classrooms that she went to, what were the grade levels?

They were two TKs and one kinder.

So two TKs and then one kinder. And then when she went in to push in, did she also co-teach or was she there as like, you know, what model?

Another great question. So we had to work it out with each of the teachers, what worked best for their styles. And so it was a little bit different with each of the teachers. So like Jeff, they actually co-taught, they divided the class in half and each went on separate sides of the room and they taught and then the kids flipped and had the other teacher. In Wendy's room, she was a center, all kids rotated through her center. And then in Wendy's room, she was also a center, but it was like a reading intervention center. So all the kids that were struggling, whether they had an IP or not, came to her center.

So in all of the three pilot classrooms that you had, how many adults were in there at one time?

Okay, so the most that there would be at one time were three adults, because it would be the gen ed teacher, the base para, and Katie. And then when Katie wasn't there, then it was two adults.

So we had a base para, and the two TKs, we had a base para in there in each of the questions.

Yeah, and those were Katie's base pairs that she had in her classroom.

Right, and then the kindergarten class?

The kindergarten class had one as well.

So they had an aide. So then we had a total of three adults at one given point. But the majority of the time there's two adults. Okay, supporting the students. Now I'm going to ask the middle school. At the middle school, what's the caseload for the middle school SAI teachers?

Okay, so it's still our contract, so it could go up to 28 for an SAI teacher, self-contained, classrooms 18.

Okay, and then when you build a schedule for the SAI students to go into their classrooms, are they all spread out or do you keep them together? How do you build a schedule for the-

Each middle school's a tiny bit different on how they do that. So it kind of depends on how they build their master schedule. But they do try to group them so it makes sense for the SAI teacher to come into that classroom to support that classroom. So there's periods in the day where it's an inclusion, like set up for an inclusion math class. And then they would have the two teachers and the paraprofessional for that entire period.

So let me, let's see, I want to ask about, because which one of the middle schools do you have as a model?

They're all doing it? I'd have to say climate probably has been the most successful at...

Okay, can you explain, so can you walk me through what day looks like for the new inclusion program at the seventh grade level since we've been doing that?

Yeah, okay, so Clements had it for quite some time so it's not like brand new for them. So there's periods on the master schedule, there are periods throughout the day where it's an inclusion class. So it's built into the master schedule that there's like a math class that's just a gen ed math class and then there'd be an inclusion math class. So a student that has an inclusion math class on their IEP, they would go into the inclusion class. section of that math class. So for a student, it really depends on what their IEP looks like, because some students have inclusion for both math and language arts, and some just have it for one subject, depending on what they need. Some have it for science and social studies. So it's hard to say, like, what a day would look like for a student who's in inclusion, because it's so individualized for their needs. But I'd love to take you over there. We'd love to.

Yeah, no, no, I'd definitely like to see it live, because it's different than me asking you all of these questions. When the middle school teacher goes into a math class, because I'm assuming the teacher has to go into a math class, an English class, a social studies class, depending on what the IEP says, right? So if they go into the math class, is the RSP teacher co-teaching or is the RSP teacher just assisting?

No, for the most part they're co-teaching. They're co-teaching. But we leave it up to each pair to decide what's going to be the best for that pair. So for some of them, it is the SAI teachers taking a group that's struggling. For some of them, it's the SAI teacher's going to take the higher group, and the gen ed teacher's going to work with the group that's struggling. They really have collaboration so that they can decide what's going to be the best model for them. But in all the visits I've done, they're truly co-teaching. It's not like the SAI teacher is just walking up and down the aisles as a para. It's like having two teachers. In a lot of cases, the students don't know that you're a special ed teacher and you're a gen ed teacher. They don't really know that. They just know they have two teachers.

The reason I ask is because I find it a little difficult if a teacher goes in to support a math class, then goes in to support an English class, for them to know all of the standards when we have teachers that are credentialed at that grade level with those specific

I understand your question. So they wouldn't. They would go into the area that- That they feel most comfortable- Like a different SAI. So the students change classes. So they wouldn't necessarily have the same SAI teacher all day long. They'd have like the math SAI teacher during the math time, the English one.

So, and what I just wanted to like clarify and make sure is that are all of the SAI teachers when they're in the classroom with the other teachers, are they co-teaching or just they're supporting?

