Board of Education — September 9, 2025

I'll call to order the regular open session meeting of the Redlands Unified School District Board of Education for September 9th, 2025 at 6.05. Before we do the pledge... I want to talk about during our meetings over the past six months, we have been focused on updating policies and have faced many challenges as a board. I want to take a brief moment to inform you of a new item on our agenda moving forward. We will be taking a moment at the beginning of each meeting to highlight some of the many positive outcomes in Redlands Unified. During this agenda item, we will focus on the theme, Empowering Positive Moments. and how every single day our students and staff, often with the support of community, are creating those moments through passion, perseverance, and purpose. Across our school, students and staff aren't just showing up. They're showing who they are, what they're capable of, and how they're shaping the future. So tonight, we will be showcasing Compact Careers Club. Well, we have compact clubs at RHS, REV, and CBHS. Joining us this evening is advisor at REV, JL Jimenez. And I only know one student who's here, Avnish Sinha. Okay. Okay. All right. Okay, so steering committee chairman Ann Leonard could not be here tonight. She and board member Barbara Phelps were two of the founders of Compact, and Ann has been an integral part of the club since 1990. There have been many community members involved in this club over the last 35 years. I have had the honor of being the school board representative on the steering committee for the last few years, and have personally seen many of our students grow during their four years in high school. Board Clerk Jeanette Wilson is our representative this year. Thank you, Jeanette, for your service. When we talk about empowering positive moments, this is what we mean. A student discovers they can be a leader. A team choosing compassion over competition. A club being a safe haven. A classroom becoming a launch pad for dreams. A teacher realizing they can make a difference. These moments don't necessarily make headlines, but they have the ability to change lives. That is what this new agenda item, Empowering Positive Moments, is all about, celebrating and uplifting students and staff in RUSD, and to remind ourselves that even one moment of support, recognition, or encouragement can be life-changing for a student or a staff member. Let's keep making time for these stories to be told. Let's keep empowering positive moments together. Now, I'd like to invite the Compact Careers Club to come forward. And we will have Avnish Sinha, is that how you say your name? Yeah. Okay. A Compact student at Rev to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance.

All right. Please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. Place 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.

Please be seated.

Good evening, members of the board. My name is Jael Jimenez, and I'm a teacher at Redlands East Valley High School, as well as the Compact Careers Club advisor. This is my first year advising the club, but I am not new to Compact. I was part of Compact myself for four years when I was in high school. I am deeply grateful for the skills Compact gave me, skills I would not have otherwise learned at that age. Compact is a career-focused club and requires commitment and hard work. Through compact, students participate in mixers, mock interviews, community events, and even a program called Multiply Your Generosity, where students receive seed funding to design and carry out a community benefit program. Each year, students who complete requirements like service hours, resumes, and letters of recommendation earn recognition at the basic, bronze, silver, or gold level. And most importantly, active seniors are eligible for compact scholarships. Compact has had a strong presence at RHS and CV for many years. And those programs have been very successful at my school. However, um, Redlands, East Valley, the club has been inactive for about five years because of how much the program helped me. I felt called to revive it and guide students through the same journey that once shaped me. We have compact officers present from RHS and REV that would like to share their experiences and the impact compact has had on them. Citrus Valley could not make it today, but I would like to read a statement from CV's president, Amariah Yinda. Her mother, Annie Yinda, was in compact club also when she was in high school, and she is now the assistant principal at Lagonia. So this is a statement from Amariah. Good evening. My name is Amariah Yinda, and I'm a senior at Citrus Valley High School. I wish I could be here tonight, but I'm currently playing in a varsity flag football game. I've been attending Compact Club Dinner Mixer since my freshman year, and last year I helped restart the club at my school and now serve as president. Through Compact, I've learned how to confidently start conversations with with people in the community and build networks without fear. These skills have been some of the most valuable reasons I've gained in high school, and I will continue to utilize them throughout my life. I'm excited to continue growing the club at Citrus Valley so that more students can experience the same impact in the future. Thank you.

Hello, my name is Rachel Daggett, and I'm a senior at Redlands High School. At school, I am currently involved in Chamber Strings and the girls tennis team. Other than being the Compact co-president, I am the president of Women's Health and Safety Advocates Club and vice president of Red Cross Club. I first heard about Compact Club when I was a freshman in high school. What drew me to Compact was the opportunity to grow my interviewing skills and the potential to meet community partners through our mixers.

Hello, my name is Lillian Pesky, and I'm also from Medlins High School, and I am also a senior in high school. So other than Compact Club, I am currently involved in my school orchestra, Children's Theater Festival, and am co-president of Speech and Debate. My friends invited me to join Compact Club last year, and what intrigued me the most was the chance to learn important soft skills, like how to do a resume or an interview. I was excited to finally learn these skills and be able to interact with my community more. Now, I'm one of the co-presidents. And funnily enough, this is actually my second year of Compact Club. I joined late, but was very excited about Compact Club, so I worked to get the second highest certification level last year.

Hello, my name is Zyra Coleman. I'm a 12th grade senior at Redlands High School. At school, I'm currently involved in Chamber Strings Ensemble, and I'm also president of the academic decathlon team, as well as tri-president of Compact Club. I heard about Compact Club freshman year from my former academic president, Aditi Patola. She was also president of Compact, as I was encouraged to join Compact also for the soft and hard skills. I stayed, however, as I had been given the opportunity to befriend like-minded individuals who want to get involved actively molding their career paths in the community, as well as their creative pursuits. This is my fourth year participating in Compact Club. I've been in Compact Club since I was a freshman. Now since you know a little bit about us, here's how we feel about Compact Club. What I like most about Compact is the community of students where we bond and participate in activities like seasonal Christmas card writings, as well as active participation from teachers, advisors, as well as committee members who help Compact Club better the participation in a well-rounded manner. getting the entirety of the community involved. And my favorite event, and most certainly all the students' favorite event, being the dinner mixers, in which all participants converse and we get to expand our perspective with adults from varying career fields and different aspects of life.

Compact has taught me the soft skills that will be beneficial in getting jobs, building connections, and how to be a strong candidate overall, whether that's for interviews, applications, or scholarships.

This next year, I'm looking forward to teaching other members about the certification process and encouraging more members to continue the Compact legacy. Thank you.

Hello, my name's Avneesh Sinha. I'm currently a junior in Redlands East Valley High School. Other than compact, I'm on the varsity tennis team, and I'm also in chamber orchestra. I heard about Compact Club during the end of my sophomore year, and I joined because it provides me an opportunity to develop my leadership skills, want to build up my confidence, learn how to build a portfolio for my career. Another added advantage is that it can enhance my college applications. And I'm a publicist in Compact, and I've been in the club since the beginning of the school year. And Rev meets on Thursdays twice a month, and RHS meets Tuesdays twice a month if you guys would like to come. Thank you.

Now we wanted to ask you if you guys had any other questions about Compact Club before we conclude our section.

I don't have a question, but all you kids are amazing. You all are going to do great things in your futures. I just know it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Well, thank you guys for listening.

Okay, we're going to move on to roll call. Oh, yeah, that would be good. Yeah, that would be good.

Students, can you come through and take a photo with the board? Also with your teacher, Miss Jimenez.

One, two, three.

Okay, so we're going to move on to roll call. Board member Ayala Quintero? Present. Vice President Hollihan? Present. Board member Olson? Here. Board member, I mean, Clerk Wilson? Here. And I am here, so we are all here. Okay. Now we will have approval of tonight's agenda with flexibility. May I have a motion?

So moved.

Is there a second? Second. Any discussion? Thank you. We'll call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Gintero?

Aye.

Board Member Olsen? Aye. President Rendler? Aye. Vice President Hollihan? Aye. Clerk Wilson?

Aye.

Motion carried, 5-0.

And next, we will have approval of the minutes from the August 5th, 2025 Board of Education meeting. May I have a motion? So moved. Second? Second. Any discussion?

All right. Moving on for the vote. Board Member Ayala-Quintero. Aye. Board Member Olson. Aye. President Rendler. Aye. Vice President Hollihan.

Aye.

Clerk Wilson. Aye. Motion carried, 5-0.

In closed session, the board unanimously took action to terminate the employment of classified employee 2025-26-01, effective August 29, 2025, pursuant to Education Code Section 45113, and direct the superintendent or designee to send out appropriate legal notices. In closed session, the board unanimously took action to terminate employment of classified employee 2025-26-02, effective September 2, 2025, pursuant to Education Code Section 45113, and direct the superintendent or designee to send out appropriate legal notices. In closed session, with a vote of 4 to 1, the ayes... Wait, hold on. In closed session, the board unanimously took action to accept, no, sorry, that was wrong. In closed session, the board took, with a vote of four to one, with the ayes being Vice President Hollihan, Clerk Wilson, Board Member Olson, and me, President Rendler, and the nays being Board Member Ayala-Quintero, took action to terminate employment of the classified employee 2025-26-02, effect, nope, So sorry. Start over. In closed session, with a vote of 4 to 1, the ayes being Vice President Hollihan, Clerk Wilson, Board Member Olson, and me, President Rundler, and the nays being Board Member Ayala-Contero, the Board took action to accept the retirement of Certificated Employee 2025-26-03, effective the end of the workday on June 30, 2026, and to approve the separation agreement in connection therewith. So sorry. All right. Association reports. We will now hear association reports beginning with the Redlands Teacher Association. Steven Caperton.

All right. Good evening, board members and administrative cabinet. I would like to start tonight off on a lighter note. RTA is beginning our fall social season for members. We continue with our free monthly movie nights at Look Theater. This month's movie night is a re-release of Toy Story. We are also expanding our offerings this year by hosting several date night movies throughout the year. Our first date night is September 25th, and we are showing When Harry Met Sally. Yes. Our major fall event is the Fall Festival. That is on October 3rd at the RTA office. It is a free event for all RTA members and is a great opportunity to socialize and enjoy free food and beverages with your fellow educators. Finally, RTA has begun our first of two rounds of site visits this year. We are starting with our elementary sites and aim to visit all of them by the end of the month. We will be visiting our secondary sites in October. So far, we have visited eight elementary sites. My site visits lead me to the second part of my report tonight. At every site I visit, I hear horror stories about uncontrolled violence perpetrated by some students against their fellow students and staff. Not a day goes by that I am not counseling a staff member or reaching out to an administrator for help, and the current response is inadequate. I have spent 22 years in education as a special educator and have been actively working with RTA since 2018. The last two years as president, I have seen a significant increase in the number of student-related violent incidents on campus. Far too often, the response from the administration is that their hands are tied. The student is sent back to the classroom with inadequate support, staffing, training, and facilities, and the problem happens again the next day. A common definition of insanity is to do the same thing over and over again and expect a different result. We have been short-staffed on paraprofessionals for over four years. We are literally in triage mode, where we move paras between assignments to cover critical needs, but we fall short every single time. We ask our teachers, paras, and safety officers to serve the front line with violent students. They get punched, kicked, bitten. They suffer cuts, bruises, broken nose, concussions, torn knees, and broken bones. They are not paid for extra for this abuse. They are not trained nor equipped to handle these situations properly. And when they are injured, our workman's comp system is broken and doesn't even attempt to bring the staff member back to full health. Even worse, we have children in these classes living in fear of being harmed by their classmates and no one to protect them. Article 9, Section 5 of the California Constitution guarantees every child a right to a free and appropriate public education. Furthermore, California law places an affirmative duty on an employer to keep its employees safe from violence in the workplace. Redlands Unified has a duty to protect its students and its staff. One year ago, I asked this board to do something about the violence in our classrooms, and still, no meaningful changes have occurred. While there is no single solution to the problem, steps can be taken. Our parish shortages remain, and no one is willing to make the type of changes in salary, benefits, and training that is needed to address this problem. Districts across the state are locked into this problem, but eventually, someone will make the required changes, and their district will reap the benefits. We still don't have calming spaces at all of our sites. So when a student becomes dysregulated, there's a safe place to take them. The district needs to protect staff who do their jobs and keep our students safe with better medical care, better training, better PPE, and facilities that allow staff to manage students in a safe manner. We need more tools for our administrators to provide the support to the students who are acting out and to support the students and staff who are being harmed. All of this requires resources and vision, and I implore this board to focus its attention on real issues that affect our students on a daily basis. Thank you.

