Board of Education — January 9, 2024

I'd like to call this meeting to order at 608. Thank you for coming tonight. Let's get started with the Pledge of Allegiance. Everybody please stand. Put 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.

Now be seated. Okay, we're gonna take roll at this time. Melissa.

Present.

Michelle. Present.

Patty.

Present. And Alex, myself, I'm present. Okay, is there a motion to approve the minutes of the October 20, I'm sorry, is there a motion to approve the minutes?

Okay.

October 24, hold on. October 24th, 23 regular board meeting, November 14th, 20- 23 and December 5th, and then December 12th.

Moved. Second.

Um, second. Thank you. So, um, Ms. Patty first, Michelle seconded. Any discussion? no question all those in favor say aye aye aye aye chair votes aye and so ordered moving on to public participation this section of the agenda is meant for any member of the public to address the board on anything that falls under the jurisdiction of the board of education just so the public knows we went ahead and rearranged the public comment we're going to be doing the public comments and any agenda items at the beginning of the board meeting so Um, 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 address the board, uh, 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 for the board's consideration. 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 his or her name. 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. three minutes unless the chairperson or majority of the board determines that a different, uh, limit is appropriate. So we have Mr. Blatchley come on down. And I guess we're gonna give you six minutes since you wanna comment on an agenda item and community input.

Good evening board members, Superintendent Cabral, cabinet. My name is Paul Blatchley. I live in trustee area 5 and I'm addressing you as a concerned high school parent. So on the agenda items I just wanted to address the Williams complaint related agenda items. When you have an agenda item where you're rewriting a policy, it would be helpful if you're going to completely strike out the previous version of the policy and essentially rewrite it. It would be helpful for the public to understand why you're doing that. When I see you reword things because people have trouble with the nature of words these days, It's easy to tell, OK, yeah, I know why you're doing this, right? But when you're completely rewriting, now I have to try and read both and see what are they changing. The other thing is on the Williams complaint reporting. So you have this complaint from East Valley High School, which is not anonymous, right? It came from me. And I did it because, number one, all the Williams complaints were all zero going back in time. And I did this one anonymously because I'm going to complain again, and next time I'm going to put my name on it, and I'm going to see if there's a difference between an anonymous complaint and how it's treated and a complaint that comes from an individual person that you have to respond to. I complained about the restrooms, and I got the response that I honestly expected from the district, basically saying, hey, we got your complaint. We looked into it. Everything's fine. So one of the things that I wanted to point out is that in my complaint, I talked about the hand dryers being functional. And that didn't necessarily mean that they blow air out. There's a function for the hand dryers, and that's to dry your hands. So however they've been calibrated, whatever brand you've purchased and installed, it doesn't function to dry a person's hands. That's the problem with it, not that it doesn't work. And the other thing is that this is going to be an ongoing thing. When you talk about keeping the restroom stocked throughout the school day, It's something that has to be addressed repeatedly. So now I'm going to have to turn in another Williams complaint because the restrooms are not stocked, right? So it says, hey, we're doing our job, but I can tell you, and I wasn't in the restroom in Building G, but the women's restroom in Building G, either the soap dispenser is empty or the soap dispenser does not work. Right? So I don't know what you have to do to keep up with it, but you need to do more, right? So that's it for the agenda items. So the community input thing that I wanted to talk about was I received this letter and I received a bunch of these letters and I consider them to be nasty grams from the district. And the letter is to inform me of my students tardiness to class. Right, so my student was tardy period three once, period four once, period five once, and period six twice. So five times. So if your student is tardy, five or more days unexcused, we're going to send you this nasty gram. And it says excessive absence in tardies lead to loss of valuable learning time, which jeopardizes The success in school, it says I am concerned, but obviously it came from the school. So the school's concerned that this kind of attendance pattern, if allowed to continue, may cause social and academic problems for my student. So my student's a straight A student. So obviously, this time that was missed wasn't impactful to their learning. It says, I know you share our concern and that you want the best possible education experience for your child. So I don't necessarily share your concern, right? Because your concern is about money. My concern is about what value is my kid getting by being in class. And if I wanted the best educational experience for my child, and I had the money, I would pay for a private school. I wouldn't have my kid registered in the Redlands Unified School District. So it says the school's going to be monitoring my students' attendance closely. And if this irregular attendance pattern continues, we'll be contacting you to schedule a conference. So be on notice. As a parent, I don't like these notifications. So they're sent out without context in terms of you're not thinking about why you're sending this out and who you're sending it to and what the circumstance is. You're just sending it out because the person had these many, and so I got to send the notice out. So I don't appreciate it. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Candy Olson. And then after Candy, it will be Michael Pazner.

