Board of Education — September 8, 2026

Thank you all for your attendance tonight. We will start with roll call. Board Clerk Ayala Quintero.

Present.

Vice President Hollihan. Present. Board Member Olson. Here. And Board Member Wilson. Here. And I am here. Anybody like to start with the pledge? Patty?

Please stand. Place your right hand over your heart. Yes.

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.

Thank you.

Thank you. In closed session, there was no reportable action. We will move on to student highlight. To continue our empowering positive moments, student highlights, I'm happy to introduce Ms. Macy McHugh, principal of Citrus Valley High School, to present CV's Classy Flower Shop and Coffee Company. Welcome, Macy.

I am very excited to introduce to you two of our fantastic teachers on campus, Jennifer Dillow and Brayden Arbeiter. They run the Classy Flower Shop and the Classy Coffee Company at Citrus Valley High School, along with some of our awesome students. So I'm going to turn it over to them to share a little bit more with you about what they do. Good evening, board members, district leadership, staff.

My name is Jennifer Dillo and I'm a special education teacher at Citrus Valley High School. Tonight I have the privilege of sharing something that is close to my heart, our Classy Flower Shop. The story of our flower shop actually began almost five years ago when I was teaching at Moore Middle School. It started with a very simple idea called Flowers for Friends Friday. My students would prepare flowers and deliver them to people around campus simply to brighten their day. It was something small, but it quickly became, I quickly realized the flowers weren't just bringing joy to people receiving them, they were bringing joy to my students too. There was something incredibly special about watching students walk across campus carrying flowers they had prepared and seeing the reactions they received. People knew their names, they were excited to see them, they thanked them, and my students got to experience something I think every student deserves to feel. I have something valuable to contribute to my school. I can make a difference. When I came to Citrus Valley, I knew I wanted to continue the program, but I also wanted it to become a new part of this school community. At Citrus Valley, our school-wide tenants are represented by the word class. character, leadership, attitude, scholarship, and service. These are qualities we encourage all our students to demonstrate both on and off campus. I thought about what I wanted this program to become. Those tenants represented exactly what I wanted for my students. I wanted them to build character through responsibility and kindness. I wanted them to experience leadership by taking ownership over their work. I wanted them to develop a positive attitude and confidence in themselves. I wanted them to apply their scholarship in classroom learning in real-life situations, and I wanted them to experience the joy that comes through service to others. And from that, Classy Flower Shop was born. Today Classy Flower Shop is a student-run vocational program where students prepare arrangements, fill orders, make deliveries, communicate with customers, handle money, and practice workplace responsibility. But if you ask me what the flower shop really does, those aren't the first things I would tell you. I would tell you about the connections my staff and students are making. I would tell you about the student who comes into our classroom because they want to give flowers to their mom for their birthday. Or the student nervously picking out flowers to ask someone to prom. I would tell you about the sympathy bouquet that we make when someone in our school community loses someone they love. Or the arrangements that celebrate. a birthday, a retirement, senior night, accomplishments, or simply say someone's thinking about you. Behind every one of those arrangements are my students, and their hard work matters. And as a special education teacher, those are moments that I treasure most. Our students with extensive support needs spend a lot of their lives being told what they can't do. A flower shop gives the opportunity to change that narrative. It allows the rest of our school community to see everything our students can do. and allows my students to see it in themselves. Our school district has created a motto of empower students for the last few years. I believe this flower program does exactly that. I've learned that over the past five years are positive moments that empower students don't always have to be big. Sometimes it's handing someone a bouquet. Sometimes it's watching someone's face light up when you walk into their office. Sometimes it's a student realizing that people around campus know them and are genuinely happy to see them. I also want to take a moment to recognize an incredible community partner who makes all of this possible, the Trader Joe's in Redlands. Their generous flower donations are truly the heart of this program. Week after week, they provide us with flowers that our students transform into something new and meaningful. Because of their generosity, our students have opportunities to learn vocational skills, patience, independence, connections with the community, and bring joy to many people. So on behalf of my students in Class B Fellowship, I want to give a heartfelt thank you to our Redlands Trader Joes for continuing to support our students. We truly couldn't do it without them. What started almost five years ago with a few flowers and a simple idea has become something I can never have truly envisioned. I'm incredibly proud of what my students have built, but even more than that, I'm proud of who they are becoming because of it. And I'm grateful to work for a district and community that gives us opportunities to empower our students, celebrate what they can do, and create a few more positive moments along the way. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'll try and keep this short and sweet. I know I am not short, but I would like to think I am sweet. So, yes, Classy Coffee Company. Some lovely pictures in the back. I certainly did not create this idea. It's something that's been cultivating throughout my experience as an educator in extensive needs. It started at... A previous district, and I've kind of carried it over here, where I was able to start it and maintain it at Clement Middle School. Due to the support and kind of attitude of everyone there, faculty, administration, it's something that they have continued to do this past year. And so now it's Citrus. We call it Classy Coffee Co. And it's just been a good time. And again, I couldn't do it without Jennifer. It's been wonderful. And again, there are so many vocational skills that my students develop through this program, whether that's, again, reading orders, directions, motor skills, teamwork, and building independence. We could talk about that all day, but honestly, those skills only scratch the surface of what this program provides. At its core, our coffee shop is about service. Service to others is, I think, one of the most fulfilling things we can experience, and my students genuinely want that opportunity. While many of us might hesitate when asked to serve others, my students are often biting at the bit for the chance to help their teachers and their school community. That is what makes my program so special at Citrus. My students aren't just learning how to make and deliver coffee. They're learning that they have something meaningful to give the people around them. Their service creates connections. When my students deliver coffee throughout the school, they're interacting with teachers and general education students who may not have otherwise had opportunities to connect with someone who has a disability. It's about just, again, more than coffee. Purpose, community, independence, vocational growth, and, again, most importantly, service. My students taught me that serving isn't a chore. It's an opportunity. And I hope that the example they set continues to inspire everyone around them and find their own opportunities to serve. Thank you guys for your time. And if you'd like to donate, we're at Citrus Valley for coffee supplies. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. One thing I would love to say is I've been to the Classy Flower Shop many, many times. And thank you, all the arrangements that I've been able to purchase. Just beautiful. And lasted sometimes longer than getting it at a florist. Really, really nice.

Mr. Best, can you have them come through?

Oh, yeah, they might fall. Through the dark, through the door, through where no one's been before, but it feels like home. They can say, they can say it all sounds crazy. They can say, they can say I've lost my mind. I don't care, I don't care, so call me crazy We can live in a world that we've never seen Cause every night I lie in bed The brightest colors fill my head A million dreams are keeping me awake That is so awesome. special things I compile each one there will make you smile on a rainy day they can say it all sounds crazy they can say we've lost our minds I don't care, I don't care if they call us crazy Run away

Mrs. Dillow, before you leave, Mrs. Dillow, before you leave it, Mr. Arbeiter, nothing makes me more proud than when we have an alumni student. He's from Rev, so that's awesome to come back. I know Mrs. Dillow's husband is an RHS grad alum, so thank you. I'm not sure if you went to our schools or not. I don't think so. That's what, okay.

But we love you.

We're proud, so thank you.

And that's what we like, positive moments. All right, moving on to approval of the agenda. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda with flexibility? I'll move.

Second.

Thank you, Melissa. Thank you, Patty. Any discussion? All right, we'll call the vote.

Everybody voted?

Thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes of the August 25, 2026 regular Board of Education meeting as provided?

Second.

Thank you, Patty. Thank you, Melissa.

It was backwards. Oh, it was? Yeah.

Oh. Okay. Melissa first, Patty second. Okay. All right. Any discussion? I'll call the vote.

Motion approved, 5-0.

All right, moving on to presentations. Please welcome to the podium Kirtan Shah, Director of Fiscal Services, for the presentation of the 2025-2026 Unaudited Actuals and 2026-2027 Revised Adopted Budget. Hi, Kirtan, how are you?

Good, how are you?

Good. Good.

All right. Good evening, Board, Superintendent Cabral, Deputy Hill, and the Cabinet, and the community. I'll be going over results of the 25-26 school year. The report is officially called Unaudited Actuals. Sorry, the first slide. All right. So the report is required to be presented to the board for approval by September 15th every year. So we're right on time. Unordered actuals represent the cumulative financial activity for the fiscal year ending June 30th, 2026. It identifies actual restricted and unrestricted carryover balances from 2526 to 2627. And like I said, it's an audit actual, so independent auditors will still come out in October and review our numbers and make sure we did everything correctly. So, all right. So here's a little overview of the 25-26 school year. We started with prior year actual, 24-25. So in 24-25, we started with $111.1 million in beginning balance, and we ended with $90.6 million, with $349 million in revenues and $369 million in expenditures. Back in June when I came here to ask you to approve our budget, we also approved estimate actuals, which is how we estimate how we're going to end the 25-26 school year before we actually end it. So we projected 90.6 in beginning balance, which is same for our unaudited actuals. About $360 million in revenues, we ended with $363 million. We expected $381 million in expenditures. We ended with $381 million. So we ended with $72.7 million in fund balance instead of $69 that we expected. All right. Here's a recap of just the revenues. So estimated actuals, we expect a $257.5 million LCFF. Ended with about the same. Federal revenue, we expect a $13.1 million. We ended with $10.6 million. Other state revenues, we expect a $56.6 million. We ended with $56.3 million. So pretty much on the... dot local revenue. We expect at 32 point, we ended with 36.2. So there is, we expect, we got lower in federal, but we got higher in local, so that made up for the difference. Here's a little recap of expenditures. So salaries and benefits we expect at $311 billion, we ended with $319.9. Books and supplies we expect at $13, we ended with $8.7. Services $46.7, we ended with $45.6, so fairly close there. Capital outlays, we expect a 7.1, end up with 4.4. And other outgo transfers, again, we expect a 2.6, end up with 2.3. So overall, we expect a 381.6 million, end up with 381,051,000. All right, this is the breakdown of our fund balance. So under unrestricted side, we have $50,000 for revolving cash, inventory, which is $515,000, prepaid expenditure, $735,000. Our required 3% reserve is at $11.4 million, and lottery is assigned at $298,000, ending at $13,030,796. Okay. In the restricted side, we ended with $59.7 million. That's all our ELOP, special ed, any grant that we have coming from state and the federal government. So that's the total of $72.7 million. Any questions, concerns?

I have a question. Wasn't that, when I calculated it out on page 100, the 7.5 some million, it seemed to be about 2.02% of the... That's for the 26-27 school year, correct? Yeah, the 26-27.

So, yes, we are right now, as of right now, we're not meeting 3% reserve for the year we are already in, 26-27.

And are we expected to?

I really hope so. We have some, well, we haven't gotten all our monies yet, and we had some layoffs done last year, so hopefully all that impact will reveal itself. But right now, as of September 8th, we are now meeting our 3% for 26-27 school year.

I also notice a large unrestricted – well, we always have a large unrestricted to restricted contributions. Yes. But I notice that they went down slightly, a downward trend. Yes. And it's good to see that it's less than last year, but is the downward trend due to our special services actually needing less from our general fund, or is this shift of funds that will rebound in the future back to that trend?