Thank you, Steve. Now we have Redlands Educational Support Professional Association, Liz Brewster.

Good evening, Board President Rendler, board members, Superintendent Cabral, cabinet, and community members. As we begin this new school year, I want to start by welcoming everyone back with a sense of hope and purpose. RESPA is looking forward to negotiations beginning on September 17th, and we are committed to working collaboratively towards solutions that strengthen our schools and support our staff. From September 23rd through the 25th, RESPA will be conducting a site blitz to connect with members across the district. Then on September 25th, we will host our annual fall union reunion at the RESPA office. This is a time for us together share experiences and build the solidary solidarity needed to move forward but as we gather in community we must also acknowledge the challenges our members face every single day our employees continue to work tirelessly despite the lack of consistent support that inconsistent trainings provided to all classified employees that increasing student behaviors on campus with little to no support from administration this is not just a matter of employ well-being it is a matter of safety for staff and for students When our employees feel unsafe, our students are unsafe. And when support and training fall short, everyone in the community suffers. We can and we must do better. Our members love their students they work with daily. What they want most is to feel safe at school, to be respected for their work, and to know they are making a positive difference for the children and families of Redland School. unified school district it is imperative that we look into real solutions to support both our staff and our students The truth is simple. When students are safe, staff are safe. And when the staff are safe, our students are safe. Safety and support must go hand in hand if we are to truly serve our schools and community. Thank you. Thank you, Liz.

We're moving on to Redlands Administrative Personnel Association, Jenny Dyerly.

Good evening. Thank you for having me tonight on behalf of RAPA. I wanted to share a couple events that we have going on. RAPA volunteered and ushered at the Redlands Bowl this summer. So that was one of the events we currently did. And then we had back to school night. So all of our schools have now wrapped up their back to school nights. And I wanted, on behalf of the management, thank our school board members for coming and attending those back to school nights. It was great to see you all there. Thank you for supporting our schools. In October, we'll be participating in the Believe Walk. We'll have a team present, so you are welcome to join us if you'd like. We will also be continuing our breakfast series this year. Our first one will be held in October, so in October I'll get you more information on that one. And then management is busy with athletics at the secondary schools and then also all of the events that are coming up at the elementary schools. Thank you. Thank you, Jenny.

Next on our agenda, we have two presentations, one by Ken first, Ken Morris, Measure D presentation.

Good evening, Board President Rendler, fellow board members, cabinet, staff, stakeholders. It's a pleasure. The facility office usually doesn't get a chance to do this, so I'm quite privileged to be able to do this. We were given a great lifeline with Measure D, and before I get to showing off some of the projects that we have, First, we must make sure that we say thank you first to our citizens for extending this lifeline. It hasn't gone unnoticed. We take great respect in that they extended this lifeline to us, and we will do our best to be great stewards of what's been given to us. The next thank you I need to give is to the other departments that help me with these projects, from accounting, Kirtan, you'll get to see him in a minute, from purchasing to maintenance and operations. I do not do this alone. I have many departments that assist me along the way, and including communications down here. And so I just want to make sure I thank them. My third thank you is actually to you as a board for allowing us to have a head start. That head start was with the resolution list that you approved a few months back. And those are the projects that you're going to see that are coming up. And so, again, thank you for allowing my team to get started and get after some of the projects before we had all the pieces in place. I think you will see that some of this is already paying off for us. So the very first project I wanted to show everybody, and these projects, what they will have, they'll kind of have themes that we will try to do at other sites. And so what you're looking at is the Ligonia path to travel. The very top screen up there, you can see there's like a little concrete. Well, that was a sinkhole. It kept sinking, and we tried to patch it with concrete. Well, it kept sinking. And so then that area would flood. And so we had to correct that situation. Well, we took the opportunity when we went to fix this path of travel. You can see that in the bottom picture there. There's a little green patch right next to it that the students never used on that site. It was kind of just a dead space. So we took the opportunity when we had to correct the path of travel. make it safer for students to get to the classrooms. The big picture you see there is the outcome. Now there's just an environment on that campus where students have another chance to learn, another chance to communicate like you saw with our compact club. Those students were very, very impressive. When I put to projects, when the team gets together and plans projects, we're looking at things like that that will help our students be more competitive in any environment that we put them, whether it's on a field, in the classroom, or even in our outside learning areas. So that's our first one. While we were at Lagonia, There was a little shade structure that they had right here. Everybody sees it every time you drive up and down Orange Street. But underneath it was just a dirt patch. So the kids would never go to that. As I was driving back to the district office today, an entire classroom was in that. photo right there, you can see with the new concrete under there, completing the shade structure. Shade structures are something that we are going to chase after going through our district at various sites. We just so happen to be able to throw this one in very quickly, and the benefit has already been great. An entire TK class was underneath that today doing their thing, and as a facility guy, I kind of felt like I had an impact at services. I hope you heard me. So there we go over there. So Sorry about the call out. Other projects that we have, big projects. I know these aren't as great to look at, but my maintenance and operations department think these are the best pictures I have in my slideshow. And that's because we dedicated $20 million into fixing 13 sites roofs that were on our red list. They were leaking all the time. They were in bad shape. They were only going to get worse and create even a bigger dollar amount for us to fix. The resolution list gave us a head start. Instead of having to wait, we were able to get some of these roofs off the ground and get them going here in the summer, which was a great advantage for us. If you look across the street up on the roof right now, they're up there demoing as we speak. And so we are taking care of these roofs. There are different solutions. That's what you're looking up there. A typical roof in bad repair, that's Kimberly. So Kimberly's principal, I hope, is a little happier because that roof is gone. We had different solutions. Like at Cope, we did have to go tear that roof back and go to a hot tar because it's a flat roof. But that was the best solution for that roof. And the third roof on the top, that's Franklin. There we just decided we could overlay over the current roof. And that was the best solution. And so we... It allowed us to take that $20 million and get it to as many sites as possible. The three on the bottom, you can see Bremer, Cope, and Mentone. Those are new roofs that are in place, and those buildings, they're already experiencing a difference of what we've been doing there. And a big thank you to Maintenance and Operations, who really drove this project. It was high on their facility needs assessment, and so we got after this one right away. Another place where you had a bad situation. So we have flooding next to Rev's. This is the backside of Rev's band room, the theater in the back. And it was flooding, and you can kind of see the damage on the building, the white shade, everything like that. So the water would gather and puddle in these corners. And it would make the building a little moldy, musty feeling on the inside. It did flood a couple of times. So we had to go and fix this drainage in this area. So what we decided to do again is get the bang for our buck. And so what you see on the left-hand side, that's the finished product. And now everything drains away from the building. So we're saving the building and things inside of it. But we also gave the theater arts and the band people an outside area to practice. If you ever drove by Rev and saw the band practice, they were out in the parking lot doing their drum line and the horn section. And now we gave them a little space right there where they are located. to actually practice and do things more creative and a little safer than a parking lot. And so again, finding projects where the erosion is a bad thing for us and then maximizing that dead space, making it more useful for students. And so now our BAM people have a chance to be more competitive than they were in the past. That's everything that we're about. The Rev Stadium, I'm not going to talk a lot about this because, again, thank you for going to the first home game with bleachers at the Rev Stadium. And they had a big win, and so I had a big win because everybody got to sit in the bleachers. The picture you're looking at right there, that's the first home track meet of last season. That was the first crowd to get to use the stadium. So the track team. actually were in the stands. That's what you're looking at there. I think you saw a very impressive picture at that first game. I think every seat was taken in the bleachers. So it was quite a good event for Rev. The best thing about this project is that Measure D finished this project, allowing funds to be returned to other budgets. And that's a huge thing for us. So now Facilities is helping other budgets go after and improve whatever program that it had to deal with. So we feel very blessed that we were in a position to actually be able to pull that off with this stadium. Rev pool renovation. Again, Measure D is helping us with this. The big cracks that you see right there in the pool, that went around the entire pool. There was no way to save that pool. It was breaking everywhere. It was sinking in a corner. We were losing water. The culprit is that top picture at the very top left up there. There were probably seven leaks in the water main that's going around that picture. When I took that picture, the pool is still five steps behind me. That's how far the water main was from the pool. Yet all the water, as you can see, is going to where the bottom of the pool is. When we demoed out the pool, we had just a big hole in the ground. Every morning you would come out and there would be water at the middle of the pool. That's how we were able to try to locate where the water was coming from. So when we fix this pool, we will also fix the water main. We're going to knock out two major problems at REV at the same time with this project. The other pictures you see up there, I know a lot of people don't think rebar is a good-looking picture, but I think that's a tremendous-looking picture. Rebar is good-looking to a facility guy. And then the next picture, that's concrete. Concrete's actually in place at the bottom and on the sides of the pool. Right now, they're working on getting the gutters into place. And I don't want to jinx myself, but that bottom picture that's highlighted in red, that will be the finished product. And right now, I'm very happy with the timing of this project. Our whole goal is to get this to the seniors by swim season. And I've been on the cruise. almost every time I meet with them, we're not letting that go. We're going to get it to the seniors before they finish their year. So that's what we are attacking, and hopefully I can say that I was correct about that one. If you ever ask me back, we'll see after this. I don't know. Jason might say you're done, but we'll find out. At Orangewood, we had an expansion, restroom expansion. The big thing with this project is that if I did not put these restrooms in, the Department of State Architecture would not approve any other projects at that site. So this was a very necessary project with that. On top of it, you have two different programs on that site. You have eAcademy. and you have Orangewood. And so we were not compliant by hosting two programs on that campus with the number of stalls that were on that campus. This project... made us compliant. And we'll make sure that if we need to go to the state architect for a bigger project on that campus, we can. Right now, those restrooms are currently functioning. They're using the restrooms. However, the project will not be completed. It will be beautified and everything like that during our winter break. I'll bring back a finished photo at that time. That's why I'm not putting anything fancy on here. The fancy photo of a restroom, if that's such a thing. Again, either Jason will present that or, you know, we'll see how that goes. But there we go with that. Playgrounds. We had, as you can see, Bryn Mawr, Franklin, Ligonia, Mentone, and Victoria. We're all upgraded with playgrounds. Again, this money started in a different budget. Measure D took this project, returning that money to a budget so it could be spent in the classroom and help students that way. We were able to make these improvements at the playgrounds. Now, I'm used to that swing set in the bottom left-hand corner. That's what I remember as a little kid. But the picture next to it, that's the new swing set at the same spot with the shade canopy over the top. Again, shade structures, things of that nature are things that we think we can attack to make sure that our students have a better environment. The bottom right-hand corner, that is what the playground used to look like. Right above it is what it looks like now. And as you can see, just huge enhancements. The kids are more excited to be out there. You'll see more just collaboration on the playground. Again, Facilities was very excited that we could give that back to them. And then if you look at a couple pictures there, you'll see that path of travel is another big thing you'll hear me say over and over again. Making sure we have acceptable path of travel to get all of our students to all of our features that we have. That is a very big challenge for my department, but we are going after it. And again, thank you for everybody who allowed Measure D to go forward. So here's the summary and the next steps. Measure D, right now we're focusing on safety, accessibility. That's those safe path of travels that I just talked about. Infrastructure, again, things we don't see but will be hugely impactful, making us more competitive inside the classroom. And then modern learning spaces like I showed you with the Lagonia project and the backside of the rev theater. Those are the things that we're looking for to try to help improve. Comprehensive improvements across multiple campuses. That shouldn't say multiple. I don't know why I left that. It should say all campuses. Our goal is to touch every single campus. And so if any of the principals are listening or watching, we're coming. Hang in there. Transparent oversight. We do have an independent oversight committee, a citizens committee that checks all of our expenditures. We report to them three times a year. Our actual first meeting this year, this fiscal year, will be in October with that group. And again, we show them all of our expenditures, and we're quite confident. Thank you again to Kirtan for the assistance that he gives as we move forward on that. The big thing that's out there right now is what will guide my office and everybody, all the consultants and everybody that I work with moving forward, including the other departments, will be the master plan. I should have the master plan sometime in October. And it's not too late. If you would like to check out the master plan, go to Redlands Unified School District's website. You will find the survey. We have it on our website. Feel free to fill it out as a parent or anything else. Make sure your voice is heard. Again, that will help us and help my office to make sure we're spending the money in the right directions. Projects that are going right now, just the other day we had where the fiber was damaged across the street. and we kind of lost some of our capabilities here at Rutland Unified School District. So we will have a disaster recovery mainframe project that will mirror the MDF that we have at the district office. That will go over to CVHS in their room. And so now we'll have not only the ability to back ourselves up during a disaster, but we'll also be able to maintain the system without taking it down. So that will be a huge advantage for us. The guys in the back of the room, hopefully they're excited about that, but they get to plan that out. So a little shout-out to the guys who spend their extra time here. The middle school safety and infrastructure upgrades, we did those walks today. We are going after our middle schools. And you can ask Jenny, who just presented not too long ago, she got to see our Army of 27 come onto her campus just to plan how to make the middle schools safer. And so that will be the summer of 2026. We're dedicating solid funds towards that project. And at the same time of making it safe, we will attack the infrastructure with things like structured cabling that are needed for our cameras. and for AI items that may help us in other things moving down the road. But that structured cabling is also going to be great for the student inside the classroom. So again, two birds with one stone, always looking for those opportunities as a facility office. And as you can see, again, thank you for allowing us to get started with the roofing projects, but now the funds have come in, so now we're continuing the roofing. And you can see Arroyo Verde, It's getting roofing right now. Crafton Elementary, the district office. McKinley, Mentone will be finishing soon. Mission and then the service center. And so that is what will be happening there as well. We'll be doing our best to relocate the central kitchen. And once we relocate the central kitchen, the options that they're going to be able to provide the students, I won't steal the central kitchen's thunder, but it will be better. So I'm very excited about that. And then the last thing, if you want to know any of the projects that are coming up, we have Measure D signs at every single one of our sites. Just find a sign. If you see a blank sign somewhere, feel free to give me a call. But a project will be coming to that site. And so look for the Measure D signs. Reach out to my office if you have any questions about that. And with that, I am out of breath. So I'm going to let you guys. Any questions for us?

