West Contra Costa Unified School District Board of Education - Regular Meeting

Good evening everyone. April 15, 2026. Um, this is the West Coast. Glotorient. Westino district. The board is about to go into close session, but before we do, we are here to listen to any public comment on close session items. Individuals wishing to speak on close session items listed. If you are here in the auditorium and you have done so already, please submit a WCCUSD public comment card which you can find at the entryway table or if you are participating via Zooms, individuals will need to raise your hand in the Zoom app. If you are accessing the meeting by phone, press star 9. The time allowed to each speaker is 2 minutes. The total time allowed is 1 hour. Speaking time shall not be transferred from one person to another. There is also no substitution of speakers. We alternate between Zoom comment and inerson comment. The public comment period is a safe space where diverse viewpoints may be expressed civily without interruption or intimidation. Please listen

attentively to each speaker's comment and respect their time as if it were your own. Be open to another point of view if one is offered. Due to the Brown Act, board members cannot discuss items that are not on the agenda and do not usually respond to items presented in public comment. The items listed in close session agenda for tonight are one conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation. Two, liability claims. We will be tableabling item three public employee discipline dismissal release or complaint. Um moving on to item four with conference with labor negotiators. Five public employee performant. We will be tableabling item five public employee performance evaluation. Sorry. Uh we will be doing item three public employee discipline dismissal release complaint and then we will adjourn the close session and reconvene to open session. Is there any public comment?

See we have no public comment.

No seeing no public comment we will adjourn this meeting and we'll reconvene at 6:30. Thank you. Good evening everyone and welcome to the open session of the April 15, 2026 regularly scheduled board meeting of the West Contracasta Unified School District. I am calling open session to order at 6:31 p.m. To access translation in Zoom, click on the globe icon at the bottom of the screen. If you are here at Dejon and need a headset for translation, you may pick one up on the back of the auditorium. And if In a few minutes, we will begin public comment on agenda item. Members of the public are invited to speak to the board on any matter that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the West Contraosta Unified School District, but it's not on the agenda. Please prepare now for public comment. If you are here in the auditorium and you would like to make public comment, please fill out and submit a WCCUSD public comment card. You can find them on a table at the entry hallway. If you are participating via

Zoom, please raise your hand on the Zoom app prior to the beginning of this item on the agenda. If participating by phone, press star 9 after your comment card has been turned in. The cards are placed in order received and we will call speakers one at a time alternating between public comment here at Dejon and on Zoom. Public comment generally lasts for one hour. The time allowed to each speaker is 2 minutes. In the meantime, we are moving on to the rest of our opening procedures. Um item B2, pledge of allegiance, and that will be Trusty Hana. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for Okay,

thank you. We'll now move on to item B3, land anded labor and body acknowledgement. We recognize that we are presently on the land of the Chenyo, Muakma, Carin, Aloney peoples and acknowledge them as the first inhabitants of the land we currently occupy. We'll now move on to uh our anti-racism statement. Sorry, quick question before. Did we do the labor and body acknowledgement? Sorry. Yes. Do the lab labor body acknowledgement?

I'll do it. I acknowledge that the burden of environmental exploitation and systemic injustice falls upon the labor of black and brown bodies in the building of this country and its institutions. I remember that black and brown bodies were born and died working this land against their will for generations. I also acknowledge that the continued contribution of the labor of survivors over the centuries of today of all immigrant labor, including voluntary, involuntary, forced, and undocumented peoples in the building of what we refer to as the United States. We'll move on to our board anti-racism statement. The governing board is committed to the work of anti-racism, the conscious and active effort to identify, challenge, and correct racial inequities in the systems and institutions within our schools and community. Racism, explicit or implicit, stands in direct conflict to the fundamental principles of district education. To carry district education into the future, we recognize that we must continually renew and reflect on the roots of racism and develop new ideas to meet the times. Unjust ideas and policies and the racial inequities they produce have shaped us, our schools, and society. The board strives to uncover unconscious biases and pra and practice anti-racism as individuals and as board members. We challenge ourselves to persist through the discomfort necessary for growth and learning to deepen our listening and our examination of racism and oppression and to develop a strong understanding of how our personal experiences and feelings fit into a larger picture of continual oppression. Each member of our governing

board individually and collectively is responsible for creating a nurturing and anti-racist learning environment where each student, staff member, and community partner is respected and valued of the member of the district community. The governing board is unequally positioned and it is our responsibility to identify and dismantle racist ideas and inequitable policies in ourselves and across the district. Therefore, we commit to supporting anti-racist policies, programs, and practices for our children's education and well-being while being strong and inclusive school communities. The board commits to holding each board member accountable towards these goals and moving the work of anti-racism forward. We also commit to holding West Contracasta Unified School District staff, students, and community to living these standards of anti-racism in our schools. We'll move now on to roll call. Um, our superintendent isn't here tonight, so Katherine Aosta process, could you do roll call?

Absolutely. Good evening. Uh, student trustee Hung here. Student trustee Whitten here. Trustee Breckler, good evening. Present. Trustee Smith Folds. Good evening everyone. Present. President Enana, clerk Gonzalez Hoy, good evening. President and Trustee Hernandez, good evening, President. We'll now move on to item six, uh, reports and ratification of close session. Um, is there a report out?

Yes, there are three items to report out regarding agenda item A2.1. The board voted unanimously to approve a settlement and release agreement involving the parents of a district student. In exchange for the parents withdrawal of public records act requests and release of any and all claims against the district, the district agreed to develop and post written procedures addressing the overenrollment and issue of a lump sum settlement payment of $8,500 to the parents for attorney fees and costs. Regarding agenda item A2.2, two, the board unanimously voted to reject claim number 670121 related to an alleged personal injury. And finally, regarding agenda item A2.3, the board unanimously approved a statement of charges for the dismissal and immediate suspension without pay of a permanent classified employee ID number 123377 and directed the superintendent or designate to issue an appropriate legal notice. Thank you for that report. Um, we'll now move on to item seven, student recognition science fair winners, and that is also Miss A. Costa Rus' item.

Thank you, President Anyana, Clerk Gonzalez, Hoy, board members, and our community. We are so excited and proud tonight to celebrate our winners of our WCCUSD science and engineering fair. And I would love to invite up our coordinator um John Ewa to present our winners and students.

Um good evening everyone. Good evening board and uh all my colleagues. I'm very excited tonight because we have a a little bit different kind of a student performance. The students have already performed. Um we had our district science fair in February and our first and second place winners from that fair moved on to the regional uh county fair. And so what we have here is we're celebrating um almost 50 students from our district who finished first and second place in our fair and were invited to participate in the county fair. So um I have a few students behind me um in just a minute. Uh they'll they'll tell you tell you a little bit more about what they did and then we have a little um demonstration as well. So, um, all of the students from our district won from first, second, third, or fourth place at the county fair. And then the most highly decorated student um is is one of one of your student trustees, Calvin. Calvin was um invited to participate in the state fair, uh, the California State Fair, which was held over the weekend. Calvin finished third place in his category in the state. Um, and you're going to see his Yes. Do it up. And then next month, Calvin will also be headed to the international fair where there'll be nearly 2,000 students from something like 70 countries participating um in that fair. That fair will be in Phoenix. So, we're excited um to be represented there as well. So, many of the the county's um representatives often come from the east side of the county and so we're really excited that um the west county is represented this year so well. So, um, students, would you just come up and say your name and your school and the name of your project really quickly?

Say your name, your name, and what you said. All right. My name is Gordon Schmidtz. I go to bed read Sask in middle school and I was studying the influence of topload shape on the wireless power of Tesla coils. Um my name is Maris Phillips. I go to Vista Virtual Academy and my project was named the future of GCR protection and it was on ionizing radiation shielding. Yeah.

Hi, my name is Calvin Hung. I'm from Elserto High School and my project is a robotic hexopod to to explore hazardous environments.

Let's go Kennedy. I'm Mag Gualupe. I'm from Kennedy and my project was eyes clo closed, ears open. Um, my name is Van. I'm from Hercules and my project was about using machine learning to identify novel resistant gene candidates in a dangerous pathogen. Yeah.

My name is Haya Lorac and my name is Julia Win. We go to Hercules High School. Our project was AI in the arts. All right. And then I think there was a request for a demonstration of Calvin's robot hexopod. So, um, what's the best way to do that? Do you all want to come over to the and see the board really quickly?

All right, let's go. test Yes. Okay. Test. Hello. Okay. Yeah. This is this is a robotic hexopod that I designed. I designed every single part of it from the onboard circuitry to the 3D printed parts. And it's designed to be able to traverse and perform tasks in areas where traditional robot systems like rovers are inefficient, where human risk needs to be eliminated, and where sensit sensitive tasks need to be able to be performed stably. Yeah. Let's take a look at it walking. Actually, let's start it up. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, the ground's a little weird. But yeah, so it move the software. It moves through essentially a lot of math. It uses the top the methods it uses are big terms like inverse kinematics, linear interpolation. But essentially what it does is it uses math to uh to to create gate points for each of the legs to move const like at every single half a millisecond where it's constantly updating it. So let's take a Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And then I designed each here. You can actually see there's the this is the circuit board on on the hexopod. And

then I also have a controller circuit board. What's what's very interesting about it is the course correction system that I created. Huh. Oh yeah, it is a robot. Do you want to come closer? Yeah. Yeah. uses it uses a course correction system with the onboard sensors to detect to the moment it walks forward, it automatically locks onto a heading and then it will basically take a weighted mathematical average of rotation and walking forward in order to correct. You want to come closer? Yeah.

Hello. And another thing, since it's walking, since it's locking onto the heading of when it's walking and adjusting to that point, that means it can also automatically orient based off of unexpected events. So, if I were to have it start walking forward and then just like took h took it and then have it like go the based the other direction, it will automatically adjust to go back in the direction where it was really locked in. I'm just I'm just pressing forward, by the way. So automatically. Yeah. So this project took me about an entire year. This is actually the fifth model. So yeah, I I started around two weeks before last year's science fair. I made until model 2. It was my first ever experience with electrical engineering. And just from from that first time, I got second place in the county fair. And then the moment the fair ended, I just thought I got to improve it. So then I made model 3 which took seven months and failed. And then I made model four in four months. And then this is model 5 which took around two months to make. Oh hey that's a save battery mechanism. So if the battery So I So that's the same battery I used the state fair. Uh so I'm actually surprised it got this long without like losing battery because the servo motors take a crap ton of battery. Yeah. So, I'll probably have to switch that off. But th this is a thing that I did because I thought it looked cool. And also turns out it saves battery from like it just randomly twitching and shaking when there's no barb.

All right, we're going to take a photo. Yeah, I should probably have it. Thank you so much to our amazing scholars for coming. We want to make sure that we celebrate your amazing work. So, please help me in giving a huge round of applause to all of our winners, to our amazing coordinator and our educators who light up science and engineering for our students.

Well, thank you to all the students who participated and congratulations to our winners. Um, now we're moving on to um item nine, standing reports. Do we have any standing reports for tonight? Point of order, public comment. I skipped that. Sorry. We'll now move on to public comment. Thank you. Members of the public are invited to speak to the board on any matter within the subject matter jurisdiction of the West Contraosta Unified School District, but not on tonight's agenda. Public comment will last approximately 1 hour. The time allowed to each speaker is 2 minutes. Should additional speakers remain at the conclusion of one hour, public comment may be extended. The time allowed per speaker after the first hour hour is generally one minute. Individuals wishing to speak, please submit a WCCUSD public comment card or if participating via Zoom, individuals will need to raise their hand in the Zoom app prior to the beginning of this item on the agenda. If you are calling in by phone, press star 9. Speaking should now be transferred from one person to another. There is no substitution of speakers. Speakers could also make public comment again for each discussion item on the agenda after staff presentation. The public will have 10 minutes per item and one minute per speaker. The the the same protocols recited above apply. The public comment period is a safe space where diverse viewpoints may be expressed in a civil matter without interruption or intimidation. Please listen attentively to each speaker's comment and respect the time at the podium as if it were your own. Be open to different point of views if one is offered. Due to the brown egg, board members cannot discuss items and are not

on the agenda. Do not usually respond to items presented in public comment. Is there any public comment? Our first public comment is Andrea Munoz, Don Gosley. Wow.

Um, good evening. My name is Andrea and I'm here representing the Latina Center. Um, also standing with Fierce Advocates. Uh, currently I work with the Young Latin Future Leaders Program. Um I want to share what happens when community engagement is done well. Not just for families but for students. Um when families and schools are connected, students feel a stronger sense of belonging. They should feel supported both at home at schools and more confident in their ability to succeed. Engagement creates stability. It ensures families have access to important information um resources and that students are surrounded by network of support. It also creates a space for young people and families to speak up early, share ideas, help solutions before challenges become crisis. This the opportunity before us is to build a system where that is where there's a connection is consistent not just dependent on the school, the staff or that moment. That is why a long-term vision matters. Community engagement should just be a part of how the district operates every day. When we plan for buildings, we plan for budgets. We can also plan for trust, belonging, and partnership. When families are empowered, students thrive. Thank you.