So in 25-26 school year, it was a shift of funds because we had some unspent state special ed money that we spent. But it started with 26-27 school year, we are getting about $6 million more from the state for special education. So I'm hoping that will reduce our contribution from general fund permanently.

Okay, so the $33.6 million is a number that will hold and not just a one-year dip, you think?

No, that's correct.

Okay.

And that's what's helping that $7 million be $7 million and not be lower. So even though we're not meeting 3%, it's still 2%. It would be lower if we weren't expecting the extra money from SPED that's coming to the state.

I saw a lot of the capital overlay spending. Forgive me for not being a financial person, but is that a lot of those expenditures, is that from the bond monies?

No. So in general fund, it's none of the bond monies. It could be MNO doing some work. It could be LCAP doing some work. It could be sites buying some equipment, things like that.

We spent quite a bit more this coming year in the 26-27 in capital overlay spending.

So 26, 27 is all budget.

It's just like what we're projected to spend. Yeah. Why are we projected to spend so much more?

It depends on the sites, department's needs, and things like that. So sometimes we budget for, let's say, last year we had seven Williams schools. So we had to have some money for those schools. Well, this year we don't have those seven schools. So that budget could end up being not spent in real life.

Okay.

So that could happen. And sometimes we budget just in case there is some emergency comes up. You know, while they're doing Measure D work, something happens. We can find something that's years old and now we have to fix it. And sometimes Measure D isn't fast enough to go through the process.

Okay. Thank you.

Any other questions or comments? Thank you, Kirtan. Appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, we're moving on to association reports. Do we do? Respa, you will go first, Respa, this evening. Mrs. Brewster.

Good evening, President Rendler, board members, Superintendent Cabral, cabinet, and community. Tonight, I want to ask one simple question. What will it take before we take workplace violence seriously? Will it take another employee being bit? Another paraprofessional being kicked, bitten, scratched, or injured? Another campus monitor trying to manage an escalating situation without adequate support? Another employee going home hurt, scared, or wondering if anyone is listening? Or will it take someone being seriously injured before we finally say enough is enough? Our employees should not have to accept violence as part of their job. And let me be clear, this is not about blaming students. Our students deserve support. Students experiencing behavioral challenges need trained staff, appropriate interventions, adequate staffing, and environments designed to help them succeed. But supporting our students should never mean sacrificing the safety of the employees who serve them. These two things can and must exist together. We have to talk about, excuse me, We have talked about workplace violence. We have talked about training. We have talked about de-escalation. We have talked about employees needing the tools and support necessary to safely respond to difficult situations. How much longer are we going to talk? When employees repeatedly report being injured or express concerns that a situation is unsafe, the response cannot simply be another meeting, another report, or another explanation. There must be action. RESPA is asking the district and this board to make workplace safety a real priority. That means appropriate and meaningful training. That means adequate staffing. That means clear procedures when violence occurs. That means supporting employees after an incident. That means reviewing repeated incidents and identifying what needs to be changed. And most importantly, it means preventing the next injury instead of simply responding to the last one. Board members, our employees are watching. They want to know, do you hear them? Do you see what is happening? And what are you prepared to do about it? Because saying that safety is a priority is not enough. A priority is demonstrated through action. They are asking you to do something very simply. Help keep them safe while they do their jobs. Don't wait for another employee to say, I told you. someone was going to get hurt. We need prevention. We need accountability. We need action. Not someday. Not after the next incident. We need action now. And they deserve to know that their safety matters. Thank you. Thank you, Liz.

Redlands Teachers Association. Mr. Caperton.

Alrighty, good evening board members, superintendent Cabral. I would like to start this evening with a few general announcements. First, I am proud to announce that RTA will send 31 educators to the CTA special education conference in October. This year's theme is building bridges between families, educators, and specialists to serve the whole student. We plan on sending similar sized groups to the new educator and good teaching conferences in the spring. Many people don't realize this, but RTA devotes a third of its annual budget to professional development for its members. Second, RTA will host its New Educator Dinner on October 6. This is our annual opportunity to welcome our new members to the Redlands family. Tonight's agenda includes a discussion on two policies affecting Redlands educators, and I would just like to offer some insight. First is policy 6144, Controversial Issues. In our most recent contract negotiations, RTA and RUSD adopted Article 35, Academic Freedom. In that article, both parties acknowledged that it requires the use of independent professional judgment, but also carries with it responsibilities including a balanced approach to the discussion of controversial issues. As a social studies teacher and speech and debate coach with over 20 years of classroom experience, I can attest that this balance is one of the hardest things that we do as educators. Educators are human beings. They come with their own unique history and experiences, religions, and political ideology. As we discuss this topic tonight, please remember the difficulties educators face in doing this work. We do not want to discourage educators from having hard conversations because that's where our students learn and grow. Finally, policy 6163.1, the library media centers. Our librarians do amazing work with limited resources. When analyzing our library collections, you need to look at the total collection, not just an individual library or an individual order. Often there is little to no money for ordering books. This forces librarians to space purchases over multiple years or seek donations from the community. The draft policy requires the immediate purchase of materials with opposing political viewpoints without analyzing budgets or the availability of additional resources. I worry that this amended policy may undermine its stated goal of encouraging freedom of thought by applying a rigid standard that could discourage librarians from making any purchases related to politics. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Caperton. This is the time for members of the public to address the board regarding items listed on the agenda. The Board of Education values the perspectives and participation of our community members. Public comment provides an important opportunity for individuals to share their views on district matters. If you wish to address the board, please scan the QR code provided at the meeting and complete the brief public comment questionnaire at this time. Registration will close once the first speaker begins speaking. Staff will be available to assist with the questionnaire. Once registration has closed, speakers will be called to the podium in the order received. When called, please state your name and trustee area and proceed to the podium. Each speaker will be provided the amount of time announced by the board president before the first speaker... begins, not to exceed three minutes. The board encourages comments, feedback, and input from all voices in the community, including those who may have differing opinions and perspectives. The California Office of the Attorney General asked us to share that in their view, matters pertaining to... Are you with us? Matters pertaining to specific identifiable students or any group of students should remain private to the extent possible. If you have a complaint about an employee or a student matter, please utilize the appropriate complaint procedure. Dr. Rudy Wilson, Assistant Superintendent of Compliance, can assist you with filing any such complaint. As a reminder, this is a public meeting where minors may be present, and we ask all participants to conduct themselves in a respectful, civilized, and non-threatening manner. The Board may enforce reasonable meeting procedures and time limits that apply equally to all speakers. How many speakers do we have?

Board President, we have eight speakers and ten topics.

All right, you'll be allowed three minutes.

Okay, first up we have Peter Hall, next Michael Paisner, and then Gina Porter.

Welcome, Peter.

So for my public comment for the agenda items, I'm going to talk about the controversial library materials and curriculum. I noticed that the school district just purchased a new edition of the AP Psychology textbook. Apparently this is the fourth edition. And according to Candy Olson, the third chapter is going to have modules on human sexuality. So it's going to be like the psychology of... biology and psychology of sex, the difference between... sexual orientation, gender identity, and biological sex, et cetera. And even though this book is for AP students, and these are advanced classes, I don't think that we should be... confusing the difference between sex and gender identity. People cannot change their sex, and the idea that we can get around that by just changing our gender identity or how we express it is dumb. a woman wants to dress like a man or a man wants to dress like a woman, that's fine, but the idea that they can become one through medical intervention is just ridiculous. We are encouraging people to physically alter their bodies in ways that are permanent and irreparable. And many of these procedures will cause lasting harm, reproductively and in other ways, too. I've read stories about people dying because the surgeons used parts of their colon in the procedure of sexual or gender reassignment or whatever, their poop leaked into their body and they died from sepsis. This is just ridiculous. We should not be promoting this. And I'm tired of the LGBTQ community saying that we're the cultists, that we're the extremists for standing up against this, when they're actually the cultists and the extremists.

Thank you, Peter. Welcome, Michael.

Michael Paisner, Area 5. So let's talk about library materials. First off, Ms. Olson admitted she was only reviewing incoming books. Of course, there are going to be more incoming books about recent presidents, like Obama, who was very popular and represented a huge milestone in our country's history, compared to incoming books about presidents who served decades ago. That is just common sense, if I may use that phrase. The goal shouldn't be to balance the count of books coming in. The goal should be a library collection that contains books that are historically accurate and include a variety of viewpoints. It's also notable that Ms. Olson failed to do her homework. When she first introduced this topic, she had no idea that a policy on keeping our library materials balanced already exists. I urge Ms. Olsen be a better example for our students. She should do her homework on what is currently in place before making suggestions or complaints. It should also be noted curating the library is not the job of board members. We have librarians who do that job, or at least we used to. If Ms. Olson wants to curate libraries, she should go earn a master's degree in library science. This whole discussion is nothing more than a distraction from her inability to lead and address real challenges such as safety issues, too few counselors, fewer PE classes, and reduced library hours. Remember, this whole discussion becomes irrelevant if we can't actually staff our libraries. As for whether our library should include books on past presidents from both sides of the aisle, I'm all for that. Let's talk about how Reagan's deregulation, social spending cuts, and tax cuts for the wealthy contributed to the worst wealth inequality in American history that we now struggle with. Let's talk about how Bush started a war in Iraq based on a lie and the lives lost as a result of that. Time prohibits me from listing all of our current felon presidents' failings, so I'll just sum him up in two words, Epstein files. And also, let's talk about how President Obama began his first term by inheriting the worst financial crisis in the century, had it handled within a year, and then led us through the longest period of economic expansion in American history. So, yes, let's make sure our libraries accurately describe both the achievements and failings of all U.S. presidents. Thank you.

Thank you, Michael. Welcome, Gina.

Okay, good evening. Gina Boffner, Porter, sorry. I am the Citrus Valley High School librarian. I have some concerns about the proposed changes to the controversial issues policy, especially as it pertains to the library's roles. Last year, I was here when the board voted three to two to approve staffing cuts proposed by the district that slashed our library staff by half, cutting all 16 elementary paraprofessionals, three high school library paraprofessionals, three middle school librarians, leaving us with only five certificated librarians for the district and seven library and textbook paraprofessionals. New language being proposed mandates that each library has age-appropriate materials about each president. While this is a noble goal, I want to know if you've considered the feasibility both financial and in terms of manpower to achieve this. When I was going through our collection today, and right now I can only speak about what's in my school, we have books on approximately half of the former and current presidents. about half. So how is getting a book on TAFT, which we don't have, going to help make our students more well-rounded and critical thinkers? The other issue I have with this, the language here, is that there's been some language added to an existing policy about fairness and balance and making sure that library materials are available without promoting any particular point of view. I don't think that anybody has an issue with that. We are all about trying to balance our collections, because in order to create these well-rounded students capable of independent thought, we need to teach them how to think and not what to think. However, when the librarians came back in August, each of us received a copy of the Bible, the purchase of which, as I understand it, was mandated by the school board, and we were instructed to get these into our collections. In the interest of balance, fairness, and equity, I want to know where are the holy books from the other major world religions? Why are those not being added to our collection? So that's basically what I have to say tonight, and I thank you for your time.

Thank you, Gina.

Next we have David Bienstock, Jeff Pogge, and Pat Molnar.

Welcome, David.