Thank you. Thank you for all that you've done and your team and other departments that are helping you.

Appreciate it. Thank you, Kenny. Good job. Good job to your staff and everybody who supports you. It's so exciting to see all these projects, and I know we tried to cope to get the roof done before, but you guys got it done, so looking great all around. Thanks.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good?

Well, I'm gone. Thank you.

Thanks, Ken. Thank you.

Kirtan, are you ready to do your presentation?

I do not have such good news, but I'll do the best. Good evening, Board, Superintendent Cabral and the Cabinet and the community. Thank you for this opportunity to go over results of our 24-25 school year, fiscal results. Okay. So... The report is called unaudited actuals because they're not audited by the auditors yet. And actually, funny enough, they are here this week auditing us. So we'll know soon enough if our numbers are correct or not. So unaudited actuals are required to be presented to the board for approval by September 15th, so we're right on time. They represent the cumulative financial activity for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025. It identifies actual restricted and unrestricted carrier balances from 24-25 to 25-26. And independent auditors per state requirement still need to validate the numbers. And like I said, they're here this week doing that.

Moving on.

So this is our restricted and under-stricted combined. So on the left column, you'll see we have 23-24 actuals. We started 23-24 school year with $108 million in beginning balance. We had revenues of $363 million, expenditures of $361 million, and we ended with $111 million in fund balance. In 24-25, we estimate actual. So estimate actual is done at the budget time in June, where we estimate how we're going to end the school year in fiscal year. So at that time, again, we started with $111 million that we ended with last year. We estimated 346 million in revenues, and we estimated 366 million in expenditures, and ending the fund balance at 91.2 million. Well, when we closed the books two weeks ago, our beginning balance was still the same, 111 million, but our revenues went up by about 2.1 million to 349 million. Our expenditures unfortunately went up to $367.3 million, so that's higher, about $500,000 from estimate. And we ended the fund balance at $92.9 million, which is higher than estimate. Any questions on this? Okay.

Okay.

So here is the revenues. So on the left column is estimate, and right is an audit. So as you can see, LCFF revenue, we were pretty close, estimated at 256.6. We ended with 256.3. Federal, 11.8 to 12.1, so gained a little bit more. State revenue is where we gained 2.2 million. Local revenue, we dropped about 79,000. So overall, that same number, 2.1 million increase in revenues. Next is expenditures. So in estimate, we estimated $291 million for salaries and benefits. We ended with $301 million, so $10 million more. Books and supplies, we estimated $11 million, ended with $9.9 million, saved money there. Services, estimated $45.2 million, ended with $44.5 million, made some savings there. Capital outlay, estimated $14 million, ended with $7.7 million. That's due to Measure D money we were able to transfer out, so thank you to you for approving the resolution. And other transfers, we estimated $3.9 million, ended with $3.6 million. So overall, we spend $488,000 more than we estimated, but in salaries and benefits, that's where we're hurting, spending $10 million more than we estimated. This is the components of ending balance, the $92.9 million. So as you can see on the left side, unrestricted, we have revolving cash, $50,000, inventory, $709,000, prepaid expenses, $897,000. We have commitments of $14.9 million. You'll see the breakdown of that on the next slide. 3% is our reserve for economic uncertainty, which is required by the state. So that's $11 million. And then we have a signed balance of lottery of $5.7 million. And then restricted, which is all the state and federal grants that we get, that's $59.5 million. So that's $92.9 million. And here's the breakdown of the commitment balance. Textbook adoption, $6.3 million. And increased pension costs, $8.6 million. Any questions? I think that's the end.

That wasn't as bad as you started out what it seemed like it was going to be.

So thank you. If I can go back to this slide. In 23-24, we had a surplus on a way to 111. In 24-25, we had a deficit of almost 20 million. We went from 111 million to 92 million. That was my not so good. That was your not so good. It gets buried in, but I just wanted to point it out.

Thank you. And what would you say that the cause of that is?

Cost of?

The cause.

Oh, the cause. Because of COVID, we got a lot of money during COVID time. We hired a lot of people. We did a lot of things. So I think we just need to right-size ourselves. Now that all the COVID money is gone. And right-size our services, everything like that.

Any other questions? Thank you, Kirtan.

Thank you.

Now we're on to public participation. We'll start with the public hearing. Public hearing regarding resolution number 5, 2025-2026, statement of assurance, pupil textbook and instructional materials compliance for the 2025-2026 fiscal year, TK through 12. Oh, did the wrong time. Sorry. The public hearing is now open. Is there anyone who would like to comment? B?

Are we doing a timer?

I wasn't sure if I understood the difference between, like, the 15A and the 10, yeah, the one we're talking about right now.

We're on 9A right now.

Okay. Yeah, because they're both on the textbooks, correct?

Yes.

Okay. And are they, yeah, so, yeah. Yeah, so I kind of wanted to just talk about a conversation that I had with one of the instructors who reviewed the 2025-26 textbook list with me, and she said the Inspire Science textbooks are anything but inspiring. And Ed Reports, an independent nonprofit, says that these books only meet about 11% to 12% of the educational expectations that they have. and none of the science textbooks that Ed Reports has reviewed meet them. And this board has been talking about getting back to basics, and this isn't even the basics. We should be instilling in students a sense of awe and wonder for science. And I want them to feel how I felt reading Carl Sagan's description of the last photo Voyager 1 took of Earth. That's here. That's our home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. I would like the board to consider open ed for the science curriculum, which ed report says meets 96 to 100% of the educational expectations they set out. I don't want us to get back to basics. I want us to go beyond them.

Thank you, B. Any other comments? Where? They're confused. For the public hearing. Oh, I'm sorry. Catherine, I'm sorry. I did not see your hand.

I know I'm out of your line of sight a little bit. So while perusing the list of textbooks RUSD issues to students, I couldn't help but notice the trigonometry textbook. Trigonometry Functions and Applications has a copyright date of 1994, 31 years ago. This text is old enough to have been used by RUSD staff when they were high school students. I am concerned about how well this age text serves our students, especially since the most recent math standards adoption was in 2010, the most recent math framework adoption was in 2023, and the most recent math instructional materials adoption was in 2014. That's by the CDE, by the way. Additionally, I know that the older a textbook is, the more difficult it is to purchase replacement copies. If, as RUSD seeks to improve numeracy, enrollment in trigonometry increases, I worry that RUSD will not be able to meet the instructional materials compliance because of how old this textbook is. Thank you, Catherine.

Any other comments? This public hearing is now closed. Oh. Oh, I'm sorry. Okay, we're reopened.

I saw your head turn. I was like, okay, never mind then. Maybe another day.

Okay, so hold on. I'm so sorry.