Yes. Next comment is Jeene Kinster. Please unmute yourself.

Good evening board. I want to advocate for my school and my staff. We're a TK8. We usually run about 12 to 13 classes, but now we're not a TK8. We're going to be a TK6. Prior to our prior administration, because of them, we have lost 12 teachers since June of 2023. With the new Williams case, I'm hoping that you'll consider letting us keep three of our staff that are in process of earning their credential right now. One will be done by the end of this school year. Fingers crossed. The other two will be finished during the next school year. I feel that we owe it to these teachers who have been working on their credential and subbing in our school for at least two school years now to keep them on staff, especially in the light of our 12 teachers that are missing. We only have three teachers left that have been here consistently. One hired in 2008, one hired in 2014, and the other hired in 2019. Our stable, our school is so unstable. We really need to be able to keep these teachers to help stabilize our community and our school. I'm hoping that you guys will help us do this. Another issue that's destabilized us is that we've been losing so many TK students placed somewhere. We don't know where before they even get to us for the 15-day wait period. Hopefully downtown will let us keep all of our TKs until that 15 days and then we can figure out if we need another classroom or what we need to do with them. But we're a small school and we're we're just dying here and not because of us and not because of our community, but because of choices that have happened to us or been made upon us. Please help stabilize us. We really need to hold on to those three staff and we need help with the TK trying to keep as many as from our community here. I've had parents saying, "Oh yeah, we couldn't come cuz they said you were full. So we just didn't put our kid in TK cuz we want to stay in the community.

Please, please, please help us be a strong, wonderful school that we are and help us grow. Thank you. Next public comment is Don Gosny.

Safety first.

Good evening. From the time to time, the district through the elected board of education creates and populates committees. So in some strange fashion, the board can say that they are giving the public a seat at the table and going through the motions of suggesting that they are actually listening to the volunteers appointed to serve on these committees. There are flaws though with how these committees are populated and even whether they serve any real purpose. A great many of the members serving on these committees have voiced their displeasure of the lack of respect that they have been shown. In a few minutes, the board will be asked to approve the cons consent calendar where there is an item repopulating the 7-Eleven committee. Did the board actually solicit applications to serve on this committee or was it staff? There are 11 names on the list to be approved. Did the board interview any of these applicants or did their bid names appear after staff decided who should do their bidding? There are still four members, actually three after tonight on the committee with three of us going back to when the committee was first formed. You can call us the OGs, old gangsters. Since we were never contacted about staying on the committee and some of us had reapplied for consideration, did the board or staff fire us but just forgot to let us know? The committee, the 7-Eleven committee, has been as tasked to evaluate four potential surplus district properties before making recommendations to the board and to the public about possible reuse options. At least three members of the board in the past have been very vocal about their intentions of what they intend to do with these sites, no matter what is included in the recommendations. And two of these board members were publicly vocal, saying that they were not even required to listen to the committee before making up their minds. Why then have you t asked some members committees me included to waste many hundreds of man-hour to do our assigned task? Why show us this disrespect? I served on one committee where the board president without consultation with the breast of the board publicly fired the committee and then went against board policy and the wishes of the board to direct staff to follow his own agenda which smacked of politics. Many of us in the community that have worked diligently to make the district business of the district a

collaborative effort feel and abuse those elected to represent the And I public Athena Pow, please unmute yourself. Can you hear me? Yes.

Thank you. Good evening, board members. My name is Athena Powels. I'm an English teacher at Kennedy High School. I wanted to shed some light on a situation that started to blow up over spring break. The company Curriculum Associates who creates the I Ready test is currently being sued. They are being sued because they are sharing student data with third parties without parents permission. As a teacher who has to administer this test three times a year for at least a week each time, that takes away from the curriculum that the students need to understand to better themselves outside of school. This lawsuit is a perfectly good reason to get rid of this test altogether and the you and use this money to fund programs that have a positive impact on students like ethnic studies, Spanish for Spanish speakers, leadership as well as others that are being cut at Kennedy. Thank you. Next public comment is Kim Chamberlain. Hi, Kimberly Chamberlain local 21 SSA chapter president and I am also the power school supervisor for student information systems. We are working very hard in the woo in this school district to make sure that students are accountable for everything. You just heard about the I Ready. You've heard teachers. You've heard different community members talk about how much we

need to engage students. We really need to get that communication out. We need to have everybody out there engaging our students, supporting our students. That includes our classified staff. making sure that those classified members are out there supporting as they have been for their entire careers. 35 years in this district and I support students consistently, no matter what. As an attendance clerk, I made sure I called kids. I can't get up, Miss Chamberlain. I can't get up. Okay. What do you want me to help you do? I'm here to support you. Do you need me to come and knock on your door? What do you want me to do? I called them every morning. Wake them up cuz they had to take three buses to get to school at the Thin Cresby school site. I'm not getting breakfast. So, I'm going over to the local store to get something. Okay. Fought. I did everything and make program at Cresby. Now, we have multiple breakfast programs in our school district because we all know how important it is to feed a student. Feeding a student isn't just in their bellies, but it's in their support of their health and mental health. So, let's keep that going and keep our classified staff supported and continue supporting each other. Thank you. Comment is Cararissa Provena. Please unmute yourself.

Good evening. Can you all hear me?

Great. Good evening. My name is Carissa Pvenza. I'm an attorney with public advocates. Our organization has been partnering in WCCUSD for the past 12 years. In a district as large as Buscontraosta, community engagement cannot be ad hoc. It must be comprehensive, structured, and intentional. Having supported district staff in engagement efforts efforts and monitoring LCAP meetings for years, I have seen both the failures and the progress made since the 2024 rejection of the LCAP. We've seen significant improvement on engagement. District staff have increased transparency, implemented feedback, and demonstrated true followthrough in the LCAP. However, I am concerned by restructuring that consolidates the duties of multiple roles into one. This seems to be being done without a clear plan for how engagement efforts will be sustained, let alone strengthened at the district and site level. To maintain the progress made, the district must develop a long-term strategic plan for community engagement, which includes transparent communication by providing clear timelines and access to meetings and defining opportunities to participate in shared decision-making. shared decision-making by ensuring authentic participation at both the district and site level as required by LCFF and the community school model. Through the California Partnership for the Future of Learning, we help lead the state's move towards transformative community schools. Shared decision-making is a cornerstone of the state's community school framework, and it requires dedicated staffing and skill building at every level to actually succeed. and language justice by prioritizing accessibility for multilingual families from the start rather than as an afterthought. After years of broken trust, district staff finally began to rebuild those bridges. Now, unfortunately, the district might be going backwards. Instead, to keep the momentum, the community needs stability and continuity. Thank you.

Next public comment is Marie Anam.

I want to thank the facilities department for fixing the railing in front of the bathrooms. The students can no longer swing, climb, or hang from the railings. It's much safer for them. I really appreciate leadership updating me on the timeline for the rest of the muchneeded resources. I know that there's a lot of sites in the district, but you're making sure that STEG is being included. We thank you. Thank you to the payroll department for fixing the retro checks. Within one week, I had a check with the correct amount. I wish it was more, but oh well. We do uh appreciate you resolving the errors very quickly. Malik is enjoying his rides on the bus. He picks a window seat and relaxes. As you know, Malik is autistic and speech delayed. He's unable to tell me about his school day and what happens on the speech on the bus ride. His teachers are great at communicating with me and send home papers so I know what's going on. I still am hoping that one day cameras and GPS will be added to the sped buses. The students need this extra layer of security. Um, these safety measures, as you know, are in the cars and I hope they get added to the buses soon. I also want to advocate for the clerk at my job at Cameron. She's a clerk typist, too. She works very hard in the intake. At Cameron, we do all the assessments at the preschool level. There are hundreds of referrals every year and she sits there and goes through all the paperwork to make sure the registration is done with the parents so that us SLPs, OT's, Sykes, and whoever else is on the team are able to do the assessments. She has informed me that she is losing her job there. We really need her there. Please help her to stay. This is my 15th

speech. Remember, students and their safety comes first. Thank you. Next public comment is Christian VI. Uh hello board. I want to start this. My name is Christian Vil and I'm the department chair of the social studies department at Kennedy High. Uh first I want to thank uh trustees Gonzalez Hoy and Anana. Um you are the first trustees that I've ever met in person and uh being uh with you all I really felt seen and recognized. So I do appreciate that. Um we are here to inform you once again inform you uh that uh Johnf Kennedy High is eliminating the ethnic studies course for the 2026 27 uh school year. Um, after six years of developing the ethnic studies curriculum, cuts to full-time teachers are threatening the end of this program, the social studies department petitions to maintain the ethnic studies program by guaranteeing a full-time ethnic studies teacher for the following school year, to add ethnic studies uh in the course catalog of Kennedy for the following year as well, and for the district to commit to its 2021 uh resolution to promote ethnic studies uh courses across its schools. Uh we have collected more than 200 signatures so far and we hope that the community members fill out the petition and support us as well. Um just to add on um study says SSV unified uh showed that 9th grade ethnics ethnic studies classes increases students overall engagement in school probability of graduating and likelihood of enrolling in college. Uh first of all and lastly um in a time where uh discrimination and racism are becoming the norm and then the studies class that promotes positive and safe learning uh communities are vital uh in

in our district. So please support Kennedy well no and thank you very much. Next public comment is Tashiana Johnson. Good evening everybody. Sorry. My name is Tashi and I'm the lead organizing coordinator for Fierce Advocates. But tonight I am showing up and standing in community with other leaders that support Fierce. We are

We can't hear you. The Microsoft can give us a minute. And could we restart the clock again, please? Yes. All right. Thank you. My name is Tashi and I'm the lead organizing coordinator for Fierce Advocates. But tonight, I'm showing up and standing in community with other leaders that support Fierce. We are here because families want partnership. Nothing drastic, just the mandated law outlined in the California Ed Code 5110 through 51102, which declares a family's equal partnership with schools to support students in addition to IDEA, LCAP, and of course, Title One. My constituent is the community, and my power lies in the voices of our parents and children. This kind of confusion and inconsistency makes true partnership impossible. Too often we are ignored, confused and blamed when we are ready to help. On the flip side, we are blamed for our readiness and willingness willingness to help. Our communication is fragmented and me and crucial community voices, especially non-native speakers are left out. We are invited to meetings but not into decision-m. Families are feeling this lack of trust and it is making them disengage. Our students are the sacrifice because disengaged parents create a generational cycle of disengaged students. Hence the reason for creating community schools and community engagement in the first place. Community engagement is not just about meetings. It's about making sure

families feel the district is working with them, not around them. Our ask is simple. We need a fully resourced community engagement department with the resources to create consistent systems across every single school. What we have now is vague, uncertain, and singular. Community engagement and transparency are the cornerstones of building trust, accountability, and equity within districts because this is what gives our residents an opportunity to actively influence decisionmaking that affects our children's lives. To move towards this vision, Our next public comment is Joanna Gordian. Please unmute yourself. Good evening board members. Uh my name is Joanna Gertian and I'm here representing Healthy Contraosta. I want to start by thanking superintendent Cotton for meeting with our schools and neighborhoods action team a few weeks ago. We spoke about the concerns we have with the new assistant superintendent for communications and community engagement role. We also want to thank the board members that have made themselves available to meet and discuss these concerns with us. Want to update you on the commitments that have come from our conversations with Superintendent Cotton. Two of our members are on the interview panel for this role. We have follow-up conversations with the superintendent in May and are looking forward to holding a deeper discussion on the importance of community engagement and how we can support ensuring this new person will best meet the needs of our students and families. We'd love to discuss the administrative regulations for this role to ensure that it meets the needs and expectations of our community. Tonight, you heard and you're hearing from other community partners and from parents about their experience with this

district and how we are eager to not just be thought partners, but co-designers and decision makers with you all to ensure the critical role of community engagement is one that truly listens, builds trust, and is centered and responsive to the needs of our students, families, and teachers. Thank you. Next public comment is Julisa Blandon. Good evening board members. My name is Julisa Blandon. I am here as an alumni from Kennedy High School. You may recognize me and even still find speak to you as a student. Even though you should be speaking to the students and the teachers that you represent, today I want to talk to you about ethnic studies. As a high school student, I felt none of the classes really catered to me or made me genuinely interested in learning until I learned about what ethnic studies is and met who taught it, which is Mr. Aendano and Mr. Vil. If you don't know what it is, it is an interd disciplinary field of study about our people's history. I found interest in learning history and being able to learn about other people's cultures and races history. It is a wonderful practice and teaches students to honor and respect their past and others as well. It is not only empowering but encouraging for students who have never heard that side of their history. My teacher, Mr. Aendaniel and Mr. Vill go above and beyond for their students and open their doors and their hearts to all the students. What you are doing to them is a disservice to them and to the kids of Kennedy. Not only do they wonder why they can't afford to be a teacher, but have second jobs. And you should be looking out for them as teachers who give their all to their students. Then you wonder why they leave. You give them no choice. As a predominantly black

and brown school, Kennedy High School, which is Kennedy High School, it is a must, not a question if ethnic studies should be taught. Ethnic studies taught me and created a passion in me for organizing in my community. Inspired me to major in it in college. My teacher's words alongside books and stories of wonderful people. And there were created something in me I did not know existed. Ethnic studies is a movement. It's something you must keep in schools. It is ultimately your choice. But I ask for you to make the right one. Be on the right side of the history, especially with what is going on in this day. Don't question it. Don't get rid of ethnic studies. Thank you. Next public comment is Nick Cresensi. Please unmute yourself. Good evening. Can you hear me? Oh, but I don't think it's my turn. Is it my turn? Thought thought you said a different name.