Thank you. I think I'm on the border of Area 3. On The agenda under 12C, there's an extent award 3-25 for Child Nutrition Services. And as a state worker, I understand that the bids going to the lowest bidder is a normal thing. This talks about fresh produce, but it's sort of brief and I'm hoping that the word organic gets injected in there and we start to have a minimum or at least present the idea that we have a minimum idea of a percentage of organic foods to bring in. We could be leading the pack for, you know, be a newsworthy item of having 80% organic items or something. And, you know, there's hardly a better investment that we have. that we're all here because the children are the clients. And I just wanted to throw that idea out there that this talks about the lowest bid, but it does not talk about quality or the nature of from where it comes, except that it's local. So I just wanted to throw that idea out there for 12C. Thank you for your time.

Thank you David. Welcome Jeff.

Good evening, Board. Jeff Poggi, Area 2, talking about 19A. And I want to say, here we go again, doing politics instead of governance. Why is this hard? Let teachers teach. Let librarians curate. This board would have you do otherwise. So what would you do in these controversies? Flat Earth. UFOs. Noah's Ark. the Holocaust, the geography of Lake Ontario, the Gulf of Mexico, the U.S. state of New Mexico, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Cuba, Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, astrology or astronomy, alchemy or chemistry, spontaneous generation or biology, feelings or facts, I have some extra time here tonight, so I'm going to address a style of argument that has been repeated over and over in many of these meetings. It's called the straw man argument. So, for an example, we all hate pornography. it's nobody who's going to stand here and say, oh, let's have more pornography. But what this board has done is instead of celebrating the author, Toni Morrison, and rejecting the idiocy of these arguments, they pull one of her books from the library shelf. That's just one example. I have 100 other examples, but I'll be done. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Jeff. Thank you.

Thank you.

Welcome, Pat.

Thank you. Pat Molnar, Area 2. I am here to talk about the book policy and the libraries in general. Because I teach English, I closely work with a librarian, the new librarian at our school, after the other one was drummed out. I got to say, I'm embarrassed by what you guys have done to the libraries, what you've done to the people, the nurses who are taking care of the staff. And I want to ask a question that I probably should have said earlier, but I would have hoped you guys would have figured this out. In budgeting, leaders lead by example. Who's faced the most cuts? Librarians. Who's faced the most onerous requirements? Librarians, teachers, nurses. What about the district staff? What about the upper levels of management? Compared to other districts, we have more directors, assistant directors. And so instead, we have the culture wars going on here. We have people attacking librarians. The amount of stress and cortisol these people are dealing with is incredible. And the way the book bans have been going, the students in my GSA are feeling threatened. feeling attacked, feeling stressed, feeling all the things that are going to create the problems that I talked to you about before, Michelle. And you said, it'll be okay. No problem. It is a problem. And this fair and balanced policy, the reminder again, let's just keep hammering on teachers that teachers have to be fair and balanced. We do a damn fine job. Thank you very much. Come and teach in our place. Come and teach in SUB. There's other districts. I think it was, I can't remember what city it was, but there's a city where they require that people in the district office come and SUB. Think who is there in the classroom with the teachers. It's getting harder, not easier. The 10th graders I have this year, they're good kids. They're kids. They need help. And they need more books, not less. The budgets that you will pass, the librarians are not going to want to purchase any books. And suddenly, Bibles appear. You must put this in. The librarians are told, you need to put this Bible in. Great. Where's the Quran? Where's the Talmud? What is this saying to free and balance? What is this saying to critically looking at all the different cultures that have faced this world? We are not one block. We are a balanced block. I keep pointing to this almost every time I'm up. The mission statement is critical thinking. So we challenge people. Also, on the controversial book policy and all, it says they will not harass. What about kids who just say, well, it's my policy that you shouldn't be able to speak?

Thank you, Pat. Thank you.

Next, we have Catherine Appleby and Greg Bertain.

Welcome, Catherine.

Good evening, board. I have two items. First item is 13D. This is the naming process, commencement of the naming process for the administration building at Orangewood High School. I ask questions when you pass the board policy regarding naming that were never answered either publicly here or in an email to me. So I am going to ask them again. How is the decision made about what buildings get named? This is not a school site. This is an administrative building at one school site. Is the plan that we're going to name every single administrative building? I mean, that's 20 some odd people who are going to love RUSD because their names will be on a building. Are we going to stop at the administrative buildings? Are we going to name the libraries? Oh wait, we wouldn't actually do that. Are we going to name the gyms? that aren't already named? Are we going to choose to name the stadiums that aren't already named? I would just like to know where this naming process begins and ends. Where do we say we've named enough stuff in RUSD? We don't need to continue naming things. I also actually wonder, what are the costs associated with the naming process? I'm going to assume that the steering committee, sorry, the screening committee for this is going to work within their contract time. They're going to be people who are paid by the district and they're going to work within their hours to be on this committee and so we're not going to need to pay them any extra. But I know school districts We can't just name a building and say, we have named it. I'm sorry, I'm going to pick on Ms. Bruick. We have named it the Lisa Bruick Administrative Building. We're not going to be happy with that. We're going to have to attach a sign to it. And districts aren't even going to be happy with that. Not only are we going to have to attach a sign, we are going to have to set time so that all the board members can show up. We can have balloons. We can have a celebration. Ms. Bruick can be there to show off this newly named building. What is the cost of that? What is the cost of the signage? What is the cost of those celebrations? Who's eating that cost? Is that going to be the site that has to find that in their budget? We saw with that presentation on our budget, we don't have extra funds. So is this necessary? Or is this just something to make somebody in the community feel good?

Thank you. Thank you, Catherine.

My second point is, or my second topic is 19a. The RTA president made an excellent point about budgets. I don't think you've considered that with this. In fact, I think with most of the policies you have put forward in the last two years, you very rarely consider the budget implications of that. It's just words on a page to you, which is fine. You're the board members. You don't have to deal with the budget. You don't have to deal with the implications of it. You don't have to deal with the space implications. You get to sit up here and be like, we put pretty words on a page and we passed it and yay, don't we feel good about ourselves. But you need to think about these things. You are the people who the community trusts that you will manage our district fiscally and be responsible about it. Your words matter and they carry things. Looking at 6163.1, the second full paragraph in red, I would like to ask you, are all viewpoints valid? And I'd like you to sit with that question, and I'd like you to sit with all viewpoints and what that actually looks like. I was really glad, Gina is the librarian at my kid's school, I was really glad that she shared about the Holy Bible being gifted at the beginning of 2026-27. I didn't see that gift listed anywhere in the board agendas for we need to send thank yous for these donations. So I'm wondering what budget that came out of. I'm also, I agree that one holy work is not balanced. There should be other holy works in the library. I'm also curious, did you check to see if the libraries already had a copy of the Holy Bible and were they forced to put a second one in? And as we all know, not all translations of the Holy Bible are equal. So in order to have a balanced collection, are we going to promote having multiple translations of the Holy Bible? Because there are certainly denominations that believe that one translation is more valid than another. 6144. It is clear you do not understand collection development. Your librarians have tried to teach you this. It's incredibly frustrating that you don't take the time outside of this to actually learn what that looks like. What if there isn't a book for every single president at the appropriate grade level? And that meets the good collection development, which is usually two to three positive professional reviews. Did you restart my time? What happened, you guys? It was like at 40 seconds. Oh, it's 19A. Okay. I will make this quick. What about weeding? If there's not a book, if it's not checked out, good collection development is we take it out. Under item A, I'd like to know the time frame between the guest speaker being invited and the superintendent notifying them. And then who's going to provide the instruction for the similar educational value if parents opt out of sex ed? And to Dr. Rudy Wilson, is the district complaint procedure the UCP?

Thank you, Catherine. Welcome, Greg.

Thank you. I'm the only one in the audience that ever addresses this subject of discipline. Other than the last two meetings, the union reps have been reporting back from the figurative front lines of what's happening to staff because they're not able to effectively discipline the students. And what's going to happen is they're going to get actually injured and they're actually afraid of being injured. That was never the problem when I was going to school. We never even thought of biting or hitting a teacher. I don't know if that ever happened. But if you don't discipline them, beginning at a very early age, they should be getting at home too, but you're responsible for them when they're in your care and custody. Misbehavior is going to get worse and worse.

Excuse me. Excuse me. Which agenda item are you referencing?

I wrote down 15C, but my comments apply to all of the discipline items.

Oh, expulsions. Okay.

So when you send out a student who's misbehaved, some of these are real serious, they've used violence, threatened violence, brought weapons to school and so on, and they get a semester of vacation from school, and then they come back in, have any of them really learned their lesson? I doubt it. And these descriptions in your agenda are so vague, we have... And the students, parents, teachers, staff have no idea the record of the offending student and whether appropriate discipline is being rendered. So it's not just for all the students that actually want to learn, not just for the benefit of the teachers, but insisting on appropriate behavior from the get-go is for the benefit of the misbehaving student. Because at some point, that misbehavior is going to step over the line, and they're going to run into the long arm of the law, where they're not just going to get a semester off from school and then be brought back. Now, a little bit ironic, however, is that, as I understand, you are constrained by state law on disappointing students. Well, the unions whose representatives have spoken here about the problems with their members and violence, they all support the people in Sacramento that wrote those laws. So they're in part responsible for the situation that they are in. My last comment on the subject is the rep who spoke tonight, I don't remember her name, was saying, well, I don't blame the students. They need appropriate intervention. Well, no. Yet, if it's particularly a five-year-old's different than a 12-year-old different than a 17-year-old. But if a 12-year-old hits his teacher, that student should be blamed. He or she did wrong and should receive appropriate punishment, not an intervention.

Thank you, Greg.

Oh, yeah. Library policy. Again, we see the misunderstanding of the people over here on the left of the role of this board. We, the people, the citizens, elect you to operate our schools. You answer to us, and then all of the people that work for the district answer to you. Now, can you do... Make every decision in the district? Of course not. You set the policy, and if there are problems going on, then that requires you to step in and change the policy, see that the people understand the policy, and implement the policy. And there is an imbalance. As Candy found, when she looked through the book orders, they were like 19 out of 20 on anything that's political or cultural was all skewing left. That's not by chance. That's not just that they didn't flip the coin 20 times in a row and get 19 heads. So now it comes back to you. And everyone seems to agree we want fair and balanced. How can students critically think? They like to talk about critical thinking. If you're not aware of the facts and the evidence, as well as differing perspectives. Now, Mr. Paisner has his perspective on various presidents. But there are very different perspectives. And how would you be able to understand what Ronald Reagan did, or what Obama did, or any other president did, unless you have those differing perspectives? So it is important, and it should not be just left to individual presidents, the policy should be much broader, is whether the issue is the economy, whether it is socialism versus capitalism, whether it is global warming and climate change, they should be presented because they're going to be voters at some point. And we want the voters to be making informed decisions. So I should start with you guys, as they understand, well, yes, there's this perspective that global warming, climate change is this catastrophic threat. We have to change how we live. And then there's a perspective that says, it's bunk. There's nothing bad going on with the climate. And there's a kind of an intermediate perspective that says, yeah, it's a problem, but it's not worth changing how we all live, impoverishing the middle class and poor people around the world, and spending trillions upon trillions of dollars to deal with a problem that is not that critical or that bad. And they should understand, and I'm using this as an example, All of those perspectives, and part of that is what happens in the library, is the books should represent all of those perspectives to help produce the informed voters that we want.

