Oakland Unified School District Board of Education - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon. Welcome to the June 10th Board of Education meeting. Mr. Rakestar, can we have a roll call to establish quorum, please?

On the attendance roll call, Student Director Simmons, Student Director Smith, Director Lauder?

Present.

Director Williams? Present, sir. Director Hutchinson? Director Barry?

Still not.

Director Thompson? Vice President Batchelor?

Here.

President Brohard? Here. Form present.

Thank you. And we can, Mr. Saychuck, can we have an interpretation check, please?

Yes, moving to interpretation check. For tonight's meeting, we have three languages for live interpretation. They are Arabic, Spanish, and Cantonese. For in-person, we have laptops for interpretation. Please come see us. We'll start with Arabic. I will hold all attendees' hands. Please don't raise your hand if you need Arabic interpretation. Ms. Abdi, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Arabic, please.

As-salamu alaykum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh. We present to you the translation in Arabic. Please follow the instructions and instructions in the following. At the bottom of the screen, search for the circle on the shape of the globe. Press on it, then select the translation letter. If you are using the same devices, there are three dots at the bottom of the screen. Press on it, then select the translation letter and select the Arabic language. Please sign the sound of the sounds so that you can hear us clearly. Thank you. The Arabic instruction is done.

Great, thank you, Mr. Abdi. Check attendees to see if any hands are raised for Arabic interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we will not start with Arabic interpretation. Next, we'll go to Cantonese. Again, please only raise your hand if you need Cantonese interpretation. Mr. Ewan, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Cantonese, please.

大家好,呢度係奧倫聯合校區教育委員會會議。 If you are new to the scene and need Cantonese translation, please go to the staff on the stage to get a hand-held computer, then follow the following instructions, you can listen to Cantonese translation along with the audience on the Internet. If you need Cantonese translation, please go to the bottom of the screen, click on a地球形状的符号, then select Cantonese, you can listen to Cantonese translation. Great. Thank you, Mr. Yuen. Check attendees if any hands are raised for a Cantonese interpretation.

Seeing no hands raised, we will now start with Cantonese interpretation. We will next go to Spanish. Again, please only raise your hand if you need Spanish interpretation. Ms. Vargas, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Spanish, please.

Of course. Buenas tardes. Le damos la bienvenida. Tenemos intérpretes al español ofreciendo el servicio. Pero este solo será provisto si usted levanta su mano y nos avisa que necesita el servicio. Puede levantar su mano virtualmente a través de Zoom o si está en persona, por favor acérquese a alguien del personal. Una vez que activen el servicio, por favor, en la parte inferior de la ventana de Zoom, busque el símbolo de interpretation, púlselo y seleccione Spanish. Si no lo ve, busque los puntos suspensivos, púlselos, seleccione language interpretation y después Spanish. Una vez más, solo se ofrecerá el servicio si usted lo solicita. Puede acercarse a cualquier persona del personal si está en persona o a través de Zoom. Muchas gracias, thank you. The Spanish announcement is done.

Great, thank you Mrs. Vargas. Check attendees to see if any hands are raised for our Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we'll now start with any interpretation. And we'll check again later during the meeting. Turn it back to you, President Brewhart.

Thank you. Tonight in closed session, we will discuss the following matters. Under labor matters, D1-25-1864, conference with labor negotiators. under legal matters item d2 26-1482 conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation d3 26-1483 conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation d4 26-1514 conference with legal counsel existing litigation D5 26-1298 conference with legal counsel existing litigation under pupil matters item D6 26-1308 expulsion student AAA D7 27-1429 readmission student fee 26-1455 Expulsion Student BBB 26-1502 Expulsion Student CCC D10 26-1503 admission student DDD under real property matters D11 26-1517 conference with real property negotiators D-12, 26-1519, Conference with Real Property Negotiators. We will then reconvene to public session at 5.30 p.m. Are there any public comments on closed session items?

There are no registered speakers for this item, Madam President.

And with that, we will go into closed session and reconvene at 5.30.

Welcome to the June 10th Oakland Unified School District Board of Education meeting Mr. Raikstra can we have a roll call to establish quorum please On the roll call to establish quorum Student Director Simmons Present Student Director Smith Here Director Lara Present Director Williams Director Hutchinson Director Barry Director Thompson Present Vice President Batchelor Here and President Brohard Here and Mr. Saychow Can we have an interpretation check please

Yes, moving to interpretation now. Let's check. For tonight's meeting, we have three languages for live interpretation. They are Arabic, Spanish, and Cantonese. For in-person, we have laptops for interpretation. They are to your left side beneath the basketball court. There is also translation and closed caption feature available on Zoom that you can use by clicking the closed caption icon on your Zoom taskbar. We will start with Arabic. I will lower all tennis hands. Please only raise your hand if you need Arabic interpretation. Mr. Turek, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Arabic, please.

As-salamu alaykum, everyone. For those of you who want to speak Arabic, please follow the following instructions. You will need two people in the room. First of all, you will need one of the employees with headphones and headphones. Or if you want to listen through Zoom, press the hand up button at the bottom of the screen. After the meeting, click the Zoom button at the bottom of the screen, and then click on the screen. After you see it, click on More, the three dots, and then choose Language Interpretation. Thank you, Mr. Tareq. Checking attendees to see if any hands are raised for Arabic interpretation.

Seeing no hands raised, we will not start with Arabic interpretation. Next, we will go to Cantonese. Again, please only raise your hand if you need Cantonese interpretation. Mr. Yuen, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Cantonese, please.

Hello, everyone. This is a meeting of the Education Committee of the Oakland Unified School District. If you are new to the scene and need Cantonese translation, Please go to the bottom of your basketball rack on your left hand side, grab a mobile phone, and follow the following instructions. You will be able to connect with online users to listen to Cantonese translation. If you need Cantonese translation, please go to the bottom of your screen, type in a地球形状的符号, and then select Cantonese. You will be able to listen to Cantonese translation. If you need translation, please raise your hand. Let us know if anyone needs our translation service. Thank you. Cantonese announcement is done. Mr. Seichao.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Yuen. Joint attendees, if any hands are raised for Cantonese interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we'll now start with Cantonese interpretation. We'll next go to Spanish. Again, please only raise your hand if you need Spanish interpretation. Mr. Copenhagen, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Spanish, please.

Sure. Buenas noches. En un momento activaremos el servicio de interpretación simultánea. Para escucharlo, localicen el ícono de interpretación en la parte inferior de la pantalla. Selecciónenlo y se abrirá una lista de idiomas. Seleccionen Spanish para español. Si no ven el ícono, hagan clic en los tres puntos suspensivos y ahí verán la opción de interpretación. Para saber si hay personas en la reunión que necesitan el servicio, por favor levanten la mano de modo virtual o escriban en el chat que necesitan interpretación. Si nadie pide el servicio de esta manera, no se prestará durante la primera parte de la agenda. Para las personas presentes en el auditorio, si necesitan el servicio, hay computadoras disponibles en la cancha de basketball. Y si prefieren escuchar, si prefieren leer los subtítulos, pueden activar esa función también. Muchas gracias. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, Mr. Copenhagen. Checking attendees to see if any hands are ready for Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we'll now start with Spanish interpretation, and that concludes interpretation announcement, and we'll check again later during the meeting. And I turn it back to you, President Brewhart.

Thank you. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize the importance of respectful decorum, communication, and engagement at our board and committee meetings. The work of the board is serious business and impacts the everyday experiences of our students, staff, families, and broader community. It is critical that all of us both up here and on the dais and in the audience model the respectful interactions that we would like to see our students have in their classrooms, on the play yard, and in athletic competition. As we open tonight's meeting, I urge everyone present and planning to attend to review and abide by the Board of Education protocols and meeting rules of engagement listed on pages eight and nine of tonight's agenda. tonight there will be ample time for public comments provided you pre-register to speak online before the meeting started or if you filled out a comment card which you can find on the table by the entrance and you can submit those any cards at any time there will be public comment after the brown act compliance after the brown act violation cure the adoption of the pupil discipline consent report Pupil comment on all non-agenda items within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board. After special orders of the day, parent and student advisory committee report, public hearing, new business, and adoption of the general consent report and the superintendent's report. Please bear in mind or be aware that in compliance with the Brown Act board members may not respond to comments regarding issues that are not on our posted agenda for tonight. I ask that all speakers keep their comments to the scope of the item and if a speaker speaks to a different item the chair will need to ask that that speaker either speak to the specific item or hold their comments until the appropriate public comment period. I would ask that my fellow board members help and support me in this regard. if you don't get a chance to speak during public comment i want to encourage you to use the e-comments feature via the legislative information center on the ousd website and of course you can always email board members directly using this format first name dot last name at ousd.org now for the report out of closed session for june 10 2026. labor matters on item d1 number 25-1864 conference with labor negotiators the board gave direction on this matter motion by president brohard seconded by vice president batchelor with a vote in favor of five to zero one abstained and one absent the yes votes were president brohard vice president batchelor director lotta director thompson director williams director barry abstained and director hutchinson was absent Under legal matters on item D2, number 26-1482, conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation, the board gave direction on this matter. Motion by Director Lara, seconded by Vice President Batchelor. A vote in favor, six to zero with one absent. The yeses were President Brohard, President Batchelor, Director Berry, Director Lara, Director Thompson, Director Williams, Director Hutchinson was absent. on item d three number twenty six dash fourteen eighty three conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation the board gave direction on this matter motion by director lotta second by president brohard a vote in favor of five abstained one and absent one president Brohard yes director Barry yes director Lada yes director Thompson yes director Williams yes vice president Batchelor abstained and director Hutchinson was absent On item D4, number 26-1514, Conference with Legal Counsel, Existing Litigation, the Board approved the settlement in this matter. Motion by Director Lauda, second by Vice President Batchelor. Voted in favor, six, abstained, none, and absent, one. The yes votes, President Brohard, Vice President Batchelor, Director Berry, Director Lauda, Director Thompson, Director Williams, and Director Hutchinson was absent. On item D5, number 26-1298, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, the board gave direction on this matter. Motion by Vice President Batchelor, second by President Brohard, approved six to nothing and one absent. Yes votes, President Brohard, Vice President Batchelor, Director Berry, Director Lada, Director Thompson, Director Williams, and Director Hutchinson was absent. PUPIL MATTERS ON ITEMS D6 THROUGH D10. THE BOARD HEARD THESE MATTERS AND WILL VOTE ON THE MATTERS IN PUBLIC IN SECTION I ON THE AGENDA. REAL PROPERTY MATTERS ON ITEM D11, NUMBER 26-1517, CONFERENCE WITH REAL PROPERTY NEGOTIATIONS. THE BOARD GAVE DIRECTION ON THIS MATTER, A MOTION BY DIRECTOR LAHDA, SECONDED BY DIRECTOR THOMPSON, APPROVED SIX WITH ONE ABSENT. THE YES VOTES WERE PRESIDENT BROHARD, VICE PRESIDENT BACHELOR, DIRECTOR BURRY, DIRECTOR LAHDA, DIRECTOR THOMPSON, DIRECTOR WILLIAMS, AND DIRECTOR HUTCHINSON WAS ABSENT. On item D12, number 26-1519, Conference with Real Property Negotiators, the Board gave direction on this matter. Motion by Director Lara, second by Director Thomson. Vote in favor six to nothing with one absent. The yes votes, President Brohard, Vice President Batchelor, director barry director lotta director thompson director williams and director hutchinson was absent this is the end of the june 10th 2026 closed session report and with that i'll take any modifications to the agenda staff has requested that numbers that items are 49 through 54 be withdrawn are there any other modifications