OK, I'll just make this completely brief. So my name is Roberto Sanja. Thank you again, school board members and staff. I'm here to speak on the agenda item regarding the textbook material. You know, I support updating course materials, especially myself as an instructor. even especially in subjects such as STEM and science. But with that in mind, they must also remain accurate and historically grounded. And what I mean is that for students ensuring the, what I'm trying to say is that it matters for two reasons. Sorry, I'm a little nervous. But being historically grounded and accurate matters for two reasons. Is for one, so that students can learn from past mistakes. So for example, like the insurrection that happened in January 6th. And secondly, that they develop critical thinking skills, such as like rejecting anti-Semitism, bigotry, and stuff like that. And learning from those contexts without censoring that information. And above all, I urge this board to respect the separation of church and state. Religion has no space in public school. Thank you.

Thank you, Roberto. Any other comments?

And... So regarding textbooks and instructional materials, I've noticed that many English and other classes now include perspectives from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, which I deeply appreciate. I enjoyed reading with junior high students about Polish immigrant families. I also read with second graders about a new student from an Islamic country. The materials emphasize the importance of respecting foreign languages, cultures, clothing, religion, and so forth. I strongly support inclusion of such materials. Language barriers are often overlooked in the U.S., where there's a common assumption that everyone should speak English. As a former coordinator for a foreign youth exchange program in Japan, I saw firsthand that American students often struggled more with learning Japanese than their peers from other countries. This experience reinforced my belief in importance of fostering linguistic and cultural awareness. That said, I do have a concern. During Michelle's candidacy, you emphasized your advocacy for minority students and diversity and cited your role in crafting that resolution on social injustice. But you recently admitted you didn't fully agree with that resolution. That contradiction raises questions about the consistency of your advocacy. I urge you to reaffirm your commitment by continuing to support materials that challenge students to engage meaningfully with issues of race, equity, and inclusion. I hope you continue selecting materials that deepen students' understanding of minority experiences, especially given that racial discrimination against minority students still exists on campus. Thank you. Thank you, Erica.

Hi, Doug Houser. I want to say I don't know the textbooks involved, but I am a retired scientist, mathematician. And if there is a need for somebody to review science and math textbooks, I volunteer myself. I don't have an ax to grind. I want all students to learn as much science and math. I fully believe that every student should be capable of going at least through algebra. Maybe trig might be a little beyond some students, but I have an interest in that, and I just offer myself as, you know, for whatever expertise I have in this subject, which is sort of considerable.

Thank you, Doug. Any other comments?

How much time do we have tonight?

Oh, three minutes on this. Oh, three minutes. Wow.

She's getting warmed up here. I was just reading in the news this morning that the NAEP test results nationwide came out today and marked the lowest scores for 12th graders ever recorded. And that's in line with the general trend of American education for at least the past 40 years. Way back in 1983, maybe before so many people here were even born, there was a commission that studied what was going on in American education and they warned of a rising tide of mediocrity that would ultimately threaten the country. Has that changed since that time? Oh, no, it hasn't. The quality and the standards and the level of learning has declined nationwide throughout that time, despite massive infusions of money. For the figures I have through 2018, from 1970 to 2018, adjusted for inflation per student spending increased in the country by 260%. In California, it increased 240%. And what happened to the quality of that education over that time? And I think that some of the comments you've heard tonight is reflected in, well, we need opinions of different, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, not teaching numeracy, not teaching reading, not teaching some of the great books, not teaching how to write. There's a professor, Tony Lima, from Cal State, East Bay. He said that the Cal State system is graduating students College, not even high school, graduating students who cannot write a paragraph, never mind writing a paper. We talked about here previously, only 3% of high school students nationwide can pass the citizenship test. that we give to illegal immigrants to become citizens. And I've taken that test. It's a pretty easy test. And those students are not prepared to, in Benjamin Franklin's words, keep the republic. I'm not sure they even know there is a republic. So in picking new textbooks, I think we really, and I see Melissa's over there rolling her eyes. Okay, who cares? Raise the standards. raise the standards to what they were before, and provide the students with a way to succeed in life and citizens who can keep our republic. Thank you.

Thank you, Greg. Okay. More comments on the textbooks? Okay.

As a student of Redlands Unified School District since kindergarten, I would like to add my own perspective on this whole conversation that just seems to have sprung up in the last 15 or so minutes. I have been here, as I said, since kindergarten, so I would say that I have a pretty fairly good understanding of the education that our school district provides. One thing that I have noticed, at least among some of my peers, is a distinct lack of critical thinking, as most of my peers genuinely look only towards tests as a way to determine academic achievement. It's not so much about how you can think, how well you can think, what you think about. It's all about memorizing facts, memorizing dates, memorizing the way to write an essay. I ask you, board, how does this inspire a future generation like me? How are we able to go out in the world and successfully succeed in our lives if we don't have the tools of critical thought that are necessary? As students, we are often taught that the only way we can succeed, get past middle school, get past high school, excel in college, is by knowing what's on this next test. Here's a review packet. Here's a review sheet. This is how you write your essay. These, while are helpful to knowing knowledge, do not do anything in the matter of thought. If you genuinely want to know and think about materials and actually have expansive thoughts and ideas on issues that face our country, you cannot do that without critical thought. And I would like to ask this board to at least do some research in this, as this has been a problem that I have noticed continually throughout education. While, yes, students can write essays fairly well, yes, students can perform very well on tests, yes, we have a class at RHS. My class is one of the highest achieving classes. That doesn't mean we have critical thought. I ask this board to examine that and improve that for our future kids. Thank you.

Thank you, Brian. Any more comments on the textbook hearing? Okay, this hearing is now closed. Now we're on to community input for agendized items. Members of the public may address the board on matters within its jurisdiction by submitting a completed registration card to the clerk or designated staff member prior to the start of public comment on agenda items. This is not a forum for debate. Policy-related complaints will be referred to the superintendent. When called, speaker may proceed to the podium, state their name and trustee area, and speak for the allotted time. Tonight we will allow three minutes. The amount of time will be announced by the board president before the first speaker begins and will not exceed three minutes. So how many cards do we have?

We have seven speakers, but 14 items that they're speaking on. Okay. The first one. Okay. Who's first? Erica Grossman, followed by Bea, and then Michael Paisner.

Can we speak on the books again? The curriculum?

Oh, so it was about that. Okay. First. You add to 9A and 15A? Yeah, I didn't know how to... Oh, OK. And then, Michael, please.

I mean, I can't.

Thank you. Michael Paisner, parent of a high school student in District 5. As you just heard, our budget is decreasing by $20 million. This should not come as a surprise because at the June 24th meeting, you approved a budget that showed reserve dropped by nearly $20 million last year and are projected to drop by more than $20 million again next year. It should be noted that these projections were made before you embarked on your current legal dispute with the union. That legal dispute with the union over flag bans is going to worsen our existing financial crisis. Increased legal fees is what happened in neighboring districts when they passed culture war policies, and we are already seeing increased legal fees this past year since Olson and Wilson have joined the board. Now, I could be selfish. I could take the attitude that reserves probably won't be depleted until my student has graduated, and this issue probably won't directly affect me too much. But that is not who I am. I want our school district to thrive, whether I have a student in the district or not. So my question for you is, when are you going to stop instigating useless legal disputes and start actually addressing the $20 million hole in our budget, as well as the critical safety issues raised by our unions? Thank you. Next item, the Point Loma Nazarene University Agreement. In this agreement, the non-discrimination clause fails to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Normally, I wouldn't bother to read the non-discrimination clauses of my local school board agreements. However, when we have one board member who is videoed giggling and smiling when a white power sign is flashed in front of her, Ms. Olson, and another board member who denies gay people should have the right to marry, Ms. Wilson, Suddenly, nondiscrimination clauses seem like a really important detail that need our attention. My question is, how come the nondiscrimination clause of this agreement fails to protect people based on sexual orientation or gender identity? Next item, the Brescia University Agreement. This agreement does prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, but it fails to prohibit discrimination based on gender identity. My question is why? Ms. Rendler, you once made a statement that you are not anti-LGBTQ. The LGBTQ community needs more than hollow statements saying you don't oppose them. They need leaders who support them by reading the fine print of non-discrimination clauses and ensuring the rights of all community members are protected. Your statement that you aren't anti-LGBTQ is false. And the only person who believes that falsehood is you. Please ensure non-discrimination clauses meet California standards and protect all classes, including sexual orientation and gender identity.

Thank you, Michael.

Next is Jeff Pogge, Robert Seha.

I think he already spoke.

And Catherine Appleby and Brian Kuntz. Esty?

Thank you.

Welcome Jeff.

thank the board, thank the staff Jeff Boje, area 2 speaking on item 15 in regards to our book ban efforts I'm going to quote each student is to each student is to be provided with instructional materials that comply with ed code section 60119 end quote Is this board aware that many of the books used in the AP instruction across the state are considered in violation of our new policy regarding instructional materials? How will this board avoid the obvious contradictions built into your own rules?

Excuse me, Jeff. What item are you speaking to?

Item 15.

15?

15A. 15A.

TEXTBOOKS?

YOU'RE SPEAKING ON THE TEXTBOOKS?

YES, MA'AM.

OKAY. YOU'LL GET YOUR TIME BACK. IT WAS LIKE 30 SECONDS.

SHOULD I CONTINUE NOW?

CONTINUE.

THANK YOU. HOW IS THIS BOARD How will this board avoid the obvious contradictions built into your own rules? The clear answer to that question is to immediately rescind the new changes that are irresponsible and pathetically Puritan. I submit that this board is now subject to outside influence. The public comments over the months have been overwhelmingly opposed to the changes, yet you've ignored the speakers and implemented the wanton desires of the extremists, many of whom are not even residents of our district. Common guidelines say that you are supposed to indicate your area.

Guess not.

Furthermore, What does the board plan to do about our looming financial crisis? What's another $20 million drop in our reserves? Are you going to ask our taxpayers to bail you out of the next lawsuit you invited? Invest in kids, please, not lawyers.

Thank you, Jeff.

So, hi. Welcome back. Hi. So, Roberto Ceja. I'm from District, I think, 4 or 2. I might be mistaken. But I just want to add on to the agenda because I signed up for 15A. But I'll add on to that to what a previous commenter made about in terms of critical thinking. So, myself as an instructor, I deal with undergraduates. And I see a huge decline when it comes to undergraduate students coming into my classroom. such as, for instance, not understanding how to do simple multiplication of fractions, or understanding simple arithmetic. Something that my colleagues and I have done is do research with different areas of textbooks, while the school district, like for instance, I work with my math department in terms of, I work with my math department, and they have a certain curriculum that we have to uphold. However, the textbook that they use is something that is backed up by research but isn't helping. The point that I'm trying to make is that myself and a couple of colleagues came up with our own set of curriculum based on the curriculum that the department needed and was able to, in other words, increase the test scores, increase the critical thinking and stuff like that within my students. While that being said, what I'm asking the board to do is, as our fellow previous commenter mentioned, was to do research on textbooks that are implemented in classrooms such as math, science, English, history, etc. Making sure that we're not just only upholding to basic standards, but also enhancing critical thinking, especially within our students. Because that is something that is truly lacking, as myself, as a graduate student who is graduating in Cal State San Bernardino. As something I wanted to mention, I'm doing my research in mathematical biology, which is an encompassing evolution and stuff like that. But that's based on me doing critical thinking and understanding my environment and Romney. But again, just wanted to reiterate that. Thank you.