Thank you, Greg. All right. We will now open the public hearing regarding Resolution No. 7, 2026-2027, Statement and Assurance for Pupil Textbook and Instructional Materials Compliance for Fiscal Year 2026-2027. Is there anyone who wishes to address the board regarding this public hearing? Seeing no further comment, I will close the public hearing. We will now open the public hearing on the initial proposal for the 2026-2027 re-opener negotiation cycle from the Redlands Educational Support Professionals Association, CTA and EA, to the Board of Education. Is there anyone who wishes to address the Board regarding this public hearing? Seeing no further comments, I will close the public hearing. Board committee reports. Any board member want to report?

I have CRYROP. We, you know, just started back to schools. There's not really a lot, but did want to say that CRYROP managers attended middle school back to school nights on August 31st and high school back to school nights on September 3rd. And then we will have Ambassador Training Day on October 14th at Crafton Hills College. And I'll have more next month. Thank you.

Anything to add, Melissa, on that? No? Okay. Okay. Anything to report?

We haven't met in quite some time. It's like every three months now. So the next meeting is this coming Friday for Parks and Rec. And I'll let you know.

Okay. Thank you. Patty, were you able to go to the rep meeting? Were you going to that?

Yes, I did. It was last month. This month they are having their social event and electing their new officers.

Okay.

Thank you.

What was that for?

For rep. Oh. Superintendent Cabral, do you have anything?

No, I don't have a report.

And now we're on to business services. Mr. Hill, any changes or additions to business services consent or action items?

No, President Rindler, no changes or additions tonight.

Do I have a motion to approve business services consent items A through J as presented? I'll move.

Second.

Thank you, Melissa. Thank you, Patty. Any discussion? All right, we'll call for the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

Thank you. All right. On to business services action items. Do I have a motion to approve the final 2025-2026 unaudited actual financial report pursuant to Education Code Section 42100 and authorize Jason Hill, Deputy Superintendent of Business Services, to sign related documents on behalf of the board?

So moved.

I'll second. Thank you, Patty. Thank you, Melissa. Any discussion?

Just thank the business office and Kurtan and his staff for all their work.

Okay, we'll call the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

Thank you. Do I have a motion to adopt Resolution No. 9, 2026-2027, determining that District Real Property located at 304 9th Street, Redlands, the Foothill Groves Packinghouse, will not be used for school purposes and is not a school building subject to the Field Act, and authorize Jason Hill, Deputy Superintendent, Business Services, to sign and transmit related documents on behalf of the Board. I'll motion.

Second. Second.

Michelle and Patty. Any discussion? I'll call the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

We have a motion to adopt resolution number 10, 2026-2027, resolution for adopting the GAN limit

So moved.

Second.

Thank you, Patty. Thank you, Candy. Any discussion? All right. We'll call the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

There are a motion to authorize the commencement of naming process for the administration building at Orangewood High School. And I vote on this. So moved. I motion this. You get a second. Second. Any discussion?

I would like to acknowledge the public comment about where does this end in terms of how many buildings we're going to name and the cost. I think that we will need to start thinking about those questions. I think I heard that it's just community requests. Is that right?

Yes, for the policy, almost anybody can request it. Since I started in 23, this is the first time since I've been here that there's been a request to name an administration building. When the request came in, we didn't have a process, and we felt like it was necessary to be consistent. We have plenty of buildings named and stadiums named, but we didn't want it to be just somebody requesting and then just saying yes or no. We wanted there to be. And so what this is going to do is just start the process. If it's approved tonight, then we would put a committee together, and then the committee would then make a recommendation to the board. We would want it to be minimal cost if it is ultimately approved. But naming a building, yes, it would require some kind of plaque.

Signage.

Signage that would go with the naming. We have RHS, for example, the administration building is named after somebody.

Martin Muntz.

So there is some kind of signage for that, and it would carry on. But that was the goal in creating a policy, was to make sure that it wasn't just anybody and frivolous requests. And that there be a district-centered process because there is belief that some of our buildings have been named just based off of school sites deciding to do something. And this centers it and ensures that it's fully approved first.

I have a question. Something we'll probably have to just keep an eye on.

That's a good point.

I had a question. I didn't think about it when we were talking about the policy, but did we ever have, when we were naming a building, is this indefinitely? Is this something that we're going to, I mean, should we have attached a time limit to it? You know, 50 years, 100 years, you know, like, I don't know.

Typically, the board policy does address a deadline or a timeline if the board deems that that person who the building is named after becomes a name that it should not be named after. So there's a process. That's if there's, yeah. Yeah, that if we find out something that we didn't know at the time that it was approved 20 years later, then there's a way of taking that off.

Well, like what happens when we demolish the building? Doesn't that name then follow? No, the...

What should happen is the new building resurrects with the name, which Orangewood is a good example because Measure D is going to help create a different administration building than where it exists now. So let's say this gets approved and we name the building. That current building is probably going to look different once we have that other administration, but that plaque would then just follow to the new building. And just to be clear for this, what the request is is to name Orangewood High School. And this is where it's specific. Anybody can specifically ask for it. And this was a specific request for the administration building at Orangewood High School to be named after Dr. George Barich. Dr. George Barich. was an educator in Redlands Unified and he also opened Orangewood High School as the principal and then served Orangewood for 16 years as the principal. He passed away in 2025.

Any more discussion? I'll call the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

All right. Moving on to educational services. Mrs. Buckmiller, any changes or additions to any educational services consent or action items?

No changes or additions on either one.

Thank you. Thank you. Do I have a motion to approve educational service consent items A through E as presented?

So moved.

Second.

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

Yeah. I had with regard to A and B. I know it was short notice, but I had asked if we could get more information on what those programs actually provide to the students. Maybe at our next meeting we could get that, a little brief presentation, because I know they provide really valuable information. learning experiences, and I think it would be great for the community to know more about what those are and what we're spending our money on.

We can certainly do a presentation. I know Ms. Buckmiller can maybe provide a little bit of information tonight.

Yes, definitely. So first of all, the Garner Holt Lab at Beatty and at Clement, it's an animaker space, and so that uses STEAM skills and students design and build animatronics. So that is just a great real-world skill and a career exploration for them. And then the letter B, the Rapid MOOC, it's a very unique, it's an all-in-one self-service. It's a recording booth and a studio all-in-one that doesn't take a lot of production skills, but it's still an introduction into video production. And both of those really fit nicely with our Empower letter E, which would be exploration, curiosity, and creativity. But we'll be glad to do a little demonstration for you.

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

Motion carries 5-0.

All right, we're moving on to educational services action items. Do I have a motion to adopt resolutions number seven, 2026-2027, resolution for pupil textbook and instructional materials compliance for fiscal year 2026 to 2027, grades TK through 12?

All moved.

Second.

Thank you, Candy. Thank you, Patty. Any discussion? Call the vote.

Motion carries, 5-0.

Do I have a motion to approve the Proposition 28, Arts and Music in Schools, or called AMS, Funding Annual Report for Fiscal Year 2026-2027, and authorize Sonia Belinga, Director, Special Projects, and Patricia Buckmiller, Assistant Superintendent of Ed Services, to sign related documents on behalf of the Board.

One more second.

Thank you, Melissa. Thank you, Candy. Any discussion? All right. We'll call the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

We have a motion to approve the readmission of student 2024-2025-015 effective the first semester of the 2026-2027 school year. So moved. Okay. Thank you, Patty. Thank you, Candy. Any discussion? I'll call the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

I have a motion to approve the readmission of student 2025-2026-003, effective the first semester of the 2026-2027 school year. I'll make a motion. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Jeanette. Any discussion?

I wanted to ask a general question. This one in particular talks about previously making terrorist threats against school officers or school property or both. And then in a different item, it was possession of a knife, explosive, or other dangerous object. My question is regarding these readmissions as a student. placed on a more restrictive or more surveilled safety plan when they come back to our campuses? If they've had a history of terrorist threats or anything with severe violence, are they placed on a safety plan? Are they watched more closely? Do they have to follow any particular directive or check-ins? What is the process like?

Typically, they would be readmitted with a behavior contract, which would stipulate not the ability to immediately discipline should they break that in any way. As far as surveillance, we do our best to make sure that not only administration is aware of the student if they're not from that school. Also, safety team. So they are made aware? Yes.

The administration's made aware?

Yes. Because they would have to carry out any kind of contract or any kind of stipulation that exists regarding that student.

So there are contracts, safety contracts that are made?

Typically. I haven't seen this specific student, but generally speaking, we would have an agreement that the student must follow all of these different, well, all school rules, of course, but it would say if you violate it, then you might be expelled again.

Is it easier to get expelled a second time around?

Yes. And I'd love to see the data. I don't know exactly the data, but I know that in my experience, kids don't typically get expelled twice. And so there is a lot of evidence that supports that the process does work as far as, if we want to use the word rehabilitation for these specific students, they come back to school and I'm not saying they don't get in trouble again, but they don't meet the level of being expelled again.

Is that data we could get fairly easily within our district?

Yeah, we could definitely look at all the students that have been expelled for a time period and see what their discipline looks like now.

And I know one of the community members has, again, brought up some of these safety concerns and the students being expelled and coming back. And I just want to let the community know that when a student gets expelled or recommended to be expelled, we are given a big, thick packet to read of what... the situation entailed and what types of interventions have already been provided and what their behavioral history is. And a lot of the details would easily reveal the identity of the student, so we have to be really careful about that. And I understand concerns about what really happened because these categories are so broad. I can just say each case is looked at by quite a few people before determinations are made. In certain situations, the decision is almost immediate depending on what the behavior is.

We'll call for the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

Do you have a motion to approve the readmission of student 2025-2026-020, effective the first semester of the 2026-2027 school year? So moved. Second. Thank you, Melissa. Thank you, Patty. Any discussion? We'll call the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

Do you have a motion to approve the readmission of student 2025-2026-22 effective the first semester of the 2026-2027 school year? I'll move.

Second.

Michelle and Patty. Any discussion? I'll call the vote.

Motion carries, 5-0.

Do I have a motion to approve the readmission of student 2025-2026-24, effective the first semester of the 2026-2027 school year? So moved.

Second.

Thank you, Patty. Thank you, Melissa. Any discussion on this one? We'll call the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

Thank you. And do I have a motion to approve the readmission of student 2025-2026-29, effective the first semester of the 2026-2027 school year? So moved.

Second.

Thank you, Candy. Thank you, Melissa. Any discussion? We'll call the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

I have a motion to approve the readmission of student 2025-2026-34, effective the first semester of the 2026-2027 school year.

So moved. Second.

Thank you, Jeanette. Thank you, Candy. Any discussion? I'll call the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

Do you have a motion to approve the readmission of student 2025-2026-36 effective the first semester of the 2026-2027 school year? So moved. Second. Patty and Michelle. Any discussion? All right. We'll call the vote.

Motion carries, 5-0.

That's why I say I'm really happy these students are coming back to school and hopefully have learned from what happened and will have a successful year. We'll now move on to human resources. Mrs. Bruick, any changes or additions to any human resources, consent, or action items?

No changes or additions, thank you.

Thank you. Do you have a motion to approve human resources consent items A through C as presented?

So moved.