Hello. Thanks for the opportunity. After appealing the principal's decision not to remove tricks from the school libraries, we received the final denial by this district last week. The committee did not believe that the descriptions were overly graphic and were intended to bring awareness for human sexual trafficking experience. That was the intention. Also, quote, the book is written as a clear condemnation of sexual exploitation, end quote. Now, you can tell me the passage that I read if you think that it's condemnation or glorification. Quote, also, it is a responsibility of parents to make informed decisions about what their children should read or not read. Well, isn't that interesting? Quote, it's important to recognize that it is not the role of the school nor the library to make those decisions for every family. Again, you are absolutely correct. That is right. So you're doing the opposite, actually, of what you're saying. saying, oh, you can request that your child doesn't read a certain book. You guys don't even know what's in your library. You think a parent knows? Oh my, that's so crazy. And one of the best of all times is, it's no more descriptive than what students have access to via the cellular devices. Okay. Really? So you think that because a kid can get dope on the street and they can go prostitute, it's okay. So is that okay in the school? You can access drugs on the internet, anything on their cellular devices. So if that's the standard, then just all hail to the wind, right? You think it's okay. So that logic doesn't make any sense. This community is so horrified by these books, you guys. While I'm knocking on doors and talking, we pull up my website, we review this explicit content along with your excuse letters. Your neighbors are not happy with you. I'll tell you that, they're not, the majority. From Tricks, page 484, here you go, describes a high school boy prostituting himself to a 40 year old man. You ever seen a ramrod like Dan's? I close my eyes and I try not to gag at the taste of lubricant, trying not to choke on the thrusts against my throat. He reaches down behind my thighs. Look how hard he is. He presses up against me. I brace as he pauses. Do you think it'll hurt? Let's see. He pushes, only a little, a test. Yes, I'm afraid it might. And after Dan, nothing else will do. Pain, oh my, nothing else has ever hurt this bad. I tense, I beg him to stop. But he doesn't stop, he doesn't slow. I can't take it. Pressure, pressure, deep, oh. Nothing else has ever felt so good. No matter what, I won't. This isn't me, but I do. And when I do, it's over the top. Now, does that sound to you like it's condemnation? No. It sounds like it's glorification. Having sex and pedophilia and anal sex is being glorified. Get it out of the libraries, you guys.

Thanks.

We have Michael Paisner. And then after that is Jeanette Wilson. Janetta Wilson

Hello, my name's Michael Paysner. I watched last meeting and just had a couple of comments on what was presented. You provided some new guidance on public comments. I just want to say thank you for that. Obviously, the intention of your guidance was to reduce some of the politics, reduce some of the drama. Maybe cut down on the stunts we see at these public comments, but We can hope. Obviously, that's not making a dent in that area. You also provided a review of the book review policy. And I wanted to thank you for that. I think that policy is great. It allows parents to express their concern. But kids don't lose access to books unless it's really warranted and it goes through a thorough review. So I like that policy that you outlined last time. There is one issue that you highlighted yourself and that is the cost. The staff deserves compensation for the time to review those books and with the number of reviewers and the time, that cost can add up and you don't have budget allocated for the review policy. But there is an obvious solution for that. The obvious solution is let the person requesting the review pay for it. If the review is valid and the book is pulled, they shouldn't be charged anything. But if it was just a waste of time, then the person making the review should have to pay for it. This is going to have a couple of positive benefits. Most of the time, the reviews are going to be covered. You yourself only said one book was actually pulled. So the rest of the time, the person requesting the review should have to pay for it. It's also going to cut down on frivolous requests, because knowing that they're going to have to pay for it, people aren't going to make that many requests. And finally, it promotes personal responsibility. If you're wasting other people's time, you should pay the price for that. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Janetta Wilson, and then after that it's Belinda Sunny.

Hi, my name is Jeanette Wilson and I wanted to Explain some things. I've been coming to these meetings, along with other concerned parents, for a few years now. And my goal has been to speak out to help protect the innocence of children, to perhaps improve policies and procedures. As you know, the book policy, for example, I believe was developed in 1995. And as a licensed clinical social worker for 35 years, I have a lot of knowledge and I've had responsibility for the safety and healthy development of children. And I've had concerns. I've given some great suggestions. These have gone pretty much unacknowledged and fallen on deaf ears. I've read books and gone to meet with the principal. And the principal hasn't even read the book. So I'm not sure what the meeting is for except to say, I got your complaint, which that could be done through an email. So the practice of enforcing the policy is not working well, I can tell you that. Anyway, I feel there's been quite a bit, I've been met with quite a bit of indifference, and I just want to remind you that on the other side of indifference could be a child at risk. And hearing our input and our ideas, in my opinion, should be met with concern and Gratitude that we are going through these efforts to provide helpful input Rather than being met with indifference, you know when parents want to be involved they want Transparency they want to be informed and they want communication and dialogue and to just be able to stand here and talk and not have any of that come back and is very, very frustrating to parents in this community. And just like, for example, the Williams complaint policy, it states that the form doesn't have to be used. Well, if the form isn't used, is the complaint counted? Is it reported in the quarterly report? Because to have four complaints in a quarter from all these schools and all these parents seems very low, four complaints. And so these are some of the reasons I've decided to run for school board, area four, to try to help give parents a voice, listen to them, and explain what we can and can't do, and add a lot more transparency to this school district. Thank you.

Linda Sunny. And then Felipe Alberto.

Good evening to all. My name is Belinda Sunny. I am here tonight to speak in regards to the Education Code, titled Political Activities of School Officers and Employees, codes 7050 through 7058. So in between the 7050 and 7058 is code 7054. This is the code. that this board is using an attempt to justify silencing any dissension or political speech. In Vaca versus Moreno Valley, speech was silenced...

I'm sorry, we could barely hear you. Could you get the mic closer? Thank you.