That's fine. The other person put their hand down.

Okay. So, good evening everybody. Maisha Harris Gash, Kennedy High School grad as well as teacher at Kennedy High School. The reason I'm speaking tonight is about Miss Lupita, our science awardwinning Miss Lupita. So, if she is still in the room, the reason I'm here tonight is to recognize you and to shout you out. Uh, Lupita and I have crossed paths just as her being a student on our campus. I am thoroughly impressed with her with her learning difference and how she maneuvers throughout our school site, how she interacts. And I'm just I'm very happy and pleased at her achievement. And I just wanted to shout you out uh, Lupita. So, I will see you tomorrow. Congratulations once again to all the science award winners. Next public comment is John Maldonado.

Uh hello school board. Uh my name is Jenna Maldonado as some of you might know me. Um we are back. The Kennedy family is back and we're continuously advocating for our CTE pathways, our Spanish for Spanish speakers, our leadership, our journalism class, journalism classes and more who are all at risk of being cut and to us students that's completely detrimental to us. These programs are vital to our campus, are vital to our students and vital to the community as well. We have students going into college pursuing these careers, right? So, as is our student government has put forward a spring carnival and a a community event that brings together the community and it's actually uh also a Kennedy showcase. So, we'll be showing off these programs. We'll have students talking about uh these programs, what they do, what they learn, projects they've worked on, articles they've released, interest they've uh had interest in. Um, I want to thank uh, Trustee Jamila Smith FS and Trusty Hernandez for going out of their way to email me back. I have sent out emails to all of the board trustees. Um, I know there's limitations to everybody's schedule and everybody being able to attend, but I would love it for everybody to attend. This is an open invite for all community members, so if any of you guys have time to show up, please do. I will be looking for your guys' emails. I have been scouring emails and sending out emails, so you will be hearing from me. Um, now, uh, students have found out that there is FTE at Richmond High School for for ethnic studies, and that's detrimental to me as a student cuz it's like, wait, why do they get it? But we we don't get that. That's not cool. So, how does the board want us to increase our enrollment if these classes that are vital that intrigue students from out of district that want to come into the district that want to switch into the school to switch in? It doesn't make sense to me and I really hope the board

looks into all of our problems. Thank you.

Next public comment is Nick Cresensi. Please unmute yourself. Good evening, board. Uh, I'd like to discuss an issue that, uh, I think is important. I really encourage the board to move their board comments from the end of the meeting to the beginning of the meeting. It's vital that the board reports out about the interactions that they have with the committees that they're sitting on. what those committees are doing and how they're interacting. It also might help drive engagement of the population since by the end of the meeting everybody has fallen off and gone to bed. If it was at the beginning of the be meeting, you would be able to give more insight of where you're coming from, what information you are receiving from different smaller groups and drive engagement. This is the way that most entities do government agencies do their comments. They do their board comments, their committee comments at the beginning of the meeting. I highly encourage you to do this. It is important that we understand where your thought processor are coming from and the information that you are receiving from not only your individual committee assignments but the general public at large that you interact with. As you've we've just heard, there are people who interact with you on a daily basis through emails, phone calls, and conversations. It's important that everybody has an understanding of what that interaction is and how you are making your decisions. You don't make a decision in a vacuum and we all should

understand where you're coming from. That's my advice. Thank you very much and have a good evening. Next public comment is Eliia Savalov.

Uh, good evening board. I'm Elias Avalos, a senior at Kennedy High School and I'm here once again to advocate for my ethnic studies and Spanish for Spanish speakers programs. Our school is so diverse. Like when I say diverse, like it's so diverse. Um, you'd have to come to our school to understand how brilliant and wonderful we are. Wait, Miss President Vortiana and Jamila Smith FZ was at our fiesta Friday. So, they saw firsthand how brilliant and how diverse we were. And we'd love to see you guys at our spring carnival on April 17th, that's Friday, from 1:50 to like 3:30, right? Um but these programs these programs ethnic studies Spanish speakers they do they not only promote inclusivity but also they promote a prosperity and success we have our own al alumni she goes to UC Davis she's studying to be an immigration warrior like that's that's amazing like ethnic studies has inspired her to choose this career path I myself have been inspired by not just advocating and leading my school but I want I want I'm studying planning to go Schumer said this fall and studying into political science so I can become uh an attorney and hopefully a person that works with the with the state to create mandates and policies that allow students that guarantee these programs. These are programs that need to be guaranteed. I hope that you will protect and hear. I hope that you hear my voice and and listen because it is only only in adults and adults in places adults own will youth be will youth voices be heard and I hope that we can we can work together and listen to each other and understand each other so we can we can get things done. There needs to be action. needs to be protection for these programs and our school will not yield until these programs and teachers are guaranteed and protected. Thank you.

Next public comment is Cairo. Please unmute yourself. President, trustees, superintendent, community members, thank you for your commitment, dedication to uplifting our students. Both your time and dedication is greatly appreciated. My name is Kyra Armi Moore, resident of West Contraosta for over 20 years. Tonight I speak on behalf of Fierce Advocates alongside impactful community partners from Richmond dedicated to strengthening program implementation while increasing accessibility and transparency within WCCUSD. We are here because we believe something powerful. Community engagement is not an extra. It is the foundation of a striving responsive and future ready school district. WCCUSD serves approximately 28,000 students and families across more than 50 neighborhoods in seven cities representing four over 40 cultures and 50 languages. That is not just diversity. That is a tremendous asset and opportunity across the district. Families are already showing up in schoolite councils, ELAC, DAC, PTA groups and advisory committees. The vision now is to build a system that meets the energy with consistency, clarity, and support. Imagine a district where every family, no matter the school they attend, experiences clear communication, strong language access, meaningful opportunities to lead, and trust that their voices lead to action. To move toward that vision, we're calling for stronger infrastructure, and a long-term strategy that sustains this work. And importantly, we add to the board agendaize a communications and community engagement presentation by this summer so this vision can begin taking shape with urgency and clarity.

This is a moment to build something lasting together. Thank you. Next public comment is Jackie Aendaniel. Good afternoon. My name is Jackie Aventando, WCCCUSD alumni and fifth year ethnic studies teacher at Kennedy. Today I want to share testimonies from the petition to the district to fund and preserve 9th grade ethnic studies at Kennedy. From an alumni, my experience while taking ethnic studies has been nothing but positive. Not only did I feel deeply connected to my history and roots, it motivated me to pursue higher education. I am now a third-year college student, ethnic studies along with Miss Avento assured me that every that there was a space for me at a university as a firstgen Latina. I couldn't possibly think of where I would be at without ethnic studies. From a parent, it helped all of my three kids and they learned a lot. Without it, I wouldn't know where they will be. from a current 12th grade student. During my freshman year of high school, I wasn't really that inspired nor productive in school. However, ethnic studies made me feel heard and curious as to know more knowledge about my culture and others. It's real, it's raw, and it's inspirational to learn how to become someone your immigrant grandparents didn't have the opportunity to. From a ninth grade student right now, the impact of ethnic studies has changed my view on many things. All my life, I've only ever known Anglo-American history. And the fact that many schools choose to hide such topics is insane because how else will we learn what not to repeat. I always think of I always bring up things that I learned in this class because I'm genuinely intrigued on how it isn't spoken enough about. Ethnic studies has

to stay from an alumni. Ethnic studies wasn't just a class for me. It was a community. It helped me connect with my peers and get a better understanding of my own Latino roots. From a current 11th grader, I didn't know that we're currently on Native American land or that Native Americans still exist today and not being taught that is not okay. People have fought for this class and the teachers at Kennedy have built this program into something students genuinely look forward to every day. Eliminating ethnic studies is un Next public comment is Alain Harrison. Please unmute yourself.

Can you hear me? Yes.

Hi. Good evening board. I would like to know um well a couple of things I want to tell you. appreciate you guys for getting um higher expectations in. Um we did meet with them and I think that's a good start on community engagement from the um district. I think that's a good start. However, there's still parts that are big concerns. I don't see our resolution anymore on the website. No communication has happened if we are going to discontin the resolution. whereas the resources in the LCAP to change 83% of our children failing in our district. I think that the communication with resources and how we're going to change educational outcomes for all of our needy students, but especially our black students need to be brought in partnership. I know the condition of our district and the resources our district have, but it's not a lack of resources. is a lack of how we're paying attention to the areas of our most neediest students. And if you don't invest in the problem is never going to change. So investing does not just mean dollars, but we need staff and people that have those credentials to change those outcomes. We've been asking year after year to be in partnership. And this looks like a partnership right now that's getting to a point where our kids are being harmed because this outcome they're not reading and being able to do the things they need to do with math at when they graduate and complete our district and let's change that. I think as partners if we start working on things as a unit to have that common goal I think these are things we can complete. I think the resources are there. We need willing people to come together with parents so we can change some outcomes for our black and

African-American students. I'll stop there. Next public comment is Ash.

Hello everybody. Nice to see you. Okay. So, um I just want to sing you a song. Uh we just need our ethnic studies, espanol. I would like to also advocate for a basic leadership class and journalism. All right. So right now what we're looking at is a bunch of people that keep reading an anti-racist statement. As a white I understand that being anti-racist takes action and not palabas. You have to also walk while doing the talk. What does that look like? Interesting. Thank you for asking. Uh, that looks like cutting. I ready. Nobody wants to do it. I already know which babies are struggling in mathematics. We don't need that. Thank you. What does that look like? Cutting middle management and keeping people at a grassroots level. People that have developed programs from scratch. People that are inspiring uh young people to develop plans for what happens when sea level rises. Thank you, Perez. It is amazing to see some of the modeling work that the students are doing to beautify Wild Crack Creek. Wild Wild Cat Creek. All right, I got a B minus in that class, but I'm going to I'm going to get better. Okay, so what I want you all to think about is uh would you like to go down in history being like one of my redneck uncles and continuing just talking and allowing the racism to continue? or would you like to put an end to it? I really want you to remember why you wanted to serve the public.

It's It's for the kids. Yeah. So, do it. Also, don't be racist. Okay. Next public comment is Helen. Please unmute yourself. Hello. Good evening everyone. Can everybody hear me? Okay. Um, I want to say thank you. Thank you for your time and consideration. Um, I am a part-time clerk at Cameron Early Intervention, working five hours a day, which will be eliminated for the next school year. I am here today to ask that my position to be reestablished as a full-time typist clerk there and not a part-time hours a day. The workload that I'm currently managing for the site exceeds the fulltime um which makes it unrealistic to complete within my limited hours. So my daily work is to assist preschoolers to register um to have an essential evaluation done. I also assist parents in person with registration which can take an hour per family. In addition, I handle ongoing open cases, enter assessment plans into the system, process record request, and my list goes on and on and on. And um like I said, I'm the only clerk at Cameron Early Intervention. And with this position being eliminated next

year, I'm not seeing how these little kiddos can be evaluated. um and have services to help them succeed in the future with speech and you know OT therapy. So I am trying to speak to the board and to ask if you can please reestablish this position to be continuing at Cameron. Thank you. Next public comment is is Kumi Yanagihara. Good evening board. My name is Kumana Gihara. I'm a fifth year science teacher at Kennedy. And when I was 14, I saw myself in a public school classroom for the first time. And it wasn't in a US history class or a world history class, but in an Asian-American studies class, which was in the ethnic studies department, because we have a whole department at my school. We read book excerpts and watched videos about executive order 9066, which was the forced relocation and interment of Japanese Americans. And what struck me wasn't this information itself, which I learned in my own community growing up, but the fact that there was now no doubt that my classmates, none of whom are Japanese, were now educated about this dark part of American history, too. And as a person of color, there aren't enough words to describe how powerful it is to learn your history in America. The only class that's done this throughout my education was ethnic studies. And again, not US or world history, which are classes that this district says will fulfill that requirement, which shady, but whatever. At a school that serves practically exclusively students of color, we cannot cut ethnic studies. We also cannot cut Spanish for Spanish speakers, which to be clear is a language arts class taught in Spanish as

it allows our majority Spanish speaking population to connect with their mother tongue. We also cannot cut CT programs that enrich our students experiences. So, how are we going to avoid these cuts? I'm not Abbott, but let's do a little math. Okay, so as per Jeff Carter from a previous meeting, it costs on average $30,000 per2 FTE, which is about 150k per full FTE. If there's 13.4 Rift UTR positions, that's about 2 million, but that's average, right? Based uh rifts are based on seniority, so it's probably less than that. And if you recall from a previous statement, the board is expected to be about 14 million overspending on contractors. So, let's call it for what it is. It's pure mismanagement of funds. So, let's do the right thing, fund our schools, and fund ethnic studies. Thank you.