Thank you, Roberto. Welcome back, Catherine.

Good evening, board. Catherine Appleby, Area 4, parent, alumni, taxpayer of Redlands. So first item is 16K. I am concerned... that members of this school board do not read all the documents attached to the agenda items, and therefore do not ask critical and thoughtful questions about those items. In the revised job description for the academic case carrier, the first essential job function has stakeholders change to educational partners, which on its own, Makes sense. But now it reads, regularly communicate and collaborate with educational and community educational partners of the identified students, and it's a little awkward. I'm not sure if the change is completely correct or if it contains a clerical error, but I hope that someone on that dais also noticed it and has asked for clarification about it. 16 A.C., As the teacher librarian at a high school, I believe that school libraries are for every student. And I was pleasantly surprised to see RUSD connect the school libraries to diversity and equity by adding, quote, provide support and oversight to the school site librarians, end quote, to the duties and responsibilities of the coordinator of diversity and equity. Often, though, when districts have a district position that supports school librarians, they create a district librarian position and hire someone who has school library experience. What school library experience does our current coordinator of diversity and equity bring? This addition to the duties and responsibilities also states that the staff will be supported. And those staff are school site librarians. But RUSD has both credentialed teacher librarians and paraprofessional library staff. So which one of these positions is the school site librarian? While I want the RUSD school library staff to be supported, I question the logic of adding school libraries to the already many important duties and responsibilities of the coordinator of diversity and equity.

Thank you, Kathleen. Welcome back, Brian.

Okay, so 12E is on the rev pool. First off, I'd just like to say thanks for reinstating the three-minute clock so I no longer have to talk at about 220 words per minute. So you can probably understand me this time around. So for the rev pool, this has been a recurring agenda item at several meetings, and if I recall correctly, the original price was somewhere in the neighborhood of around $350,000, $300,000, give or take. Now that number is well over $150,000 more than the original price, so around $400,000 to $500,000, give or take again. This board has overspent by a whopping $150,000 on one singular item, despite, as we've seen previously, having a budget deficit of $20 million and additional budget deficits coming up with increased legal fees. I have special issue with this spending when programs that I am a part of have to have their budget cut and other programs keep gaining priority despite not having any history of performing highly. For instance, Speech and Debate, which I am a part of, has for three years now placed in the top 10 at California State Champions. Meanwhile, our football team for Redlands High School is somewhere in the top 400 or 500. give or take, and despite this, continually gets funding and priority over speech. Additionally, marching band has, two years ago, was placed at sixth at the state championships, and is always having to compete for football over stadium use, and is always gaining the short straw. If you refuse to listen to me on anything else, which I have to say, which kind of has been the case recently, at least look at who and what you're funding and make it more equitable. Distribute funds based on how well a program performs, not at your own discretion. 13A, GAN limit adaptation. This is a resolution identifying your annual estimate appropriation limit. I was reading this agenda item, and I am really curious as to how much of our limit has been decreasing. Well... When I wrote this, I was curious. Now I'm no longer. We had the statistics of $20 million. So, yeah, last year the district lost $20 million from its emergency reserve fund, and that number has been on a downward trend for some time. I'd especially like to hear how much higher this budget would be if the board did not have to spend money on legal fees, which is no longer a far-off possibility as it's a fact now. This board's administrative regulation that targeted the display of pride flags has already drawn a lawsuit, despite it being less than a month old. How much money are you willing to take away from students like me? How much money are you willing to take away from us in order to purge against the liberal agenda, which, by the way, doesn't exist? I can tell you as a student how much our programs have already been cut. As I previously said, but I will elaborate on now, RHS Instrumental Music's transportation budget was cut in half from $72,000 all the way to $36,000. This means we have to self-transport to several competitions because we simply do not have the funds anymore. Either that or we extremely ramp up the amount of fundraising we do. If you ask me, this is just pointless, especially when we are overspending by, as I previously said, over $150,000 on individual agenda items. Furthermore, RHS speech and debate has consistently been sidelined despite placing top 10 in the California State Championships. Why are we focusing on divisive rhetoric when we could be helping necessary programs? Shame on you, board, for doing this, and especially you, Michelle, for letting your misguided views hurt students like me. Agenda item 13B, acknowledgement of due diligence and authorization to commit funds. When reading this agenda item, two words caught my attention. Due diligence. Merriam-Webster dictionary defines due diligence as the care that a reasonable person exercises in order to avoid harm to other people or property. Here are some words I noticed. Care. Reason, avoid harm. I wonder, do I need to use Merriam-Webster dictionary to find these words for this board as well? Where was the care when you voted to sideline vulnerable students? Where was the reason when you all knew full well that these policies would draw multiple lawsuits? Where was the attempt to avoid harm after instigating policies that themselves have been connected to the suicides of queer and trans youths across this country? This board will not even listen to their own policies. Look at your mission statement. Go on. Look. Where is the diversity, the productivity, the multiculturalism, and democracy when you hurt our students, sideline minorities, and disrespect the will of your own constituents? I have no small amount of joy reserved for when I imagine your second electoral defeat in 2026, Michelle. Soon, you'll know exactly what happens when you ignore the will of your own people. I hope you're proud of that legacy.

Thank you, Brian. All right, moving on to board committee reports. Anybody have a committee report to report on?

Yeah, I do. As was mentioned earlier, I'm the board rep to the Compact Club, and we now have a calendar for the year with the steering committee and officers and advisors all starting their meetings beginning October 8th. And the first event that the students participate in is the fall mixer, which will be on October 30th. And I'll provide more information as that gets closer. So that will be our first meeting for the year.

Thank you. Anybody else? Kenny, do you have anything to report?

No, we didn't have a meeting. Okay.

Moving on to superintendent's report. Mr. Cabral, do you have anything to report?

No, I conceded my time to Measure D. I was very excited for that presentation.

All right. Thank you, Mr. Cabral. Now we'll have business services consent items. Mr. Hill, do you have any changes or additions?

I do have one change. Consent item number... A letter I needs to be an action item. So I'm requesting that we move consent item I to action, business action item C. That is the approval of the budget that Kieran presented tonight.

Okay, everybody got that? We're going to move I over to business services action items. Okay, thank you. Do I have a motion to approve all consent items as detailed in items 12B to 12L? We're taking I out and moving it to the next. So moved. Do we have a second? Second. Any discussion? Okay, we'll call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero?

Aye.

Board Member Olson? Aye. President Rendler? Aye. Vice President Hollihan?

Aye.

Clerk Wilson?

Aye.

Motion carried, 5-0.

Moving on to action items under business services. Mr. Hill, any other changes or additions aside from that one? Okay. Oh, I have to take each of these individually. Okay. Adopt resolution number six, 2025-2026, resolution for adopting the GAN limit. Do we have a motion?

So moved.

Do we have a second? Second. Any discussion?

All right, we'll call for the vote. Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olsen? Aye. President Render? Aye. Vice President Hollihan?

Aye.

Clerk Wilson?

Aye.

Motion carried, 5-0. Adopt Resolution Number 7, 2025-2026, Acknowledgement of Due Diligence and Authorization to Commit Funds, confirming projected reserves will be available in the general fund as of June 30, 2025. Do we have a motion? So moved. Second. Thank you, Kenny. Thank you, Jeanette. Any discussion? Call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala Quintero. Aye. Board Member Olson. Aye. President Render. Aye. Vice President Hollihan. Aye. Clerk Wilson.

Aye.

Motion carried, 5-0.

Adopt the final 2024-2025 Unaudited Actual Financial Report pursuant to Education Code 42100. Authorize Jason Hill, Deputy Superintendent of Business Services, to sign on behalf of the board.

Move approval.

Second. Any discussion? Call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero.

Aye. Aye. Board Member Olsen? Aye. Did you do a discussion, did you? Oh, no, I didn't. I'm sorry. Okay.

Oh, I did. I asked for a discussion. I just wanted to say thank you to Kurtan. Oh, okay. And his staff.

Okay, now we'll call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olsen? Aye. President Redler? Aye. Vice President Hollihan?

Aye.

Clerk Wilson?

Aye.

Motion carried, 5-0. Moving on to consent items under educational services. Mrs. Buckmiller, do you have any changes or additions?

No changes or additions tonight. Thank you.

Is there a motion to approve all consent items as detailed in items 14B to 14I? I'll move.

Second.

Melissa, thank you. Patty, any discussion on this?

Yes. Oh, sorry. I had some issues I wanted to discuss with G. Okay. Oh, my turn? I'm waiting. Sorry. Yes, this is regarding the MOU with Building a Generation to conduct the Family Resource Center programs at Ligonia and Victoria. And I have a concern with the MOU in that... It's not complete. It states there's an attachment of services that will be provided and there is no attachment. I believe Superintendent Cabral looked to see if there was an attachment somewhere.

Yes, it's what you see is what we have.

So that's a big concern for me, that we would be extending our hand to an agency to provide services and not know what those services are and not be able to hold them accountable to that. I love the concept of family resource centers, believe me. I just can't, in good faith, sign off on an MOU that's incomplete.

It's actually not just a agency. BAG, Building a Generation, has been around for a long time. And we've supported Building a Generation for many, many years. They've been a partner with the Redlands Unified School District. So it's not just an agency like someone down the street or someone that we haven't worked with before. It's someone that we have a lasting relationship with for many years.

This is just a renewal.

I don't. My thoughts still stand. I'm very familiar with the agency and I did a lot of research as well. Like I said, I love the concept. I just can't in good conscience. sign off on something that's not complete. And I also found out that what they were supposed to last year, they didn't fulfill their obligations. So I just, unfortunately I'm not able to support that.

Well, I agree with Jeanette. And, um, although I like the idea to, um, This says that they're at the following four locations, which there's only two now listed. They're not at all at Victoria Elementary School whatsoever. So that's not happening. And regarding the monthly and quarterly summary reports to our district, none of that has happened. No monthly or quarterly summary reports have happened last school year. The thing is, if we're signing off on this, they were given the opportunity to correct it. Because we don't know what we're agreeing to, it doesn't say what services are offered. And how can we agree to a contract when we don't know what services are offered, how many hours a week, what days of the week? what exactly is being provided. There is absolutely no description here in what is being provided to our kids, how much of it, how many hours, and who's doing it. They were given the opportunity to correct this, and they chose not to, to give us more information so that we could make a judgment about it.

Well, I think you have some misinformation because I just heard you say they weren't at Victoria at all. They do have a resource center at Victoria. They were not asked to do anything last year. It's a partnership between the school and Building a Generation. It has to go back and forth. They don't just stay there. There are things that they help with. They come on certain days when they're asked by the principal. to come and help with things. So it's not fair to say they haven't done anything because if they were asked, they were there. They would do it.

They weren't there last year?

Yeah, because they weren't asked by either principal at either school. So that's why. And there was a misunderstanding. It got corrected.

What misunderstanding?

Between the principal and the board members. And it got corrected. I would still like to pass this through so that we can get this... going at the school sites. But what are we agreeing to?