In Vaca versus Moreno Valley, speech was silenced like you've done and the board was wrong. Once again, this board attempts to silence concerned parents' voices. Again, this board is failing as a whole. Also, this board is being deceitful, devious, and trying to apply this code to us. Our voices will continue to be heard. Amen.

Congratulations. Felipe Alberto. And then we have Susan McLaren.

This person has threatened me in the past. I don't feel comfortable, this person here. Thank you, officer. Can you please recite 250? Thank you. Hello, Redlands school board members. I am Phillip Albertone, Area 5 resident, and my child attends elementary school at Redlands Unified. I came here today to show my support and solidarity to the school board's commitment to diversity and inclusion, and to alert the community that our Redlands public schools are under attack. Local radiologist Dr. Dale Broom, who some of his associates are present here today, has donated almost half a million dollars to promote the diversion of public money to private schools. Make him one of the largest donors in California. His donation almost single handedly funded a failed push to put a measure on the ballot that would defund our public schools, including Redlands Unified. And that's what these people want. Dr. Broom and his associates called the California Public School curriculum an American, which, according to him, includes global warming, social justice, atheism, critical race theory, LGBTQ, and evolution. Dr. Broom already made clear the kind of school he expects, one that does not teach evolution, does not teach science, does not teach social and emotional learning. His plans and his associates is to literally take money.

Go ahead, continue. There's no defamation.

I took him to court.

Do me a favor. Can you just be quiet? Because if not, I'm going to have you removed.

Thank you. Can I have a few minutes, a few seconds?

At the end, just go ahead.

Thank you. Dr. Broom already made clear the kind of schools he expects. One that does not teach evolution, does not teach science, does not teach social and emotional learning. His plan is to literally take money out of our already underfunded public schools and give them to private schools. Private schools never cater to working families. They are for profit after all. And they cater to parents who can afford their services. Public schooling is the only way to achieve equality and justice for all, not only those who can afford private schools. I'm proud to live in a community that values all Redlands families, and not only the ones who live in Smiley Heights. Thank you.

Thank you. All right, next, we're going to go to our student trustee reports. Tonight, we have a student trustee from Orange Wood High School joining us. Christian, would you like to give us an update? No. Oh, I'm sorry. Was there?

I thought that was it.

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry before Christian. Susan McLaren. Oh, McCleary? Sorry about that. All right, then you're going to go next, Christian.

Good evening. I'm Susan McCarley. There's an old proverb that says, when the godly are in authority, the people rejoice. But when the wicked are in power, they groan. I'm here to address the library books that have not been removed from the library. From UNICEF, exposure to pornography at a young age may lead to poor mental health, sexism and objectification, sexual violence and other negative outcomes. Among other risks, when children view pornography that portrays abusive and misogynistic acts, they may come to view such behavior as normal and acceptable. from the College of American Pediatricians. Pornography may be defined as the depiction of erotic behavior, sexual display in pictures or writing that is intended to cause sexual excitement in the viewer. Pornography use has grown in part because it is accessible in our school libraries. Sexual predators have purposely exposed young children to pornography for the purpose of grooming, the children for sexual exploitation. Pornography exposure on older adolescents and young adults shows that males show increased callousness toward women, consider the crime of rape less serious, and become more interested in more extreme and deviant forms of pornography. Teenage sexting has been linked with pornography exposure. The production of pornography is considered a form of sex trafficking as defined by the United Nations. As pornography becomes more accepted, society becomes hyper-sexualized, increasing the demand for sex trafficked women and children. An article in JAMA Psychiatry shows neural changes in the brains of pornography uses are like those changes seen in the brains of those addicted to cocaine, alcohol, and methamphetamines. Because of its harmfulness to children, adolescents, and young adults, pornography must never be used as a tool to teach children human sexuality. Exposing children to pornography should be forbidden as it violates boundaries and beliefs around body, sexual development, and intimate relationships, as does direct sexual abuse on their body. The survivor risks reenacting or engaging in similar criminal behaviors. Please remove the pornographic books from our libraries so that these things don't happen to our children. Thank you.

All right, student trustee report. Go ahead, Christian.

My first school that I have is from eAcademy. They just had their awesome winter concert that I heard went really well. And they put up tons of signs all over school. So it's going to be really cool walking around, seeing all their awesome new signs. And soon, they'll be having their knowledge fair coming up. So maybe we can geek out, learn more. At REV, six of their band students were elected to perform at the All-County Honors Band. And it's coming up February 10th, so good luck to them. They're going to do good. And REV's librarian, Miss Caron, will be recognized with the California School Library Association President's Award this annual conference later this month. So I'm really excited for her, too. I'm sure REV is really proud of her. And this semester, Rev got a new assistant principal. Miss Carious, did I say it right? Correct. Thank you. So I'm sure Rev is welcoming her in with open arms. At Redlands High School, they're having their basketball game for the girls' team coming up this Friday. It's going to be the first one since they come back from the break. And ROTC is going to be selling different concessions. So if you stop by, buy a thing or two, see the game. I know the girls are going to slam dunk and win the competition. And over the break, Redlands High School, Rev, and CV went to London. Here it was an incredible time. They went over December 28. Saw many historic sites, like Windsor Castle, Oxford University, and Elizabeth Tower. That's where Big Ben is. They had a bunch of fun. And I hear that over 500,000 people saw them live. And 300 million saw it televised. So to everyone in the bands, we're proud of you. You guys did awesome. And then for Orangewood, we have boys basketball season starting up now. Tryouts are this week. So I know we're going to do good too. Avid trips are coming up. We have tons of different field trips for different colleges, but also community events. So our most recent, we're going to be going to Silver Motors in like a month. That's going to be really fun. We had two students who really wanted to learn about automotive and all that. And our Avid class always works in a way where everyone can kind of get their voice heard, and then we can kind of tailor field trips to them, which is so cool. So I'm so glad that we get to do that for them and go on this awesome trip. We're planting a community garden soon, working with eAcademy on that, because we want to build our connection to our community. I think it's going to be really good. And we're having a blood drive January 23rd, so if any of you guys want to donate blood, if you can, we'd love some more support. Our student mural is still getting made. We have a couple nominees for who's going to be painting our dragon wings. We're hoping to have a cool Instagram shot where you can take pictures with it. And then for the Rubathon, just learned that this year is going to be our biggest year yet. We're going to have 24 other high schools joining in February 3. Hope we take the gold again this year. That's all I have. CV couldn't. Oh. February 3.