One second.

Thank you, Jeanette. Thank you, Melissa. I can't abstain from one on here. How do I do that?

You set the lit.

Okay. Okay. Okay.

I'm abstaining from A. Do you just want my votes for B and C, or do you want me to do it on here?

You can do it there, and I will make the note.

Okay.

Okay, motion carries 5-0 for items B and C, and motion carries 4-1 with Board President Rundler abstaining from A.

Thank you. Do I have a motion to ratify and adopt revised resolution number four, 2026-2027, action regarding teaching outside of credential authorization?

So moved.

I'll second. Patty and Michelle. Any discussion? All right. We'll call the vote.

Motion carries 5-0.

Thank you. Next, we have public participation. This is the time for members of the public to address the board regarding matters within the jurisdiction of the board that are not listed on the agenda. If you wish to address the board, please scan the QR code provided at the meeting and complete the brief public comment questionnaire at this time. Registration will close once the first speaker begins speaking. Staff will be available to assist with the questionnaire. Once registration has closed, speakers will be called to the podium in the order received. When called, Please state your name and trustee area and proceed to the podium. Each speaker will be provided the amount of time announced by the board president before the first speaker begins. It will not exceed three minutes. How many speakers do we have?

President, we have six speakers tonight.

Three minutes.

First we have Peter Hall and then Valerie Zavis and Karen Starr.

Okay. Welcome back. For my public comment, last meeting Michael Paisner accused Candy Olson of improperly, of campaign contribution misconduct. He said that she failed to disclose campaign contributions and that She used the group Awaken Red Winds to bolster her campaign. And I wanted to see what exactly was in the complaint that he filed against her nearly two years ago. So I sent a public information request to the FPPC and they sent me the files back. And apparently, according to the files, the only reason Michael Pizner even made this complaint against Candy Olson is because he received campaign material from Awaken Red Wins back when Lawrence Hebron was running for a school district seat. So that was the reason that he filed the complaint against her. And the fact that she is a sitting board member on the Awaken Red Wins group So she founded the group and she's a sitting board member on it. Those are the reasons why he followed that complaint so Petty personal jealousy, I guess. He doesn't like her. He doesn't like the group. And he has no proof that she committed any kind of misconduct. Also, I also found a complaint against Patty Hollihan for similar reasons. She had a complaint filed against her for failing to file campaign paperwork on time. And the difference between her complaint and Candy Olson's complaint is that the complaint against Candy Olson was brought against her by an FPPC commission instead of by an individual. And also the complaint against Patty Hallahan was resolved within a month, like a month and four days. So they filed the complaint against her in, like, August of 2023. And then, like, September 2023, they closed it out. And I guess she was reprimanded, maybe had to pay a fine or something. I don't know. And the complaint against Candy Olson is still ongoing. So every time Michael Paisner is here, he always likes to say, she's under investigation. I guess technically, but after two years, how much more time does the FPPC need to find out whether or not she's guilty? Also, Michael Paisner has, in his latest public statement, he has repeated the constant refrain that board members just trust the employees that they hire to do their jobs. And if we don't trust all of you that we actually hire, why would we trust people that we don't even know?

Thank you, Peter. Welcome, Valerie.

Thank you. That was a beautiful presentation, by the way, from Classy. Flower and Coffee Company. I'll look back on that and smile each time. Michelle, you called out Candy and Jeanette earlier like they were little children when they were speaking during your statement, but Melissa was speaking to Jason, and you didn't say anything. I think accountability... Should be for everyone. At the previous school board meeting, a speaker brought up FPPC complaints involving Candy Olson. And I think it's important we deal in facts and not insinuations or half-truths. There is a significant difference between having a complaint filed against you and actually being found to have violated the law. The FPPC itself explains that complaints can be dismissed or closed without further action and when there is insufficient evidence. As of today, I have not found an FPPC enforcement decision establishing that Candy Olson committed any violation. Yet, when discussing Candy Olson, her opponents continue to bring up complaints as though a complaint itself proves wrongdoing. When we look at Patty Hollihan's record, there is an actual FPPC complaint or enforcement action. The FPPC found that Patty Hollihan, her campaign committee, and her treasurer failed to timely file a required 24-hour contribution report. The matter was resolved with a $690 penalty. The violation was acknowledged, and the penalty was paid. so the distinction matters an allegation is not a finding a complaint is not a conviction then there's the issue of campaign signs during the previous election patty hollahan admitted to directing her best friend to illegally remove her opponent's campaign signs during the 2022 election there were four stolen signs found at patty's friend's house upon police arrival not the example of how a leader of children should conduct herself. And now Patty's supporters are at it again. They traveled 60 feet up onto private property to steal a large Dr. Broom sign this past weekend. This was captured on video and a police report was filed. And this is not something to simply be brushed aside or be minimized. School board members are role models for our children and representatives of our community. And as such, we expect honesty, accountability, respect for private property, and respect for the democratic process from everyone seeking that responsibility. Do not rely on accusations. Look at the documented record, look at the evidence, and then make your decision based on facts. Thank you.

Thank you, Valerie. I'm sorry, I did not catch your name. I didn't catch your name.

Oh, Karen, this one? Karen Starr.

Welcome, Karen.

Area 1. Whatever our roles in this room, the most important responsibility of the board and district leadership is the same, to make sure every student can access, participate in, and benefit from a quality education. The heart of the work should be simple. Students matter. The system exists to serve them. I'm concerned this board has lost sight of that responsibility. Your job is to make sure the system works for the student and that staff have the training, resources, and authority they need to act when it doesn't. Make sure this district understands and applies disability law and acts when something is going wrong for a student. I've watched what happens when that leadership fails through my daughters. When one daughter's disability kept her from school for weeks and months and ultimately years, the answer cannot be to ignore concerns, create barriers, delay help, and give her failing grades and unexcused absences. Parents should not have to know the right meeting, use the right words, complete the right form, or obtain yet another doctor's note before the district addresses an obvious problem. Doctors provide the medical framework. The district must turn that into an education that the student can access, not ask doctors to predict the unpredictable. A disability should not have to be visible or predictable to be taken seriously. Listen to the student. Believe her. Her voice matters. The IEP process should solve problems, not delay solutions. There's one letter in IEP that deserves far more attention, the I, individualized. One size is not supposed to fit all. Start with the student, not the system. The Supreme Court has made clear that each child must have the opportunity for meaningful progress through appropriately ambitious goals. Individualized means the right supports, pathway, and pace. Sometimes that means more time or a different pathway, but it should never mean more time for the system to respond. Every month the system delays this time the student cannot get back, and this is where I question the district leadership priorities. Hours have been spent micromanaging and debating books, classroom flags, gender issues, other controversial policies, while serious problems affecting students go unaddressed. Everyone is entitled to personal beliefs, but public leadership requires recognizing your own biases, having the humility to know you will not understand every student's experience, disability, needs, or identity, and being willing to learn from others in order to serve every child. No student's dignity, access, support, or opportunity should depend on the personal beliefs of the people governing the school. Every decision should begin with one question. How does this really help students? Students before systems, outcomes over checking boxes, measure every policy by what it actually does for students. No child left behind had serious problems, but the answer from Redlands Unified, SOLPA, and CDE cannot be to simply leave children behind. When a child can no longer access her education, make sure somebody notices. Make sure somebody listens and understands, and make sure somebody acts. Put your time, attention, and authority entrusted to you where they belong to students. Students matter. Thank you.

Thank you, Karen.

Board President, next up we have Greg Bertain, Catherine Appleby, and Robert Jesus Moreno, Jr.

Welcome back, Greg.

Thank you. As I've said before, the three roles that the school has, the system has, and why we're paying you all of this money, in California it's now up to $28,000 per year per student, is to prepare the students to educate them so they can go out and have a good life, hopefully form a family, and be productive. It's also so that they grow up to be responsible citizens, so in Benjamin Franklin's words, they can and want to keep the republic and understand what the republic is and what that means. and also to pass on the history, the culture, the traditions of our country as needs to be done in any country if you want to keep that country going. And in all of those things, and we've talked about the academics and the overall performance of the government-run schools in America, and it's not good, and it's getting worse despite vast amounts of money being put into it. And you have some ideas here, and I hope they work out, of a team looking at what's happening with a particular student and trying to catch it early and get them caught up. And I hope that works. But there's other aspects of it, and this is all to lead up to, I was looking and there's some polling data that came out this week. And going back to 2001, the question is, are you extremely or very proud to be an American? 2001, the Republicans were 93%, the Democrats were 90%, and the Independents were 84%, roughly equal. 2026, the Republicans are 93%, the Independents have plummeted to 51%, and the Democrats have gone 20%, 27%. And how you maintain a country like that when the people don't even particularly like the country. And I think a lot of this comes back on you collectively, the education system. Where are they getting all of this? Where are they getting their history? Where are they getting their understanding of the country? And large measure is coming from the schools, coming from the universities. And those numbers don't reflect very well. And the breakdown on that polling data is the younger they are, the less proud they are to be Americans. Something's going on here, and something's going on not right. You're not fulfilling part of your essential obligations and what we've hired you to do. Because if you tell the true story of America, yes, you talk about slavery, but you talk about the 600,000 Union troops who were killed and wounded ending slavery. And that's just one example. So you should be proud of the country if you have a good education, not ashamed of the country.

Thank you, Greg. Good job. Welcome back, Catherine.

Glad to be back. I am so sorry I did not start by saying that I am a resident in Area 4. I do want to thank Board Member Wilson tonight for asking my questions and for Superintendent Cabral for providing answers about the naming of buildings. One follow-up question is, does the plaque include enough information that in 50 years students and community members will know who the person was and why they were important? without the context of being a person who knew it. I happen to know of a plaque at a school site that claims to do this, and it does not. It actually provides very little information. Continuing with my board representative, board member Wilson, it was nice to see you at Citrus Valley High School's open house on September 3rd. It was nice to see you from a distance when you left around 5.30 before most of the parents were there. And so I'm hoping that you can explain to all of the Citrus Valley parents why you didn't bother to stick around. Michelle, who, we're not even her school. I mean, I guess as board president, we're all your schools, but we're not even President Rendler's school at Citrus Valley High School. And it was between, I think, periods two and three when I saw President Rendler there. I appreciate that she stayed. I thought it was a little odd that you cut out before the actual program started, before most parents had even arrived. Now, you might have come back. I didn't see it, though. And I didn't see you around. I didn't see you with Superintendent Cabral. I didn't see you with Board President Rendler. I didn't see you with Principal McHugh. Board Member Olsen, you have spoken for about two years that you wanted to bring a balanced book policy to our district. But it was only at the last meeting that you said you had found existing board policies that you could add the balanced book language to. I understand that the board policy table of contents is 43 pages long. It's a beast of a table of contents. But it's not top to bottom, right to left text. It's actually just a list of text. And so I'm hoping that you can provide your constituents in your area a valid reason for why it has taken you almost two years to read the titles of board policies. I understand you have a full-time job. I also know that being a nurse, your hours are slightly different and you do have significant chunks of time in which you could dedicate to your other job as a board member. I would like to remind this board, however, that the Brown Act says that you cannot discuss upcoming board issues with anybody outside of the board. And I would like you to ask yourself, why did it take two years to scan 43 pages of board policy topics?