I'm sorry, can you please repeat that again?

Sure. Items 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, and 54 are withdrawn. On the consent report, I'm sorry.

Put that in there now for that, I wasn't sure. Okay.

Are there any other modifications to the agenda?

A point of clarification, I didn't think that was the order of the agenda today, where after the president's statement G, there's supposed to be G1 Brown Act compliance, and you're skipping into modifications to the agenda.

Thank you. That was my fault, and I apologize for skipping that order. I did not intend to do that. And I apologize to audience members as well.

So which item are we on?

We're on G. Yeah, sorry. So this is item G126-1366, Brown Act compliance, acknowledgement of violation and commitment to cease and desist. Is there a motion to adopt? So moved. And is there a second?

I second. Second.

There is a motion to approve and a second. Now I'm going to read the Brown Act compliance acknowledgement of a violation and commitment to cease and desist. At the May 13th, 2026 regular board meeting, the board adjourned without providing the designated non-agenda public comment period. Notwithstanding that members of the public had registered to speak and had remained in attendance in reliance on the posted agenda. This conduct was not in compliance with government code section 54954.3 parentheses A. Board action. The board hereby, one, acknowledges that the failure to permit non-agenda public comment on the May 13th, 2026 regular board meeting violated the Brown Act, government code section 54954.3a. 2. Unconditionally commits to cease and desist from adjourning any regular meeting before the designated non-agenda public comment period without either a taking public comment first or b formally continuing that portion of the meeting to a date and time certain pursuant to government code section 54955. Three, commits to maintaining order at board meetings to prevent intimidation of speakers and to ensure that members of the public are not denied their designated comment time. Four, direct staff to provide written confirmation of these commitments to the individuals who submitted the cure demand within 30 days of May 13th, 2026. This action is taken pursuant to Government Code Section 54960.1 as a cure and correction of the violations identified in the written demand received by the Board. Brown Act Violation Cure, Part G2. Yeah, I need to be on this for a second. Yeah.

Okay. Madam President, I recommend that we stay with G1, and then you will go to G2 afterwards. That's a separate issue.

All right, thank you. Is there public comment on this issue?

Yes, Madam President. There are three speakers.

Two minutes each.

All right. Those three speakers are David Reed, Judith Klinger, and Asada Olagbaba.

If your name was called, could you approach the dais, please?

Hello, I'm reading this for a parent who wishes to remain anonymous. I'm a proud Jewish parent in OUSD. I'm saddened by the rise of Jew hatred in OUSD. I'm in support of the CDE finding and want the board and senior leadership team to comply with the orders, do the right thing, and train our staff to be able to recognize Jew hate and rhetoric that should not be taught in the class. I do not agree with the teachers who feel that OUSD is suppressing free speech. The CDE states that these educators do not have the best interests of our students. OUSD should focus on reading. 70% of children read below grade level. My child needs to learn math, science, history, literature, and critical thinking skills. I don't send kids to be a teacher's captive audience for hate-filled messages. Teachers must educate according to the standards and curriculum the school board has agreed to Teachers need to provide a balanced, rigorous, and professional environment for all students. Personal views of teachers should not matter or be infused into the classroom.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hello there. My name is Judith Klinger. I am a retiree. Actually, good evening, members of the board, superintendent, and Madam Board President. My name is Judith Klinger. I'm a retired high school teacher and a longtime Oakland resident. So thanks for the moment to speak. We all know that it is impact, not intent in matters of discrimination, right? I'm going to read a couple of quotes here. Some of them have four letter words. So if you don't want anybody to hear a four letter word, they will be quotations, not my language. Toronto, Canada, a Jewish-owned grocery store was set fire and spray-painted with the words, Free Palestine. Bristol, UK, killed Jews, Free Palestine etched into a door at an Ikea. Kasaudi, Moldova, a Holocaust memorial was vandalized with Free Palestine graffiti. London, England, three men accosted a group of Jewish men and chanted, Free Palestine and fuck Jews. Brooklyn, New York, A Jewish man was stabbed, the attacker yelled, free Palestine. Boulder, Colorado, a man yelling free Palestine threw Molotov cocktails at a rally and he killed a Holocaust survivor. Ann Arbor, Michigan, a Jewish student was beaten and chants of free Palestine were heard by the crowd. Those who wish to do violence to Jews are coupling the phrase free Palestine with attacks on Jews. When a Jewish student, a Jewish teacher, sees a Free Palestine sticker in a classroom on a board president's laptop, the impact upon us of it is that it instills fear because of the way it's being coupled with violence out in the real world. I would very much ask this district to stay true to its values of recognizing impact of discrimination and treat all Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

I'm not clear, Madam President, on what is being accomplished right now. I'm understanding that something happened related to the Brown Act. And what is the purpose of it being agendized at this point? Could somebody clarify for me, please?

Thank you, Ms. Asada. On May 13th, we...

I understand that. What is the purpose right now?

The Brown Act provides for a mechanism to cure when you have a violation. So this is the manner in which you can cure. Okay, got it.

All right. First, I want to thank the board for recognizing the violation and taking corrective action on that. What I'm not clear about is in order to correct this, it only applies to people who at the point of when the item was called, they were in attendance. That's what it says here. So if you were not in attendance, you're not identified as being a part of the violation. Is that correct?

Yes, the cure applies to individuals who signed up to make comment on non-agenda items. They sign speaker cards either online, so not in attendance, or in person.

I got that. So on the next page, I'm identified as signing up, but I was not in attendance. So what you're trying to correct doesn't apply to me because at the point of when it does apply to me, Okay, that's the part I was confused about. So in the corrective action, am I going to be allowed with G2 to have public comment on the May 13th that I didn't have? Okay, and I'm asking this question because I didn't want to have public comment if it meant that I had to be in attendance. I wasn't going to overlook that, okay? So thank you. I understand it now.

Other board comments on this? Director Hutchinson.

Yes, thank you. First, I think If you've watched a couple of meetings recently, you've seen my utter frustration with what's been going on. And this item right here is really indicative of a lot of the problems that we've been having. This is the first time in my memory, and I checked with my mother, the first time in her memory that we've ever seen a school board item where they had to correct a Brown Act violation. That doesn't mean we haven't had Brown Act violations regularly. But that means this one was so egregious. And a lawyer sent in an email complaining, and now we're having corrective action. So at the May 13th meeting, like what happens at every one of our meetings, President Brohard changed the order of the items on the agenda. And she kept moving back and moving back public comment on non-agenda items, which is required by law to happen at every meeting. She didn't call for that item until 1142, and our meetings end at 1145 Hard Stop. So now here we are in an unprecedented situation where we've had Brown Act violations going back to when Dr. Kyla Johnson Trammell was forced out as superintendent to even tonight, where again, the public hearing on the budget was not properly noticed, even though it's being redone for a second time. And the reason we are in this situation is because of how the meetings are being mismanaged by President Brohard. So I would like to hear an apology from her. I would like to hear a commitment from her that we're no longer going to show up at the school board meeting and have her first thing in the night change the order of the items. Especially since she's the one who makes the agenda order to begin with. Especially since at the last meeting, she changed the board bylaws for the second time to rearrange the order the items even come up under the board bylaws. This represents complete dysfunction and chaos But even more than that, it's a breakdown, not just in democracy, but in our responsibility as elected school board directors. We're each elected by over 50,000 constituents. And to have this board continue to act in a way to not just limit, but not allow public comment from the very constituents who elected us is objectionable, offensive, and is really indicative of these problems that we have going on with the district. So on tonight's meeting, there's not just this Brown Act correction. We're gonna be redoing the public hearing, the statutorily required public hearing that happened at the last meeting, because that wasn't compliant either. And I hate to tell everyone, tonight's isn't compliant. And if you look in the consent report, half the items don't have the required listing of funding source and resource code. These are all the basics of how we operate. So I would like to hear a further commitment from President Brohard. And I would like to hear some responsibility because at that May 13th meeting, many of us brought up that it was a violation at that meeting at the time. And now here we are just getting the correction. Thank you.