Next public comment is Christina Werta.

Hello, Christina Werta, Kennedy High School. Um, there are a couple things that I want to discuss today. Obviously, we're still fighting for Spanish for Spanish speakers. We're we're not going to stop. So, whatever it is that you need to figure out on your end, let us know because otherwise we'll just see you here till the school year ends. And then if you don't bring it back, then you'll see us next year too because it is important. As we've told you every single meeting, as our students have told you, as our community has told you, the same with ethnic studies, the same with all the wonderful programs that have been at Kennedy High School for many years now. I've been at Kennedy for 13 years. It has been tough to see so many colleagues year after year move on to other sites or feel that they're being pushed out. Why are we doing this to Kennedy when it is already such a vulnerable school and already dealing with so many other things? And it's not only our certificated staff. Our wonderful custodian, Miss Fabi, approached me two days ago, no yesterday, and asked me for a letter of recommendation because she was riff. She was a sub custodian for the first six months of last school year. And when she finally got moved into a permanent position after advocating for her position over and over and over again, she came into my classroom after school and said, "I want to reintroduce myself to you. I am now the permanent custodian at Kennedy High School." And we celebrated and now she's been rifted. And there's no need for that. People want to work at Kennedy and we need them there. We need our students to feel the stability that any high school should provide their students. Reinstate everybody who's been rifted,

whether it be certificated or classified, and focus on Kennedy for a change. Thank public comment is Zach Porter.

Hello board. Zach Porter, Kennedy High School. Uh now that we're back from break, I just want to follow up on some discussions that were happening before uh we left. Um so like a reminder to especi especially to the board members who have been at Kennedy. Uh we really need more transparency about the decision-m making process. There's been no coherent narrative as to how or by way of who FTE is being allocated. Um, I think for us at Kennedy, it feels like uh we're stuck in that Spider-Man meme when they're all pointing at each other, but we're uh like in the crossfire and we don't have a Spider-Man outfit, which is not cool. Um, uh, we also remind you that we really need to hold our site admin accountable for not taking proper care in building the master schedule. Specifically, I want to remind uh um trustees and Gonzalez Hoy to follow through with the April 2nd pledge to redo Kennedy High School's choice sheets. Um it's really important that we we do that as as promised. Um and related, our admin has attributed decisions they're making to the Elmo director, yet the Elmo director is not responding timely or or in a forthright fashion to us. Um, so also, um, and then I I think this may be being addressed, but we want to remind you to follow up with us about the status of the 2, uh, the 0.2 FTE allocated to welding and construction. Um, and then just generally speaking, um, please return to us the 2.4 FTE we need to maintain our best programs. Specifically tonight, I want to highlight ethnic studies. It's unacceptable to offer ethnic studies to Richmond and not Kennedy High School. Um, it's just it is. So, um, this is incredibly short-sighted and we need your support in pushing back against our admin and we need your support to keep these programs. Thank you so much.

Next public comment is Magu Lupe Marin. No. Good evening. I'm here to talk about the funds of this district cuz they suck. Honestly, I'm sorry to say that, but they do. A somebody who's downtown makes at least 180 if not more. A teacher makes 60. You can pay three teachers in that and you have leftover money. What can you do with the leftover money? Can you fix the floor at Kennedy, please? Because I've already fell twice on that floor and I'm blind. let alone a sighted person could probably fall and hit themselves and get injured. Please fix the floor. Please keep Spanish for Spanish speakers, ethnic studies, all the programs that you guys think aren't necessary. At this point, you guys might as well just say who which school you guys prefer cuz at this point you're you're trying to drive Kennedy to the floor. You guys are giving everything to other schools but us. do what's right cuz if not, we're going to think you guys are being picking favorites at this point. If you guys are, just let us know. Thanks. Next public comment is Joseph Gaspar.

My name is Joseph Gaspar. I am a sophomore at Hercules High School. And all I really want to start off by saying is that ethnic studies has taught me more about myself, about my family, and about my culture than any US history class will ever have. Especially because of my awesome teacher, Mr. E Eddie Baldo, who has actually taken the passion and the hard work to teach someone face to face. And now I want to express my support for Kennedy who is currently having their ethnic studies program. I I don't want to say targeted, but definitely cut and in danger of being completely eliminated, which is in my opinion absolutely ludicrous because you have all these all these awesome kids who want to pursue this subject that they found comfort in because it teaches it teaches them about themselves, about their history, and just the fact that that's in danger of being completely eliminated and leaving I I'm going to guess about hundreds of students without without in the dark about who they are about what their culture is and I find that completely unacceptable. Thank you.

Next public comment is Jacqueline Valencia.

Good evening. Uh my name is Jacaline Valencia. I am a Kennedy High alumni. I graduated from Kennedy High School in 2010. Uh some of you know me from the community, from my church. Some of you were my teachers uh in high school. Um I'm here today uh to speak against the proposed cuts to journalism, IT, and ethnic studies at Kennedy High School. These aren't just extra classes. These are the classes that keep our students engaged, that help them find their voice, uh their identity, and their future. Ethnic studies helps them understand who they are and where they come from. As a lot of folks have been saying tonight, journalism teaches students uh to think critically and to speak through. And I've seen that. I've seen some of the students from Perez's class go out and actually write for the Richmond Pulse, right? They're at Contraosta College and beyond right Kennedy High School. I support these programs because I've seen what they do. I coached at Kennedy High School for eight years and in the eight years that I've coached, these are the programs that have made the students successful and that have kept the students engaged and to want to pursue higher education as it was mentioned with all the alumni. So, I have to ask why why is Kennedy always under the fire? Since I was at Kennedy High School, we had to come up here, right, so that the school wouldn't close down, so that programs wouldn't uh get shut down, so that teachers would come back to work. literally like for for years now. And here I am again as an alumni. So that is my question. Um you know if you care about Kennedy right and if you care about students and teachers do the right thing. Our students deserve access to these classes. They deserve well-rounded meaningful education like these educators come and show up to Kennedy. We say there's no teachers there's teachers that want to teach at Kennedy. Well they all want to. We just have to keep these programs and keep their jobs. Thank you.

Mity Perez Carl. My name is Mity Perezo and I'm asking you to be equitable to Kennedy High. I'm a second generation WCC alum, an advocate for students for 15 years. I'm a ninth year career technical education teacher at Kennedy. What is the reason to reduce ethnic studies at our school and still provided at other schools? The development of this curriculum was carefully crafted by a stable and powerhouse teacher, Miss Aidano, alongside Mr. Vhil. How can you ask us to promote our school if you plan to gut our programs? We need electives to continue and to thrive at our site. How are you investing in building a state-of-the-art new building, but no plan to fill seats? There is no way that the expected enrollment for a new campus will be 550. How do you expect us to sit around and wait for a miracle to happen for our school? We need you to work directly with us and our staff. If you see the struggle that we are going through and continue to ignore us, it's really not a good look for any of you, including cabinet. Our students are the reason we are here, why we care, why we continue to advocate for better conditions for them. I will continue to ask you to do better for our Eagles. Here are some recommendations again, if you forgot. Cut consultants, take a pay cut, fix the truency issue, work with our staff instead of against us. Next public comment, Dulce Garcia.

All right. Good evening, board members and district staff. Tonight, you heard a shared vision from parents, partners, youth, and community leaders. A vision where community engagement is strong, consistent, embedded across the district, public advocates, the Latina Center, and soon you'll hear from county trustee area 1 about that vision. West Contracasta Unified School District is at a very important moment for community engagement. With change comes opportunity and the opportunity to strengthen trust, which I hope we can do. Fierce families are ready. Fierce community partners are ready. The question is whether the district will build the structure to match the readiness. Our asks are clear. Strengthen the community engagement role. commit to aligning with the board and community and staff and develop a long-term strategy that sustains this work. Tonight, we make one clear ask agendaize a communications and community engagement presentation by this summer so that the work can move forward with urgency, clarity, and accountability. We already plan for facilities and budgets. Ellen does this so well. Long range planning. This is our opportunity to also plan for relationships and foundation of a strong district. This is about trust where families feel seen, where partnerships are aligned and where students are fully supported. Fierce Advocates is ready to work with you. families are ready to engage. Now is the time to put this plan into motion and we hope we can continue to build trust. Thank you.

Their last public comment is Daniel Nathan Hace. Good evening board. U my name is Daniela Gomez and I'm Daniel's proxy. I am a Contraosta County Board education member representing trustee area 1 which includes the this district. Tonight my Contra Costa County Board of Education board meeting and I cannot attend in person but I share this as an elected official deeply invested in this district. I see tremendous opportunities in how WCCCUSD can lead throughout strong community partnerships. This district is surrounded by organizations ready and willing to support students and families like fierce advocates. The opportunity is bringing that energy together in coordinated strategic way. A strong community engagement department can serve as a connector aligning partnerships with this priorities ensuring resources reach the communities that need the most and creating more seamless experience of school for schools and families. This is about building smart system that maximize impact and reduce inefficiencies. Investing in a community engagement is not just good practice is effective governance. It strengths coordination, improves outcomes and building long-term stability. I respectfully urge the board to agendaize a communication and community engagement presentation by this summer so this work can be implemented by with clarity and alignment. If you have any questions, please reach out to me via email which I read available on the CCC BOE website. Thank you.

Well, thank you to everyone who gave public comment tonight and now we'll be moving on to our standing reports. Do we have any standing reports tonight? Our standing reports are UTR, DLI Community Schools Collaborative, NCAC, Francis Ortiz. Good evening board members, staff, and community. UTR educators and the broader WCCUSD are raising serious alarms and concerns about the district's lack of a coherent strategy, declining trust, and an absence of stable leadership. There has been no clear or updated 100day plan since its uh release in the fall. No articulated vision, no road map that the public or educators or even this board can point to and say this is where we are going. And as a result, trust is eroding. Confidence is diminishing and we cannot continue to operate on blind faith in leadership without clear, transparent strategy grounded in student outcomes. What we are seeing instead is instability at the highest levels. The continued loss of highly functioning, dedicated, proven effective and student centered cabinet leadership is not just a staffing issue. It is a signal a signal that something deeper is wrong with how this organization is being led

and sustained. At the same time, we are witnessing the systemic dismantling of secondary course offerings, decisions that directly impact students without any clear analysis of how these changes affect attendance, engagement, or long-term student opportunity. That also brings me to the reductions in force. We are now one month away from the statutory deadline for the district to either issue final layoff notices or resend the 13.4 FTE preliminary notices that are impacting 18 human educators. And we must also say this plainly that district staff did not follow the direction of this board. The public record, including your own deliberations, reflect a clear directive to reduce 8.0 music positions and identify 1.1 million in savings from the 14.5 million that the district is in overage in contracts and consultants. That's not what happened. Instead, only two music educators were issued layoff notices. And now we're hearing rumors of proposals that elementary music teachers may be converted into prep coverage teachers. So I'll ask you this directly, board. Is this what you all intended? Because the consequences are going to be real and drastically. They're going to be incredibly absurd. We're talking about dismantling the foundation of award-winning secondary music programs. And what are we going to move to rhythm sticks and recorders for everyone? Are we going to have mini drums banging in multiple classrooms across the schools throughout this uh

entire school day for five periods a day? Are we introducing harmonas to students so they can share the same set of instruments across periods? Are we asking students to airplay uh or pretend that they're, you know, hearing music or sounds? Are music teachers now expected to carry instruments for 30 students for five periods a day across multiple sites like a traveling road show? Because if this is the plan, then you got to be honest that that's not building a music program. We're turning them into noise making stations. This isn't innovation. This isn't equity. This isn't a strategy. This is improvisation without direction. And our students are the ones who are going to be paying the price. And that reflects a broader pattern of decisions that are made without coherence, without transparency, and without a clear understanding of the impact on students. And so this is your wakeup call. Our students deserve stability. Our students deserve clarity. And this community deserves leadership that is aligned, strategic, and accountable to the vision you set as the board. will continue to advocate for the schools that our students deserve, but we need leadership that matches that same level of urgency, integrity, and commitment. And in my last closing moments, I call that we hold a moment of silence for Greg Alono and Lawrence Smith, uh members of the Elserto and Danza High community who lost their lives this week. Thank you. Next is the Alli Erica Crues.

Next is Community Schools Collaborative Joyce Sinat.