Thank you, Katherine. Are you Robert? Yes, ma'am. Welcome.

Good evening, everybody. My name is Robert Jesus Moreno, Jr. I'm a substitute teacher for Redland School District. Thank you. I think I've been here for three years. So I wanted to say thank you to all the board members because of your sacrifices. You know, you could be at home with your family members or doing some other things. But a lot of comments were said, and sometimes it's It's hard to hear the criticism, so I just want to commend you all for sticking in there, staying in there, okay? The last thing is that I've been doing, I've been substitute teaching with the Redland School District for three years, but I also have a non-profit, and I believe when I've, percent my resume, I might have listed it on there. It's called Motivating Workforce. But there was a lot of comments said about differences in the school district that people want to address, so maybe I can help out.

Okay?

Thank you all. Have a good evening. And can I say Merry Christmas? God bless you all. Thank you.

Thank you, Robert. And with that, thank you, everyone. We now have one item for discussion. Superintendent Cabral, would you like to start us off with this agenda item?

Yes, thank you. So what we have in front of us are two different requests. One was pending from the two meetings ago, language to support balance in the way of adding books about each president. But at the last board meeting and then since the last board meeting, we've had a request. I think it was Member Olson who said it on the dais, but also very specifically to look at the reading library materials. I think it's policy 6163.1. And so this discussion is for the board to give a final direction on what... the board would like to see happen with respect to this policy. And so copies should be, they would have been provided online for anybody in the public, and everybody has copies in front of you.

The only comment I have is we don't have any librarians anymore to be able to go through this.

We have no librarians?

We lost librarians.

Well, the public knows that we have librarians.

We have librarians. I just said we lost a few of them.

Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you said we don't have any librarians.

Well, I would just like to talk a couple things about my intention. Since I've been here, I have not been speaking or requesting about a book balancing policy. I have been asking for balance in our libraries, and I had continued to ask our superintendent. and also of education services, too. And I had concerns because there was always an imbalance every time a batch of books came through. And ultimately, our superintendent told me that we could not enforce that and there wouldn't be a way to enforce a balanced policy, balancing of the content, which is why I had assumed, and this is my fault for assuming, but that's why I assumed we didn't have a policy. And then when I came and we spoke on it and the discussion was, you know, on the last meeting, All of you guys argued with me about that we shouldn't have anything that says we have balanced opposing viewpoints of controversial issues and how that language would be so difficult and so hard to determine. And so... Certainly, I'm newer here. I should have looked, even though I was relying on other information. I should have looked myself. That's true. And I'm repeatedly learning that as I've been here, that I have to look at actually everything. Because you just miss a lot if you don't. And Michelle's been here quite some time. Patty's been here 20 years already. And Melissa's been here quite a while, too, and none of you guys knew that we had a policy that states that you must have opposing viewpoints on controversial issues. So shame on me, but also shame on you all for not knowing that you had a policy that says that. So if we can... Now that we have... We see that we have a policy... Now, I was thinking, instead of putting it in the other policy that I had originally suggested, which was the 6144, now that I found the policy, again, shame on me for not looking the first time, and instead I was just trusting what I was told. 6163.1, Library Media Centers, where it says that materials that present opposing sides of controversial issues need to be in the library. Okay. I would say that... Adding the language that is here that starts from when ordering materials and reviewing available content, I would say from that point on, maybe that should be like 6163.1 AR because that's the way that it's going to be implemented. So we don't have an AR on that policy, so it seems to me that would be the appropriate way to proceed. Can I make a clarification?

Mm-hmm. Because... It's been said a couple of times, and I just want to clarify what I meant when I said that we would not be able to do this. And it isn't because there was no policy. It's because books that I was given titles of What I am trying to convey to everybody is what in those titles makes them controversial and who gets to decide that that's a controversial book. Now, if you could put up the graphic that you put up a little earlier, I want to give specific examples of the books that I was given that are controversial and looking at these books which is which are all great appropriate and these are lists of books that were bought for those specific school sites and not just these books they were with the group of many books but if you look at can you start can you go scroll back up to the top you have a book titled city summer country summer by keith layman It's a book for K-4, and it is by a black author, and I would have asked, what is controversial about this book? Then what I was trying to convey is, who gets to decide that this book is controversial? The book of The History of We by Nicholas Smith, another prominent black author who talks about, this is a children's book, ancient civilization. Again, what would be controversial about this book and who on my staff, is it me that has to decide this is controversial or is it the board that gets to tell me this is controversial? I don't have a problem with balanced books, and I know we have a policy, but what was being asked of me is to look at these lists of books and deem them controversial and then provide a balance. You have Meet Taylor Swift was also on this list. I asked out loud, what is the opposite of Taylor Swift? And what is controversial if this book is not about anything other than her life? Very popular figure. And she's not the only pop figure that we have in our libraries. Travis Kelsey was on this list. Barack Obama. Yes, President Obama. We have about 70 titles district-wide of President Obama. He is not the only president that we have. You can scroll up a little bit. So I just want to make clear, it's not about not wanting to provide balance. It's about being able to decide what is controversial. And if the board is saying that you're directing me to decide or to direct my staff to decide what is controversial versus what is not, then that is going to be difficult. And that's what I tried to explain. Who gets to decide that?

Okay. I didn't ask you to deem those controversial. I just let you know what the Internet says is controversial, and it took about 10 seconds. So it's what can be run through search engines very easily. I have never read any of those books, so I don't even know myself. That's just what the Internet says, and it's very easy to do that. That's my point. This is a board discussion about this policy.

Which came out of a request that was made to me. You five are my supervisors, and you can make a request for me to do something which is appropriate. I totally accept that. This list was given to me, and I had some questions, and then I simply said, this is not possible. Who's going to decide what the opposite of these books is if that's what we have to do for balance?

I was explaining to the speaker why I hadn't looked for the policy. That was all.

I just want the board to have the full picture of why this is in front of us right now.

Can we scroll so I can see the rest of these?

I'm sorry, there's just, I guess there's... And I just have something to add. So you just told, you just said, shame on me, that I didn't know there was a library media center policy. You don't know that I didn't know that?

Well, you were arguing with me about that language.

Because the language you want in there is that the librarians and the principal are in charge... of making sure the books are balanced.

You argued that we would never be able to know what controversial subjects were, and that's already in a policy.

So what's in there is, it says opposing sides. That's in there already. It's been in there since 95.

Yeah, but you didn't bring that up at the time.

Did you know about this policy?

Yes, I've read this policy. But I didn't remember every single line. There were eight lines in here. I didn't remember every single one. But I had read this policy at one point. But the only thing I was telling you is that I didn't know how we were going to make a librarian and a principal... look at the books.

Well, they don't need to read them. They can just run it through. 30 seconds.

I read a title of that book, City, Summer, and City, what was that? Summer in Some Country.

Summer, city, and country. City, summer, country, summer.

And I'd be like, I don't know what that book's about.

Yeah, that's what the internet's for.

No, that's what the brain is for, to read a book. Not the internet. I don't want the internet to tell me what a book is.

But the librarian already ordered that book. So they obviously had a reason to want to order it.

Some of these are really popular books, like the Blood of Olympus.

No one's saying they're not.

No, I'm just saying. I don't understand what the issue is with some of these titles. I can see where you would have an issue with the Barack Obama, the Kamala. I don't understand the Taylor Swift one. As I've said many times before, I have no problem with Obama. Can I please ask a question?

No problem. Can I please ask a question?

There just needs to be alternate perspectives. I didn't interrupt you. I didn't interrupt you. I just want to ask my questions. I'm not sure what the... The issue, like the Blood of Olympus, those aren't necessarily, they're fictional tales about Greek mythology. And I mean, Insurgent, interesting that it's just Insurgent because there's three books in that series, three or four books in that series. And so I'm just, I'm not understanding what is so controversial about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. Now I guess I can ask questions. And I do, as Michelle said, I am actually quite shocked that you would shame me for something. I said shame on myself. But also shame on you guys. Shame on all of us. No, no, no. I reject your shame because I don't see. It said lightheartedly, Melissa. Excuse me. I am not trying to argue. I let you guys speak. I'm allowed to speak as well. So I reject your shame because I still don't think that this is what you say. I mean, this includes, yes, controversial issues, but this has nothing about us needing to, it's saying present things that may sometimes include instruction. And I get it because, yes, back when it was drafted in 1995, yes, HIV and AIDS prevention was still a very hot topic. Like, I get why this is going to come up. Right now we're dealing with something different that, yes, we're dealing with a cultural and, you know... political shift in our viewpoints and so I understand where you would want to find some sort of balance but like our job is to be non-partisan and we're supposed to be displaying or presenting instructional materials in a non-partisan and factual manner for our students and I don't know that we should be assigning political designation to things like what is so political about you know blood of Olympus and house of Hades I don't understand it

I haven't read it, but the internet tells me it's very controversial. And I can't recall the exact one, because this is hundreds of books later that you put up my email for everyone to see.

These are not all politically controversial.

The list I've given you, right? The list I've given you.

You gave it to me.

Well, it's obvious.

My suggestion? Where are we going? is possibly taking out the third paragraph of the red.

Wait, I think we need to decide first which policy we're even talking about.

Well, I think it actually could be left in both because they're different. One says library, one says controversial items. I think you could leave both of those in there.

You know, I find it interesting, though, we've had both of these policies for quite a while now, and they both require the superintendent to make determinations, if need be, of what's controversial. So you've already been expected to do that. So to say that it would be difficult to do, I find interesting. odd because we already have the policies. All we're trying to do is add some verbiage to ensure that the library books also try, there's an attempt made to have a balance of not just political It got narrowed down to that somehow at the last meeting, but not just political, social, economic, any categories, religious, that there be a balance. And I agree with the audience on some of the examples they gave. I'm all for a balance, regardless of whether it's political, social, economic,

Where do you see in the policies that it's the superintendent's job to make sure it's balanced? Like, is it written in here? Because I didn't see it.

I would just offer that I believe that we have been implementing the policies that exist. And I think that when it's brought to my attention that these books are not providing a balance, the only thing that I said, I didn't say anything, that I have a problem with controversial or identifying controversial. If it's up to me to identify this list of books as either controversial or not, then they're not controversial. They've gone through the approval process. They're appropriate for the reading levels for the schools that they exist in. That's what I was trying to say.

According to hundreds and thousands of reviews, you're disagreeing that those were controversial topics?

Yes, because if you use whatever, like if you're going to use chat or Gronk or Gemini or an AI, it depends. I guess if you're seeing it differently, I chat GPT to every single title. I don't know that I would have concluded that these books are controversial. I think there's one who is at 7-12, it's an insurgent, where that one possibly could be more high school level rather than just middle school, or rather than both, I should say, because it says grades 7-12. But I think that we do have an approval process, and I do believe that our principals have to ultimately approve all orders. And we have an opt-out policy for all parents who do not want to have their students exposed to certain books to the point where you can opt out of any books, and then parent must be notified if you're going to have access to any of our library books that exist currently. And so those processes, the policies that are in front of us, I believe we are following them. And I believe that. When I had a... specific requests made, I was trying to convey that that's why, but I've heard several times on the dais that we maybe aren't understanding our own policy, and I just wanted to make it very clear that that's not what was in front of us.