I am going to respond I again I think on that night we did move the order of it in order to fit we had a number of contracts that we had to look at that night and we did run out of time and again I apologize to those people who did not get to speak that night I think one of the things in changing the agenda that that is up to the board agenda of our president excuse me And one of the corrections to this as well was to move our public comments back up. I know that a number of people have waited before or have spoken off topic because they wanted to be heard and they knew that public comments often didn't come until 10.30 or 11 at night. So in redoing this agenda, it really is to address a second part of this problem tonight that we're addressing, and that is so we can have our public comment early on. People can come make their comments to things, and again, if something goes late, they're not staying here until 11 o'clock, not being heard. so um i also appreciate the general counsel in um working through the cure with this and um this is legally what we're supposed to do and again um hopefully this satisfies the needs of our community and we can can move on um are there any other board comments okay uh with that mr rake star can we have a roll call on the vote

on the motion to adopt the brown act cure represented by agenda item g dot dash one student director simmons yes yes student director smith yes director lauder yes director williams yes yes sir director hutchinson yes director barry yes Director Thompson. Yes. Vice President Batchelor.

Yes.

President Brohard.

Yes.

Motion unanimously adopted.

thank you moving on to item g2 26-1541 brown act violation cure in part public comment on all non-agenda items within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board of the district i'm sorry may 13th 2026 board of education the names i'm going to read off are the people who were either submitted speaker cards either in person or had registered online and they will each be given two minutes to comment carol dalton jonathan mates muchen cynthia kaufman michael shane michael watcher craig gordon jack nelson anna rollini david blum paulina s Musa Tariq, Judy Greenspan, Isra Barney, and Asada Olaballa. If you heard your name, would you please approach the diocese?

And are any of these speakers online?

Currently, I see David Bloom and Carol Delton online.

We'll take the in-person speakers first and then move to online. We didn't mean to rename you, but yes. Okay, thanks, Carrie. If you heard your name. And remember, you have two minutes each.

Yeah, hold on, I'm not ready yet. Don't set the clock.

Madam President, make sure that in terms of executing this, the first set of speakers are the people who registered for the item. Then there are subsequent to that, there are people who on tonight's agenda who have signed up to speak on this item. We will call those names after the people who were wrongfully denied have an opportunity to speak. Correct.

We don't know what the topic of the speech of their presentation will be.

They are entitled to speak on non-agenda items and we are listing those individuals here. Tonight, because this is also an agenda item, people also can register to speak about are having this agenda item on the agenda, and they will be called second. I just want to make sure that the audience doesn't misunderstand that we're not going to call people who were not part of the May 13th issue. All right.

Thank you for that clarification, Mr. Riggstra.

Thank you, and I do appreciate that. I was called, and I was present, and I did want to speak at that time. Thank you, Board, very much for this time. UIOS has been in bargaining with the district for five months. We've been bargaining our reopeners on salary for this past school year, and we have been bargaining for a full contract from 2026 to 2029. The district has refused to address our re-opener for this past year. Throughout this process, we have grounded our proposals in three priorities, pay, safety, and workload. Unfortunately, we have yet to receive meaningful response on these issues and continue to wait for progress. first pay we completed a joint study with the district and it confirmed what we've been saying for years Oakland administrators are among the lowest paid administrators in the region despite increased demands on our jobs many of our neighbors can move to neighboring many of our members can move to neighboring districts and receive significant salary increases without sacrificing benefits this has a real consequence for morale recruitment and retention we've identified three major concerns salary longevity stipends and the lack of career growth within our salary schedules as i've shared previously eighty two percent of our members are at the top of the salary schedule and do not get any salary advancements from year to year in some in some cases administrators supervise employees who earn more than they do including assistant principals supervising teachers and supervisors who are overseeing specialized staff that reality makes retention and recruitment increasingly difficult and sends the wrong message about leadership in Oakland. Safety remains one of our most urgent concerns raised by our members. Administrators are often the first people called when a crisis occurs. We respond to unsafe situations involving students, community members, and the increasingly complex challenges facing our schools. We are often expected to engage in situations involving violence, threats, ICE activity, or serious behavioral crises. Too often, district supports arrive slowly or not at all. While we frequently hear that safety is our priority, our members do not consistently experience that support necessary keep themselves, their staff and their students safe. Finally, workload. Year after year, positions are eliminated without meaningful discussion about who will take the work and what remains. I only have a couple more to say. The results is predictable. Our members absorb the responsibility of two or even three positions. When central office positions are cut, additional work falls on site administrators. When site positions are cut, additional work falls on central administrators. The workload has reached a point where many administrators cannot reasonably complete the expectations of their job within the normal workday. If Oakland is truly committed to being a full-service community school district, every school should have a community school manager And every principal should have the support of an assistant principal. If Oakland wants to be a leader in the Bay Area, it must offer competitive compensation, not compensation that lags behind every neighboring district. And if Oakland believes in a restorative and humane workplace, every employee should feel safe at work. Pay, safety, workload. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hi, beautiful people. Yes. This is my beautiful voice. Great. Thank you for listening. My name is Ezra Barani. And tonight, regarding compliance with the CDE, I ask a simple question. If the victims were anyone else, would a response take this long? If the victims were anyone else, would complaints go unanswered? Would documented discrimination be met with delay and excuses? If the victims were anyone else, would hateful messages remain in classrooms and hallways? Again and again, we hear that OUSD values diversity and inclusion and stands against hate. But values are not measured by words. Values are measured by action. Equal protection means equal Equal protection means that Jewish students deserve the same urgency, the same concern, and the same accountability as every other student. We are not asking for special treatment. We are not asking for privileged treatment. We are asking for equal treatment. We are asking for schools to teach students how to think, not what to think. Because if discrimination is wrong when it harms one group, it is wrong when it harms Jews. And if inclusion means everyone, it must mean Jews too. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hi Board Directors and Superintendent. My name is JT Metz-Mushen and I'm providing public comment tonight because my rights were violated on May 13th and there was a significant bias by our elected leaders. You chose to let people speak when it was not their turn and about items that were unrelated to the agenda item, manipulated the agenda, and then ran out of time for my comment. And perhaps even worse, you watched as I was subjected to harassment and intimidation, and you did nothing to protect me to allow me to provide a genuine public comment on the superintendent's report. And then there's the subject of the protest during the public comments on the superintendent's report. One teacher, while wearing a shirt promoting an intifada, stated how he explicitly violated the OUSD ethnic studies curriculum. This is detailed in the email that I sent to you all on May 13th, and partially in the statement that I gave the next evening when Director Lotta respectfully provided public comment at the end of the Budget and Finance Committee meeting. So my ask for you tonight is to take politics out of the classroom. I demand you remove the polarizing posters, hateful murals, politically driven lessons, take them out of the classroom, take them out of our schools. The rules are not being enforced and this affects all of our children. The board and the superintendent need to provide the direction so that our children are safe and cared for. No child should be afraid to go to their classroom or feel like they cannot talk to their teacher. Just like no child should be afraid to talk to a police officer but sadly neither of these are true but you have the power to make the change in the classroom remove the posters you have the power to stop the hate thank you thank you next speaker please alright yes i was there that night also um your job is a thankless job often and uh

I do appreciate what everybody up there is there. And Director Smith and Director Simmons, you guys are going to do really well in life. I'm usually right about these things. One kid back in 1978, I go, he's going to be a millionaire.

He's a multimillionaire.

You could just see it. But anyway, the administrators, that struck a chord again tonight. I've been lucky, I've worked with Principal Wong, Principal Price, and Principal Blasher at various times in this school year, and they're all really good. And you don't want to lose them, so you've got to pay them. You've got to figure a way to do it. So that is my thought.

I want to take the time to thank Marlene Sachs, because without the letter that she wrote, I wouldn't have an opportunity to have my voice be heard. I also want to thank the principals who wrote the letter that identified that we need to take action on closing schools. And that took a lot of courage. I appreciate them. I want to mainly talk to you. Last week, this is what I wanted to say. Measure E is failing. Very disappointed that this board supported Measure E. Measure E was an effort by the city and the unions to get an approval of a ballot measure by having it identified as a citizen's initiative. And it wasn't a citizen's initiative. The union members of the city workers of Oakland are only 32% of them live in the city. They are not responsible for any measures but a citizen's initiative they put it on the ballot it failed because one of the reasons a group called uh... empower oakland recognized that that ballot measure had language that said not limited to that means the identified items that the money was supposed to be spent on it could be spent on other things there was deception in the ballot measure And you supported it, and I asked you to read and make sure this was not a citizen's initiative. In order to get 50 plus 1 votes, they misrepresented it that way. I hope in the future, when you get your picture on those things, Mr. Williams, Ms. Batchelor, supporting something, that you fully investigate all of it. And I hope that you realize that voters are now scrutinizing the city of Oakland and the school board. When you want to put something on the ballot, it better be legit. And you have to demonstrate your leadership will protect those monies that they vote on. And you're not doing it at this point.

Thank you. Uh, are there any other speakers in person? Um, can we go to the speakers online, please?

Yes, those speakers who I will call in order are Carol Delton, David Bloom, and David Bloom. First, Carol Delton.