From what I've seen, for the most part, I think they're co-teaching. But that's also one of our things in our PD plan is making sure they understand what co-teaching really is.

Right, because to me that's like your biggest bang for your buck when you have two teachers actually in the classroom teaching and not just the general ed teacher doing the teaching and then you have somebody there as an extra teacher. So is our model that you've created or we're working on, do we, Do we know if, since two teachers are working together, which is not the norm, it's not a normal thing for us as educators. Somebody normally takes over because of the comfort level of the subject or the comfort level of teaching in front of somebody else. Has there been training amongst the staff on how to do a co-teaching model?

Yes, that's another excellent question. So I have to say for the secondary level, Redlands has been doing this for quite some time, having two teachers into a classroom. It's just not every school had all the grades doing that. So way before I came into this position, there's more has been doing inclusion for quite some time, where they have two teachers in the classroom. But to answer your question about professional development, this last spring we provided through an outside company, the Bureau of Education Research Bear. They have come out and worked with all the co-teaching partners for all secondary at both middle schools and high schools. And then the identified co-teaching partners at elementary also got that same training at an elementary level that they got this spring. That was in late May. So they are going into the school, you're having that for elementary as well. But yes, the secondary co-teaching pairs all had that training. And then in addition to that, I have sent a group of my teachers on assignments and professional or a program specialist, I've sent them to be trainers and go to train the trainer model so that we can have our own trainers. So we don't have to rely on outside companies to be the experts. So I've really worked hard to develop experts on our own staff so that they can start providing that PD. We've really laid out like a three to five year PD plan. So next time I come, I will be glad to share that with you as well.

So then the expectation is for it to be a co-teaching model, not just necessarily a push in. You have the students, now you're going to get extra support, but the general ed teacher's going to take care of everything.

Yeah, no, the expectation's co-teaching, a true co-teaching model.

All right, thank you. Great job. Thank you.

I have one question. How long are we giving, just say, you know, everything starts out great and we identify a student that possibly needs a more restrictive environment. How, because my concern is that we are putting them in a situation where, you know, it's a new environment for them and they need some time to adjust. How long are we giving them to adjust? Because then we're about to, we might need to remove them and put them in a more restrictive environment and then they'll need even more time to adjust back. So what a kind of timeline. And I mean, I would hate for them to lose the year Adjusting to all these new environments, what kind of timeline are we looking at here?

Okay, so our pilot taught us a lot with that as well. So first of all, it's the mild students in the mild, mild classes that we're sending back to their homeschools. So hopefully a lot of work has been done to kind of pave the way for that. But in our craft and pilot, we did it, we just took those students and put them in there, like you were saying. So it was pretty obvious right away. There was a couple students that really needed a more restrictive environment. But we gave it six to eight weeks before the team met again to have that conversation with the parents. And it was a pretty unanimous decision for the IEP teams. It wasn't, I mean, it was pretty obvious that the student was telling us that they needed a more restrictive environment. But I'd say it's six to eight weeks. Like we need at least to have a minimum amount of time to try it for that long.

So what does that more restrictive environment look like?

OK, then it would be back to a separate class that would have 18 students in it. That might be on a different location, because not all of our elementary campuses have that separate class.

So then we would remove them from that and bust them again, essentially?

Yeah, it might involve transporting them back. Yeah, that's why we've been working with our IEP teams to make sure that they're making a good informed decision what's best for the child.

Absolutely. All right. Do we have any more questions? Thank you, Patty. I really appreciate it. All right, we would go to board committee reports. I don't have one for CRIROP. Our meeting is tomorrow. So we will jump to Michelle with compact. And you can do compact, rep, and Parks and Rec.

OK. Compact, nothing to report, as they won't be meeting until the school year starts. And same goes for rep. Will not be meeting until September. And Parks and Rec meeting was postponed again. to this Thursday, so I'll have something at our next meeting. This is an easy report this time. Mr. O'Neill?