Okay, let's get back to deciding what we're going to do with whether we're going to work on 6144.

I think we should... Hey, well, I just said a suggestion that... What's your suggestion? Keeping those two parts that we added to 6144. How come the board policy other references are crossed out? Is that just for clarity? No, I didn't put them there. Because they're all crossed out, but I think they're supposed to stay in there.

That would be if we were updating it. The suggested for C-144 would be that those not be referenced moving forward.

It just seems like they should be. But then also take out that third paragraph that was added into library media centers. Because I think all that other stuff is really good. It's the intention of the district and When ordering materials, each school librarian will make a concerted effort to provide a balanced selection of materials. I think that's really good.

I think we should match it. If you wanted to put language into 6144 also, it should say... in that additional language school libraries shall provide access to age-appropriate materials with a balanced selection of viewpoints. I wouldn't limit it to the President of the United States because that would be in conflict with the library media center that says materials must present opposing sides of controversial issues.

I thought we agreed that we were only going to limit it to the add in the president's thing at the last meeting.

That was before we realized we actually had a policy that had the language that I wanted in it. And again, I apologize for not researching and finding that policy from 1995.

So can I ask, I saw that list, but is there a list of authors you would like to see added?

No, off the top of my head, no. I'm not picking on one particular author or one particular book. The general leanings of each batch of books are neutral to left. There is no right-leaning books coming in to our libraries. So I think that's off-balance. And if it were the other way around, you can bet that... I mean, we should all want a balanced viewpoint. Come on, you would hate it if it was a ton of right-wing stuff in our libraries. You would be so upset, and so would I, because we need a balance. We need opposing sides of every issue to be able to raise up critical thinkers.

I don't appreciate you assuming that I would be upset with something, because there's plenty of things that I'm upset about, but I don't... I think a lot of people would be upset. Excuse me, please.

Okay.

Okay. I was just asking because you read all the lists, and I mean, that's great, but how do you know? If you can't tell me authors that you would like to see coming in, how do you know that the ones that you're looking up aren't, I guess, balanced and conservative? Because, I mean, you say that they're all neutral or left-leaning. I mean, are you looking up... this kind of gets to my next point are we going to be looking up the author's political voting history like their voting history I don't understand like so is it just the author is it the topic of the book it's the content of the book Okay, and that's what I'm trying to ask. So, I mean, if someone writes a book about, I don't know, you said Tim Tebow, and he's a football player, why is that any different than Travis Kelsey, who is also a football player? Why are we assigning a political side to them?

Um, Travis Kelsey and like Taylor Swift, for example, made themselves political figures over the last few years.

So they're just, it's a football player.

They ran for, they were participants in the Biden campaign. They did a lot of progressive advertisements.

That's their personal. Of course it is. And it's fine. I'm not against it. Let me finish. But does the book have anything about those books themselves? Do they have anything in them, the content of the book? Does it have anything about their left-leaning preferences?

Yes, according to the Internet. I haven't read them, though. But when you put them through a search, it does say that it's very... They're very left-leaning with progressive topics. Same with Simone Biles, a great gymnast, but it's not about her gymnastics. There are some that are about her gymnastics, which is great. But then there are some as she is a political activist. And that's great, too. But let's just have some political activists on the other side. So when something gets flagged through a quick search that literally takes less than a minute... then you could say, oh, well, hey, why is this flagged as possibly controversial? And, you know, a lot of these books have been through many book challenges and different districts, different controversy about them and their content. So why not just ask for something that's an alternative viewpoint? And if you can't afford it, then don't buy either one for that batch until the next time around.

So why wouldn't we just ask if there is a book about Simone Biles that is limited to... I mean, I don't know which book you're talking about, and I don't have it in front of me that I can't see. what the content of that book is, but Simone Biles is a quite accomplished gymnast, so why wouldn't we be able to just have the book about Simone Biles and maybe not get something that would include any political activism that she participates in? Because I don't know necessarily that authors choose to write that portion of things.

Yeah, it's intentional. Yeah.

No, no, but for even the Taylor Swift, does the book itself include that she participated in the Biden campaign?

I don't know about Biden per se, but the description of the book includes that it's her role being an activist. Can I see what that book is?

I would like to look it up myself.

I would have to go and look through all my different documents. I don't have it on me. Melissa, I have no problem with...

Excuse me, I just don't know that we have to be... I don't understand why you're getting upset with me.

Oh, they took it off.

You didn't bring the list.

No, I didn't bring that. Juan put that up.

Is that list handy?

Pardon?

They're going to bring it back to a picture of it.

The list, though, I would like to say was not brought here purposely for this particular discussion. So...

No, but I mean, if we're board members and we're supposed to be looking at this policy, I don't see why it's a problem that we know what we're talking about. If this was the example given.

Because you're honing it into so many specifics. How am I honing when I'm just having a discussion?

Excuse me, I wasn't finished. But you did the same thing to me.

I didn't, but I haven't even spoken yet. We're here to talk about a broader issue of balanced perspectives. Period. So do we agree that the libraries and the classrooms should provide balanced, as much as possible, not having to read every single book, but an attempt to provide balanced information to our students?

The recommendation I made still stands. My recommendation still stands. Leave everything else except take that third paragraph out. And because up above it just says... What page are you talking about? On board policy 6163.1. Take that third paragraph out.

What third paragraph?

In the red.

There's no red on mine.

Starting with what?

Oh, you don't have red? No. Starting with just... Oh, it's in here.

It's in your... So starting with it is the intention or each librarian? Each librarian. Take that out?

Yep.

Because right above it, it just says when ordering materials and reviewing available content, each school's librarian or designee will make a concerted effort to provide a balanced selection of materials. If a book or media can reasonably be considered to be political in nature, including materials focused on previous or current presidents, we can add Something in there because you don't just want presidents, you want everything. Presidential family members, controversial political or social issues, political movements or activists. Hey, it says it all in there. A book or other media presenting the opposing viewpoint shall be purchased. I'm good with that. It already says it in there.

Yeah, I wrote it.

I know. So we don't need that third paragraph.

Well, it just says who's responsible for overseeing the process. So, I mean, it says that the librarian will make a concerted effort. And then the next, I think somewhere along the line, it should say who's responsible for doing, who oversees it.

I think it's a given, too, that the principals oversee their staff. Okay. So I think that's a given. So I just, that's what I would like to take that third one out. And I think it's fine to leave it in the controversial. those two little parts.

Well, we shouldn't say, we should just say that it should be balanced because now they're contradicting each other. One says presidents and the other one is talking about opposing viewpoints of all controversial issues.

And that's what this says. It doesn't just say presidents.

No, but the 6144. 6144 is where it just says presidents. So we should instead take that age-appropriate materials.

Oh, yeah, I see it right there.

Age-appropriate materials and a balanced selection of material, I would suggest, instead of presidents of the United States. That way it matches the concept.

All right, say that again. Age-appropriate materials.

Age-appropriate materials and a balanced selection of library content.

16144?

Yeah, right here. So we're done with 6144, and then on to the 6163.1. What do you think about placing that? We're going to get rid of this each librarian or designee, right? You're going to get rid of that paragraph. What do you think about placing the rest of it into an AR? AR. since this is a BP and we don't have an AR, and this is regarding the process of ordering and actually implementing it.

All the other three paragraphs, you mean?

Well, yeah. The additional red. Just put it in an AR. It seems like it's appropriate for an AR. The ARs are about how you implement a policy, right?

The AR would only be two small paragraphs.

Well, look at how small a board policy is. It's like this long. It's like five sentences, the board policy is.

I know you guys are working on this, but I looked up those two books, Meet Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey All Access, and neither include anything. Any complex social or political topics like activism are specifically excluded to keep the text accessible for you very young readers. The content scope is basic musical achievements, her favorite number, and the Grammy Award counts. for Travis Kelsey. And I'm just providing context for, like I said, I'm not understanding why some of these are included.

Well, first of all, this list is... Excuse me. Oh, I thought you were finished.

This one just says, all access Travis Kelsey. Lists his favorite foods, career highlights, notable fan moments, traces his path from Little League and high school sports up to his NFL stardom with the Kansas City Chiefs. Easy to read charts, top ten lists, and football records. So, I mean, I think it would be fair to remove these things. books in these topics from your count in saying that we have more left-leaning books when these aren't included in them.

There's no count. I have no figure or account.

It's not specific.

And also, this list is not provided by me. This is not an all-inclusive list. This was hand-picked From my emails. Okay, no, but that's what I'm saying. This is a K through third grade book. Probably the Taylor Swift one for later is more of an activist. Just the idea, you know, and also I had several different categories. Some were mildly or possibly likely. What?

Can I see that list?

Can we get back to this?

I am a board member just as much as you are, and if you have an issue with the book, I would like to see them so that I can either support you in that decision or be able to argue the opposing viewpoint.

But I think it's important to keep in mind, Melissa, that we're not talking about specific books that we want to get rid of. We're talking about an overarching philosophy and belief that the school board... the governing board, which is us, that we have a responsibility to nurture intellectual growth, freedom, critical thinking. Do we still agree with that?

I understand what you're saying, but what, I mean, what Candy has said in... scanning the book list that there is an overwhelming left-leaning or neutral or left-leaning bias. And so I'm trying to say that these specific titles or these, I guess, topics should not include those, not be included. It's not meant to be argumentative and it's not meant, I'm just saying, I am trying to better understand your thought process. And I'm trying to better understand what exactly we're talking about because you're asking us to amend a policy based on your viewpoint of this. And I'm trying to understand that. So I don't see what's so wrong about that.

Well, we have 26 schools. And Candy made it very clear at the last meeting that it's not all the same at each school. There's variations. it's an overarching goal, an attempt to have balanced material.

And I just want clarity on that because, like I said at the last meeting, if we're going to have an opposing viewpoint, I want to know what that looks like. We can't just say an opposing viewpoint because, like I had brought up, if we are teaching about slavery, are we going to approach an opposing viewpoint to that and find something that says... that slavery was a good thing. I want clarification because the opposing viewpoint could have different meanings. And I mean, if we have a science text saying, talking about the evolution, are we going to then buy equal amounts of books about creationism? I want to understand how far we're going here. Or if we're talking about the earth being round, are we going to get flat earth books? I just want to understand how far we're going with this, and I would like clear guidelines about that.

This says, as set forth in BP 6144, school library collections shall include materials representing opposing viewpoints when appropriate.

So that would... And I get that, but I think that's the thing because we could also expand on that and say this is the appropriate time. You know, I mean, it's all subjective and it's all a matter of perspective.

Well, you wouldn't say that If someone wrote a book about the Holocaust, that you have to have the other side because it's not really appropriate.

I understand that, but I want to make sure that that's not what we're talking about. Because technically, the way the policy is, I mean, who's to say that's appropriate? Us?

A good test would be to simply just say, this list of books, if this policy exists the way that we're talking about right now, Does this list of books create any discomfort or not?

You can't ask. First of all, this is our board discussion about these policies. And second of all, we're not going to be going through the...

