RUSD Board of Education — April 26, 2022

Meeting Summary

The whole published agenda passed, no item drew debate, and the board ran out of business well before its scheduled public-comment hour. The friction was all at the microphone — and the evening's most consequential sentence came out of closed session in the final minute.

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🗣️ Public comment carried the meeting

Three people spoke during general public comment, and every one of them was there to tell the board it had failed them.

The format was the first grievance. The first speaker objected to trustees taking comment through a video link rather than in person, saying the arrangement "inhibits progress and professional dialogue" 1. The second asked how long "this charade is going to go on" and questioned the law-enforcement presence in the room — "All these police here that could be home with their families" 2. The third said the board should be ashamed that it could not meet parents face to face, calling the arrangement ridiculous and shameful 3.

Pandemic grievances ran through all three turns. One speaker described a son who entered the March 2020 shutdown as a sophomore and said "the last two years of his high school were robbed from him" after he was refused in-person instruction for declining to wear a mask; the same speaker said the board had called her racist for serving it papers, "which was well within my rights" 2. Another told the board it had never been in the business of educating on health, argued that real health guidance would mean teaching children to cook, restoring salad bars and stripping processed ingredients out of school meals, and cited the federal Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System's counts of 26,225 and then 29,129 deaths reported after vaccination — closing with "I want the freedom to make my kids' health decisions without coercion from you or the government" 1. VAERS is an open-submission system: anyone may file a report, and the federal guide to the data states that "A report to VAERS generally does not prove that the identified vaccine(s) caused the adverse event described" 5.

The last turn made the political argument explicitly. The speaker tied market losses at Netflix, Disney and CNN+ to the state superintendent's newly announced task force on declining school enrollment and said no task force was needed to explain the trend: "The problem is your woke liberal agendas" 3. That task force was real and six days old — the California Department of Education announced on April 20, 2022 that Tony Thurmond was creating it to address declining enrollment statewide, co-chaired by officials from the Public Policy Institute of California, the California Federation of Teachers, the Association of California School Administrators and the California Association of School Business Officials 4. The same speaker said a group called Wildcats for Change "promotes Marxist ideology, the Black Panther Party, and trans culture", asked the district to keep progressive ideology out of its schools, and acknowledged how few regulars were in the room — "we're just a couple moms, three moms here, four moms" 3. Comment closed when the board was told there was no more public comment 6.

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🥗 The only question anyone asked about an agenda item

Earlier in the evening, the agendized-comment period drew a single speaker, who asked about the child-nutrition items buried in the human resources consent block: "We want to know what has changed in the job description, and is there a change in the amount of staff" 7. The answer from the dais was procedural — the material was available in printed form in the Human Resources Department 8. No presentation followed.

Those items, XV.v through XV.aa, re-titled five Child Nutrition Services classifications and revised their job descriptions effective April 27, 2022, alongside a companion revision to Appendix A-2 of the Child Nutrition Series in the classified bargaining agreement 9. They were approved minutes later inside the consent block, with no discussion 10. The agenda language is confined to titles, job descriptions and the bargaining-agreement appendix; on its face it says nothing about staffing levels, which is what the speaker asked about. The renamed classifications show up in the district's classified salary schedule by that July, with Assistant I and II at ranges 12 and 14 and Lead I, II and III at ranges 16, 20 and 21 11.

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🔒 The last minute mattered most

The agenda set an open/closed session for 5:30 p.m. and published one closed-session subject, Public Employee Discipline/Dismissal/Release 13. No public participation was offered before the board went into it 12.

At the very end of the meeting, closing out board comments, the dais reported out of closed session that "the current safety protocols for volunteering in our schools will remain in effect as long as the governor's requirements for district employees remain in place" 14. That one sentence tied parent and community access to campuses to the state's pandemic-era requirements for school employees — the same policy terrain the evening's speakers had spent public comment attacking. It drew no discussion, and the meeting was adjourned immediately afterward.

The rules did not stay frozen for long. The district's volunteer regulation, AR 4229, was revised that October; it now requires a tuberculosis clearance dated within 60 days of application — "The valid clearance must reflect a date that falls within 60 days of the submitted date to the District" — and allows volunteers to begin service before board approval once documentation is verified 15. The October 11, 2022 minutes record the board discussing exactly that change, adjusting "the wording for the 60-day waiting period after a valid tuberculosis clearance" 16.