That's the Rube Goldberg, right? Yes.

CV couldn't make it today because they're out in India right now. But they're going to be here next month. So they'll have lots to talk about. Thank you.

Christian, do you know what the silver motors is? If you can expand on that, if you know.

So far, all I've told is that it's going to be learning about how cars are built, manufactured. So next week, we're actually going to be taking in-depth, taking notes about what's going on. But we got a bunch of new AVID kids. So right now, we're just kind of towing them how AVID works. Next week, we're going to be going all in-depth.

Anybody have any comments, questions? No. All right. So moving on to board committee reports. Does anyone have anything they would like to report?

I have something from the Cultural Arts Commission. I attended the meeting from Melissa last night. She was unable to go. They had discussion about their commissioner task list and subcommittees just trying to do some housekeeping stuff. Questions were asked by the commission to city staff as to why things take so long to be approved, such as the art sculptures that are being put up around the city. Also, a local artist, Frank Samaro, was introduced. He wants to be involved in the community by restoring murals and paintings and doing new ones around the schools. He'd like to work with the districts and all of our schools to help spruce up some of our older murals or paint some new ones. And I have his card here for you, so I'll pass that over to you. The next meeting of the Cultural Arts Commission is March 11th, so write that down. And that's all I have, nothing for compacts and nothing for rep because those meetings are later this week.

Any other reports? Nope. Alrighty. On to board member comments. Sure. Patty?

Just want to wish everyone a happy and a healthy 2024 and it's good to see all of you back. Thank you.

Just want to welcome everybody back to school. I hope you all had a wonderful break with your families and that students are healthy and eager to resume their academics and extracurricular activities for the next semester. I hope our teachers and support staff are well rested and that they enjoy time with their families as well. I want to send a thank you out to Cindy Van Horn and the teachers and parents who helped her all year long with the special education students. And a special thanks to those and congratulations to those students in the Inspire choirs across our district for their wonderful winter concerts. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing you all sing your hearts out. If you haven't been to one of those concerts, it just pulls at your heartstrings. You should go listen. It was a pleasure to meet with all our student trustees yesterday evening hearing their perspectives on issues that we're facing and listening to discussions on what needs attention in our schools. From a student's point of view, it was enlightening to me. And there was a lot of discussion about the bathrooms at all the schools, so. We need to follow up on all that. And I just want to thank Jim for including me in that. We have a great group of student trustees this year. I'm looking forward to a great second half of the year, going to events and school sites to witness the terrific things that are happening for and by our students. I want to remind everyone that we have a superintendent's awards program next Tuesday, the 16th. It's at CV at 5.30. And if you have not been to one of the award nights, I strongly encourage you to go. and see how truly amazing all our students are. And that's all I have, just welcome back.

Thank you. Melissa, nothing to report. I wanted to talk about tardies since Mr. Blatchley brought it up. And as an educator, as a teacher at the secondary level and elementary level, First instruction is very important and it normally occurs within the first 15 to 25 minutes because the rest of the time it's independent work and then after the independent work we assess what the students have learned. Imagine if you have a school size of a 2,000 students and you have each child tardy six times You you end up with approximately 12,000 tardies So the letters that are sent out are normally just generated after a certain number of tardies just to keep you aware of What's happening, you know with with tardies and as a as a teacher like I said the I would prefer if all of my students made it to class on time because if I'm teaching a new lesson and you end up coming, you know, let's say 10 minutes late, you've already missed 10 minutes of my instruction, then I have to make sure to go back and catch you up on it and then that disrupts, you know, the rest of the flow for the class. So the letters that are sent out are only as a courtesy to parents to let them know about incidents that are occurring because The first instruction, like I said, is extremely important. Other than that, I just want to wish everybody a happy new year and hopefully everybody has set their resolutions and goals for 2024. I'm going to try and work out and stay a little bit more healthy this coming new year. So next, we have a superintendent's report, Mr. Juan.