What are we agreeing to? There's no description of services.

They have these resource centers at the schools and do what they have always done. Family resource centers.

Where does it say that here?

I don't, I mean, it's probably missing here. I don't know. Superintendent Cabral, can you, or Assistant Superintendent Jason, can you plug in in here, please?

Yes, I can share information that I know. And the information that I have with respect to last year is it's both a little accurate. They weren't present as much as I'd like to see. And we did have a discussion with them at the end of the school year about going into this school year, providing more support. The deal is for them to be at both Victoria and Lagonia and to offer support to students after school in the form of tutoring or providing some type of enrichment. The status right now is that they are going to Lagonia twice a week, Mondays and Wednesdays. But they have not confirmed supporting Victoria. And what I know about Victoria is that it is not on us. We're waiting for them because they have been informed that we want the support of Victoria. And they have not assigned anybody to Victoria at this point. and there is no plan for them to provide support. And so one of the questions would be to immediately contact them and say, you know, what's the holdup? Why have you not provided us the support at Victoria yet? I don't have an answer to that. I do know, though, that it's not because of our principal's lack of communication. Our principal has communicated with them that they want the support. They just have not provided it at this point.

And I know in the past they've had the same – it's been the same support person at both sites. So I don't know if they're going to do the same thing or what. But I know that in the past that's what they did.

But I assume that everything that comes here has been – looked at and briefed, so you're okay with it. Obviously, business services is okay with it. Because if it's on the agenda, you've done your work.

We have it on the agenda tonight because we agreed when we met with them in May that we would support them for another year. And we went over the lack of support that we had last year and I look for it to be different this year. I will say, though, that I'm concerned that they are not supporting Victoria and it's already the fourth week of school.

Do you have anyone here from Building a Generation? No.

I'm sorry.

The other concern I have is, again, I think Candy may have already said it, but it just worries me that when asked to provide more information and be informed that the MOU that already came up, them needing to get it renewed, wasn't complete. I don't understand why they wouldn't want to provide the documentation that's missing. And I know, I mean, I love having relationships with groups in the community, but I'm not going to just sign off on something because we've always worked with them.

Right.

That's your choice.

Yeah, and it's my comment, period. But I do have a question. If we end up not putting this through and we wait a couple weeks to get more information, what does that do to the support at Lagonia right now?

Well, it would probably stop until we have an agreement.

Yeah.

And I know that they are there. I know that.

I saw it myself.

But if the expectation is if they've already had a conversation with, you know, our superintendent or our deputy superintendent and the expectation that things should change and in the end it doesn't, then, I mean, obviously we won't be renewing this again next year. Correct? Correct.

Well, that's what the conversation I had with them in May was to give them an opportunity. Yes. So this is the opportunity to correct. Yes. So moving forward, if we move forward with building generation, then we'll be contacting them, asking them about Victoria. But that's just what's happening right now.

Thank you.

So, you know, the one thing about this agreement, the only thing that they have to do that they say here, because they don't tell us what services they offer, they don't tell us what they're doing, they don't tell us how often they're doing it, they don't tell us how many hours per week, none of that is listed here. The only thing it says that they're going to do is provide monthly and quarterly summary reports, which they have not done. So, I mean, as somebody who's, you know, we're requested to vote on something, and from the action that I've seen them do, they do good work, and I was impressed at their work at Legonia. But, you know, you're asking me to vote on something when there is absolutely no description or promises of service or what type of services. So it's just like in good faith, I just can't approve something when I don't know what are the terms of the contract. How are we blindly voting on stuff like that?

I guess for me, knowing that the superintendent and the assistant superintendent have done their work and due diligence, and you can disagree and that's fine, but I'm just saying they've done their homework. You've asked the questions. You've met Mr. Cabral with them.

It needs to be in the paper, in the contract. I'm just saying my point of view that they've done this.

I got a question. So if we pass this through and it turns out they end up not doing supporting Victoria, if they don't come through, we can cancel it all, right? We have the...

Yes.

We can do that if we want to. So... Okay, so let's call for the vote.

Let's call for the vote, please.

We're going to call for the vote.

In order to make sure that we're on the same page, this was a voting for all consent items together?

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So it's all, they can abstain from that.

It's not a one-on-one.

Board member Ayala Quintero. I think that you had another question. Excuse me, did you? On another item or no? That was the only item? Okay. Okay.

Are we going to pull that and vote that separately then?

No, you can. You abstain.

Is that how we usually do it? I thought we usually pull it out and vote separately. We didn't pull it out.

We can. We can pull it out and vote separately.

I've already started voting. So all they have to do is vote aye with an abstention or a no on item.

Oh, you can do that. You pull it out yourself when you. You already started. No problem. I already voted.

Oh. Next. Port Member Olson.

Aye, with an abstention from item G. An abstention or a no? A nay, I'm sorry. Right. From item 13, no, I'm sorry. It's 14G with the building a generation. I would say nay, only because it's not a complete contract.

President Render? Aye. Vice President Holohan?

Aye.

Clerk Wilson?

I will abstain with the nay, and also because there's not enough information, but because they're already not doing what they said they would do. It's not an abstention.

Oh, it's not an abstention. But we're just checking for a yes with a no on G, right?

Yes with a no on G? Oh, yes with a no. I'll vote for yes with all the other items, but a no on G. Okay. Okay.

Motion carried, 5-0, with Board Member Olson and Clerk Wilson voting no on item G. Moving on to action items under educational services.

Mrs. Buckmiller, do you have any changes or additions?

No changes or additions.

Is there a motion to adopt Resolution No. 5, 2025-2026, Statement of Assurance, Pupil Textbook and Instructional Materials Compliance? for grades TK through 12 for fiscal year 2025-2026. Move approval. Second. Patty, thank you. Melissa, any discussion?

I would just like to say that I took notes of some of the comments from the audience, and I think they made some really good points, so I'm sure we'll be looking at those.

Any more discussion? Call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olsen? Aye. President Renner? Aye. Vice President Hollihan? Aye. Clerk Wilson? Aye. Motion carried, 5-0.

Is there a motion to take item 15B through 15T?

So moved.

A second. Thank you, Patty. Thank you, Melissa. Any discussion? T or V? It says T on here. I don't know.

As in Victor.

Oh, mine says T. It's V. No. It's only T? It's only T. Okay. UNV are separate.

So moved. Second.

I'll call for the vote.

Discussion?

I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry. I had the vote. The first, Patty, and then the second. Okay.

It was Melissa and me. Got it.

Any discussion?

Yes. Very happy to see a lot of readmissions. Over 20.

All right, we'll call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olsen?

Aye.

President Redler? Aye. Vice President Hollihan?

Aye.

Clerk Wilson? Aye. Motion carried, 5-0.

All right, is there a motion to take Item 15U and V together? So moved. I'll second. Any discussion? All right, call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olson? Aye. President Rendler?

Aye.

Vice President Hollihan?

Aye.

Clerk Wilson? Aye. Motion carried, 5-0.

Moving on to consent items under human resources. Mrs. Bruick, do you have any changes or additions?

Yes, President Rendler. I'd like to remove or pull letter K.

All right. Is there a motion to approve all consent items as detailed in items 16B to 16L, pulling item K?

I'll move approval. I'll second.

Any discussion? I'll call for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero? Aye. Board Member Olsen? Aye. President Rendler? Aye. Vice President Hollihan? Aye. Clerk Wilson? Aye. Motion carried 5-0.

Under human resources action items, is there a motion to approve addendum to the clinical experience agreement between the Redlands Unified School District and Point Loma National University?

Excuse me, President Rundler. I'm sorry. Oh, I'm sorry. I would like to. I'm sorry. That's okay. I would like to pull action items A and B.

Okay, so is there a motion to approve addendum to the clinical experience? No, not that one, I'm sorry. C. I'm going on. Is there a motion to approve memorandum of understanding between the Redlands Unified School District and California School Nurse Organization effective September 9th, 2025? Today. So moved.

I'll second. Second.

Any discussion? All right, we'll call for the vote.

I'm sorry, who was first?

Candy was first and I was second.

Thank you. Board Member Ayala-Quintero?

Aye.

Board Member Olson?

Aye.

President Redler?

Aye.

Vice President Hollihan?

Aye.

Clerk Wilson? Aye. Motion carried, 5-0.

Is there a motion to approve revised student affiliation agreement between Redlands Unified School District and the University of St. Augustine for Health Science, effective September 9, 2025, through June 30, 2030?

So moved. Second.

Thank you, Candy. Thank you, Jeanette. Any discussion?

Call for the vote. Board Member Ayala Quintero. Aye. Board Member Olson. Aye. President Redler. Aye. Vice President Hollihan. Aye. Clerk Wilson. Aye. Motion carried, 5-0.

Is there a motion to ratify approved service agreement between the Redlands Unified School District and San Diego County Superintendent of Schools effective July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2028? So moved. Second. Thank you, Melissa. Any discussion?

Call for the vote. Board Member Ayala Quintero. Aye. Board Member Olson.

Aye.

President Redler. Aye. Vice President Hollihan. Aye. Clerk Wilson. Aye. Motion carried 5-0.

Is there a motion to ratify or approve student teaching agreement between Redlands Unified School District and Point Loma University effective March 27, 2025 through August 31, 2028? So moved. All second.

Second. Oh, you second.

Any discussion? All for the vote.

Board Member Ayala-Quintero. Aye. Board Member Olson. Aye. President Rendler. Aye. Vice President Hollihan. Aye. Kirk Wilson.

Aye.

Motion carried, 5-0.

Next round of public participation. Public comments are permitted upon submission of a completed registration card prior to the start of public participation. This is not a forum for debate. Policy concerns will be referred to the superintendent. When called, speakers may proceed to the podium, state their name and trustee area, and speak for the allotted time. The amount of time will be announced by the board president before the first speaker begins and will not exceed three minutes. How many cards do we have? Fifteen. Fifteen. So we will do three minutes.

Aaron Fernando, Eric O. Grossman, and Chris Claudes.

Welcome, Aaron. Thank you. Hello, I'm Aaron Fernando, District 2. I wanted to start off, Michelle, by saying I really liked what you said at the start of the meeting with the student highlight with the compact career about how even one moment of support and acceptance can have such a positive impact on our students and our teachers. But I wondered about the opposite. Doesn't it follow that even one moment of feeling unsupported and unaccepted can have a profound negative effect on them? Because this board has engaged in not just a single moment of opposition, but a sustained campaign to tell LGBTQ plus students and teachers that they are not welcome, that their existence is controversial or even pornographic. By your own words, shouldn't the guiding principle behind all of your actions as a board be to support our students? Tell me. Do you think the eighth grader that Anita Rhodes hurled ableist and homophobic slurs at felt supported when you cleared the room to let her continue speaking? Do you think that experience had a positive effect on that student's academics? What about the teenagers who spoke here and learned that John Barry had taken pictures of their butts and posted them to his Facebook? Don't you think that they could have used some support after being so grossly violated by a pervert adult? And no, moving him across the room to obstruct his view of children's butts does not count as support. Then you have a board member, Candy Olsen, liking memes with Hitler shaking Jesus' hands or promoting driving through a pride parade. Do you think Jewish students felt supported when they saw that? Do you think LGBTQ students felt supported when they saw how she feels about them? That you couldn't even censor her for it? To be clear, these abusive actions going unpunished affects more than just the students who had to experience it. It affects every single student who hears about it. They'll be less likely to report it if something similar happens to them because you've sent them a message loud and clear that you don't care. All right, that's all I have to say.