Thank you. I do not see a clock. So I will endeavor to meet that. Thank you. Now I see it. So board, I won't thank you for this time, which should have been granted weeks ago, but I will say that I appreciate that the board and superintendent are getting back on track with meeting procedures. And I hope that you will be getting into public session on time in the future and recessing the board back to closed session if needed as other districts do. And I'm also happy for a remedy for once that did not require a full-blown lawsuit. In the past weeks, I've had a few conversations about the CDE ruling and trainings in OUSD. It came to my attention that staff at an in-person training weren't fully informed about the extent of OUSD's ignoring past complaints. and how issues, which I lifted up in my remarks two weeks ago, were left unaddressed for years. I think that one key to expanding a broader understanding of how Jewish students have been experiencing persistent issues would be including that at the beginning of the trainings, the why are we here, and about that non-responding. As a professional in the field of communication and especially social communication, I can tell you that not responding is about the worst thing you can do in terms of building a relationship. The robotic voice you provided to read your response to CDE is only slightly better and underscores that staff within OUSD have not associated themselves with fighting back against anti-Semitism. In daily conversations, I learn and relearn not to expect others to know about my culture and history or my experience, but I would hope that my experience and the experience of other Jews is not disparaged, dismissed, and minimized as it has been. The ADL training online, minimal that it is, does lift up some of the centuries-long tropes of anti-Semitism, which unfortunately are echoed in stereotypes that persist today, post after reposting.

This is not trivial.

I will end there for now, and I am very happy that you're back on track. I look forward to you coming back into public session on time in the future.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Yes, next speaker will be David Bloom, allowing them to speak.

Hi, are you able to hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

My name is David Blum. I'm a parent of an OUSD student, and I'm going to speak to you some more about politics in the classroom. During the launch presentation for OEA's December 6, 2023 teach-in, an OEA panelist made this remark. Both the West and Israel intend to exterminate indigenous people, so we have the same enemy, capitalism and Zionism. This remark was intended to deepen the raw open wounds of the October 7 Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israeli Jews and bring even more pain to the Jewish students at OUSD. Lessons which participating teachers delivered to students during this teaching also included these statements, which ranged from factually inaccurate to wildly selective. to grossly manipulative to outright libel. Palestine is a country located between Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon in the Middle East while displaying a map of Israel. Zionism, noun, a political goal of creating a country only for Jewish people. 75 years ago, a lot of decision makers around the world decided to take away Palestinian land to make a country called Israel. Israel would be a country where rules were mostly fair for Jewish people with white skin. Who are the Jews? The Jews are an ethno-religious group that practiced Judaism, the Jewish diaspora. Jews originated from Judea, now Palestine, but for most of their history, they have existed in diaspora. So what is Hamas at the center of it all? Here is what to know. Hamas, officially the Islamic resistance movement, is a Sunni Islamist political military organization governing the Gaza Strip of the Palestinian territory. Hamas is a group created during the 1987 uprisings in Palestine against Israeli occupation. And ironically, propaganda is used to persuade people to agree with a particular side of an issue. Those were all quotes from the lesson that I just pulled. Everything about this event was intended to malign Jews and to deny their right to self-determination. It's what you get when you abdicate control over curriculum and allow activists to teach students what to think. Today, the mob's ire is directed at the Jews. Tomorrow, it could be directed at any other group, Latinos, Asians, Blacks, whoever happens to be the flavor of the month. Jews and Israelis are just the canary in the coal mine. So I ask you directors to speak clearly that you reject anti-Zionist, anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish, and politically and ideologically motivated teaching in general within OUSD's classroom walls and on our campuses. I ask that you will take action if any personnel or contractor engages this way, because OUSD stands for inclusion, not bias or bigotry or political education or agitation. I encourage you to speak this forcibly through a resolution, which I'll work with you to craft. All students, regardless of their political beliefs, their national origin, their race or their religion, will be safe here. Inclusion means no purity tests. Thank you in advance for your compassion, your leadership, and your moral clarity.

Next speaker, please.

That concludes the listed speakers for persons who signed up for this item, Sheila Haynes. I do see them online.

This is now for public comment on this.

Yes.

Okay, so the next 10 minutes are public comment on this agenda item.

Sheila Haynes, I will allow to speak. Sheila Haynes, you are unmuted at this point. You can unmute yourself to speak.

Hi, can you hear me okay?

Yes, we can hear you.

Is this the Brown Act section?

Yes, it is.

Okay, so I just wanted to just speak on brown act violations in general, because there has been brown act violations repeatedly done in different situations. Without proper protocol, not being enforced. Back on the February 26 meeting of last year. you guys went from proposing a million and cuts to music and fund water quality to it just being money just being taken and allocated. And so in regards to those arts being taken through a block grant, it was done in a way that violated the process. And since these actions were done, there has been additional funding cuts to positions, programs, Even arts education, we had even asked for a remedy to this violation, but instead more cuts have been made to the arts and music. So I just ask you to just enforce proper protocol in all situations because the results when processes aren't being followed has a negative impact on the students and community members. and that's all I have to say for this section. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other online speakers?

All registered speakers and listed speakers have been called.

Thank you. Are there board comments? Okay. With that, we have completed this agenda item, and we will move on to item I, which is the adoption of the pupil discipline consent report. Is there a motion?

We skipped over item H. H, we already did H. No, we didn't do H. You went back to G, and I said specifically I have modifications to the agenda, and you said we were going back to G1.

I assumed that there were no, I asked, excuse me, I'm going to finish, thank you. I asked if there were any other modifications to the agenda. Do you have a modification to the agenda, Director Hutchinson?

Yes, which is what I said then. Then please tell me what you'd like to modify. And then I asked you if you were going to finish G or not. Again, indicative of why we're in this situation to begin with. so for modifications to the agenda i have three things um first i want to put on notice that again tonight's public hearing statutorily required public hearing on the final budget from 2627 was not properly noticed one of the requirements for notice for this item is that it is placed in the newspaper So everyone can see it. That's what had been done before the public hearing last week. And when we need to redo the public hearing, we also need to redo that public notice. Are you making a modification? Excuse me.

I'm asking a question.

Excuse me, I told you that I was. Thank you.

Please make that, thank you.

The second thing that I want to point out in President Brohard's agenda is we have a real problem with the consent reports. So if you look at the first couple of items in the consent report, they're listed normally. They include a vendor number, a resource code, and a funding source.

Director Hutchinson, these are comments that can be made at the time. Excuse me, no.

Are you modifying? Excuse me, no. This needs to be modified so I know if they need to be pulled or if we can even discuss them. And I had already brought this up to General Counsel Lindsey. So again, Do you want to pull the items? Excuse me, I'm trying to speak and make it clear.

Do you want to modify those items?

So again, items R12 through R24 do not have a vendor number, a resource code, nor a funding source, which is required for every item in the consent report.

We can discuss those as we come up to them if you want to pull them.

No, we can't discuss them because they're all a part of the consent report.

Do you want to pull them?

Okay, so I would like to pull every single item from the consent report so they're each addressed individually. All right. Thank you. Now the third item that I want to make sure is spoken about is we have coming up very soon a presentation from students, a new student committee that's been formed on safety. Later on in the meeting, we have an item Q2, which is a safety presentation from staff. i don't know why there's going to be three hours in between the presentations so i would like to propose we move up the staff presentation after the student presentation to also ensure that the students were engaging around this issue are here to hear staff presentation and i would also uh... respectfully requested in the future if we are having multiple presentations on the same subject that they are held together so we can work on everyone engaging together. Because it's hard to believe we're really valuing the students' work when two hours later in this meeting we're going to have a staff presentation and there's explicitly no connection. So again, I need a ruling on the consent report from general counsel for these items. I pulled every single item, so now tonight I expect them all to be held individually. And if people really press me, I'm going to make sure that we handle everyone explicitly to the full extent of the time. So I would please like a ruling from the General Counsel or for the parliamentarian about these items that are listed that don't even have a resource code or a funding source. And lastly, we know that's not proper because there's other items in here that do have it. So what is going on here?

Do you want your ruling? General Counsel and parliamentarian, can we have a ruling on that, please?

parliamentarian said go ahead and speak first director Hutchinson thank you for highlighting your concerns with the agenda starting with a safety presentation from students and staff I want to address that but in terms of the items that are listed with what you noted as the vendor number and resource number that is and funding source most importantly and funding source on the agenda, there is on some of those instances, it's included in the memo, but what I want to highlight to the board is that in looking back at prior agendas, there has been some inconsistency with consent agendas adopted, sometimes with that information and sometimes without. And so I do appreciate you lifting that up, Director Hutchinson, if that is, a practice that the board wants to enforce and make sure it is the case going forward. I'm just highlighting today that throughout many agendas, there has been inconsistency in that information being presented on the agenda.

But saying it's in some memos isn't good enough because that means it's not in all of them. And I haven't voted for a consent report in over a year because of these inconsistencies. And so my understanding is we are required by law to put this information in our agenda so the public has access to it. And if for every item in the consent report, if there's not an explicit vendor number, resource code, or funding source, how are we supposed to be able to track this? And that's not the practice. So again, it might not have been brought up before. That doesn't mean it wasn't problematic before. So I would like an explicit ruling. So is your ruling that all these things can go ahead and be voted on? And I want to bring up, we're at a meeting today where we're having to redo two things because it was not addressed at the time and done the right way. So what is the explicit ruling? And if that's going to be the ruling, I already pulled every single item, so I'll make the point 50-something times tonight. So is your ruling, General Counsel, that we can go ahead and approve these anyway without that key information having been made available to the community?

So my ruling is that you've certainly done that in the past. This year, previous years, you've certainly done that. And so if what I'm turning to the board to say, if you are deciding today to enforce that, then the item should be pulled and brought back with that information.

i'd like to give a little historical perspective on this when the board went when the district went into receivership back in 203 one of the safeguards that was put up and of course council has already noted that funding sources are sometimes listed in the board memo and they are also sometimes listed on the printed agenda there's been inconsistency in terms of the application but one of the reasons that we were instructed as board staff at the time to put the information in the agenda itself so it would be readily available was to give assurance to the board that there was a funding source for this matter that the board was about to consider based on the superintendent's and her subordinates assurance that there was money to fund the item before the board voted It's a matter now of enforcement. If you as a board want to know that information, then you should give directions to the superintendent and the subordinate staff to put forth the information on the agenda. Otherwise, it's your decision.