Yeah. I met yesterday with the Cultural Arts Commission, and a couple of things. They're slowly but surely filling in their art in public spaces around Redlands. Probably you've noticed a few things going up. You'll see some, I think it was in the paper this last time, they put something up near the golf course, Redlands Country Club. It's one of those things where some people loved it and some people didn't love it, but that's art. Everybody has their own personal taste when it comes to art. So those are usually up for about a year and then they switch them out. And I also probably need to ask you, Superintendent Cabralt, about the possibility of engaging our high school art teachers and students. The city would love to see some of the walls along the train track more representative of our town instead of the graffiti that's on them right now. So I know if anybody rides a train, you could go through sections of different cities and you see whatever the tagging artists have done. And so they have some wall space that they would like to see. I said, well, if you come up with a budget to maybe provide supplies, paint, and brushes and things like that. That maybe our art teachers at the high schools could get some volunteer student artists to go out and paint some of those walls and we could either do school themes or we could do whatever they wanted to come up with. But that's a conversation that we'll be having and they're gonna get back to me on that. But maybe we could talk to our art teachers, see if that's something they're interested in. Yeah, and that's it.

Is this the inside of the wall or the outside? Because I'm a little worried about kids being inside the wall.

Well, it's there are block walls in certain sections of town like down by Alabama and you know, whatever and be the inside so it would be yeah Obviously safety issues, but it's not like they we have to you know Pull their bottoms in as the train went by it's not like right next to the tracks. No, but I mean there's areas where there's block walls and They're on the right away And they've been tagged pretty heavily. They look pretty ugly. And we had that discussion. So I think that we could probably do something better.

I think it's a great idea. I just don't know if we should have kids doing it. I mean, maybe student designs would be great.

Well, then you got to pay a muralist to do it. So that's up to us. We're way before that. Another conversation.

They'll be working with the city, they can turn off the train. That's right.

Okay, CSBA?

Nothing. We have nothing to report on CSBA.

All righty, we do not have a student trustee report this evening, so we'll move on to the next item, which is a new standing item that we have added to the agenda to give our associations a chance to address the board. So we'll go ahead and start with RTA.

Good evening, Board Trustees, Superintendent Cabral and Cabinet. We're very excited to be part of the agenda. This is going to be part of our ability to communicate with each other and share out what RTA is doing. Wanted to keep this very brief for our first night, but as I was making a list, it got longer and longer, so I will try to keep it short. Most people always congratulate teachers about having the summer off and getting to just rest and relax, but we all know that's not the case. This is our time when we set a real strong foundation. And as I'm looking around and talking to some of our educators, we've got teachers teaching summer school classes, going to trainings, AVID, AP, C-STEM, not just here locally but throughout the state. Some are getting advanced degrees and national board certification. We've got a lot of changes, including what's going on with inclusion in TK. So we've got teachers moving classrooms and moving schools, setting up new classrooms. And I know that I was one of those bad teachers that would sneak in all summer long putting up my brand new bulletin boards. We also have new curriculum, so they're busy reviewing curriculum and setting it up for the new year, plus doing our professional development. So it may seem like we're enjoying the sun, but we're actually working just as hard as always. RTA is also doing the same thing. We got together as an executive board and started planning for the new year. And then we did an exciting thing. We went to the California Labor Management Initiative Conference in San Diego with some of our HR staff and with our sorry, our companion association, RESPA. We learned a lot. We had some good ideas and some good planning that we're looking forward to working all together with. I got the privilege of, I'm not sure I should say the privilege, but I got the chance to go to Florida in the July heat. But it was the NEA's representative assembly. So there were 6,000 delegates there. Pam Stevenson and Mary Sandoval attended as well. And it was five days of intense work, starting at 7 a.m. and finishing usually at 6. So it was quite the long days, but we enjoyed it. Tomorrow we fly off to San Francisco for the President's Conference and then we were lucky enough to get a grant to attend CTA Summer Institute in two weeks and we're bringing 14 members with us. And then of course we're getting excited for the new year and our TA is going to be taking part in the new educator orientation that HR sets up. Along with that, we have just agreed to host a meet and greet with our new superintendent in August. So I'm not sure you heard already, but we'll get the details worked out. So that'll be a great time for everybody to get to meet you up close and personal. Next week, I'll be starting to meet with principals individually as we start to plan for the new year and continue building the relationship that we have. and I think that is about it for my first report. Do you have any questions about what is happening? Oh, I almost forgot the biggest thing, and I didn't have it in my notes. I'm glad it popped in. We are going to be ushers at the Redlands Bowl for the musical, and I hope you all get a chance to attend, even if it's not the day we're ushering, which will be that Sunday, but our very own member Debbie Pretzman is Dolly, so we're very excited to see her up on the big stage. And you might remember her from last year when she was Ursula. All right, and that concludes my report. Any questions or any? No, we're good, thank you. So I didn't go too long, I hope. No, you're good. All right, you'll invite me back next time.