Good evening. My name is Joyce Sinnate and I'm representing BACR, the lead agency at 20 district community schools. I'd like to speak on what the work is, why it's important, and offer some examples of what that currently looks like in our district. I first want to stress that community schools are more than schools with services. It's a strategy for school improvement, an organized and intentional way to run schools so that students get what they need to be healthy and successful. A report published last spring by the Learning Policy Institute shows that the strategy is working in California. When compared to similar schools in the state that were not implementing the strategy, community schools showed better attendance rates, lower suspension rates, and over time better academic outcomes. There are four pillars that drive this strategy. Number one, integrated supports. This is best ill illustrated by the care teams that our coordinators facilitate, which connect students to such supports as tutoring, mentoring, therapy, and case management. Why are integrated supports important? Because if students have access to appropriate interventions, they will experience better attendance, academic, and health outcomes. What do integrated supports look like? At Richmond High, this year, there's been 325 care team referrals. 322 of them have been triaged, and all kids who need support have been connected to services provided through six different community partners. Integrated supports also look like or translate to better attendance. For all 20 of our sites, year three of the grant yielded their lowest chronic absentee rates. This trend was interrupted this year because most students stayed home in solidarity during the strike, but we anticipate continued improvement in the coming year. Number two, powerful student and family engagement. This is both engagement to learn from the community and events to celebrate the community and bring joy and connectedness to campuses. Why is this important? because

it builds trust, relevance, a sense of belonging, and a shared ownership of the school and the programming. And what does that look like? Two years ago at Don, 7% of families attended back to school night. Last year, as they lean into the pillar of powerful engagement, they integrated studentled conferences and 52% of families showed up. The impact of engagement can also be seen in lower suspension rates. The number of students of suspensions at Coronado decreased by 5.8% 8% last year at Obama engaging students in restorative mediations this year has prevented 50 suspensions and the suspension rate for African-American students as don has decreased by 21.4%. Three, collaborative leadership and shared power and voice. The community school strategy flips the script on traditional top-down school governance by elevating and depending on the participation of students and parents. Why is this important? because it fosters a sense of belonging and empowerment. This here looks like Dover parents who made a workroom for themselves and have taken over responsibility for organizing student and staff of the month activities, parent workshops, schoolwide events, and teacher support. The student climate crew at Ford is preparing a student-driven anti-bullying campaign. Across all sites, students are helping guide PBIS implementation by teaching their peers their school expectations, identifying appropriate incentives, reorganizing how incentives are distributed, and managing the stores themselves. Expanded and enriched learning opportunities. Number four, coordinators support many learning opportunities outside the classroom. Um and this the addition of the community school teacher lead position is helping to bring relevant content and best practices in the classroom. Uh this is important because the result of any school improvement strategy is success in school and preparation for

the world beyond. What do enriched learning opportunities currently look like? 10 Helm students just returned from a week-long journey to Washington DC and Philly with the close-up program. Uh in March, students from Greenwood and Don participated in an on the baseline women's empowerment event with the Golden State Warriors. Here they learned about self-care, nutritional wellness, and the importance of community belonging. We are committed to working side by side with you and we have a clear plan for how to advance the strategy and improve outcomes for children and families. The district can help by strengthening the systems that support this effort over which we as an agency don't have much influence. In particular, provide training and professional development to build a shared understanding of the strategy amongst district staff. Ensure that contracts are in place in a timely manner. Not just ours, but those of the community partners that are so valuable to students. Streamline the budget process and please provide data. This is important for helping us to ensure improve continuous improvement. With these systems in place, schools are our last standing report is CAC Angela Silver Lima. That concludes standing reports. Thank you everyone um for those reports. Uh we'll now move on to item 10, agenda review and adoption. Does the board have anything they would like to address on the agenda?

Uh Trusty Smith votes. I just want to table the superintendent's report since she's not here. Table it to the next meeting. Okay. We we will proceed with the following adjustments. Um removing superintendent uh report. Now we'll move on to the approval of minutes for March 11, 2026 and March 25th, 2026. Trusty Winn.

Um, whoa. I wanted to correct the spelling of a Hercules High School student's name. Can you I think they're getting I can't hear there's I Huh. I think we're okay. Okay. Um, I wanted to correct the spelling of Hercules Highness name on the March 25th. March 11th. 25th. 25th. Okay.

Okay. The correction is um Jaden. J A I D E N. Alfonso. A L P H O N S O. That's it. Thank you for that. So, do we have a trusty regular?

Thank you. I have a something I'd like to add to the March 25th minutes in E3 resolution 2526 adopting the California state seal of civic engagement. I just want to um expand a little bit on the motion. The sentence says the board asked clarifying questions and made comments. the and then what I'd like to it to say is the resolution was adopted with amendments to include relevant volunteer internship and paid work experience such as poll work and pre-registration and voter registration if I may make that update.

Okay, that would be Thank you. So, do we have a motion? Go ahead. President Yan, I move that we approve the minutes with the uh two changes presented. Reckler will second. Okay, we have uh motion on the table by Gonzalez Hoy, second by Trusty Regler. Uh Trusty Han, yes. Trusty Whitten. Yes. Trusty Reckler. Reckler. Yes. Trusty Smith FS. Smith Falls. Yes. Trusty Gonzalez Hoy.

Yes. And Trusty Ornes. Yes. Trusty Anyana. Yes. Uh, minutes have been approved. Now we'll move on to item 12. Resolution number 2526-67 in support of the full and timely release of state education funding. And that is for Miss Aosta. Oops. I'm sorry. That is uh Trusty Regler.

Thank you very much for agendaizing this. Governor Nuome's proposed budget uh is looking to withhold 5.6 6 billion from K12 schools through deferrals for the 26 27 year. These are critical dollars that support our classrooms, staff, and student services. Costs are rising exponentially in our district and others across the state need the dollars. Now, this resolution calls on the governor and legislature to release these funds and prior prioritize stable ongoing investment in public education. So, for us to pass this resolution and for anyone here tonight uh or who's listening at home, uh I want to encourage you to contact your straight state leaders and advocate for the release of these funds in the resolution. Uh you will find the email addresses for uh member Wix, state senator, and Governor Nuomo. I'm pretty sure we probably all have the same reps. And I encourage all of you to email in just a few sentences. It could just say, "Hello, my name is Leslie Reckler. My zip code is 94530. I'm affiliated with the West Contraosta Unified School District. I'm a teacher or I'm a parent or I'm a community member or I'm a whatever your however your whatever your relationship is. My school district is struggling with rising costs. We understand that Governor Nuomo wants to hold 5.6 billion from public schools and we are hoping that you will work to ensure these dollars are released. Please return this communication and indicate how you will support the release of funds. And then um I'll go through the resolve clauses. Um now therefore be it resolved that the board of education of the West Contraosta Unified School District urges the governor of California and California legislators to release the full 5.6 billion of education funding. And be it further resolved that the

board calls on the governor and the California legislature to prioritize increased stable ongoing funding for K12 public education in recognition of rising costs and student needs. And be it further a resolve that the superintendent or appropriate designate is directed to transmit this resolution to the governor and the district state legislative representatives. And be it further resolved that this resol resolution be sent to the following state leaders. Governor Nuome, Honorable Jesse Eric Green, Honorable Buffy Wixs, and be it for the result that this resolution is to be shared publicly to encourage parent staff and the broader WCCUSD community to contact their elected representatives and advocate for full and timely release of education funding. That concludes my presentation.

Well, thank you for that. Do we have a motion? Uh, I'll go ahead and I'll go ahead and move resolution 2526-67 in support of the full and timely release of state education funding. I I'll second. So, we have a motion moved by Trusty Regler, second by Trusty Han, and I will go to the vote of Trusty Han. Yes. Trustee Whitten. Yes. Trusty regular. Reckler. Yes. Smith folds. Smith folds. Yes. Gonzalez. Hoey. Yes. Arnandez. Yes.

And Janas. Yes. U. Motion passes unanimously. Um, now we'll move on to our action items. We I mean I'm sorry, our consent items. We are up to item C, consent items. Do any of the board members wish to pull anything from the consent for discussion later on this evening? Trusty Regger.

Yes, thank you. I'd like to pull C17, approval of membership of district facilities 7-Eleven committee. Okay. So item C17 has been pulled, the approval of membership of district facility 7-Eleven committee. Uh we will otherwise accept the rest of the consent items. Now we'll move on to item E, action items. Um A1, approval of board policies.

I can do that item tonight. Um, so tonight we are bringing forward a set of policies that were scheduled to be presented on March 25th. However, they were later tabled. And so our staff is requesting that the board wave the first reading and to proceed with the approval of these board policies so that we can ensure timely alignment with current requirements. As outlined by board bylaw 9310, the board may wave a first reading when appropriate. These are mandated updates. They have been reviewed by staff. They're aligned with the latest California School Board Association guidance and they're tailored to reflect our WCCUSD practices and protocols. In total, it includes 26 board policies and 16 administrative regulations and approval is needed to maintain compliance with our CES, our local plan and our recent immigration related requirements. So, our recommendation is to wave the first reading and adopt the presented policies and our team here who worked on them is ready to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you. So, do we have any board questions? Um, let's start with Trusty Regler. Okay. I have some documents that I'm going to pass out to you guys. I have some little updates on um a few things. Thank you. So, first I want to start by saying thank you for everybody working on this. This has been a herculean lift and I really appreciate everything that everybody has done um to to work on this. Um I do have a few comments on a few policies and I've have it for everybody to take a look at. Um I don't know whether I don't know the best way to do it if we want to just pass everything else and maybe table these for a different reading, but I'll just walk through what my mindset was. Um, so the first policy that I have some comments on is the LCAP policy. And back in August of 2024 when we adopted the LCAP, we made a motion with six points on it. um collaboration and uh information for the committee, uh space at board meetings, um a commitment to increase the number of LCAP members through routine uh recruitment of members, um progress reports and um to acknowledge and support the efforts of staff. And so I thought it was important that we try

and incorporate that into the policy. And so I made a little paragraph which talks about stakeholder engagement and transparency and it says that um the governing I just tried to take these six and put it into a paragraph. And so it says the governing board is committed to meaningful ongoing engagement with LCAP advisory committee and the broader community in the development implementation and monitoring of the local control accountability plan. The district shall provide the committee timely and transparent access to relevant data, program information, and progress monitoring to support infor informed participation. The district shall make reasonable efforts to ensure that there are ongoing recruitment efforts to attract committee members and that the committee reflects the diversity of the community, including historically underrepresented groups. The board shall receive periodic updates on the progress of student groups identified as underperforming with emphasis on those indicated to be in the red categories on the California school dashboard. The board shall also provide regular opportunities for the committee to share input as part of its commitment to transparency, collaboration, and continuous improvement. And so I'll stop with that that one and see if I I asked staff also if they had any comments on it. I don't know. We can ask. Um and I'm just open to feedback if you want to include it or don't.

Trusty Gonzalez. Thank you. Thank you. Trusty regular. I was wondering are you going to um go through each one of the policies and your suggestions or like what is uh what is your thought on the rest of the next two pages that you gave us or is this just for us to consider for the future? Yeah, it's up it's up to you on how you want to do it. We could pass everything else and go through a couple of these or you could receive this tonight and we could bring it back or we could I you know whatever everybody's maybe you don't want to do any of them. I just um but I I found a few things as I was going through that I thought were important that I raise.

Thank you. Um may I suggest and I don't know if you'd be open to this. I'm I'm open to anything, but I wonder if we could pass the resolutions there tonight and then we could bring this to the next governance meeting and then we could bring him for if we want to include a lot of this stuff after we have a conversation with staff. I just don't want to feel rushed looking at all this. It looks like really good thoughtful, you know, information, but um then that way we can bring them back with changes for the full board to consider um with the rest of the policies. Uh, unless you want to do it tonight. I mean, I'm okay with whichever. I just thought maybe it'd be more efficient if we bring it back to we pass them now and then bring back changes in the future.

I'm fine with whatever anybody wants to do.

I'm good with it. I'm sorry. I'm having trouble hearing. Okay. about that. So, so does do we have any more questions on this item?

Trusty Smith folks, I have a question for cabinet. uh what we're passing tonight, is it a living document or is it is it a living document meaning that we can go back through it, we can look at it, we can add, we can subtract, we can discuss further. Is what you're asking for tonight just a passage to for compliance reasons to pass the the policies now, but are the policies in a living document? I guess that's my question.

Thank you so much for that question. So, our policies um get adapted as new laws come out and updates come out. And so, what we're asking tonight is that the board um approve the wave of the first reading and that they adopt the policies as presented with the CSBA updates. Um we can come back and make additional edits that would require additional board approval. Okay. So what I heard you say is the the ask is to pass the documents as presented tonight. However, there is an opportunity for us to for you guys to come back to us or us to come to you and say listen upon further review conversation thought or whatever we would like to look at policy number 35689 and add or subtract or whatever this part of it. That's is that accurate?