Can I have a point of clarification, Director Hutchinson? I'm seeing that many of these do have a funding source. Do you want to go through and name the ones that you would like to see pulled?

No, I already pulled every single one of them. And what I said was 12 through 24 have nothing listed. Then there's others like R37 that has just the funding source but no vendor code or resource code. And then if you actually go and read through the memos, many of them do not then have this information on their memo either, like General Counsel already alluded to. So I pulled all of them because I'm getting no relief from the board president who doesn't even want to address this issue that should have been addressed before we even show up here because you had to approve the agenda in the first place.

It was addressed, but it obviously was not addressed to your satisfaction.

It wasn't addressed. This still looks like it. How was it addressed? Excuse me. How was it addressed?

Excuse me.

You can't just say something and then all of a sudden that becomes true. So obviously it hasn't been addressed. You weren't even aware that this problem existed.

I would like to go back to the situation with items Q, which is the safety. The student report was under special orders of the day and that was previously agreed to with Ms. Zanolli. Mr. Rakestraw can we have a ruling because usually what we do when we move something is we move the entire section so it would move all of Q up to right after J point of clarification the last five meetings when you've moved things you haven't moved the whole section

That's why we just had a Brown Act violation cure here. You've been moving individual items each meeting.

No, we move it by item.

Madam President, members of the board, I will try to be responsive. You will please note under the general consent report notation, which is section R, it says that a board member may remove an individual agenda item from the consent report this wording is part of your bylaw adoption so technically and legally and practically director hutchinson's pool of all of the consent items on the consent report is consistent with the adopted bylaw how the board wishes to handle this unprecedented situation remains to be seen and the way that you have handled it in the past And it becomes a new business item when the item is taken off of consent. So he would be entitled to an item removed, no matter who the board member is, is entitled to individual consideration every last one of them.

That's correct. It gets 10 minutes of public comment and it gets board comment. And I'm going to do that. But I do want to ask you, Mr. Rakestraw, about Section Q. Do we want to, is it okay to move the, I know you guys like to have the sections the same.

Mm-hmm.

section Q it comes before the consent report so I'm not sure of the of the ask one of the things that we are encouraging I think council has encouraged and I'm encouraged that you follow the agenda order so that we do not have issues down the road

I'm just asking for a clarification on director Hutchinson's desire to move item q2 I believe it is a school safety Yeah that would that you under your adopted rules you can but not recommended I'm gonna take a vote on this The request is to move item Q the safety report from the district next to right after the item K which is special orders of the day the safety report from the students I didn't hear a second Madam President Second

then uh if there's no further debate then there's a roll call on the roll call to adjust the agenda as stated uh moving q to uh the section on special orders uh right after special orders of the day uh the uh for the safety report uh that's in queue student director simmons abstain student director smith no Director Lara Abstain Director Williams No Director Hutchinson Yes Director Barry Abstain Director Thompson Yes Vice President Batchelor Abstain President Brohard.

No.

The motion is not agreed to. The agenda order remains as is.

Thank you. Are there any other modifications to the agenda? Thank you. And with that, we will move into agenda item I, which is pupil consent. Is there a motion to adopt the pupil discipline consent report? So moved. Second. And is there public comment?

Yes, we have one, Sara Olagbala.

She's motioned no. Okay. Are there any board comments?

That's all speakers. Okay.

And with that, can we have a roll call on the vote, please?

On the motion to adopt the People, Discipline, and Consent Report, Student Director Simmons and Student Director Smith are recused. Director Lara?

Yes.

Director Williams?

Yes, sir.

Director Hutchinson? Absent. Director Berry?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Yes. Vice President Batchelor?

Yes.

And President Brewhart? Yes. The people with discipline concern report is adopted.

Okay, thank you. With that, we'll move to the next item on the agenda, which is public comment on non-agenda items. And do we have any speakers who have signed up?

Yes, one moment. We have 10 speakers.

Two minutes each.

Call all names. All right, names listed for public comment on non-agenda items are Sheila Haines, Carol Delton, Jonathan Metz-Mutchin, Angela Lloyd, Posada Olagbala, Carmelita Reyes, Alessandra Cabrera, Mark Dirter,

Jack Nelson If your name was called if you would approach the dais thank you We'll do in person first and then

good evening board members and superintendent my name is JT Meitz-Mushen and i'm here tonight to speak on behalf of the students of skyline high school the scholars and artists and athletes who deserve facilities that reflect their value and potential we often hear about preparing students for the challenges and opportunities of the 21st century, yet when we look at the condition of Skyline's facilities, it's difficult to see how that commitment is being realized for more than 1,100 students. Our athletic facilities are outdated and deteriorating. The weight room lacks equipment and resources found at other large high schools in our district, placing our student athletes at a disadvantage when it comes to training Conditioning and injury prevention while our athletes continue to work hard and compete with pride They should not have to overcome inadequate facilities to simply keep pace with their peers Our stadium field has been used extensively by the broader community resulting in significant wear and tear the field lighting system requires replacement yet the project remains in the bidding phase as a result football soccer and flag football programs may be forced to travel for their games and this is not only impacts the student athletes and their families but also reduces the opportunities for fan participation school spirit and the revenue from that from those programs inside the gym the conditions of the facilities raise additional concerns the floor has holes dead spots that create safety hazards and discourage other schools from visiting due to the concerns about athlete injuries During recent an athletic event attended by visitors from across the district, the gym roof leaked. This is not the image or the presence presenting to our students, families, and community partners. Our students deserve facilities that are safe, functional, and worthy of their efforts. They deserve locker rooms that visiting teams feel comfortable using. They deserve athletic spaces that support our excellence rather than create obstacles. Despite these challenges, Skyline students, staff, and parents and alumni remain committed to Skyline, and we continue to show up for our children and work toward their success. But commitment from the community must be matched by the commitment from the district. So we ask for several items. Where's the Measure Y funding? What specific projects have been identified for Skyline? What's the timeline for addressing the long-standing facility deficiencies? We appreciate the walkthrough that's gonna happen. Our scholars, artists, and athletes should not have to wait indefinitely for facilities that meet basic standards. They deserve the investment, transparency, and action.

Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker.

Good evening. My name is Carmelita Reyes, and I'm a principal at Rudsdale Continuation High School and have been a principal and a UAOS member since 2007. So it's been a minute that I've been leading in this district. And I was also part of the team with UAOS and the district that looked specifically at salaries of our principals and assistant principals and determined that consistently we are paid less in total compensation and work more days than our counterparts in other districts and that's not acceptable and everybody here deserves raises and when contracts came up for renewal our superintendent was negotiated with and got a raise our legal counsel is got negotiated with and is i think gonna get a raise tonight probably uh... the teachers were negotiated with and got a raise and we're not being negotiated with in good faith where dollars are being put on the table and we have been told that there is no money right now to have these discussions And meanwhile, the board has self-certified as a positive rating. So there is some disconnect between how the leaders of our campuses are being treated and other members of OUSD community who also deserve raises. And so I'm not saying that we shouldn't pay teachers. We absolutely should. But all the bargaining groups need to be treated equitably. So thank you very much.

Next speaker, please. Good evening.

Thank you for hearing me out. My name is Angela Lloyd. I've been with the district 30 plus years, and I've seen how the district has evolved and changed. We always come up with a plan for our budget, but we need to come up with a plan for our are working people here, right? How do we go about absorbing all the work from the vacancies that will no longer be filled? What does that look like? What does that plan look like? Can we implement that plan and can you share that with us? Thank you.

Thank you, next speaker please.

My name is Mark Dieter. I'm an administrator at Oakland Technical High School, and I honestly don't think I have anything to add to what my colleagues have just said, so I hope that you heard our needs to be considered fairly along with other bargaining units. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please. And there are two speakers, I believe, online. I'm sorry, Mrs. Sa.

I want to take this opportunity to thank Ms. Janelle Harris, a parent whose son just graduated from McClimans High School. Ms. Harris has been a gift to that school in the way that she has tried to advocate for the teachers, for the students, and for programs at the school, and for her own child. She had a very difficult time. And she stayed persistent in doing that. I really appreciate her efforts in trying to do what she could. Thank you, Ms. Harris. I am very, very upset about the McClymonds community not participating in dealing with some of the issues at their school. Ms. Harris was told at the enrollment office that there was no more room at McClymonds when she tried to register. She fought and made it happen that her child got there. Every year that we worked at McClymonds, the past four years, we've had to go to the enrollment office because parents were being told the school was full. Related to the school project of modernization, last June you put out a schedule for McClymonds that meant that the football field project would start in June. This year, absolutely nothing happened to deal with the football field, the turf being replaced. They're going to start this year with the clock not working, with the intercom system not working, and the field in horrible shape. I don't know what you're going to do and move them to someplace else. This project for modernization started in 2021. At this point, you're saying it will be complete in 2029. You move the children to half of the beginning of the building, I'm sorry, at the beginning of the school year. We had no intercom system in the beginning all year. People could come to the school. You had to open the door and let anybody and everybody in. Culture keepers that were supposed to be roaming the building were assigned to watch the door because we didn't have an intercom system. We have tremendous problems. and i had come to you all year what was the two notice of exemptions that you requested are they requested related to environmental issues at mcclimate you x the state to exempt you for dealing with the environmental issues at mcclimate twice this year so i don't know if you're going to have something going on uh... this friday and you make it celebrate you shouldn't be celebrating It's a disgrace that nothing happened for McClimas the whole year. Nothing. And we want to pretend like, oh, we're going to celebrate restarting right now.

Thank you. Two speakers online.