Of course. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, up next we have RESPA.

Good evening, board members, superintendent, and cabinet, and guests. My name is Liz Brewster, and I am the president of RESPA, representing our classified members. I am going to keep this short, unlike Susan. I'm sticking to my agenda. I started off the year attending the labor management with Sabine and a few other members and our executive board met in June to do our planning for the upcoming year. Our first site rep meeting is on August 28th at 445 and I already invited Mr. Cabral And we have a few fun activities planned for our members this year. And I look forward to a great year collaborating with all of you. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Any questions?

Please say no.

Blacked out today. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Up next, is it RAPA or RAPA? I caught wind of some sort of disagreement about it. I want to get it right, so if somebody's going to correct me, please do. Okay, thank you. All right, floor's yours.

Good evening, President, Board Trustees, Superintendent, and Executive Cabinet. I'm Dr. Rebecca Acosta. I am the new President of RAPA, as well as the proud principal of Franklin Elementary School. Just to share a little bit about RAPIC, especially since you might not have heard about it yet, we are a group of both classified and certificated management members here, and we do align ourselves with AXA. So our goal is to advocate for the best interests of our students so that they can develop, empower, and inspire equity-minded leadership, just like we hope to inspire in others. Our board does meet monthly, and what we do is we discuss state and local policies. We update one another about what's going on in our respective areas and plan for events to support our own professional growth and development, as well as celebrate one another and what's happening. On behalf of RAPA, I first want to extend a warm welcome to you, Superintendent Cabral. We are excited to have you here and welcome you to our Redlands family and look forward to partnering with you, not only this year but for many years to come. um this is new for me so i just stepped in as of june and immediately went down to palm springs to meet with both regions 12 and 19 to have our annual conference and here it was all district leaders from riverside and san bernardino counties once again talked about local and state policies leadership had some motivational speakers there as well to kind of get us fired up So this summer, our site administrators have been going through training. So while some are having breaks, others are working kind of back and forth. We've had many principals attending AVID training. Myself and a few directors had traveled out to Dallas, Texas to attend the Get Your Lead On. Get Your Teach On Conference, which was extremely inspiring. And now we are all ready to step back and start our schools up. So most administrators are back either this week or next week. We are all planning our individual meetings with you, Superintendent, to share our goals for the school year and just start that partnership and working relationship with you. And a huge thank you to Dr. Robertson Phillips and the entire HR department because you have been hiring Like crazy and we appreciate your diligence and support with that and just in closing I wanted to say that we look forward to another incredible year Partnering with all of you as well as RTA and respa who just spoke before me. So, thank you questions

No, you got off easy too. Thank you. All right. And up next, we will have the superintendent's report. This is our superintendent, Mr. Juan Cabral's first official report and first official board meeting. So we're super excited to hear how everything's going so far.