That is correct. And we're actually going to be engaging in updates of our entire workbook. And so, um, you will likely in the next coming months see hundreds of policies so we can, um, have an opportunity to make additional edits should the board decide to do so.

Trusty regular. Thank you. And then like some of the things I found which I think are important. So, in the immigration policy, in the old one, we had a directive staff is going to get trained. Staff will be trained on policies. In the new one, it says May. So, I have it that we should probably go back to what we did before um in suspensions in the positive school climate resolution. Oh, you can't hear me? I'm sorry, Trusty Reckler. Uh we we can't hear. I think the two speakers up in the uh up here are either not working or

Can I have a point of order? Can we take a five minute break just to see if we can fix the sound cuz it's been kind of bugging all night. Yeah. Okay.

So, we're going to take a five minute recess to try to fix our sound. I just found a few things that I thought were important. I wanted to bring it to everybody's attention. Maybe you don't want them, but I we didn't have a first read, so there was no way to bring them forward and say, "Hey, you know, maybe we want to look at these." And whatever anybody wants to do is fine with me. I if you want to pass them and bring them back, I'm fine. If you want to pass everything else and hold these back, I'm fine. Whatever. Whatever you want to do.

Trusty Gonzalez. Thank you. Yeah, Trusty Reckler and I very briefly in the break talked about bringing these possible changes to the governance meeting at the end of the month and then um that way also give staff some time to review them and then um if we make changes to the policies if passed tonight then we'll bring them to the four for the full board to uh to review and possibly pass again.

Okay. Do we have any public comment on this item? We have no public comment.

Trusty satisfy. Thank you, President. So, I make a motion that we approve uh all the attached policies as written. Reckler will second. Okay, we have a motion on the table u by Gonzalez soy, second by trustee regular. Do we have any additional board comments? Okay, see now we'll go on to the vote. Um Trusty Han, yes. Trusty Whit, yes. Trusty regular. Yes. Trusty Smith FS.

Smith. Smith Falls. Yes. Trusty Gonzalez Hoy. Yes. Trusty. Yes.

And trustee Zana is a yes. U motion passes unanimously. Um now we'll move on to item F, discussion items and reports. And we have one item on that. It's the 2025 20 202526 demographics and enrollment overview and that is presented by Miss Mahia Hooper. Good evening board. Thank you for having us tonight. Um tonight we're going to bring forward the uh demographic report and and enrollment projections. Uh this is an important background document data that will be utilized as part of the facility master plan which we discussed at the previous board meeting. Uh it's tonight I would like to introduce Ken Reynolds who is from schoolworks and completed the demographic report.

Good evening. It's wonderful to be here to present the results of our study for you and be able to answer any questions you may have. We do have a short presentation that highlights the the key components of our study. So this first

this first slide just talks about the methodology we use and we saw a lot of questions come about our study from the board. So thanks for all of your comments in advance. The key components to our analysis involve a lot of research and looking at what's happening with development, new homes that are being built. We look at the number of bursts occurring within the community. We get that information from the department of health. And then the one of the most important factors is looking at your historic enrollment. And that information we collect is from your actual student enrollment every October. and we have multiple years so we can analyze trends. As we go through the next few slides, we'll show you a little bit about how that work is done. On our next slide, we illustrate a map of the school district. This is in our computerized mapping system. And what you're visualizing here is the current location of students in the district. And that was based on data from this past October. And so you can see the blue area represents your district boundaries and all those red dots where the students and where they live this year. Then the next slide shows how we can take the district and divide it up into your school attendance boundaries. So we do this for the elementary schools, the middle schools, and the high schools. Because when we do our analysis, we're looking at all those individual neighborhoods to understand what those dynamics are locally for each school. Our next slide shows the birth data we collect in comparison to your TK students. Those are your four-year-olds. Those blue bars represent how many students have been enrolled in your TK

programs over the last several years. And those yellow bars are our projected TK enrollments. That program has grown over the last several years from being just three months eligible to attend to now all four-year-olds eligible to attend. The reason we see an increase next year is because of the planned expansion and offering of more uh courses for those students to attend. Then the next slide shows our kindergarten students. These are our five-year-olds. Again, we have a little more history here. So, u more blue bars showing our historic enrollments. And we can see those numbers have been declining a little bit. And then the yellow bars are our projections. And again, they're continuing to decline because that blue line running across the top of the page are the number of children born each year. And so the children that have been born that will be attending our future kindergarten classes has been shrinking. And we've been seeing this statewide. Uh the number of children being born each year in our state has been declining. Statewide we used to have over 600,000 births. This past year we only had 400,000. So we've lost onethird of the burst in our state over the last about 12 years. On our next slide, we can visualize I think we're missing some information on that slide. The Yeah. So we if we just look at the information on this cohorts page,

this is the actual enrollment from each October over the last four years. And by comparing the students in one grade to the students in the following year in the add in the one additional grade. That's how we look at the cohort data and we summarize it by averaging it in the final column here. There's some very key points and again one of these questions was asked all right where are we losing the most stu number of students and we can see that in our seventh grade cohort. So when we compare the number of students in sixth grade to the students in seventh grade the following year right we're we're losing on average almost 300 students. Uh some of the grades the numbers are pretty minor uh with a you know a plus two in first grade or a minus14 in third grade but uh from grades 5 through seven those cohorts add up to close to a loss of nearly 500 students. Now when we get down to ninth grade we have an average positive of 58. And that's pretty common to see where we end up with more students in our high schools than we do in our younger grades. But the overall impact of these numbers is that we've been seeing some declining enrollment. And again, those mostly are impacting our secondary campuses. But if you look at the key factors on this page, when we look at our incoming TK, kindergarten, and first grade, those numbers are lower than we've been having. When we look at grades 2 through six, right? We have about 1,900

to 1950 students per grade. And we're starting to see those numbers starting to drop off. And as the bursts in these future years that are going to be generating our incoming students have been lowering, we're going to see those numbers to continue to drop. So whereas our elementarymentaries have been relatively stable overall, those drops that we're projecting in our enrollments are because of the fewer number of children that had been born. uh there of course that's separate from the issues where we see in the secondary grades where we're losing some students but the key component in our projections that is showing some decline is due to just fewer children being born in the community. If we go to the next page we talk about the new housing development. Uh this has been a challenging sector uh for our economy lately. Uh due to high housing costs and high interest rates, the number of homes being built throughout the state have been on the low side. And there's a lot of people projecting that it will continue to be a challenge over the next several years. And some people believe that, you know, things could turn around and improve. So that that makes this area the mo most difficult uh in creating an accurate projection because things can uh improve or decline rapidly. But we are do we said we we have worked with the cities and the developers and trying to understand what they're going to build when they're going to build it and that has been taken into account in these projections with a total of 1762 new homes projected

over the next six years. Uh however, when we look at the number of students we generate from these homes, we're only projecting 0.2 two students per home. Uh historically for grades K through 12 in our state, that number has been.7. That's from about 20 years ago. Uh so we can see the cost of housing and the drop in the number of bursts we've been having in our state has really had a significant impact on what the impact of developments are projected to be. So even though there's a a fair number of homes, the overall impact is not enough to offset the declining uh birth rates. Our next page highlights the overall results of our projections. Here we're showing 10 years of history and six years into the future. Uh the first four years the district was relatively stable. Then over the last six years, but ever since the pandemic hit, uh we saw some significant drops. Uh the last four years has just been a slight drop in enrollment uh relatively. Uh the reason it looks more stable than it is in the projections is because those numbers were offset by the expansion of that TK program. So that was creating additional students in the district that gave the illusion that we are not uh declining that much. But now that that program's fully expanded and the upcoming burst has been lower than we've had historically uh that's what's leading to the drop over the next six years. Again, we are showing a drop of just over 2,000 students over six years.

Uh the rest of the pages in our presentation just give you a quick uh expl explanation of some of the information and the details in our full report. Uh this page highlights the uh information we have on a specific school. Uh here we've used as an example Hercules Middle School. So, for every school, we're going to have a map that shows that school's boundary. Uh, where the students are living. They're colorcoded. Red dots are represent students enrolled in that school that live in their boundary. If you see some blue dots in that boundary, those are students that live in that school's boundary but attend a different school or a different program within the district. And then any dots you see outside that boundary are students that are choosing to attend that school or that are enrolled in that school but live outside its boundary. So it gives you an understanding of those attendance patterns and the choices the parents are making in the community. Then on the next page we show the enrollment projections. Again we used Hercules as an example here but the information is available for every school on these charts. The blue line represents how many students live in that school's boundary and the red line represents the enrollment. So if we see a variance between those two lines, there's a net transfer in or out of that campus. Uh and then on the chart below each campus, uh we show the six-year projections by grade level so we can understand uh the information we need if we're looking at staffing issues and classroom needs. And we do have a capacity line drawn on these uh charts for each individual school. That capacity line is based on classroom counts and not all the other details that you probably look at in your actual full facility master

planning uh documents. This is just looking at strictly classroom capacity. Our next slide again just shows some additional information. Uh this one is supposed to be showing the uh high schools. We had a blue line represent the students that live in a boundary and a red line, a red bar that represents the students attending. So again, it's it's just different ways of summarizing the demographics and the uh choices parents are making as to where they live in relation to where they the children go to school. And then the next page is our utilization map. We'll see. That one turned out okay. Um, we provide these maps for the elementary grades, the middle and the high school grades. This one here is the uh middle school. So, what we did is we colorcoded the boundary areas for each school. Uh, if we use the uh blue color, it says we have lots of extra space available. So, if more kids show up, there's plenty of room. Uh yellow is sort of that we're in that ideal range of about 70 to 79%, right? We've got enough students to run a great program. We do have some space available, but we're not overcrowded. Now, when we get to the green, we're in that 80% range. So this campus is probably feeling a little bit impacted especially in certain courses or at certain uh programs. And then when we see the red color here that's saying we're projected to be a little over capacity. And so the this is based on a six-year projection and they're probably asking for more teachers, more classrooms when we get to

that level of overcrowding. So again, a lot of details in our full report. Um, I believe there you may have some questions. So hopefully I can do our best to help answer your questions.

Thank you. Do we have to thank you for your presentation. I was wondering if you could go back to slide 11 and you could reexlain that one for me. I did read a little bit on the main report, but um during your explanation, I kind of got lost. I was wondering if you could pick one of the schools shown on the slide and just uh explain the colors for us again.

Yeah, there's two key colors, right? We've got our yellow in that chart up in the uh left hand side there. The yellow represents students transferring into that campus from outside that school's boundary. Now, we can't see a lot of those dots on the map because we're sort of zoomed in on that school's boundary, but any yellow bars on that chart are represent students transferring in that live somewhere else in the district. Whereas the blue bars represent students that live in the district in that school's boundary but are attending other schools and programs within the district. So, it's just showing you the choices that families are making. And so the but any of the red dots on that map are students that are going to the school for the boundary which they live in. And those red ones are not represented on the chart because they're just they're attending their home school. So that the the chart in the on the left hand side only is showing you the students transferring in or transferring out.

Does that help? It does. Thank you, Trusty Reckler.

Thank you. Thank you very much for the presentation. I'm wondering if you could help me with uh TK and K and the correlation between the two. When I read this data, I get the feeling that TK is not really converting kids to K, which I would have thought that if you're enrolled in TK, then you would just naturally become a kindergartener. Can you confirm my assumption of that data?

Yes, that that is a accurate statement so far. Again, this is our first year that we've had all four-year-olds eligible to attend and and schools I've studied throughout our state. The TK numbers are coming in lower than our kindergarten numbers. So, if we were to actually look at the cohort variance or change from our TK to our K, we're seeing positive numbers. So again that's representing that not all the children are choosing to attend TK. Of course it's not mandatory. Um so we and I think it you know I haven't seen especially when we look at the recent numbers where it's had a positive influence on kindergarten enrollment. Um, it could perhaps maybe in the long term, but we don't have enough data yet to be able to suggest that it will or will not have an impact on our long-term kindergarten enrollments.

And then how accurate has the cohort data been? Uh, you know, can you go back to I don't know. I I remember these things from like the at least from the 2014s or 2015s. Have Have the projections been accurate or how far how far off?

I I believe that the well the studies have shown that the cohort model is the best methodology for projecting school enrollments. Of course, what we're doing here is we're using that cohort methodology, but have modified it to account for birth data and we also modify it to account for new development data. Very similarly, the state in its new construction funding program uh used to just have a simple cohort model, but they've also implemented using birth data and they've always had available the ability to use new development model. So again, it's a methodology that the state believes in so strongly that they base their school uh funding for new schools on this program on this methodology. Most of our projections as a firm with all the adjustments and analysis we put into our work typically come in with an error rate of 1% or less. Of course, there are exceptions. Uh one of the big exceptions of course was COVID that created an anomaly that I don't think anyone had predicted projected. So there there can be exceptions. And then finally, how does the study treat or how how are you capturing charter school and private school students and maybe even homeschool? If you had some ideas about that.