Thank you. That's a good goal, Mr. Barra, to stay healthy for 2024. Happy New Year to everyone. Excited for another calendar year. Love hearing from our student. Christian, you always do a great job. It's really good to see you all the time. Have a great semester. And to our other student trustees who are here, have a great semester. A lot of wonderful things going on. Our kids went to London over break. How do I sign up for that? I saw a lot of pictures. If you haven't seen the pictures of that, that must have been a wonderful event. I had some parents reach out also and who were able to go and they had a wonderful experience also. I want to say thank you to Ms. Gail Howard. I participated in the prayer walk last Friday with many community members and that was a very good event to be a part of. We hear a lot about Redlands being a family, and that was definitely one of the events that was very clear to me why that is so. And so, Ms. Howard, thank you for that. As Chief Tolbert participated, it was just a really good event to be at. Dr. Sabine and I were there, and it was good to be there, so thank you. Um, Williams Act, uh, I- I- I wanna make sure that, uh, we know, uh, in this, uh, agenda, we do have five complaints that were resolved, um, and those are specifically s- uh, stated in- in the agenda and the attachments. I know that it's a topic that comes up a lot in public comments Which I appreciate and I do feel like if we want to dive deeper into the process of Williams Act complaints I recommend that we you know, take that route. I think it would be good refresher Also, with respect to public comments and education code 7054, really the key there is at the podium, urging support or non-support of a particular candidate. or political issue is what is not allowed. And that really doesn't mean that a person can't come up to the podium and talk about an issue that they feel strongly about or that they support, you know, not having certain books, things like that. It just means you're not supposed to urge the support specifically or non-support of any specific candidate. And that's for any political office. Um, what is probably more local and coming up in the next couple of months that's gonna be very important for our school district is board candidates. That's gonna be what, uh, we're gonna be hearing about a lot and that is what education code 7054. Also, when it comes to profanity at the podium, when you look at our public comment sheet, it doesn't mean that you can't read a book that has profanity if that's a point that you want to make. That's not what that means. It means that if it's going to be profanity that is going to be disruptive or profanity that is geared towards a passionate against somebody or a topic, then that is something that we may ask you to not use that profanity or to stop talking. And so I just want to kind of point out the distinct differences so that there's some clarity. There's some articles that have been written in the community news that maybe are contradictory to what I just explained. And so I just want to – and if there's any other clarity that we need, I invite anybody to have a discussion with me so that we can all get on the same page on what we're attempting to do. I believe that's it. Thank you so much for the time, sir.

Thank you. Before we get to a presentation, I want to do a presentation of my own, and I'm going to step up to the podium to do this presentation, though. All right. Oh, there it goes. There we go. There we go. I'm only going to take three minutes since I'm up here at the podium. At this time, I just want to give a sincere appreciation to Melissa Ayala Quintero for being a board president. Last year, you did an outstanding job. We appreciate everything that you have done to bring us together and all the extra meetings. the extra meetings and the extra places that you went and you visited and you've done an outstanding job and we just, you know, wish you the best and we want to thank you and token of appreciation from the board and from the school district. We want to present you with a sincere appreciation to Melissa Yala Quintero, President, Board of Education December 2022 to December 2023. So come on up.

Well, this was a surprise. I didn't realize you guys could all keep a secret this well. I very much appreciate this. It was definitely a rough year. It takes, there is a learning curve to it. And I want to thank you all for your support, Carrie Ann, Christine, Juan, Sabine, Jason, Ken, all the board, even our student representatives, even having cheerleaders is fantastic. So thank you guys. Thank you for all of this. I really appreciate it.

all right now we're on to uh presentations um redlands unified school district audit report uh id bailey llp royce townsend

All right, well, thank you so much for having me here this evening. So I just want to present to you your audited financial statements as of June 30th, 2023. And I'm not sure if you've had an opportunity to look through all 104 pages of that audit reports quite a bit. But in a nutshell, there's just a couple pages in that audit report that I think are really important from a board's perspective to review on that annual basis. One is the summary of auditor's results, and the second one is the schedule of financial trends. So the summary of auditor's results basically just recaps the outcome of the audit. And for your audit, we're looking at three specific areas. The financial statements. Then we're also looking at the federal awards that you received and how those are expended. And lastly, the state compliance and how those monies are expended as well. The highest level of assurance that the audit can present to you is an unmodified opinion. Anything other than that. Well, you probably want to ask why that's the case. So to summarize the outcome of the audit, as it relates to the financial statements, we are providing you an unmodified opinion. We did not identify any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies of internal controls that support those numbers within the financial statements. As it relates to the federal awards, Again, the auditor's opinion is unmodified. This year we had to look at three major federal programs. Those are federal programs that expend over a certain threshold. Again, we did not identify any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies of both internal controls or compliance. Lastly, as it relates to the state awards, it's probably close to 40 programs that we have to look at. Again, an unmodified opinion. with no material weaknesses identified. So that's certainly the outcome that you want to hear. As it relates to the schedule of financial trends, I said there was two pages in there. This really is a page that summarizes the information, the only place where you have historical information. Important trends that I think you as a governing board need to focus on is that you have deficit spend one of the past three years. You're projected to deficit spend in the current year. Your ADA, average daily attendance, has declined, and that is your funding source. And as a result, available reserves have declined as well. So those are the things that, from a governing board's perspective, I think you need to just be aware of.

And that summarizes the outcome, and I'm here for any questions you may have.