Yes, super excited is a great couple of words. I have a long list, so I think I'm going to probably beat Sue on the time. No, I'm going to go fast. Actually, it's been, first of all, thank you to everyone in the Redlands community, school community, the city of Redlands. It's been a great welcome, and I've had a chance to meet many folks and go to different events. And everyone that I go to and everyone that I meet, it's just been wonderful. Specifically, I was able to go to a few events at the U of R, a Juneteenth event back in June, middle of June. Saw one of our students from Citrus Valley, shout out to Citrus Valley, Kaliki Amoby was recognized and awarded at that event. That was wonderful. July 4th, we went to Sylvan Park. And saw our very own director's band perform at the park. Joe Williamson's band, very good. He's a drummer, if anybody didn't know that. He does a wonderful job and that was a great show. I met a lot of folks there. Got to go to the Chamber of Commerce meeting last Friday. Met some city folks, that was wonderful. Met the mayor. And then last Friday, went to the Redlands Bowl. That was my first time going to an event at the Redlands Bowl. What a great venue. It was a really, really nice event and the national anthem was sung by one of our students, Caleb Roll. And it was awesome because we happened to be sitting right next to his family. So when he took his seat after singing the national anthem, I got to meet his parents and take a picture with them and it was really nice. It was a wonderful event. I have been meeting individually with several district and community leaders, which has been really, really good. Several principals already, several directors. I did get a chance to meet with Sue and with Liz. And I met with Chief Tolber from the Redlands Police Department, and that was good to meet with her and her staff. So it's been really good. I have meetings, just like Dr. Acosta said, with principals and directors in the next coming week, so I can make sure to get to know everybody as much as possible. Also want to say thank you to Ms. Buckmiller for a great presentation on inclusion. Look forward to really seeing that in person this fall. And also, we just received tentative dates for Studio 24 at Redlands High School. Looking forward to being a part of that and seeing our special needs students as they work to help us eat lunch. That's going to be wonderful. I want to give a special shout out, if you'll indulge me, to my mom who's watching from home. Hi mom. So real quick, thank you for that. And I want to say thank you and show my appreciation for everybody who's working so hard to get our schools ready for this fall. It goes by so quickly. I will also shout out to HR because the amount of hiring that has to happen to get ready for the fall. I mean, every principal can appreciate every director being able to be fully staffed and that's the goal to have a full staff coming in the fall. And then our maintenance department facilities, they're trying to beautify our schools and make sure that they're ready for all of our students. And so it's going to be a great opening of school and I'm really, really excited to be a part of it. So thank you very much. That's all. That's all I have. That was like two minutes.

I timed you. Okay, you were just under three minutes. I didn't get the buzzer. We love Mauricio, but he, yeah, it went on for a while. You're doing great. Great start. All right, yeah. All right, well, thank you, Mr. Cabral. We are all very excited to have you on board and are looking forward to great things in the future. We will move on to superintendent's recommendations. Okay.

I'll take that.

Yeah.

Okay. Good evening. Tonight you have copies of the board's initial proposal for re-opener negotiations with the Redlands Teachers Association and Redlands Education Support Professionals Association for the 23-24 school year. The public hearing on the board's proposals will be at the August 8, 2023 Board of Education meeting. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Up next, we are up to business services consent items. Mr. Hill, do you have any changes or additions to human resources action items?

President, we have one change. I'm going to remove item F under the action item. We are moving item F, which is adopt resolution number six, to its own facilities corporation meeting, which will occur right after this one.

Okay, can I get a motion to approve items 13A, consent items B through Z without item F? Correct?

So moved.

Okay, thank you Alex, thank you Michelle.

Correction.

Sorry, that's sorry, my bad, okay. Okay. So that was, where am I? I'm lost now. Action. Okay.

Carrie Ann, do you want to clarify?

Okay, sorry. All right, is there a motion to approve items 13A, consent items B through Z? My apologies.

So moved.

Thank you, Alex. Any discussion? Okay, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, chair votes aye and so ordered. Sorry about that. All right, going on to action. All right, adopt resolution number 1, 2023-2024, resolution of the Redlands Unified School District Community Facilities District number 2001-1, establishing an annual special tax for fiscal year 2023-2024. Can I have a motion?

Move to adopt the resolution number one.

All right, thank you Jim, thank you Alex. Any discussion? All right, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, chair votes aye and so ordered. Item B, adopt resolution number 2, 2023-2024, resolution of the Redlands Unified School District Community Facilities District number 2006-1, establishing annual special tax for the fiscal year 2023-2024. Thank you, Michelle.

Second. Jim got it.

Yeah, I think Jim got that one. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye and so ordered. Item C, adopt resolution number 3, 2023-2024, resolution of the Redlands Unified School District Community Facilities District number 2016-1, establishing annual special tax for the fiscal year 2023-2024. Can I have a motion for that please?

So moved.

Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Michelle. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye and so ordered. Item D, adopt resolution number 4, 2023-2024, resolution of the Redlands Unified School District Community Facilities, district number 2021-1, establishing annual special tax for fiscal year 2023-2024. Moved. Thank you, Michelle. Thank you, Jim. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye and so ordered. Item E, adopt resolution number 5, 2023-2024 with Redlands Unified School District authorizing the execution and delivery of a ground lease. A lease agreement, a trust agreement, a certificate purchase agreement, and a continuing disclosure agreement with respect to the execution and delivery of Redlands Unified School District certificate of participation. 2023 warehouse kitchen and meeting facilities financing. Authorizing the execution and delivery of such certificates evidencing principle in an aggregate amount of not to exceed $25 million. Authorize Jason Hill, Assistant Superintendent, Business Services, to sign on behalf of the board. Can I have a motion, please?