I'm trying to make sure that the board knows, though, any policy that's passed has to be implemented. And the more specific, the easier it is to implement. And the reason why I believe that we're here right now in this discussion is because a list of books like this were purchased and put in our libraries, and it created a feeling that there's just not enough balance. Okay, so this is a list of specific books. So whatever policy gets passed... I'm trying to understand how staff is going to implement whether or not like this specific list of books is in one way or another not okay and how do we fix it because I have to hold staff accountable. So if a principal approves this list of books, for example, and somebody on the board points out that that isn't or isn't okay, then I'm going to look at the policy and go, okay, how do I implement it? That's all I'm trying to say. And so like we could look them up right now and just say, okay, let's look at the first book. Is the book appropriate or not appropriate according to the policy that we want to see? That would be helpful.

I really think that that's not an accurate representation of the intent of the policy is not to say whether we want these books. Examples were given of books that the opposing view was not found. in that library or not being ordered. So it says, when ordering materials and reviewing available content, each school's librarian or designee will make a concerted effort to provide a balanced selection of materials. It's not asking to take books away. It's not asking to say certain books aren't appropriate. It's just asking for a balance.

I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm trying to say that this list right here What if it doesn't get identified by anybody on my staff as a problem?

As needing an opposing view?

Yes.

An accountability.

Because the book itself doesn't create... in the person who's purchased or approved it, a view that requires an opposing view. That's, if I'm not saying it correctly, I'm sorry. I'm just trying to, if you look at this specific list of books and it comes in, some of them are obvious, like the presidents we've talked about, but some of them are not. Like, how is a librarian supposed to know that this one requires an opposing view?

I think that with an honest, good intent of the person, it would be fairly reasonably able to determine. I looked up one school. I can't even remember which one it was. And just because I needed to pick a name, I picked Trump. Could not find a book. I mean, he's been president twice. So that's kind of simple to say, ooh, we probably need...

We have about 13 titles of Trump. I said I picked one particular school. Yeah, just to make sure we know.

Yeah, there's just so, it's not, I don't know. I think that...

I just wanted to be clear because if we pass a policy, I want to implement it, and I want to make sure that it gets implemented correctly.

Right, but this list was not prepared for this discussion. My guess, I don't even know where it came from.

This is how the discussion started, though, from this.

I'm providing the list for this exactly, is if we pass a policy... I'm showing you a list of books that have been purchased. Are these books okay? Or are these books, is my staff going to have to decide that some of these books require an opposing view?

The intention of this is not to go through and go vote on every single previous book that's been adopted. You know, I've said this before. It just needs to be reasonable, and the policy says they will make a concerted effort to provide a balanced selection. That doesn't mean that if they have one off balance that, you know, it's the end of the world. You know, it's... And as you've said so yourself, the education world is very left-leaning. There's a reason that parents who are conservative tend to put their kids in private school if they can afford it. And it is due to the overwhelming left-leaning of almost virtually every aspect of the educational world. I would like to retain students of all political parties, of all religious orientations. Everybody should be respected here, and I think we should have more of a neutral balance, more of a balance selection in everything. In our curriculum, there's not a lot we can do because of what the state recommends with us, but as far as our library centers, we could offer some balance, and we could create kids that have a better, more balanced version of the world And like one of the speakers had mentioned about all of the poor things that Bush has done and Reagan has done, I totally agree with that. All of the things we could talk about, Trump's done. He mentioned that too. Every single president in our lifetimes and before has done negative things and positive things. We all need to learn from both sides about each president and things they've done wrong, things they've done right. And that's the way kids learn. And we're just not providing it. So the intention is to make a reasonable effort. It's not to make it an exact science. And I don't think we need to dig through every past book in the library that's ever been purchased. I just think that if you ran it through AI and you said, would this be considered controversial? Would any of these books be considered controversial? It gives you an answer. So if it slips through AI, then that's... What are you going to do? It's not like someone's going to get 50 lashes for missing a book.

Okay, let's get back to this, what we're going to do here.

Which I think is why you were suggesting a chunk of this be an AR, because we already had the policy. We already have the policy.

I mean, the policy is short. We can have a short AR, too.

And what are you proposing goes in the AR?

The red writing. And maybe the leftover black writing at the end. Either way, it doesn't matter.

I don't know what all makes sense to go in an AR.

how they go about enforcing the policy. So I would recommend at least the red writing goes in the AR. We have a very short media policy. It's like this long. We can have a short AR. It doesn't matter. It only has three paragraphs.

I would say maybe the last sentence should go in the AR. And that the other one goes...

stays up here with this one well it's talking about frequently and to request to use their libraries request materials which they would like to add to library collections so that's kind of how they're implementing the policy so I would also go well with it this whole chunk could just go in an AR so our library media centers will stay the same

That policy will just stay the same. Add an AR to it with these three paragraphs and the last two lines.

I think we're taking out the second one.

We're taking out the third one. Which librarian or designee? Yeah.

Yeah, except for taking out that.

I think at the end, sorry, I think at the end of when ordering materials, the last sentence, or other meeting presenting opposing viewpoints shall also be purchased, if appropriate. Because as we were just saying, it may not always be appropriate.

Okay. Also be purchased if appropriate, as appropriate.

Okay.

We obviously don't want horrible content for our kids.

And then are you okay with leaving those things in 6144?

Except for what we changed, which was to say a balanced selection of library material instead of the President of the United States.

Okay. And we could reference 6163.1 here.

Yeah, that's a good idea. Thank you for these colorful copies, Tish. I really appreciate it. It's so much easier.

Yeah, it's nice to see what you're looking at. Okay, so are we good? You got it? Yeah. Okay. Oh, we have to vote. No. Discussion.

Discussion. Okay.

Just discussion. Okay. All right. Moving on to board comments. Anybody have anything they'd like to talk about?

Yeah, I do. I did want to, it kind of relates to what we were just talking about, but also I just wanted to... kind of remind principals to beware of subscriptions and enrollments in book selection services, because I happen to call one of the ones that one school just spent a little over $2,000, so there must be some money available for books, for a subscription-type subscription. And I was asking, because I thought, well, that might be the way to have an easy way to get a balance, you know, to ask one of those companies to help us provide a balanced books. And she said, no, we wouldn't have balanced books. We don't. She was very quiet and sheepish, but she was honest, saying, no, we wouldn't have the alternate view on books. many of our books. So just an FYI on that. I wanted to explain. So I was excited to go to back-to-school nights at Crafton, CVHS, Moore, Rev. And the reason I was not able to stay at CVHS the whole time is because I needed to get over to Rev. And both of those schools are sort of not really in my area, but I wanted to go to both. And I thought the way the CVHS event was promoted that there would have been more parents there to network with and talk to, and it just didn't happen to be that way. And I enjoyed attending all four of those back to school nights. And it was a great way to observe some of the school culture, student enthusiasm, talk to parents. I was able to change my shirt when I went to Rev and wear my 250th t-shirt. And I appreciate their ideas and plans that we heard about last meeting to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our country. And I look forward to hearing about other celebrations. And I'm also looking forward to site visits starting up. So I just, that was it.

Thank you.

Candy? I am very concerned about our budget, and I am concerned that we're projected to have a 2.02% budgeted reserve for economic uncertainty. So I would like to maybe in the future, I know this was one of my agenda questions that I got to you late in the day. It took me a long time to look through that budget. And I'm sorry it took so long. And I know I didn't give you any time to respond to it, but I would like to understand what the plan is to get us to the mark of 3% if we have a plan. And maybe you can't tell me now, but maybe later you could tell me about that. I am very concerned about that. And maybe there's a great plan to get us up there. I just don't know what it is. The other thing is I just am so thankful for these gorgeous flowers from the Classy Coffee Company. And I can't wait to go there. I've been to the Terrier Grounds and their new flower shop several times. And I don't know where this one is located on the Citrus Campus, but... I'm going to come and visit them in their coffee shop soon. And I really am thankful. Seeing those students up here was really great. That made my day. So thank you. I know you're not here anymore, but if you're watching, thank you.

Thank you. Yes, once again, just thank you to Mrs. Dillow and Mr. Arbiter for bringing the CV students in. Like I said, it's always nice to see our alumni coming back and teaching and staying in our area, which is great. And then just as a FYI, the middle schools and high schools back to school were all really nice. I kind of did... What Jeanette did, you went a little bit at each one so you can attend them all. I know that you go and stay later. But it was great to see the parents and surprised to see a lot of the students showing their parents around so they knew where the classes were, especially at Rutherlands High School. And thank you to the principals for hosting. I appreciate that. And then just went back to football season. It's opening day. I went to see the RHS and REV. And it's nice to see our teams and our bands. They work all summer and our cheer going at that. And then I just wanted to say a special thank you to REV for honoring one of our alumni students, Greg Ramirez, last week at the REV football game. That was very nice of them to do that. And then... Mr. Cabral, you did a great job at Rotary presenting. I got a lot of calls from Rotarians saying that you did a really good job and it's nice that you could be there and to staff as well, which who was there, Christine, and to Trish for being there as well. But a lot of great support and they said a lot of great feedback. You were transparent and they appreciated that. And then just remembering, take some time that this 9-11 is Friday and it's 25 years. I remember where I was 25 years ago. I was in a meeting. So just take some time to reflect on that and where we are. Thank you. That's it.

So like other people said, I went to back-to-school night. I went to COPE and Clement, and then I went to RHS and CV. I went to CV first and then RHS. Yeah, it is hard to be able to get to them all because they're all pretty much at the same times now, which that's a little difficult, but it was fun. I really, really, really, I just love that our principals just love their school so much. You can see it in their face when they're walking you around to classes and they're talking to teachers, talking to families. It was pretty neat. I did like at COPE, most of the kids did not want to walk their parents around. They said, you figure it out. You made me do it. You can figure it out. And COPE's not that big of a campus. I said, try going to RHS. You can't get from one side to the other. But they said, oh, soon enough we'll be there. And I also went... attended the meet and greet for day pack. It was so much fun. We had a good time, played a little game here and there. You know, it was fun. We had a good time talking about old cell phones. And when they said old time phones, I was thinking they were going to have a rotary phone. And I was like, that's what I would pick. patty buckmiller and i both we would pick that right the rotary um but no they had a couple cell phones that i didn't even know what they were because i didn't get my first cell phone until i was like 45 so um i didn't i didn't know what a cell phone was till my daughter asked for her first one she got the brick you know that big thing and she was so excited anyway um so that was really fun and i look forward to your next one that you have and thank you for being here tonight um And that's about all I have tonight. Oh, football. I've been going to football games. I don't really watch the games. I just talk to people and walk around. I don't really like football, so I couldn't even tell you who won. But thank you. Have a good night. And Superintendent Cabral, your turn.

Yes, back-to-school nights have been awesome. It's really good to see students. This Friday is Redlands High School's homecoming, and they are having a red, white, and blue theme. And so that should be pretty cool to see. And it is always packed, so if you plan on going, game time's at 7, and they always do a really cool halftime show. And so hope to see more of you out there, students, as I go out to campuses. So thank you. That's all I have.

I'm really sad to miss the games this weekend, but I will be out of town. So, represent.

I don't know who they're playing. Somebody that we're going to beat. Is it Beaumont? Oh, Beaumont.

It's 745.

That's going to be a tough game. But I have faith.

No, it's 745. We have to have a motion to close the meeting. Oh, I need a motion to adjourn. Second. I'll second. Patty and Michelle. All right. We are adjourning at 8.40. 38.