Thank you, Mr. Townsend. Do any of you have any questions? Nope. All right, thank you very much.

All right, we'll enjoy the rest of your evening.

All right, you too. Next we have Jamie Quartz here to give us an innovative update. Jamie.

Good evening board members, Superdental Brawl, cabinet and guests. It's been almost a year since my last technology update, so I'm excited to catch you all up to speed on technology here in the school district. And I just want to start by saying it's definitely my honor to present on behalf of many educators and technologists in this district that have helped to make all of this that I'm going to be sharing with you happen. So let's start with in technology, there's educational technology and information technology. So we're going to start with ed technology and innovation. So for student usage and teacher usage, did you know that in the school district, there is on average 33,000 files created daily? And of those 33,000 files daily, 30,000 of them are shared. So that's collaboration and file sharing and creation that did not occur prior to our efforts. Google Classroom, 16,000 weekly users, 3,900 Google Classrooms created in the school district. And that's not just teachers. That's counselors. That's administrators. That's district office creating Google classrooms to share information. For Chromebooks, 21,000 daily users. Now you may ask, we don't even have 21,000 students in the school district. That also includes Chromebooks that actually go home for home use for students who don't have computers or technology at home. So 21,000 Chromebooks in use daily. I'd like to put this up. The number is zero. That was the number of usage in 2016, 2017. That was the year that we were pre-Google, pre-Google Classroom, pre-Chromebook, Pre-one-to-one at high school, all of our student reps have their own Chromebook, hopefully, that you can take home and bring to school. Pre-take-home pilot for those students who don't have technology at home, who do now. And pre-WIFI in all buildings. These are all things that we just take for granted that we have every day and we don't even think about. So let's talk about innovation in the elementary schools. These represent lessons and PD topics that our innovation teachers have supported. You can see the bulk of them fall under Lego education. Last year, we learned that we have three Lego ambassadors, national Lego ambassadors. That's out of 80 in the whole country. Heavy on coding, and you can see it's digital citizenship and 3D design is also creeping up in our school district. We broke that down by lessons and PD topics supported by grade level. And you can see that there's actual pretty equal distribution of strategies and support among grade levels. You even see ELO creeping up. So a lot of technology and instructional tech there in ELO opportunities. For elementary innovation support personnel, they've completed, just in the first semester of school, 16 whole school PDs, 23 small group PDs, and 112 co-teaching lessons. So that's a massive amount of support going into building the STEAM and innovation program in the school district. This is a really wild chart. And to help our board members, I gave you a really nice placemat version. What this really illustrates – and you can kind of just see visually without really even seeing the actual things on the left-hand side – is the schools, the elementary schools up top. So you see Arroyo, Bryn Mawr, Crafton, and so forth going across the top. And on the left-hand side, you can see the STEAM, coding, and technology programs that are at each school. Now when we set out for RUSD 2025 in the 2017-2018 school year, that was zero. that would have represented zero. Nothing was checked off at any of the schools. So you can see that the opportunities for all kids at all schools are growing. So on the left-hand side, you'll see things like code.org, codable, dash and dots, just all – legal education, z-space, just things that are growing, being developed, provided, and supported for schools. And you can see that at every elementary school in the there are things checked off, multiple things. So that's pretty exciting. 2016-2017, as I mentioned, that was zero. Pre-innovation lab. There's an innovation lab at just about every elementary school in the district. Updated 21st century libraries at every high school and middle school. We didn't have any in 2016, 2017. Pre-coding programs, pre-Steven innovation programs, pre-21st century learning spaces, pre-digital citizenship, and pre-digital storytelling. All of these have grown, developed, and expanded since 2016, 2017, when there was zero. Events that we've held this year, GIS Day, so I think all of you are aware of that. We had Digital Citizenship Week, and we had Computer Science Week, so those are big events that have been supported out of our EdTech and Innovation Department. Check this out. We have one of the most developed YouTube training platforms from a school district in Southern California. You can see that just in our training platform, there have been 27,000 views this year. I'm hoping we can get advertisements and money. Just kidding. That's a joke. We should be close there. 240,000 all-time views and 7,900 total watch time hours. These are people that are viewing them from around education, not just here in Redlands. It's that popular and that important. This year, we've produced – actually, today, six. Six newsletters, 4,400 views for our newsletters, and those are the latest trends in technology, strategies, so forth. Two podcasts. Our superintendent was our first one in the school year. Very popular. We had 205 listeners before that. Now we're up to 207. Six continents. So anyone know anyone in Antarctica? Just let me know. We'll round up seven continents. So that's our – we have accessibility training. That's a district-wide training starting with secondary, and that's technology tools to increase accessibility for students for testing. Canva. Hopefully many of you are aware of Canva. Everybody loves Canva. This has been the most popular thing that we've done. And thanks to Jason, who helped initiate that. We've got Canva accounts, Pro accounts, for every student and teacher in the