Move to approve. Second.

All right, well, I think you initially got that, but we'll give it to Jim and he will get the second. Any discussion? All right, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye and so ordered. Item F was struck from this meeting. Item G, adopt revisions to the annual proposed budget for the 2023-2024 fiscal year.

Moved.

Second. Thank you, Alex. Thank you, Michelle. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye and so ordered. Moving on to consent items under educational services. Dr. Wagner, do you have any changes or additions?

Thank you, President Aielecattara. No changes or additions.

Thank you. Can I have a motion to approve item 15A, consent items B through E?

So moved.

Thank you, Alex. Can I get a second? Okay. Thank you, Michelle. Any discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye and so ordered. Moving on to educational services action items, we only have one item this evening. Is there a motion to take consent item 16A? So moved. Second. All right, thank you Alex, thank you Jim. Any discussion? All those in favor, say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye and so ordered. Moving on to consent items under human resources, Dr. Robinson Phillips, do you have any changes or additions?

I have no changes or additions this evening, thank you.

Okay, thank you. Is there a motion to approve item 17A, consent items B through BA?

Move to approve.

Second. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Michelle. Any discussion? All right, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Chair votes aye and so ordered. There are no human resources action items, so at this time I would like to report out from closed session. In regards to the public employee employment part of the agenda, I would like to report the following. In closed session, the board took action to appoint Jeffrey Ray to the position of coordinator for special education effective July 24, 2023 at step four of the management team salary schedule. With the following vote, Ayala Quintero, O'Neill, Redler, Vara, voting aye. Is Mr. Ray here? Thank you. Did you bring anybody with you tonight? South Great, thank you. Okay, see there are no discussion items this evening. So we will move on to public participation. We just have the one card, okay. Let me jump to. This is the time that any member of the public may address the board on anything that falls under the jurisdiction of the Board of Education. Provided the person submits a completed registration card to the clerk of the board or his or her designee prior to public participation. This is not meant to be a debating period. Complaints and problems related to policy matters will be referred to the superintendent. The person wishing to address the board shall, when recognized by the chairperson of the board, step up to the podium, microphone, and announce their name. The chairperson shall limit the amount of time which a member of the public may use in addressing the board to three minutes, unless the chairperson or majority of the board determines that a different limit is appropriate. I'm just going to make a note that there were no emails this evening, so Mr. Blatchley, it's all you.

Good evening, board members, superintendent, cabinet. I'm Paul Blatchley. I live in trustee area five, and I'm here addressing you as a concerned high school parent. So a couple years ago, we had this thing called COVID, and we introduced the idea of distance learning. And with that came these tools that we were using at the time for somebody who was at home. And I'm going to specifically talk about ingenuity. since Edgenuity is what's being used in summer school. So I don't know if Edgenuity is the best way to deliver curriculum. I'm actually kind of surprised as a parent that the high school in summer school is still using Edgenuity. You just had the Redlands Teacher Association President say that teachers are teaching summer school. Well, the teachers who are in classes where the curriculum's being delivered by edgenuity are not teaching, right? They're just there to open up quizzes and they're doing a little bit of grading, right? Because there's writing that goes on in the class. If ingenuity is a great way to deliver curriculum, then let's just use it all the time, right, and forget about delivering curriculum with teachers teaching classes, right? Also, I appreciate the response I got on the library issues that I brought up previously. It's great that the library makes available through the tools that they use to manage the library books, the ability to go and search stuff, but it's a little clunky. It's not very user friendly. It's not very good. It's not a great way to be able to really go in there. and see everything that's happening in the library. So it'd be great if the district could make available through a link on the district website or a link on each individual school website the ability to download a file with the school name, the title of the book, the author of the book, or the authors of the book and the year that it was published. If somebody had that information available to them, a full list, then you could use online tools to go in and analyze what's going on in the contents of the school libraries. And I think that would be much more helpful to parents than, you know, having to go look up individual books and having to go out of the tool and get back into it. It's just not very user friendly. That's it.