Yes, Madam President. I will allow Sheila Haynes to speak first and Carol Delton allowing Sheila Haynes to speak.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Hi, so I just wanted to first acknowledge again, the student board directors for their positive leadership, wishing you both the best, the very best in your future. It's all about our youth. So I just, I pray that we can get to a point in the district where all students can have that positive character of respect. It'll truly take you all, take the community a long way because too many students come from negative environments. And they look to the school district as their last resort to be in a place of respect. But I just wanted to kinda just talk about the violence prevention and student safety and with my disappointment that you guys just didn't approve the items together because having those items in between other sections when they are connected, personally, it would have been best for me because I wouldn't have had to wait through the other items on the agenda that I'm not signed up to speak for. I just wish that... The board would put personal feelings aside and really just truly think about the students. And their parents, and not just make decisions out of personal feelings towards others because. When things like this is done this, this impacts. the students and the community and results in harm being done, I would have wanted to speak on both of these items at once. So, I mean, it's up to the school district that service over 30,000 students to 1st, to 1st and foremost, and for enforce a common courtesy and. Respect for everyone and to really just treat everyone the same. Because when people aren't treated the same, it really causes a negative impact. And then it makes us question whether or not you really do have the care for the community. Because, you know, like I said, not having these items together, when I'm signed up for both items, it would have definitely been easier for me to just talk on it at once. Okay, thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Next speaker is Carol Delton, allowing them to speak.

Good evening again, board. I see the clock, but it hasn't started. So now I see it. So I know you hear me. I will have some comments on some of the consent items or now individual items later, but I wanted to lift up concerns in general. Whatever the history of the requirement that every item have a funding source, a resource code, and that also an assurance that that item is within the budget line that it is intended for. We have a repeated issue in this district, like adjoining districts, that the contract budget line goes up every year way beyond the June budget. That's a consistent pattern and OUSD is not unique, but it needs to stop. We also have the situation in OUSD that the district is over double contracting out compared to other districts. And that also needs to be reined in. Every time we contract out work, we are paying an overage an administrative overage to a private company versus adding to the OUSD workforce and adding to, as Director Williams has talked about, the skills that exist within the district. It's going to take a lot of, I believe, relatively small actions to add up to contracting being reined in and to more of our work being done by employees in-house. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other speakers, Mr. Hollis?

All speakers' names have been called.

All right, thank you. Yep. He called mine.

He just forgot.

Once brief. I've got three announcements. That's what I'm here for Saturday June 27th is the skyline Alumni and friends barbecue. It's free free not too many things are free these days and The barbecue also include things like Veggie hamburgers veggie dogs so different things so it's not just you know you traditional barbecue September 25th is a tentative date and That will be I hope I had an email the other day from Golden Gate sign when we do the beam Fardella Presentation and I'm hopefully you're all there if if in fact that is the date that is set aside for before the work gets done on the lighting at the stadium at Skyline. Last, this is a new one, totally new, October 8th. That's a Thursday. I've heard things tonight. I heard Ms. Haynes and, of course, Ms. Asada, as we've talked many times. I'm going to do something I haven't done for about three years, and I'm going to, do a run from my home, which is below Skyline Boulevard, up Skyline, over the hill, past Tech, and I will end up at McClymonds. And I've started to raise some money for that already. So I just thought I'd let you know.

Can I ask you a quick question about what time the barbecue is? Mr. Nelson? 11 to four? Okay, thanks. Okay, that concludes public comment. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, what time is it from? Yeah. It's 11 to 4 p.m. Okay.

Just drop in, come in anytime.

Thank you. We have a special order of the day, which is a safety report from, I believe, Emily Zanolli.

Good afternoon board members. My name is Augustine. I am a 11th grader at Oakland Technical High School.

And my name is Graciela. I am also an 11th grader at Oakland Technical High School and we are representatives of the OUSD Student Committee for Safety and Violence Prevention.

The OUZ Student Committee for Safety and Violence Prevention was established in December 2025. We are made up of eight schools, eight students from five different schools, Oakland Tech, MedWest High School, Skyline High School, and Oakland International High School, and Bretthard Middle School. We represent the voices of all OUZ students advocating for safety and support of schools.

Our mission is to ensure that students have a voice and feel heard, to understand the cracks in the system, and to work towards real, long-lasting and student-centered solutions to make OUSD a safer place our goal is to help make student school an environment where students feel safe and take to take academic risks without judgment form healthy relationships and be able to plan for their futures we'd like to bring your attention to an issue that sits at the heart of our school communities student conflict

We want to learn about what types of conflict are happening in our schools, what we can actually do about it, if it can be prevented, or whether it is just part of the school environment.

To understand why this conversation is so important, we want to start with some context. Skyline High School seniors, for example, have experienced a major safety incident at least once a year for their entire duration of their high school careers. Additionally, in the district as a whole, about 75% of all suspensions are due to physical violence.

School is basically where we live. We're there more than anywhere else. And what happens in school matters. It shapes how we see ourselves and how the world around us. When we don't feel safe, it affects everything. It affects whether students want to come to school and whether we can focus and actually learn while we're there.

And it's not just about physical safety either. Students' experiences with staff member directly impact their sense of emotional safety. When students feel they are being treated unfairly, it can lead to mistrust, not just in one staff member, but in the system as a whole.

We designed a survey to look at the root causes of student conflict, whether it's avoidable, and most importantly, how both students and staff can respond differently and more effectively when conflict arises. Our goal shouldn't be to just react to conflict after it happens. It's to build environments where students feel safe, supported, and heard every day.

We received over 700 responses from 25 schools. The majority of our respondents identify as Latinx, Black, and Asian. Students in grades 6 through 12 responded, but middle school students responded at a slightly higher rate. Responses were split evenly between girls and boys, with a small number of transgender and non-binary students.

Students were asked, how safe do you feel in your school? On a scale of one, not at all safe, to five, very safe. Only 55% of students responded with fives and fours and fives. This means that almost half of OUNZ middle and high schoolers feel neutral about their sense of safety on campus or feel closer to not at all safe at school.

On the survey, some of the changes students want to see include knowing which adults to ask for help, improving facilities such as creating more sanitary and comfortable environments with specific attention to bathrooms, and creating a program to report concerns anonymously. The most frequent conflicts observed were gossip, verbal arguments or threats, and issues stemming from social media or online conflict.

Students also raised concerns about the frequency of physical fights on school campuses. When asked how teachers or staff intervene when they see conflict occur, most students said staff either tell students to stop or discipline them. Instead, students were like to see staff members make more effort to understand what happened. One student said, A lot of conflict starts as jokes but escalates further because students aren't given a reason for what they are doing wrong.

We also asked students if they know what to do when they're involved in a conflict. The majority of students replied, sometimes, meaning most students in OUSD do not know what to do or where to go when they need help.

To prevent a conflict from escalating, students would like to see early intervention. The sooner an adult gets involved, the easier it is to resolve. There is need for more staff presence in hallways and outside to supervise, prevent fighting, and monitor entrances and exits. Students want to see an increase in adult engagement, stepping in before conflict escalates rather than reacting afterwards. Separate and cool down. A key strategy to prevent escalation is to immediately separate the students involved and put them in different rooms so they can calm down before engaging in conversation. Increase communication and use of restorative justice. Using restorative justice circles or conflict mediation strategies to hear all sides. To help find the root causes and resolve the issue before it worsens. Reach out for adult support. Seeking help from trusted adults can make students feel more comfortable more comfortable engaging in the process and trust that their perspective will be heard. Students want to be heard and they need help to do so.

Student accountability. Students feel conflict should be stopped by implementing stricter discipline. Holding students accountable and using progressive consequences like detention, calling home, or loss of privileges. Overall, discipline needs to be more consistent and free from bias. And lastly, increased student support, increased access to counseling, therapy, Emotional check ins provide students with tools and resources to properly respond to issues like bullying, harassment and others and to treat others with respect to prevent identity based discrimination and to navigate other social challenges. These are practical solutions we think every school should reference as a plan for the next school year. We appreciate the opportunity, deeply, to raise this issue with the school board. On behalf of all OUSD students, we hope you will take these solutions into consideration. Thank you very much for your time.

i'm going to take board questions and comments first and then we'll move into public comments since you're up here are there any board comments questions uh director smith i just want to say thank you guys for your presentation you guys are really good public speakers and what you're talking about is really really important i'm really intrigued by this um initiative that you guys have going on i love that it's student-led and you're talking about safety which is a really really large part of our district so again i appreciate you guys it was very educational very informative it was easy to read the slideshows and you know the information was broken down well for our students to understand which is what our goal is in the district and i can also second that the issues that you guys highlighted, which is like gossip, verbal arguments, and like social media issues. Those are a lot of issues that I see that come up in different school sites, especially when I went to Tech, I was a peer wellness student and I was a peer wellness mentor. So a lot of the stuff that I did with other students, those were a lot of the topics that were coming up. So with me saying that, I'm just saying that restorative justice and adult intervention are two things that I do think that will help students you know making sure that adults are involved in the beginning these are like just words a lot of times it's miscommunication so i'm just saying that these are things that can be fixed and as long as we put our care and support into it it's going to work out so again thank you so much for your presentation and i hope you guys keep going thank you director smith director simmons

You guys had a beautiful presentation. I think I might be a little sick. But you guys had such a good presentation. I really appreciate the way you guys showed up. And I also want some pointers from you guys because I want to know how you guys got 700 responses. That is a lot of responses. And that means you guys did a lot of work and a lot of careful outreach and a lot of thoughtful work. Pat on the back, like honestly, 700 responses is a lot. So you guys are doing a lot right, a lot right. And I appreciate the way you guys came out and the way you guys showed up and presented yourselves and presented to you. So it was a really well presentation.

Thank you, Director Simmons.

Are there any other board comments? Director Hutchinson.