school district. And we've started training full deployment on that. The biggie that I wanted to spend a second on is artificial intelligence. Now, I think a lot of folks are really hearing AI, AI, AI. Artificial intelligence, that's the biggie. We are doing massive training for our staff. We're learning ourselves. a Watson IBM training certification for myself. And we're really delving deep into artificial intelligence to make sure that we're using it in a safe and responsible way for our students and our staff. So moving on to informational technology, and I just want to say that this is just the big programs that we're doing, not exhaustive of everything. These are the things that you may see or may notice or may be relevant to you. One of the things that you probably noticed was our website switched over, and Christine Stevens did an amazing job, and it was really a combination of our PIO, EdTech, and IT to really get this website switched over. It was a massive, massive undertaking that switched over on December 29th. Safe and secure schools. We have a raptor system at every school in the school district, and this is for maybe unsafe people coming onto campus. There's an alert system that hits cell phones for teachers. Now, we have two schools that are sort of a black hole for sale service, Mission Elementary and Citrus Valley. So our IT department figured out a way to get the teacher cell phones onto the school Wi-Fi, which seemed simple, but it was actually a really big task that took a lot of work behind the scenes. And I wanted to highlight that and thank our staff for doing that. Internet security, we used to have a content internet filtering system called iBOSS that sort of sunsetted. And we had to switch all of our content filtering over to a new system called ContentKeeper. It's important for our public to know that we have really top of the line internet filtering systems in place. And ContentKeeper is the one that the county actually uses as well. It took a massive amount of work, again, behind the scenes from our IT department to switch over overnight from iBOSS to Content Keeper. So I wanted to highlight that effort as well. That happened just this year. Fishing. Almost 100% of all malicious viruses and malware and everything comes via email. So what we have done in this school district is we started a fake phishing campaign where we push out sort of a fake phishing email to our staff members to see if anybody will bite. I'm not going to tell you if people have bitten or how many or names, but this is the first in a major training event to really educate our staff on malicious emails, what not to click on. And I recommend that all of us, even with text messaging and things like that, to be very careful with what you click on and what you open. So this is a very targeted effort to provide training and safety for our network systems for staff. So we've done that twice for 335 employees, and it's going to expand again to the entire organization, and we'll continue to keep going on with that in the future. For the applications and websites and YouTube videos that are viewed and used by students and staff, we have something called the blacklist. Basically, it's not allowed unless it's vetted and requested. So through time, We've expanded the applications and websites and YouTube videos that are allowed. This year alone, we've vetted 1,000 or over 1,000 sources just to make sure that they're safe for our students and teachers to use in schools. One of the things that disaster, like a flood or something that would affect our internet. We actually practice. We call it a tabletop. We actually practice recovery in case a disaster happens. We actually create our own disasters and recover and fix them and practice them ourselves, sort of like an earthquake drill. So we just want our public to know that this is something that's done and really practiced under the leadership of our IT department and our incredible IT director. So something that's important for us. Everybody should know. History of EdTech. This is mostly for our new superintendent, Mr. Cabral. Also in the packet for the board members, what we did is we started in 2016, 2017, and it's one of the handouts. And I'm sorry I couldn't do this because it's a lot of writing for the public. We kind of outlined not everything, but the major events that have happened. from 2016 to 2017 to now. I created a little graphic to kind of just visually from a distance see what that looks like. You can see this department was actually formed in 2016, 2017. And you can see in 2017, 2018, that's when we turned the switch with Google. I've got a great photograph of my office with Jason, myself, and a few people. Actually, I think Jason's the one who actually pressed the button. that turned Google on for the school district. And Mr. Massaro was definitely heavily involved in that. But you can see, as the years went, 2018, 2019, a massive amount of initiatives. And you can kind of see that dip during COVID. initiatives and so forth for technology kind of stagnated. But you can see in the last two years, 22, 23, 23, 24, the amount of initiatives and efforts and things going on and technology, not just instructional technology, but information technology in the school district are just thriving and it just keeps growing. And you can see we already have initiatives set for 24, 25, and we haven't even started there yet as well. I – again, I started this by saying this is my honor to present this on behalf of many people, such as Mr. Massaro, Mr. Monaco, and the incredible IT team. We have Mike back there as well, our amazing ed tech and innovation teachers. Also, I call them courageous – courageous and innovative teachers throughout the district to try this stuff. You know, it's sort of, it takes a lot of courage to try something new and try something that's, you know, in this whole field, in our field, everything's new and there's no pathway or road ahead. and also the site administration for their trust and support. So that's my update. And really, I'm speaking on behalf of August to now. So this is just in one semester of work here in our technology and innovation field. So I'll leave it up to you for questions.