Thank you, Mr. Baschi. Okay, we are on to board member comments. I will start with Michelle.

Actually, I just hope everyone's having a great summer and getting ready for the new school year. It's the first time I really don't have a report, so have a great summer.

Ken, what is Edgenuity? Is that like an independent study summer school program?

Yeah, basically. I mean, Edgenuity is an online platform that we use mostly for credit recovery classes. Sometimes we do it for original credit. It is A through G approved through College Board, but we use it in a variety of settings. In general, during the regular school year, our RISE program, our independent study program, sometimes the academy will use it for some classes also. our curriculum department Kind of reviews which classes are ones that we'll use and which ones we won't use and it's got a lot of options with it The teachers can use to either use some of the curriculum some content others It relies on a teacher monitoring process to go through and use that platform It's kind of there's other platforms out there. It's just one of the ones that we use here in Redlands and

And so then we use that program to ensure that we have more students able to take the class to finish a summer school course that they need to make up.

I mean, our summer school access is way higher now than it used to be, so we do have a lot more students that do have credit recovery needs accessing summer school. But again, during the regular school year for zero, seventh period, we have students accessing it that way too. It's more self-paced, so students are enrolled for a period of time. They're expected to do a period of time, but when they finish the course, they're finished. So some students that work on it rigorously at home. are able to proceed through courses faster sometimes than students that just use the class time to do that.

Thank you. Thank you. Well, first of all, I want to know who's responsible for that monitor. The whole district. Wow, what a great idea. It worked out great. So thank you for that. It's just so convenient to look up there and watch the presentation and keep an eye. Yeah, good. And during baseball playoffs, no one will really know that we're sneaking a peek at the, you'll know. Picture in picture is four. I wanted to do a shout out to our maintenance crews. As a Kiwanian, I volunteered at the 4th of July celebration there at Moore Middle School, and we had a beverage booth there to raise money for scholarships. I'm telling you that Moore sparkled. It looked great. It was a great venue. It was a welcoming place. I just love that our community is there to utilize our facilities and have it looking so nice and the crowd was very well behaved. We made a lot of money for scholarships, so that was all good. The crew there at Moore, it was Jorge and Andrew, also helped us. They just volunteered to help us move the drinks to the Kiwanis booth and everything. And I know Joe and his crew were out there cleaning up before getting rid of all the sticker bushes and stuff on the banks and everything. It was awesome, thank you for that. And I don't know if people were not able to see the 4th of July celebration, but it was a spectacular show. I mean, it would be the envy of any city to have a fireworks display that was put on by the 4th of July committee there, so. I was very proud to be there and proud of our district to be part of that, so well done everybody. And yeah, I hope your summer's going well. I was talking to a couple teachers just today and I just happened to mention what were they going to be doing in three weeks. And the look on their face was three weeks, that's all we got left. So time really goes fast and starting school. in summer really it just uh it's so different but you know they're they just like any good long vacation it has a maturity date and you can't wait to get back and i hope everybody is starting to feel the sense of urgency to get back to work and be with kids so thank you for that thank you okay we're gonna go back to mr bar he wasn't quite done

I just remembered something. So Juan, at the last board meeting, we approved you being here, but I want to officially welcome you to Redlands Unified School District and being on our board and being our superintendent. Congratulations again and welcome.

I don't have much, I just want to thank RTA for hosting the retirement dinner and inviting us. It was a wonderful event. I want to thank everybody that had anything to do with graduation because it's not just. A few people, it's everybody. So I want to thank everybody that attended and I want to congratulate all our graduates and our upcoming seniors. I know I have one and it's going to be busy. But I also want to just wish everybody a great summer. Oh, and thank everybody for letting me crash the administrative events. It was great, I love Dr. Betters, she's fantastic, and I'll listen to her speak anytime. But yeah, that's it, just enjoy what's left of our summer, even though it's, according to Mr. O'Neill, it's only three weeks left, so thank you for that. We are going to adjourn this board meeting, but we have one more quick meeting, so I'm not going to let you guys go just yet, just ten more minutes, and I promise we'll be done. But I'll adjourn this meeting at 813. Alright.