Thank you, Erin. Thank you. Welcome, Erica.

Let's be honest. You don't care about student safety or protecting them from sexual assault. One of the people Candy and Jeanette brought to board meeting was Mr. Robert Newman. He introduced himself as a child psychologist specializing in sex offenders. What he failed to mention was that his license had been revoked for sexually abusing patients. He groomed them. One of the accusers was a teenager. This is all public record. And Mr. Lawrence Hebron, who ran for school board alongside Candy and Janet, served as Mr. Newman's campaign manager when he ran for governor. I heard that Mr. Hebron knows about Mr. Newman's abuse case and appears to be defending his sexual abuse. A man who depraved on women and another who defends sexual abuse now claim to be protecting children from porn. In the past, Candy and Hawaken Redlands members disrupted board meetings. You shouted, groomer, while being escorted out. Those who weaponize that term often turn out to be predators or their defenders. Numerous arrests have been made. Your friend, Sonia Shoichino, who claims to be protecting girls by targeting trans girls, failed to notify parents and students for over six months after her friend, a school resource officer, was arrested for sexual misconduct involving junior high student girls. I saw that Jeanette posted Matt Gates on her social media. He's being accused of raping and trafficking underage girls. So tell me, who's really enabling sexual predators? You need to get serious about protecting our students. The idea that removing certain books from The idea that removing certain books from the school library will reduce sexual assault is just ridiculous. Please protect our students. Thank you, Erica.

Welcome, Chris.

My name is Chris Claudus. I am a resident of Redlands, a retired public school teacher, a school board member, and grandfather to four RUSD students, one of whom, Antonio Endicott, will be addressing you soon. you spent a lot of time at the beginning of this meeting celebrating a program intended to increasing the intellectual skills of our students increasing their analytical abilities increasing their communication abilities and increasing their leadership abilities That, on the heels of a summer spent pushing programs that absolutely stunt the intellectual growth of every student. By banning students you don't like, by silencing ones who say things you don't want to hear, that is not education. There was a policy put forth by this board about six months ago. This policy said that we will ban divisive speech and that we will only permit patriotic speech in our schools. My greatest fear is that you will resurface this after your two victories and try to get this one put through. A blatant attack on the First Amendment and certainly a blatant attack on education. Please, Review what you're doing. Think about what you're doing. You are not helping our students. You may be helping yourselves, but our students are the ones who will suffer. Thank you.

Thank you, Chris.

Dale Groom, Gene Saglin, Michael Pacer.

Welcome, Dale.

Thank you, Board. Dale Broom, Area 1. And I would like to express my dismay with the Redlands Teachers Association and that they filed a lawsuit against the school district regarding the recent passage of a flag policy limiting the display of the flags in the classroom to the American and California flag. To claim that this is an unfair labor practice or a workplace violation is absolutely ludicrous. This is a common-sense policy that restricts teachers and administrators from pushing political and social agendas on the students through flying such flags on the very walls, desks, and flagpoles that are paid for by taxpayers of this district. The display of the American and the California state flags is the standard decor of classrooms for centuries in this country and in this state. And it is the standard of practice for almost all government offices, including the vast majority of private sector jobs. There's nothing offensive or discriminatory about the practice or this policy. This policy proposal was fully discussed and negotiated with both RTA and RESPA, And Mr. Caperton spoke at the board on July 8th, warning them about the cost of litigations of these policies and his grave concern that these expenses would steal money from the classroom. What I want to say about this is this frivolous lawsuit is really complete hypocrisy, because now he is filing a lawsuit, or at least RTA is, that will actually steal money from the classrooms. So this is really hypocrisy, and I think he needs to drop this lawsuit. Mr. Caperton, you're really completely out of your lane, because the representative for the teachers' union should be really focused on collective bargaining not policies the school board policy the policies for the school district or should be set by the elected officials of the school board not by the teachers union and uh... that is a responsibility of course of the school board uh... and the other thing i would ask is does this Lawsuit really reflect the majority opinion of the teachers in this school district. I sincerely doubt that it does, okay, because most of us have grown up in the education. We've gone to school under the American and the state flag, and that has been the standard that we are used to. So I would just urge Mr. Calverton and the RTA to cease and desist this frivolous lawsuit that's going to cost thousands and thousands of dollars, and it just doesn't need to be done. Thank you.

Thank you, Dale.

Welcome, Jean.

Hi, good evening.

I'm a parent and a retired RUSD employee, and I'm from Area 3, Melissa. I'm here just to bear witness and keep telling you over and over, I'm opposed to your book ban and your flag ban, and you're harming our students and our community. Stop wasting our taxpayer money. Thank you, Gene.

Welcome back, Michael.

Thank you. Mike Paisner, one moment of encouragement can be life-changing. That's the sentiment you just expressed at the beginning of this meeting, Ms. Rendler. Do you not think that sentiment applies to the LGBTQ students? Apparently it doesn't because your actions directly conflict with your words. One moment of encouragement can be life changing. That is what our teachers try and do every day. And some of them choose to do it with a pride flag and somehow that triggers you and you reverse course and say one moment of encouragement isn't appropriate for them. The other point I want to make is about leadership. Leadership involves the ability to influence, inspire, and guide others. Leaders promote teamwork, fostering an environment that encourages open communication, trust, and mutual respect. Ms. Rendler, it brings me no joy to say you are failing as a leader. There is no teamwork on this board. Communication has stopped. Trust is shattered. And there is no respect between some members. And the root of this failure is your inability to see the malicious intent of two board members who insult community members outside of this room and play the victim when they sit next to you. This board will continue to fail so long as you refuse to confront their discrimination and you fail to acknowledge the discrimination that lives in your heart.

Thank you, Michael. Next is Bea, followed by Jennifer Escobar and Brian Koontz. Welcome, Bea.

Thank you.

President Rendler, two months ago after the first reading of the illegal book ban policy, I happened to drive by you as you crossed the street from the boardroom to your car. You looked small. You looked tired. You looked broken. I wanted to feel pity for you, but I couldn't. You've ignored students, teachers, librarians, and parents, many of whom have had strong relationships with you to align with Nazi sympathizers and violent felons. You have turned this board room into a show of horrors, and for the longest time I couldn't understand why. And then I realized something. Virtually all the people who come to these meetings and support these policies have one thing in common. They're part of the art community church. One church that organized letter campaigns from people outside the district. One church that has two members on the board who coordinated to wear matching t-shirts with transphobic comments on them. and who just lied to you about why they don't support building a generation, and it's because this agency is partnering with nonprofits that provide supports to all of our community, including the queer community. One church who stands in opposition to eight other churches who wrote to you urging you to support our LGBT plus students. One church who does not have a monopoly on what it means to be Christian and who does not speak for the community of Redlands. The Arc Church doesn't support you. They are manipulating you and using you to destroy our schools and promote a doctrine of hate. They have alienated you from your community and fooled you into thinking they care about you. And these are the types of things that a cult does. And now they're all but finished with you. And they are already planning to replace you with one of their own. I know you're running again. I know people who endorsed you previously have refused to do so. If you reversed course now, I doubt that it would have any impact on your ability to win them back. However, I do think you might be able to reconnect with the people you have hurt who love you. I think you could leave your position knowing that you did what was right. I think you could potentially be able to reconnect with your community that I know you've devoted a lifetime to trying to support. I may not have a lot of pity, but I do have enough of that to wish that for you. And I hope you can wish it for yourself. Thank you.

Thank you, Dean.

I think Jennifer's gone. Brian?

I, unfortunately, wasn't able to attend the last meeting where you guys banned books because I had a marching band rehearsal going from 5 to 9. Anyways, I just have a personal opinion on this that is really deeply important to me. And I thought it important enough that I share at an unrelated board meeting. When I was in seventh grade, my English teacher, who to this day remains one of my favorite teachers I've ever had, gave me a book that would forever change my life. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah is a memoir about his childhood as a mixed race boy growing up in South Africa apartheid, a time where his very existence was illegal. The book follows Noah and his resilient, rebellious mother, Patricia, as they navigate a world of strict racial segregation and oppression using humor and wit to survive poverty and violence. I'll tell you why this book changed my perspective on life forever. It was the first piece of literature I had ever read from a person of color. It was the first piece of literature I had ever read about growing up in adverse conditions. It was the first piece of literature that I had ever read about being born into a system that despises your very existence. And as a queer kid growing up, that meant the world to me. Now, with this policy, books like Born a Crime are on the line. And I know you say you don't ban books, but that's exactly what you do. Because if this policy had been in effect when I was a student at seventh grade in that English class, I would never have seen that book. I wouldn't know what that book is today. I wouldn't know anything about that. And it is just disgusting to me that people will come up here and say, we are not banning books. You can get them at the library. You can get them at your house. You can order them online. You are banning books, though, because the people that have the most control over increasing the amount of perspectives of their students are teachers. And if you get rid of that source of information, perspectives, and ideas, you remove vital information from an entire generation. I urge this board to reconsider that decision before it bites you in the ass. Thank you.

Thank you, Brian. Next, we have Antonio Endicott, Sue Heady, and Catherine Appleby.

All right. Hello, Patty, Melissa, Mr. Cabal, all of you down here. I actually think your work is very, very good for us. Those I didn't name, not so much. Oh, sorry, Jason. You too. Now, I want to bring up something that got brought up earlier, critical thinking, because some members of the board don't seem to have this. And I'll use it bringing up a statistic someone brought up earlier as well. Our national test averages have been going down for the past 40 years. Now, a critical thinker would try to examine and figure out why this is happening. What happened 40 years ago? Ronald Reagan was elected. Now, let's look further. A critical thinker would then ask, does Reagan actually have a causation to this? And considering his track record of all of his policies sucking, very likely. Obviously, you should then go and do further research. Assumptions are uncritical, and you should always challenge those. Now, I want to switch to something more important. Michelle Rendler, you have supported that fact Pig in sheep's clothing right there. That's not a proper term, but you know, that Miss Candy Olsen, the most blatant racist I've ever had the displeasure of meeting. And you have allowed for these horrible policies that spit in the face of plenty of communities. You have spit in the face of my friends, my family, and while I myself am not queer or from a diverse background, you have spit in my face by proxy. It is incredibly disgusting that you have allowed this to happen. Maybe stop working with the best advertisement for an abortion I've ever seen. Screw you, Candy Olsen.

Welcome, Sue.