Yes, thank you. That was one of the best presentations by anyone that we've heard at a school board meeting in months. And so it was a really good job. I was really impressed just with the report and how you presented the information. I really liked that middle schools were included and included as heavily as they were. I also really liked that you lifted up the need for us to have as many quality adults who students can trust in our schools as possible. And it's one of the things I'm really worried about right now because as we are close to adopting our budget for next year, there's some real questions if we can even maintain the adults that we have, let alone increase the number. and so I'd really encourage you and other students now that we have this these reports and some information to try to turn it into some advocacy and so hopefully next time with some constructive things so if if your work shows that we need more RJ coordinators then to start turning those maybe into some more specific demands that then people can organize around going forward I was hopeful that you all would still be here for the other safety presentation later. I doubt that you will be, so I really wanted to give you all some of the historical context as well. And so for everyone, especially since we have so many new people at board meetings, it's important that we all remember Raheem Brown. Raheem Brown was murdered by Oakland School District police officers in January of 2011. He was sitting outside of Joaquin Miller Park, which is where Skyline was having their winter ball. And an officer came upon him, accused him of having a screwdriver as a weapon, and shot him. that incident that traumatic incident that the district had was sued over that led to the start of black organizing project and black organizing project from there engaged in a 10-year-long campaign to achieve police-free schools that was finally voted on in 2020 And so if I had my way, we wouldn't call it the George Floyd resolution. What happened to George Floyd helped the school board at that time finally make the right decision, but it really should be the Raheem Brown resolution. And I think it's important for everyone to know now that that came about from community and student organizing that said we didn't want police officers in our schools anymore. hopefully can help inspire us to get to the next point that we need to get to because what I really want to put out there is after we eliminated our police department as a school district we still haven't come up with the prestige procedures practices protocols to replace some of the activities that the district police used to do we still haven't decided how we want to handle security or conflict resolution really at our schools and security and safety outside of it so hopefully this work can really spur that next generation of work where now that we have police free schools how do we really make our schools as safe as our students need them to be going forward but again thank you for the report it was really impressive

Thank you, Director Hutchison.

Thank you very much, President Brohard. Of course, like the other directors, I want to say that you did a very good job of presenting information. And if I can, I would like to identify three particular areas. One, academic risk. I think that's really important because it's either tangential or it's a precursor to understanding literacy. If you allow an individual the freedom to be able to take risks. Then of course that opens the door for that to take place. The next thing is looking at something in a different vein and that was emotional safety. I think that's very critical too because a lot of us, because we can't see a thing, we don't realize that it actually exists. And so thank you and kudos for doing that. And the third thing I want to really address is your depth of data analysis. I really appreciate that because you put numbers to the actual thing so you can have a qualitative thing but a quantitative assessment of what it actually does. And so I really appreciate that. I want you guys to continue your work. It's absolutely wonderful. I have chills right now because it was just that good. A former professor, you guys are doing college work, I promise you. So it's very good. Thank you very kindly and continued success.

Thank you, Director Thompson.

i also would just echo the comments of my colleagues but i wanted to just thank you so much for the work that you've all put in obviously you've done quite a bit and the expertise that you're sharing not just with the board but with the district and the community is so so valuable since you and students who are in our schools every day are the experts in what you need so thank you again

Dr. Williams.

Yes it was very insightful I just want to thank you very much and it looks like you put a lot of time into it and just want to see you can see how it projects out you know one of the things that I like is that this is a great opportunity to build the relationships with our school teams our administrator with our culture keepers as well as our counselors and our educators, our teachers, our paraeducators. I think this is a great opportunity for you all, for us all to come together, maybe at the beginning of the year, to really talk about the results of the survey. Like that should be the high priority as well at the beginning of the year as you step in. We start to set ground rules and start to understand how we're going to engage with one another with the RJ as well as Director. Max has been really advocating for as well throughout the schools. I think there are some combinations there and hopefully we have administrators in the back right now. Hopefully there will be conversations in which we can bridge that. you know that level of just quick intervention having you know when teachers return and parents return back to the school site they have a few days of training before school start and if one of the things that they can get and practice is really how to intervene in particular engagements with students and ask further questions or ask how to de-escalate the situation i think that would really be a success for all the youth around so um i think you really it's really fabulous i wish we would have had this not at the end of the year but somewhere in the at the first end of the semester, which would give us time to continue to build those networks to work together. So again, just wanna thank you for what you're doing. Really appreciate it. I have some young folks that I talked to in LA called LA Students Deserve, and you're doing some of that same work in Oakland, what students deserve in Oakland. So I just really wanna hype you up and tell you congrats on that. It was very powerful. Thank you.

Thank you, Director Williams.

Director Barry, I know you're online.

Yes, thank you. And I agree with everything that everyone has shared already. Powerful presentation. Thank you for being so clear, so rigorous in your analysis, so grounded in listening and authentic curiosity, which I think is absolutely required because you know safety is so urgent being so foundational to learning and uh the question that I keep asking is what is base what is our base what is core to the district and I think when we have uh research like what you all did, it provides us guidance around what we build and what we protect as we redesign OUSD in this moment of what I believe can be really incredible or powerful visioning and calibration. And as such, I think as a next step, I would suggest that this The data that you all put together, the recommendations that you provided that it resurface at our board retreat. So we can discuss how we can begin to operationalize it and make use of the recommendations. And in fact, I know I mentioned this a few weeks ago, having the student board directors. present at our board retreat, and I'm not sure if we were able to work that out. But if not, I feel like in some way we need to make sure there's some actual follow up and follow through here. And I would love to also beyond the specific recommendations in this presentation, figure out how we can learn from the work that you do, the work that you did here so that we can replicate it for some of the other big pressing challenges that we're up against at this time. So ultimately, thank you.

Thank you, Director.

Vice President Batchelor.

Thank you all again for the great presentation and it was very clear what you were trying to articulate to us I think a few things that came to mind that popped out of me from your presentation was a 75% suspension number of physical violence that again I think is something that we need to investigate a little bit more think about what is happening both inside of our community and at this point globally because a lot of what comes up for folks is a combination of all that right home school and their environment and unfortunately the environment online I really appreciate you just highlighting the like what happens at school truly matters because you all are there for so long and especially at school sites I think that are for example CCPA that are like 612 like you are there for a significant portion of your time and so wanting to figure out if there is a difference in some of the data that you're seeing from school sites that are 612s versus school sites that are middle school sites and then in a different high school site because it would be interesting to see if there are any differences another thing that popped out at me as well is the call out of like there is not a lack of resources it's a lack of accessible resources and so I want to investigate that a little bit more to think about like how can we make things more accessible but not overload staff into having them think about every single thing that students have to get to be supported and so thinking about how we can streamline that and I really do appreciate you just calling out of having de-escalation trainings for students I think that as a board we could use that as well but I think having that be potentially part of the curriculum and figuring out where like maybe advisory classes or other spaces where that could be part of the school day as well and I would be remiss to say as a facilities chair I often think about how do our facilities support the safety of our students and staff and so again like with Director Berry drafting the heat mitigation resolution to try to tackle some of that but I would also be asking like what are some of the facilities related changes that we would need to make in order to have our students feel safer in our classrooms and I hear you on the bathrooms I hear you loud and clear we are working through that and so I am very hopeful that we will have different situations at different school sites for the bathrooms But yes, I appreciate your presentation and really appreciate how you all work together as a team as well I'm sure to get all those 700 surveys in Thank You vice president superintendent

students I just want to just acknowledge that this is a fantastic presentation and student voice is so important because that's what we're here to do is to provide school for students I want you to know that part of the work that the senior staff is doing I initiated a process where on our regular meetings that we have weekly we are visiting schools and part of that protocol is actually to have a group of students actually talk to us about what's happening at that particular site. So we piloted it this year, we started it at, started at Castlemont and we recently did that at McClymonds where we had a team of students who talked about the very things that you have discussed around safety, many issues, and we look at facilities, we look at the cafeteria, we look at how students who are just not connected are being addressed, and we're looking at the investments, just the issues that you've brought up today. So I really wanna thank you for your thoughtful presentation. and I wanna commit to meeting with you before school opens to talk about how we can continue this work and actualize it. We also wanna offer our Executive Director of Safety, who is here, to be a part of those discussions. He's been in many conversations with students, but we wanna formalize our process so that we can actually have an action plan that we implement.

Thank you, Superintendent.

Again, like my colleague said, an excellent report. I thought your evidence was amazing. I thought the figures, I think, really do stick, that 75 and 55 are stuck in my brain. I think one thing I would like to see too is, I'm always thinking as a former teacher, I think Adults often interpret discipline in very different ways, and I think you made a comment about progressive and consistent, and you gave some examples of what those were. I think it is important, again, as we develop a fair system of discipline, that um we all agree on those terms so i really appreciate it again your specific evidence with that i think it gives that framework for adults to have that discussion with you as well as you kind of co-create you know a safe school the other thing i really liked and i have stressed this over and over again is that you can't learn at school if you don't feel safe so think social emotional and academic learning all go together so again a really great consistent coherent report that gives us all I think a lot of food for thought I also would like to suggest to our teaching and learning chair that perhaps we take this up with a student report and one of our first meetings in the year no pressure but I think if we're gonna do something about it we also need to take that information so thank you very much

Thank you very much, President.

We'll now take public comment.

Yes, Madam President. For this item, we have two speakers, Sheila Haynes and Asada Olagbala.

I don't know if you want to stay up if other people have questions for you, but excellent report.

So I really appreciate the identification by these students of where we need to be focusing on. And I just want to identify some areas that haven't been identified. And so when we have altercations at McClymonds and at other schools, sometimes the parents get involved. And so what happens is that the student will call their parents, they come to the school, And then you have altercation with parents fighting, and it has to be dealt with. Another thing that has to be discussed is when the issue of safety is when staff has been attacked or become a victim of violence by students. That has to be addressed. That's happened. Uh, when we have students who go off campus, like Oakland tech is a good example. They go to Rockridge, uh, for lunch shopping center, and then you have a situation of an altercation, how you deal with that. And, uh, we've dealt with that too. Uh, I'm concerned about, um, the situation of drugs on campus, uh, drugs on campus is happening. And it is something that needs to be dealt with, not only because this is a safety issue too. And we have sexual assault that goes on at schools. And that has to be dealt with. We also have safety, and I bring this up about Skyline, and the evacuation of students. That's a safety issue. We have had, like Rockridge, That was a gang-related situation, retaliation. And we do have gangs in our schools. How we deal with that situation. We also have, my last point, we have altercations that take place where outsiders come to the campus. These are not our students. And I've seen that at McClymonds. And Dr. Sadler, I called Janelle Harris. She's going to be there on Friday.