Anyone have any questions?

I just wanted to make a quick comment. I really appreciate that we've implemented using Canva because even our students that are in ASB and they're constantly making flyers for social media to hand out, not that they hand them out anymore, but when they post them around the school and things like that, it's been really a skill that they've needed to have. I mean, my older daughter, when she was in ASB, she had to do all that from scratch on you know, on Publisher or Word, you know, and it's come a long way in the fact that our students can use Canva and it's a fantastic tool for them to have. So I really appreciate that. And a personal note, I just want to comment, these 33,000 files created daily and 30,000 files shared daily, why is Google bothering me about my photo storage if that's what they can do? It's insane. But thank you, Jamie. I appreciate everybody's hard work.

A quick note on Canva. Jason, David, and I are actually talking to Canva right now about incorporating artificial intelligence into that program. So that's how artificial intelligence is sort of seeping into our world, whether we like it or not. Pretty interesting.

I just want to say thanks for a great presentation and thanks to both the EdTech department and IT department and the Davids. Thank you so much for everything that you do. Our students are so lucky to have such great people leading them and teaching them these things. Thanks.

Appreciate the timeline because we got to see the progress where we started I remember putting you in that position of where you are.

So thank you way fewer gray hairs then But seeing everything you've done.

It's nice to see it firsthand and to think our our team back in the back You guys are amazing Dave. That's our on your team. We appreciate everything you do for us and keeping us into thanks

Awesome job. Jamie. I I have a question on the fish, uh fishing. Have you caught any board members?

I will neither confirm nor deny.

All right. You know, I just want to talk about the innovation that for the last six years, it's been amazing how fast and how far we've gone with innovation. Because when I started as a board member, I remember asking if there were any of the elementaries with any of the Azobots, Makey Makeys. And we didn't have any. now we have almost all of the elementaries. And this is technology that our students need because they need to be prepared for the future. And it's just amazing how far and how fast we've gone in such a short time. Not only that, but we're also presenting now at ISTE conferences, which is amazing. going on to the the google um use of google is every is every department in the district office using google Like the Google suite for example I'm so used to using Microsoft Office, you know, we have the PowerPoint we have Excel, you know We have word. So what I'm asking is is everybody in the district office no longer using that and we're using are we like completely Google district where I know I would say

If you look at the Microsoft suite, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Outlook, we're still an Outlook email district. We do a lot of things using Outlook because it does a better job of sharing private encrypted information. So when we're moving and sharing and storing student data with personally identifiable information, we lean more toward Microsoft. We lean more toward Google when it comes to education, sharing of files, and making Google Classroom, things like that. So Google is better for the teaching and education piece. Microsoft tends to be better for business operations and organization.

okay and um i just wanted to share that i learned this this week there's a site now called i believe it it's called magic gpt for schools or schools magic gpt but it's you know artificial intelligence and i i hope you look into this because it's an awesome tool for all of our teachers to use for example You it asks you Several questions what grade level so then you put you know, either K through 12 Then you it asks you for a title or subject you can put math And then it asks you for the standard and you could list the standard or you can say order of operations whatever you want to work on then it asks you you do would you like an article or a video and And then it gives you that choice and then you just input whether if it's an article or a video. Then after that, it asks you how many questions would you like, you know, me to develop for this lesson. So then you can say, you know, 4 to 10 or you're going to create a test. Then after that, it brings out a video or it brings out the article and then it creates you know whatever number of questions you have then on top of that you all you got to do is press a button and say send it to google forms and it creates the google form for you and then after the students take it then you could just send it to the gradebook and everything's automatically done. It's just an amazing tool. AI is huge and it's an excellent tool in education, so I hope you look into it so that way our teachers take advantage of it because it's going to make life a lot easier instead of the teachers having to develop their own assessments or lessons. It just makes it a lot easier. Other than that, thank you very much for your presentation. It's amazing what we're doing here in Redlands. Alright, next business services consent item. Is there a motion to approve item 14A consent items B through L?

So moved. I'll second.

Student preferential vote. So right now you can say You don't want to I'm gonna have you practice. Okay Alrighty, I just figured I'd you know throw you in so you can practice Thank you a discussion all those in favor say aye aye aye aye chair votes aye and so ordered Next under business services services action items we have item 15a to accept the audit uh so accept the audit of the 2022-2023 financial audit reports as presented by id bailey llp is there a motion move second uh thank you discussion

I'd like to thank the departments under Jason for getting this done. I know it's not easy. It's a lot of work. So thank you to you and your department for getting this done.

Thank you, Jason. All those in favor say aye.

Aye. Opposed?

Chair votes aye and so ordered. Moving on to consent items under educational services. Is there a motion to approve item 16A consent items B through G?

Move. Second.

Thank you. Discussion? No? Okay, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye and so ordered. We have no educational service action items. Let's move on to human resources. Is there a motion to approve item 18A, consent items B through AB? Move. Second? Okay, thank you. Discussion? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? Chair votes aye and so ordered. Under human resources action items, we have two items. Um, ratify approved student attendance calendar for the 2024-2025 school year. Is there a motion? Move. Second. Thank you. Discussion? No. All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Chair votes aye and so ordered.

I do want to go back because it is second and final read that should be in the minutes. So you want to go back and... Just say it the whole the way it should be said.

All right so ratify and approve the student attendance calendar for the 2024-2025 school year. and final read second and final read all right the minutes thank you all right so now be approved student attendance calendar for the 2025-2026 school year first read so moved second thank you discussion

Yeah, yes We voted on the two separate calendars oh We're gonna have to do it again because we only read them and because we changed it we need a vote again on each separately

One's a second read, one's a first read?

Yes. So take each one individually, two separate votes.

But you changed it. You had to reread it. This one we just did, so this one we can go ahead and approve because you read it correctly.

Okay, approve student attendance calendar for the 2024-2025 school year second read.

Second and final. Final read.

And final read. Is there a motion?

So moved. Second.

discussion Okay, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Okay chair votes aye and so ordered All righty, okay, we need be we didn't vote we did Okay approve student attendance calendar for the 2025-2026 school year first read their motion move Discussion All those in favor say aye. Aye. Chair votes aye and so ordered. We have no discussion items this evening so we'll go ahead and adjourn the meeting at 722 we're going to return a closed session. Thank you.