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📋 The entire agenda, in about a quarter of an hour

The open session opened on a livestreaming problem — "Well, our technology is catching up. We have opened the meeting, and we have had the pledge" 17 — and the board then worked through everything it had published:

• Minutes of the April 12, 2022 regular meeting. Approved 18.
• Business services consent, items XI.b–XI.i. Staff flagged one correction first, swapping in a corrected page 10 of the CIF representative designation item 19. The block was then approved without discussion 20. It carried an amendment with PCH Architects for $4,125 on the project replacing eighteen portables, an amendment to the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department agreement for School Resource Officer services not to exceed $261,893 for 2022-23, the county's third-quarter Williams compliance report showing no insufficiencies or deficiencies, rejection of Claim No. 605478, donations, and payment transmittals totaling $4,779,863.38 21.
• Resolution No. 38, 2021-22 — Education Protection Account requirements and spending determinations, listed on the agenda as a business services action item 23. Adopted 22.
• Resolution No. 39, 2021-22 — use of redevelopment pass-through funds under AB 1290. Adopted 24.
• Educational services consent, items XIII.b–XIII.h. Approved 25. The block carried second readings of four policies plus three student travel requests 23. The policy manual bears this meeting out: the district residency board policy, which sets out how a family proves it lives in the district, carries a last-revision date of April 26, 2022 26, as does the head lice policy, which holds that infestations "require treatment but do not pose a risk of transmitting disease" and that a student found with live lice stays in school to the end of the day 27. The homeless-education and foster-youth policies approved that night have since been revised again: BP 6173 in September 2023 28 and AR 6173.1 in March 2023 29.
• Resolutions No. 40 and 41, proclaiming May 11 the Day of the Teacher and May 17 Education Support Professionals Day. Both were read into the record in full from the dais — the only extended floor time of the night 30 — and both were adopted 31. The second of the two resolutions honored paraprofessionals, secretaries, custodians, bus drivers, technicians and maintenance workers 32, and it too was adopted 33.
• Human resources consent, items XV.b–XV.kk, the longest block of the night and the one holding the child-nutrition retitles. Approved 10.
• Board Policy 4221 — substitute and short-term employee hourly rates. Revisions approved, effective April 27, 2022 34; it was the only item in the agenda's human resources action section 35. The manual entry carrying that title today, BP 4221.16, sets out the hourly schedule by class — $16.90 for a Class I child nutrition services substitute, $19.50 for an instructional paraprofessional, $450 a day for a classified manager 36.

With the last item disposed of, the dais noted that the board was "running quite a bit ahead of schedule" and opened general public comment early 34, well before the approximately 8:30 p.m. slot the agenda had penciled in for it 35.

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🏟️ Committee reports

• REV athletic stadium. The board heard an email read aloud from a member of the stadium coalition, reporting that the East Valley Stadium Coalition "has collaborated with Redlands Community Foundation and formed a nonprofit to raise money for the Rev Stadium", was seeking individual and business contributions, and would put a GoFundMe page live alongside its Facebook presence 37. Six weeks later Redlands Community News covered the groundbreaking, reporting that "The East Valley Stadium Coalition is accepting donations through GoFundMe for phases two and three" 38; Community Forward Redlands reported in August 2024 that the stadium still needed more funding 39.
• CRY-ROP. Regional occupational program staff were reported to be attending a free emergency medical services and tactical medicine day on May 18 at Arrowhead Regional Medical Center 40.
• City of Redlands Parks and Recreation Commission. A new commissioner was seated, options for reopening Market Night went to a subcommittee that would meet with the chief of police, and the community-garden expansion returns to the commission in June 41.
• With the superintendent absent, there was no superintendent's report 42.

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🎓 A student trustee program takes shape

The board announced that the student trustee concept approved at its previous meeting "will be moving ahead", and that principals would tell students how to apply for a 2022-23 seat 43. It stuck: by that October, a Student Trustee Report was a standing section of the board's order of business, with a student trustee on the roll call 44.

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🏅 Recognitions, and what the board's own reports covered

Board reports and closing comments carried the evening's good news, and this page names none of the people in them — see the note below.

• The district's superintendent, absent from the meeting, was named the first recipient of the Dr. Margaret Hill Social Justice Award from the San Bernardino County Office of Education, for leadership in equity and equality 14.
• The owner of a Redlands themed-entertainment company received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Themed Entertainment Association; his company was described from the dais as a significant district education partner whose expanding STEAM labs serve several school sites 14.
• A campus monitor at the Orangewood High School RISE eAcademy campus was credited with performing the Heimlich maneuver on a choking student during lunch 14.
• Board members reported on a University of Redlands Town and Gown event, a RESPA taco day for district employees, the 50th anniversary of Crafton Hills College and the season's retirements 45; on a fourth-grade class's virtual tour of the California missions built in a school STEAM lab, on assemblies by professional cycling teams from the Redlands Bicycle Classic that reached about 10,000 students across Redlands, Yucaipa and San Bernardino, on a charity basketball game against the Harlem Wizards, and on five teachers honored at a Teacher of Excellence recognition 46; and on a Citrus Valley pep rally, Administrative Secretary's Day and the coming PTA Teacher Appreciation Week 47.

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Note on attribution: no adopted minutes for this meeting are on file in this archive, and an automated transcript cannot establish who said what — the speaker labels on this recording include automated voice matches, which are software's guess about a voice and not the record. Speakers, board members and staff are therefore described without names throughout this page, and nothing here states how anyone voted. Readers who need to know who said or moved what should consult the district's adopted minutes for April 26, 2022.