Yeah. So again, since the core data we're studying are your students and that and we're looking at that data over time, if this number of students enrolled in home schools and charter schools and private schools is growing or stable or declining, we're going to see the impact of that by understanding what's happening to your numbers. So if those programs are growing, we're likely to see that your numbers would be dropping. And so by understanding the change in your numbers, it's inherently accounting for any changes in those external programs of just by studying what's happening in your data. Now we do have census data that we look at. Of course, that's we looked at it in 2010 and we looked at it in 2020. Again, that those periods were both before the impacts of the pandemic. Um, but looking at that data, your enrollment was about 75% of the children that live in your community and it was pretty stable between those two decades. It will be interesting to see where it comes in with the 2030 uh data. Statewide our average is about 80% of the students are enrolled in public schools and then we usually have about uh the other 20% are made up of the charter schools, private schools and homeschool opportunities. So you're a little bit less than that but you've been stable at at your current ratio. So I think there so that's why I think there could be some room for growth especially when we see those uh drops between sixth and seventh grade. Uh so that there's some opportunity there but overall the the

patterns you've seen have been pretty stable. Okay. Thank you very much Trusty Gonzalez Hoy. Thank you. Yeah I have one additional question about your projections for Kennedy High School. As you know, we are rebuilding the school. Uh, but I see your projections even at the time for when the rebuild is finished to continue to decline. Was that was the construction taken in consideration during the creation of the report?

No, that the impact of that facility project is not accounted for in our numbers. We're just looking at the historic enrollment, the number of students living in that community, and where they're currently choosing to go to school. And so, a project like that could draw more students. Um, you know, whenever it's is very common when we have a brand new elementary school open that we study how many students live in that community and the enrollment typically is more than that because there are students from outside that area trying to enroll in the brand new school. So that can occur. Uh if that does, that has not yet been accounted for in these numbers. And the other thing that's not yet accounted for is I think there was over a thousand homes still projected to be built within the Kennedy boundary, but they're not within our six-year projections. They're beyond the six-year just because of the current slow housing market. So it has potential for growth beyond our six-year projections.

Thank you. you just follow up. Uh, thank you. Um, would you be able to work with our staff to ensure that as we project for staffing and enrollment for both Kennedy High School and Richmond High that we are incorporating the rebuild and potential calculations and what that could bring. Uh I don't know how that could be done post this but and if if if it's even possible to work with you on that but I just want to make sure that we use accurate data and it's you know we don't get to it and we were under uh uh reporting right and and uh we don't prepare accordingly to the uh to their rebuilds being finished for both these schools right

yeah be more than willing to work with your staff and make any adjustments based on uh anticipated impacts of that program uh ex and the impact of that uh construction project. Thank you so much. Thank you, President. Okay. Do we have any um public comment on this item?

Oh, hold on. Just votes. My question is when looking at when looking at the enrollment and looking at the patterns, how deep do you go? So, for example, in Hercules, we have a lot of families that their last is graduating out, right? So, they're they're finishing. We And it goes kind of in phases and then we'll have a year where we'll have all three kids in the family in the school system because one is in elementary, one is in middle, one is in high school. Right? So, how do you kind of account for that? Do you go that deep in it? Do you just count the people that are in school currently? Do you look at the how many kids are in the family? So, how many you think that are going to attend that local elementary school or middle school? Can you walk me through that or is that even a question that you can answer? Well, again, for for each school, we're looking at the number of children that live in that school's boundary from TK all the way up to the largest grade of that campus. And so, if if we're looking at a middle school or high school, right, we have all of those younger grades that we know are going to be moving up through the system and enrolling in schools. uh for elementary schools, right? We're we're looking at birth data to project how many children will be enrolling in our future TK and kindergarten classes. But uh as in that by looking at multiple years of data that would tells us who lives in the community and then after we and if you look on our individual school charts that blue line represents the population projected within that community that school's boundary and then by understanding those transfer patterns and assuming that those transfer patterns remain consistent into the future that is how we adjust for of the

number of students living in that school, how many will attend the school and how many will attend that school from outside their boundary. And then we add all those together to get the final projections for each school. So it's again it's a a bit of a comprehensive analysis, but we that's that those are the steps that go into each individual school. Okay? So we're not looking at an individual family per se. We're looking at all the families within each school community. Okay. So, you're not looking at individual families. You're looking at all the families that exist inside the boundaries of that school. Correct.

Okay. And then when you talked about looking at classrooms, when you go into a school, you are not looking at the classrooms that are used. You're looking at the classrooms that are able to be used. Is that accurate? We usually have a a number in between the two, right? We don't want to assume that every room can be used as a classroom because we know there special programs that need space. But at the same time, any school that has a much lower enrollment than their capacity will start using rooms for all sorts of other things because they have that available space. So we we like to take a compromise between what they currently use and what the maximum number is so that we have a reasonable capacity that says, "Hey, if another 30 kids show up, do we have space for them or do we really need to purchase, you know, a new classroom?"

Okay, thank you. I'm complete.

Okay, now we'll go on to public comment. First public comment is Marie. Please unmute yourself. Can you hear me? Yes. Oh, okay. Yes. Um, this is a very interesting discussion and I'm hearing the TK discussion and it just reminds me earlier in the school year I was sent to my per personal email a survey about TK asking whether you would like it if some of the programs were made more full day. So, I'm just wondering if the district is considering making some of them full day because right now, yeah, Lydia, I have to make sure there's child care for her since her day is so short and with a lot of parents working, you know, with bills and everything. It would be nice if TK programs some of them, you know, try out to make them longer and see if that increases enrollment in the district. Thank you. Jean Kinster, please unmute yourself. Hello. I also am wondering about Can I have my full time, please? Thank you. I'm also wondering about the TK thing. I'm in a situation where um we don't even have we have a combo and I would love a full TK but the district assigns TK and they decide that oh the class is full and they bounce kids that belong to us to other schools. So, do your projections look at stuff like that where kids want to come to us, but they don't because they're told it's full or, you know, it doesn't even seem like we get the 15 days of TK's over like we do all the other grades to decide whether or not we need more FTEEs. And we

definitely had the classroom for it with the bathrooms and everything. So, I'm just kind of wondering if that was taken into consideration or not because once those TKs go to another site, if they're not leaving to go somewhere else because where they could go, TK isn't offered or it's too short and they don't want to pay. So, they come to us as that year and then go off to a private or whatever for kindergarten. If they go to a different kindergarten and stay in the district, then they've made friends and their parents don't want to go back to their home schools. And that's kind of killing us at Birdie. Last public comment is Alon Harrison. Please unmute yourself. Hello. Can you hear me?

Yes, we can. Okay. Um, I wanted to know the same question that trustee Gonzalez Hoy asked about Kennedy about STE. Is that gonna apply to stage also because they're in the middle of a rebuild? So, I just wanted to know that if you guys can find out if that how does that look? I'm complete. Thank you to everyone who u gave public comment. Um, now I'll entertain a motion. Oh, Trusty Wiggler. Sorry, it's a discussion item so just comments but I do have some comments. Okay.

Okay. Thank you. So I want to thank you for the presentation and for the transparency. I think this was really important to bring this forward. In previous years there have been demographic studies done and they've kind of been buried on like the 20th page of the business services. Um you know so I really appreciate the transparency. I think it's really important. Um I also find this report to be really sobering. Um so enrollment has been declining for decades. Um you know it's we all know it's high cost of living, declining births. Um housing is not coming in right now the way we thought it would. Um and students are leaving the district as they pass through. Um but not all of this is out of the district's control. And we've got 7,300 or 7,500 charter school students right here within our jurisdiction and they're attending charter schools and not our schools and families are making choices and the district needs to really understand those and respon respond in a much more intentional and strategic way. Um, you know, we've discussed this for years. Um, but I think now the district's really at an inflection point because we're looking at a 9.2% decline over six years. That that's a lot. Um, and you know there there has to be an action plan, a formal measurable plan that we have and we're looking at and we're figuring out how to ameliate this. Um, you know, at the same time, you know, there's going to be excess capacity and that has real in imple imple implications because you may end up with schools that are teeny teeny and we can't offer any of the resources to them. So, it's going to be a real balance between what you can invest and what you can offer in, you know, schools that may be very small. So, I'm

recommending a multi-prong plan for the board, superintendent, and community to get behind. And it will really discuss raising attendance, enrollment. We may have to look at school boundaries because there's, you know, areas all over the place. Uh looking at existing offerings and improving them and then really taking some calculated risks on what we think are going to bring kids back to this district. Um and um you know we may need to look at workforce housing, joint ventures, other ways of revenue, um advoc continued advocacy at the state level. We're not alone. And um you know, working on a plan for Kennedy. I thought when I looked at that number, it was taking into account the remodel. I'm hearing now it's not. And so I'm really concerned about that. there has to be a relaunch when that building is ready to go with, you know, a solid need to really work on enrollment for that. Um, so there's a lot of work ahead, but I really do think it's possible to ameliate some of these effects, but it's going to take fiscal responsibility. there going to be a lot of really hard decisions that need to be made um and a willingness to take calculated risks and but if we act strategically I think we can do some stabilization and strengthening um you know uh we can be led or we could lead change and I think that we should you know try and lead the change um and I think we should start thinking about it over the summer because the facilities master plan I guess is going to be back in the fall and so we could have some thoughts around that before that hits maybe um and then you know put the two together so that we're not losing um any time and again I appreciate the work and the transparency it it's really important um where the district is right now so thank you very much I really appreciate it

you have any further comments votes Thank you so much for the presentation. I think that uh as a board we're coming to the point to where we're going to have to have a conversation that we all don't want to have. Our numbers are going down. The enrollment is projected to go down. We cannot operate schools that are small because operating a school costs money and we may not have well we don't have the money to operate schools that are at low enrollment low capacity. I think that as a collective board we have never wanted to have the conversation about school closures because it's never been part of what we wanted as a district. We want all of our neighborhood schools to stay open because they're neighborhood schools. And we know that when you close schools that it has ripple effects throughout the entire community, not only throughout the school community, but throughout the the neighborhoods, throughout it has impacts. I think that if we are being honest looking down the road, it's a conversation that we're going to have to start breaching. And the earlier that we start talking about it and what it looks like and the impact, the better it will be for a terrible sit situation. It's going to be bad no matter what. It's going to be worse if people come in here and do it to us than if than us being able to be strategic, reasonable, and led with empathy and love when we have these conversations. I think if people come in here, the state, the county, whomever, whoever comes in here, I think they're going to do it without the tenderness and care that we would have because we are the community. We know the community and we um to to your point, we need to have a plan. We need to have a plan and we need

to start having hard discussions because we know looking at our fiscal numbers and we know looking at our enrollment that this is the next conversation that we have to have. So I would suggest that we start we start I'm complete trusty Gonzalez.

Thank you. Um I I appreciate everything Trusty Reckler mentioned. I think that it's really important to use this data which is very subbering and plan to support our programs that are not working. I mean, I think that this data shows that fifth, sixth, and seventh grade are where we lose the most students in this district. And that's matched with the enrollment that we see in charter schools. Uh where a lot of our charter schools have opened and started and where they're going. Uh there are thousands of kids who are going to charter schools because uh families feel like we're not providing them the right supports, the right resources or right education for their students. I think we're gonna need to concentrate on that. We do need to have, I think, a plan to support the programs that are working, increase them, duplicate them, actually have those conversations, have a thoughtful strategic plan behind that. I don't think that our focus and our conversation should be about closure of schools. I think it needs to be about how to support our schools and what is our plan for increasing that enrollment. Knowing that births are falling, knowing that knowing that people are moving out of the area, knowing these truths that we heard tonight, uh the reality is that there are still thousands of students that are choosing to go to other schools, private, home school, and charter schools. So we need to really actually focus on the why behind that especially knowing that they are mostly in fifth, sixth and seventh, some 10th and 11th grade why that's happening and change that. I think that's where our focus should be not on closure of schools which we know are not actually saving money. There are thousands of studies that have been done the last few years where more districts have chosen to schools to close small schools that show that the actual closure does not save money nor does it actually help the district. So in my opinion I agree with

Trusty Reckler. We just need to be re refocused have a strategic plan and a vision behind how to support our schools and increase our enrollment. Thank you. Trusty Smith vault.