Thank you. I'm a parent, a middle schooler, and a high schooler at Cope and Redlands High School. And I'm in trustee area two. I'm disappointed in the decisions the school board has made so far this year. None of them has made our students safer or feel more at home in IUSD schools. Three people on this board are wasting our tax money by making unlawful policies that is an embarrassment. Three people on this board are clearly not listening to any of the public comments. Three people on this board claim to be Christians, but I've never seen any love or empathy from them. Instead, I wonder how you can be so smug in your seat up there when you have Proud Boys and white supremacists, sympathizers from out of town, coming here speaking on behalf of your causes. That should tell you, especially you, Michelle, everything you need to know. Having the words compassion and protection of all RUSD students coming from your mouth is empty and misguided. You claim to do good in your position on the board. So far this year, you've done the opposite. I am a worried and afraid immigrant parent, and you being there in those seats does not make me feel better. We need good counselors in our schools. We need quality support for our disabled students, safety for our immigrant children. Basically, we need better listeners on the board, not those who only want to promote their petty hate policies. All of this was two minutes wasted time for me to say that because what I really want to say is I want you to focus on the bus money that you took away from Cope Choir this spring without warning them. Or just marching band all of a sudden had to find bus money. You could have used your time to find that money for them. Library hours at Redlands High School is now closed at 3.45. My daughter has marching band at 5, and the library was one place for her to stay safe at school until 5 p.m. when marching band began. Now what is she going to do at 3.45? You're not there to keep our kids safe. You're doing stupid, wasteful, I don't know, stuff.

Thank you, Sue. Welcome back, Katherine.

Thank you. Katherine Appleby, Area 4. Board President Rendler, thank you for implementing a positive showcase of our USD students and staff. Are you aware, though, of the irony of speaking about how one moment of encouragement can make a difference for those same students and staff when you, as president, have facilitated the dismantling of opportunities and experiences that lead to those moments? I hope that as we continue to highlight the positives of RUSD students, this board will take actions to proactively create a safe boardroom environment. As a reminder, proactive means that you will take actions and set expectations before the board meeting begins. Additionally, over the summer, one of the tasks that this board undertook was the updating of your own internal board governance document. So in order to proactively create a safe boardroom environment, I would like to know how the updating of your internal governance document is going and how it will improve the board's own behavior to create a safe environment. And in closing, I would like to remind this board that while RTA has never contributed to an unsafe environment in this boardroom, the Arc Community Church and their non-Redlands resident speakers have. Thank you, Catherine.

Next is Doug Hauser, followed by Greg Britton and John Berry.

Welcome back, Greg.

Thank you. I'll start by saying thank you to Jeanette and Candy and Michelle. You have endured a campaign of harassment and intimidation and name-calling and viciousness like I have never seen in politics before. Because you had the courage and fortitude to do what is right for the children. You know that this highly sexually explicit stuff in some of these books is wrong for children. The leftists want to sexualize children. Why that is, is a longer discussion. We don't have time for that tonight. But they do. And you've seen how hard they fight. for the ability to sexualize children. This is going all across the country. I will not be interrupted. You had your turn. You also know that we are not paying you $24,000 per year just in state money, never mind federal money. so you can tell the children what your personal, political, and cultural views are. That's not why we've hired you. We've hired you to carry out the purposes of education, to prepare the children to have an economically successful life, to prepare them as citizens to keep the republic, and to pass on as every nation has to pass on It's history, it's culture, it's traditions. That's what we want you to focus on. And this is what they don't want. You got in the way. And that's why it's been so vicious. And why I thank you for your courage and fortitude. Because you got in the left's way of dumbing down indoctrinating and sexualizing the children. And when you did, you saw what happened. And it wasn't confined just to the boardroom. As you know, Michelle, they went to your church to harass you there. They vandalized, somebody did, the art church for participants that some of its members choose to participate in politics. Imagine that. They filed a complaint against Candy's license to practice as a nurse because she got in their way. And I want to thank you for what you've done. Hang in there. And now let's try to focus on raising the educational standards that I talked about earlier. Thank you.

Thank you, Greg.

That was the last speaker.

John Berry is not here. All right, moving on. Anybody have any board comments?

Short one for me. Just wanted to say congratulations to Rev on the opening of the stadium. It's been a while since we had met, and it was a great event. And then also, I like the new shutters. They're really nice. I had to figure out what was different. It's about time we do something.

I couldn't figure that out.

Maybe next to these curtains over here. The curtains over here. Yeah, they look nice. Good job. All right. Anybody else?

Well, I'll make a statement. I'm really happy to see that security is being taken more seriously now under our new director, and I really appreciate him very much. And we've already seen the results of a student who brought a BB gun to school being arrested, which I think should have been happening a long time ago. I'm very happy to see that we will be punishing kids who... appropriately and severely so that this doesn't continue and that we can keep our students safe. What else? I wanted to say I'm very excited that an opt-out form will be coming shortly to our district. So all parents will be able to opt their children out of any content that they have a religious objection to. And this is a huge, huge win for parental rights under Mahmoud versus Taylor. Everybody knows about that decision now, and we've been working. District has worked very hard. I appreciate the district and Juan for taking it seriously, being proactive, and getting a form together, letting us all contribute with our ideas and how to make it the easiest for parents. And also in the future, we're going to have a page on our website for all of the opt-ins, opt-outs. So if you missed the form... You know, regarding there's sex ed that you're able to opt out of if you wish. Our Title IX videos, that's another thing. Then the content, what I was just talking about, if you object to certain themes or storybook or activities that you don't want your child to be participating in, you can opt that out on sexed. So eventually we'll have it organized on a website, easy place to go to for parents if they miss the form, and that's really exciting too. So a lot more transparency and options for parents is coming in the future, and that is a great day. Our scores are looking better too, so I'm excited for the future.

Melissa, do you have anything? No. Okay.

Yeah, I just wanted to comment on I've gone to several site visits since school started. First of all, some of the back-to-school events, I was really impressed with the love and the attention Unity that the principals are really trying to impart on all the students. It was great. Went to the Rev homecoming, well not homecoming, Rev first game in the stadium and the stadium is beautiful and the lights that go along with touchdowns was really cool. Um, also at RHS did a site visit there and I was very impressed with the grounds, uh, the look, the feel, the atmosphere there was really good. Got to, um, test out the coffee at Terrier Grounds, and that was a good experience. Adult students learning work skills, and they were so excited to be making our coffees. And Natalie, I believe is her name, running that program, she was just very excited to have our feedback and know that we're looking and watching and appreciating what she's doing. She's doing a great job there. And lastly, Lagonia, we saw the pictures of Lagonia Elementary, but I used to spend some time there and the grounds are beautiful. It looks so nice. And it is a good place for kids to be able to hang out and talk to each other and classes to go sit together. So that was all really great. And I just, I do feel very privileged to have this opportunity. And more goes on than what you see at these meetings. And I don't want the meetings to just be a rubber stamping session. So I'm really, really excited about what we can do. And our focus now will be on attendance, increasing attendance, increasing math and reading scores. Those are our focus goals for the year. So you'll be hearing a lot more about how that's going at the future meetings.

Okay. First of all, I just want to again thank all of you who have been sending emails, texts, and talking with me personally in support of the policies that we've passed. I attended back-to-school nights at COPE, Clement, RHS, and Citrus Valley. I always enjoy visiting with students and their families, as well as the staff members. Thank you to Principals Wendy Kores, Natalie Johnson, Wes Cullen, and Macy McHugh for taking time to take me around to the many classrooms. I made it to the end of the assembly at Franklin last week. Thank you to Vice Principal Gail Dockum and Principal James Benanti for your understanding of my lateness. I couldn't find a place to park. And I look forward to coming to the next one. Franklin also has had a great overall attendance rating since school started. They have started incentives for students who are at school every day. They offered popsicles and they let me know they were the healthy kind that the kids probably don't like, but they gave them out anyway. So I'm excited to see how it all carries out in the next few months. I've enjoyed a few high school football games, and the Rev Stadium, like everyone said, is beautiful. My hope is to get to a few flag football games and the middle school volleyball games next week. And thank you, thank you to the 665 parents and community members in our district who completed their paperwork to begin volunteering in classrooms, on campuses, and on field trips. You are all greatly valued, and I know our schools are grateful for your support. Last week, I attended a Zoom ethics training class put on by Dana Scott and Alex Worthy of CSBA. Thank you, Catherine, for reminding me that it was coming up, although you did say October and it was September. For me, it was basically a refresher course about conflict of interest, tax filings, the Brown Act, Public Records Act, and due process and competitive bidding. There was a lot of information packed into two and a half hours, but I want to thank CSBA for putting the training together and It's always good to be reminded of the different things that you learn. Thursday of this week starts Redlands League, formerly the Assistance League of Redlands. They're cool for school, which used to be called Operation School Bill. It identifies students at each elementary school to receive $100 worth of clothing and shoes. I look forward to meeting the students and their families on the next five Thursdays who will benefit from this worthwhile program from Redlands League. A huge thank you to Kohl's for providing the space and the employees the time to help these families. Thank you to my fellow Redlands League members who will be volunteering at each event. And that is all I have tonight. And thank you all for staying to the end of the meeting. Thank you. And Mr. Cabral, do you have any comments? Not yet. Mr. Cabral, do you have any comments?

I do. I have a few. I love talking about student achievement. And it was mentioned a lot tonight. So I just want to... Like, how do we measure our success? And I don't... I have to comment on it because our teachers work so hard. And they work very hard every day. And there is... Success going on in the classroom. And I do have some measurements that I can share that support that so that you don't think I'm just a superintendent who only says positive things. Although I'm okay with being accused of that. Our graduation rate, again, up more than 2%. Our pass rate for advanced placement exams, a national exam that every high school student in the country takes who is afforded the opportunity to take AP, 81% pass rate. That is a phenomenal pass rate. And we had over 1,400 test takers in 2025. The national average pass rate is closer to 70%. Those are a couple of measurements that I have to point out because congratulations to our AP program, our teachers who work in that program, to our students who are working very hard, who I believe we are doing a better job of making them critical thinkers, although I do agree that we have some work to do. You're going to see a presentation in October once test scores are released that you're going to see that we're trending up. And that scores are going back to where we were. And I know that Redlands Unified is not the entire state of California, nor is it the nation, of course. But we use the metrics that are afforded to us. And I'm very proud of the work that we are doing. And I'm very proud of our teachers, our administrators, our classified staff who help us do that every single day.

Thank you.

I do also want to shout out to the book, Born a Crime. I read that book. Awesome book. It was one of the best books I've ever written. Given myself the credit. Ever read. So I was happy to hear that earlier. Very good book. And I am going to be doing a tour of sorts. I am planning to speak to as many students as I can. And I begin next week at Orangewood High School. Followed up the following week with Rev. I plan to go to every school. We reached out to the principals. They're signing up for me to go out to speak to students. I want to hear directly from them some of the things that we can do to help improve what's going on, not only in the classroom, but at their school and their facilities. And so I'm looking forward to seeing you. Rev BSU, I plan to be at their meeting on the 18th. And I'm looking forward to that. They have a list of questions. I told them they can ask me anything they want. I'm a little scared, but mostly I'm excited because I think they're going to have great questions and we're going to have good conversations. So I look forward to seeing all our students out there. Look out for me. Thank you, everybody. Those are all my comments.

All right. And we're going to adjourn this meeting at 8.30.