I don't disagree that we need to focus on how to build enrollment, but I do think that because we I don't disagree that we need to focus on how to build enrollment, how to keep and maintain, how to figure out where or how to figure out how to bring our students back. As the only board member that's always voted against charter schools because they're underperforming in our district, I get that. I think that we have to be able to look at the both and our enrollment is continually going down. We know from what we have been told as board members that there are when we look down the road at the next at year three year four that closing one school two school you're right three schools may not make a difference but that's not what is projection the projection is to have to have to or the possibility of making that next step and I think that as a board it is incumbent upon us to not only prepare the community but prepare ourselves to have that conversation and to have the district help guide us because they are the experts in that to what the impact's going to be. What is it going to look like? I think that we have a fiscal reality that's sitting in front of us and we have to be able to as a board talk about everything. Talk about where our students are going. Talk about how we capture them back. Talk about how we as a board have a understanding of what we will say when it comes to un un underperforming charter schools and then what our vote will then tell us to do about that because that will bring our students back because again charter schools are supposed to be outpacing us. They're not and if they're not then we need to have that discussion and then make the necessary decisions that impact. I think that again my I do not want to close schools but I also want to make sure that we have one hand on the wheel when it comes to local control. I don't

want somebody to do something to us. I want us to be able to have the power to have the conversation with community, have the conversation with our district, have the conversation with our our sites about what's next and do it in a tender, loving, clear way because we cannot avoid what's coming down the road. I'm complete.

Okay. See, no further comments. I have a comment. Um, I want to thank you for the report. I think there's interesting data on there. I welcome everyone I think in the community to flip through each page and get acquainted what I think what is how are your schools in your community looking and also I think it's interesting that it gives us as trustees a data point to see which schools are also being more affected by the transitioning of of students leaving our schools um those seem to be more in certain areas than others and how we have also made decisions that may be impacted some of that I think throughout the time. How can now we move forward in supporting some of our schools to bring their attendance up? How do we get um students back into the classrooms in certain areas where we see that we have a bigger fall of students? and how do we now use the data to actually support our sites um equitably to be able to be contestants I think out there amongst so many other options. So I think that's my comment and um I think we have one more item that we need to give back to and that is item C17 the approval of membership of district facilities facilities and the 7-Eleven committee.

Yeah, thank you. I pulled that item. I have a question and I see two elected officials on the roster. I guess we've always had one, but it just never snapped in my head, but Moren Toms is an elected official. Um, we can't be their attorney. Does but does the district have any risk with um any conflict of interest with elected officials? So we did ask that question. Um I was unaware that Marine is is a current elected official. So we will have to um go back and look at that. There were two other applications. Everybody who applied um was uh added to the committee except for three applicants which were um identified as conflict of interest um issues and and two of them were elected officials. So um the uh that would definitely be an issue when it comes to marine if if that's can I ask what her position is? City Council.

City Council of Penol, right? Yes, she's on the city council of Pull and Ardo is on wastewater, right? AC trans waste water. Wastewater.

So, the wastewater is not an issue per se. It was more if the And I'd have to double check. I believe one of our sites is within the city of Penol. It would it's only a conflict of interest if they have a um position that uh we have a site in question and the land use of that site affects their role in both organizations. Um so uh water um board is not exactly the same as a city council member but we can double check on on that if you'd like us to.

What's the property in panol? I'm trying to think if we had one in Pole County. So then that that is um why it wasn't flagged. Okay. Thank you. But we did have um council review all the applications to confirm conflict of interest um issues. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. I'd like to move the roster, but remove Don Gazny from the roster. I'd like to move the roster removed on Gazny.

I have a question. Um, I know that some of these some members have stated that some prior members are some of them are on this list. Why are we still voting on those members who are returning? Uh well, the overall list was provided to confirm that we had 7 to 11 members. Um at this point in time uh the original intent was to add the additional members uh that are identified um through the application process. So even though some of the re from my understanding there was outreach done for those who were in the prior 71 committee and I see some names here who were part of that 7-Eleven committee but now are being brought back for the board to approve their appointment but they already were part of it. So, did their terms expire or did they stop because of the fact that the 7-Eleven committee didn't have quorum? No, we were listing it. This follows a similar format of the previous time that we have done this process where we have added additional members to a committee. Uh we list the um returning members. Um the the entire reason it's called a 7-Eleven committee is because you're required to have between seven and 11 members. Uh so uh we followed the format that was previously brought to the board that identified the current members and then also identified the new members and as you can see on the list uh there's

parentheses next to the members that are new. Uh so that was the intent of of bringing this forward.

Okay. But did their were they term appointments like you know how the CB uh CBOC and you know all were they termed that they had to reapply and then to be able to come back or are they are they still in term? I don't know if I know Don was part of the CBO I mean was part of the 7-Eleven committee Ardo um Mr. James all of uh are they did their terms come to end? this is why we're bringing them back so we can vote them in or is it because we're reestablishing the 7-Eleven committee? That's where I'm trying to get clarification because if so, then the board should only be voting on the new members, not the returning members and they should have been two separate lists.

So, I don't believe there are any term limits on the 7-Eleven committee. Uh the intent was to bring forward the new members for appointment. Okay. follow-up question. I was so the intent was to just approve the new membership. Correct.

Then could we take the I think I'm I'm going to make a motion a mo I'm going to make a motion to move only the members from I think it's number 5 through 11 um because that's the new membership list. keeping intact previous members that shouldn't have been brought to the board because their membership is still active.

I second that. I don't know if it's doable. Can staff advice trusty regular? I have a question. So, is this committee continuing where it left off or are they starting again? Can somebody answer that?

Again, the intent of the the um of this particular action was to uh make sure that we were in compliance. We're required to have 7 to 11 members. Uh there were not um seven active members any longer on the committee. So we needed to uh reestab or we needed to add additional members to the committee to be able to be within the compliance of the statute. Uh so we are bringing forward uh so the idea was that we were ex we were re we were adding uh the required number of members to the committee so that they could continue their work. So it wouldn't, if I understand correctly, it would not be a start from the beginning. They would pick up with I think they left off with um community meetings.

So there is going to have to be some level of um of catching up the members that have not been previously part of this the process. Uh so that would be our first initiative is make sure everybody uh understands the data that has been presented so far. There is a draft report that is um that has been uh brought forward. Um however, it has not been shared with the public yet. There are also open meeting minutes that need to be resolved before we can move on to um the recommendation to the board. Okay. Thank you.

Okay. So, we have trustes Miss Votes. Can you remind me the last time that the 7-Eleven committee met it? To my knowledge, I remember right before we took a tour of Adams. I remember we took a tour uh 2024. So 20 is that accurate, Miss Hooper. Is it 2024 is the last time they met? I believe so. Okay. I think so, too. Okay. Thank you. I'm complete. Maybe Mr. Sanders knows. It was 2024, right? Misters 24 was the last formal meeting.

Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, we have a motion on the floor to move um membership from starting from row 5 to 11 keeping intact uh 1 through 4. Um and we'll do roll call trusty and Calvin Hug. Yes. Trusty Whitten. Yes. Trusty Reckler. Reckler. No. Trusty Smith votes.

I'm sorry. There there is a point of order. If you can't keep one through four, right? We can keep one, two, and four cuz three is going to be changed. Is that accurate? It'll be one through four and then once that changes, then that will be Yeah. That would be brought back up to staff cuz she's still to put another staff person in that place. Okay. Uh, Smith abstains. Sorry, president. Just for clarity, uh, the staff member is still a land owner, so she can actually stay in the committee. Um, so there might not be a change in in that in the returning. So I just wanted to clarify.

So the person who is number three may still be on the committee because number three is a landowner and willing to stay on that committee. we will have to appoint um a new administrator uh because an administrator is a required um member of the committee. Uh however uh due to timing um that will occur at a later date. Thank you.

Quick um quick point of order. Um, so on the bylaws it states that we are to have two administrators on because we have a second administrator on number 11 that's stated as staff administrator for Pedro Agradano. So he is staff. I'm getting clarification if he will qualify as an administrator. Okay. Well, we could take that up at a later date. Continuing with the vote. Um, Trusty Gonzalez Hoy. Yes. Trusty Hernandez.

Yes. Trusty Anyana is a yes. Uh motion passes. Um with trustee regular um no and trusty Smith folds abstaining. And that brings us to item G. Um comments from the board of education. Does anyone have any comments this evening? And let's keep them really short and sweet. So, uh, trust the wedding. Oh, they can go first. Do you want to do yours?

Okay, we'll start. Trusty. Huh? Yeah. I believe it might be a great a decent idea to bring up the prospect of sort of re-evaluating the purposes of I Ready to maybe maybe being able to reallocate those funds for other purposes such as as being has has been thoroughly stated of maybe taking a look at the Kennedy let's say ethnic studies programs Trusty Wooden. Okay.

I just wanted to say that um listening to our students is extremely important. We truly are what makes the district. We as a board can make the district or break the district based off decisions we vote for or against. To be completely transparent, we get asked at least 10 different questions about addition, subtraction, or moving further programs that we already know the answer to. If we can't do it, we can't do it, and we need to say it. There's no need to front and beat around the bush. If you make a decision you feel is good, stand on it with all 10 of your toes and keep it pushing. Let's ease turmoil by meeting, building, and maintaining relationships and telling the truth. We should commit. We we should continue making conscious decisions for our community on our own based off what the community needs and what we are able to give. The only approval that you need is your own, no one else's. If you have to look at somebody when making a decision, that's not a decision you need to make. Also, for I Ready as a student, we don't need it cuz we don't do it truthfully. Thank you,

Trusty Reckler. Thank you. So again, I want to um uh Francisco Ortiz mentioned it. I want to mention it again. I just want to um um just commemorate and re recognize the life of Greg Alano, who is somebody that I knew, really liked, always very pleasant. Students loved him. And it's such a loss for the Elsto family. I can't even tell you. And also for his family, Miss Lano, his daughter. Um, and I just want them to know that I'm holding them in my heart and um, wishing them the best. Thank you.

I'm sorry, I had one other thing. If we can agendaize for the governance committee how the policies will be rolled out and implemented and explained to staff. Do we have any further comments from the board? Okay, seeing Trusty Smith fols.

Um, we only have a handful of days left in this year. I think that we need to acknowledge that it has been a incredibly hard year for everyone that has um had anything to do with schools. Um from teachers to staff members to parents to students to community members, this has been probably, if you ask, one of the hardest years that people would say. Um, I think that we all need to get behind the superintendent we are one because I think that's the only way that we're going to survive um what's coming. I think that we have to be clear-minded and steady. Also want to not dismiss the comment from the community member that said board comments need to be heard. Um I believe that board comments are relevant and necessary component of the agenda. I urge us to move the board comments just for a couple of meetings to higher in the agenda to see if it works. Also urge the board to report out to each other on the dis and to the community what meetings that we attend as liaison and as non- liaison and a summary of what was learned. I think that we cannot keep our learnings or information in a silo. I also think it would be important for us to report out what we do outside outside of the meetings in the community as board representatives. It's clear to me that this would not only be a accountability measure but also a tool for information. I am complete.

Trusty Hernandez. I just want to thank take a moment to thank Miss Sigler for her 19 years of service to our district. and I want to wish you well in your future endeavors. I'm truly am sad. Uh your dedication to this district is is not going unnoticed and I just want to say thank you Gonzalez Hoy.

Thank you. Since my fellow trustee brought it up, I also would just want to give you kudos, Summer. I appreciate everything you've done for our district. Um, the first call that I ever had with Summer, she called me when I was union president to fight with me about something that had nothing to do with her, but she just called me to argue with me out of the blue. And I remember getting off the call and being like, who who is that? Um, and then later I found out she was the principal at the ENSA. I was like, "Oh my goodness." It threw me off. And from there, I learned we ended up having an amazing relationship at the time. We never I don't want to say we never agreed. We always argued in a really healthy way, and I always appreciated that about you. Uh you always fought for your students and continue to do so for teachers and families. Uh, and I know Diana has always continued to be at your heart and Richmond High and some of the other schools that you also taught and served. So, uh, I just want to thank you for the service because 19 years is, um, you know, it goes really fast really quickly. Uh, and I know you're going to continue to be involved since hopefully your kids will go to our schools eventually. So, uh, we'll see you around, but thank you so much for everything you've done.

Okay. my ending to my comments. I think I want to echo what some of my colleagues said. I really appreciate I think your hard work and dedication. Um and it's been great to say the least working with you. Um I appreciate all the support and I think how you helped us as trustees, new trustees on the board kind of navigate and you know support us and since my LCAP days. So I, you know, I really am sad to see you go, but I am excited to see what great things, you know, hold for you and other places. So good luck to wherever you're at. Don't forget us. You know, we are here. We are a family. We are one, right? Um, also I want to invite everyone who's listening to our contracts committee. The contracts committee um meets this Friday at Penol Valley from 9 to 12. So we are having interesting conversations around the many many different contracts that we have. Um we've met twice already. This will be our third meeting. So I invite everyone to come out to the contracts committee. also just pushing Kennedy Spring Carnival that will be happening also this Friday um from 150 till 350. So good opportunity to come out and see the hard work that our students are putting in to bring in more resources and you know really build community at Kennedy High School. I think seeing it on the ground and experiencing is you know the gratifying part I think of doing this work. So thank you Kennedy High for Kennedy High students and leadership

the leadership of students um and pulling this off. So we'll see you this Friday at the carnival. And I'm also reminding everyone that our next scheduled board meeting is for April 29th, 2026 here at Lavana Dejon Middle School. So, thank you everyone and have a good night. This meeting is now adjourned at 9:40.