Thank you. Are there any other public comments?

Yes, Sheila Haynes. I see them online. I will allow them to speak.

Thank you.

Hi, can you hear me okay?

Yes, we can hear you.

Hi, so thank you students for the report. What stood out to me, of course, is the hate speech, the verbal altercations. You know, I've been asking for over a decade for the district to mandate love and respect through spoken words, using the arts and a ban on hate speech. I came up at a time where we all had to embrace each other every morning and say the Pledge of Allegiance. And I didn't know what that meant, but I knew that what stood out to me was that we all stood in peace and walked in love and respect. And for the most part, I had a very positive upbringing in school. I can only speak on my experience. I actually had a student sign my petition that said that she was called the N and B word and it hurt her feelings. specifically in our community the n and b words the r words homophobic type language even special needs are harmful words to students and their parents and you know i continue to hope that the district that service 30 000 students i mean just imagine if the impact on the community if our district could stand for a culture shift of respect and kindness what Our students here in their minds, it shapes them as an adult. And so like the student board directors, you know, I once again want to just wish them well in their future and encourage all students to adopt a respectful character of value. It really starts with the value for self and each other. And we really just have to get back to a culture of respect. I invite the community to have discussion around different words that are offensive and hurtful. And we just really need to have an environment where students are happy and joyful and they have respect for everyone around them and being the best mindset. And I know that there are many triggers of violence, even physical altercations, but the verbal altercations is a real trigger for violence to occur and not really understanding like what's going on with the budget. But I continue to ask for a restorative practice that includes the arts and a ban on hate speech. And I'm hoping that you can at least mandate a loving environment with positive words because that doesn't cost any money. So thank you for your report.

Thank you, Ms. Haynes. Are there any other public speakers?

All public speakers' names have been called.

Thank you again, students, for an amazing report, in-depth, and look forward to enacting some of those solutions. Next on the agenda is PSAC.

Hi, Cynthia Molina supporting the advisory committees. Very briefly, some logistical things. We're gonna have one presenter in Spanish on that district English language learner subcommittee. So I'm sure you've received the instructions just to be queued up for that consecutively. And then we're gonna have one over Zoom, which is the last one. That would be Patty Jurgens for the foster youth advisory.

Good evening. Thank you for having us here. My name is Damani Jackson. I'm a PSAC member and a parent of a OUSD student. We want to start off with our members. We have a diverse group of members from seven districts. As you can see there, I'm not going to go through all the names. We want to give our appreciations to our partners. We want to thank Diana Sherman for attending all of our planning meetings and carefully sharing information and context with committee members and participants. Troy Christmas for providing simple and accessible explanations for complicated financial information like the budget. We want to thank Superintendent Sadler for attending all of our meetings this year, which is the first time this has happened in the history of our committee. And we also want to thank director bro hard for a participating in our meetings and providing important content we appreciate that also thanks we want to thank the staff that make our work possible our program director cynthia molina appreciate her district interpreters erica do little from the communications team uh... who find uh... science say chow from them board staff and others who responded to request and most of all the students parents staffing community members who served in our committee uh... this is a volunteer position so we really appreciate them and they're very engaged in all of our meetings so uh... moving to ongoing feedback for the out cap uh... we call attention to peace acts recommendations for the last two l cap years and we highlight the ongoing importance of a number of things of explaining and discussing the criteria and formulas used to assign any resource or service to particular schools and students, clarifying the function of any position, describing and explaining significant non-labor expenditures that happen to appear in the LCAP, discussing all curriculum choices within the LCAP, explaining how the success of each action will be evaluated and the indicators that will be used to do so, explaining the role of central coordinators, and administrators, showing the extent to which the services listed under each action are reaching focal student groups. And there's a lot of groups that it is reaching. Explaining why certain linked learning pathway programs are located at particular high schools. Analysis of how the discipline matrix is being implemented. And we're still requesting that the LCAP action be solely dedicated to describing the collaborative work of reducing suspensions. We want to uplift the recommendations that we have not adopted to date as we prepare to develop a new three-year LCAP for 27 through 30. And briefly, our process in 25-26, we have monthly meetings, public meetings and activities that are listed here. I don't want to go through all of them. And I'll turn it over.

high-tech teammates mission uh... another uh... peace act lead uh... i want to uplift our lessons from this year uh... our consistent consensus statement from december twenty twenty five stands as a crucial starting point for conversations about how to reshape our district and strengthen our al cap and budget process in the statement we brought attention to the in-depth cuts to special education being proposed the potential of not being able to finance the proposed restructuring, the well-intentioned but confusing language that we make cuts that do not directly impact students in schools, investments in student safety as a highest priority, I think we heard about that tonight and will probably continue to. The need to focus on restoring the base budget and to reduce our reliance on reclassifying expenses. Cuts to enrollment stabilization and maintenance as counterproductive to fiscal goals. The need to consider reductions in salary or furloughs for high level administrators. network consolidations as potentially reducing support for schools without being worth the reductions in expense the need to maintain custodial services the current any and encouraging focus on reducing contracts through centralization and internal hires the impossibility of reaching the stated target without cutting school site and just a programming the need to explore the financial and community impacts, recentering K-6 communities around their local schools, the need to develop a needs-based assessment for cuts made to schools, and if school mergers and closures are going to happen, the undertaking must be thoughtful, community-led, and equitable process that centers the needs of the most risked students first and does not compound the harm that has already been done to particular communities. additionally lessons from this year we need a clearly outlined and predictable budget process that engages all stakeholders right at the start of the school year we must not again fall prey to the lack of time and being forced to take reactive stance we must have time to discuss the impact of the decisions we must dedicate time effort and resources to explaining the information in simple and manageable ways and the depth and breath of detail can be overwhelming to stakeholders when presented all at once. And so we ask the following questions. What is the line between a normal and an abnormal budget process? Why does every other district develop their budgets so differently from OUSD? What have been the consequences of our unique budget development process that prioritizes autonomous budgeting by schools and departments? What can we learn from best practices from other districts? Last minute decisions were made by staff to zero out or drastically reduce particular non-labor expenses in certain LCAP actions. We were not made aware of those decisions at our last PSAC meeting. Any decisions to utilize additional dollars coming into OUSD must first include a public board discussion of non-labor investments that were reduced or eliminated within the LCAP after our May 20th meeting.

Back to Damani. Thank you. Um, I do want to discuss our successes. Um, we had 60% or more quorum of school representatives, some six out of seven electoral districts in our elections and a historically high representation from electoral electoral district four. we elected fourteen members which is actually great uh... we provided an urgently needed public space to discuss budget decisions and to understand some of the constraints of the budget development process such as the requirements of particular funding resources We identified the areas of the LCAP that were most affected by budget decisions and engaged in direct dialogue with staff about the possible impact of those decisions and about remaining investments in those areas. And we also helped to form the OUSD multi-staker engagement group alongside parent leaders from the other two mandated advisory committees in our district. So coming up Saturday, August 15th, we have a goal setting retreat. Wednesday, August 19th, is the first PSAC meeting of 26-27 year. Meeting information is on the link provided. August engagements of the multi-stakeholder engagement group. Stay informed at the website, ousd-mseg.org. Thank you.

Buenas tardes. Mi nombre es Mayra Cárdenas. Yo voy a hacer una breve presentación del Comité Asesor del Distrito para los Estudiantes Aprendiendo Inglés, por sus siglas en inglés, DELS. A continuación, les mostramos los miembros. Nuestro proceso.

Going to give the presentation for the District English Learner Subcommittee.

Nuestro proceso a lo largo de nuestro ciclo escolar.

And here's our process throughout the school year.

A continuación les voy a mostrar algunos ejemplos sobresalientes de cada mes en los que estuvimos trabajando. De cualquier manera, les pido que analicen la información.

And following, follow up, I'm going to present you some examples, some highlights, monthly highlights that we have been working on. But I do ask you to please analyze them too.

En agosto, conocimos al personal que coordina el apoyo para los estudiantes aprendiendo inglés. Conocimos nuestros derechos bajo la política de Distrito Santuario de USD.

In August, we met the staff that coordinates support for English learners, learned about our rights under the OUSD sanctuary policy, and how the policy works in practice.

También conocimos los requisitos para establecer los subcomités escolares para estudiantes aprendiendo inglés .

And we also learned about the requirements for establishing the site English language learners subcommittees, also known as CELS.

In September, we learned what about our new practice or meeting agreement is fixed to be understood.

And we disclosed and formally adopted our community goals for 2025-2026. In October, we discussed basic start of the year data about English learners compared to the start of 2024-25. We also found out which schools met their reclassification goals in 2024-25.

Diciembre. Revisamos los datos de reclasificación de estudiantes aprendiendo inglés con discapacidades. y escenarios presupuestarios adoptados por la Junta del Distrito que podrían afectar el apoyo a los estudiantes aprendices del inglés.

We also in December reviewed the reclassification data for disabled English learners with individualized educational programs or with disabilities, and we also discussed how the budget scenarios adopted by the Board could affect support for English learners.

Febrero, discutimos las acciones recientes para reducir y ajustar el presupuesto de USD y el posible impacto.

In February, we discussed recent actions to reduce and adjust the OUSD budget and the possible impact.

Marzo, informamos a las familias sobre los programas de verano 2026 y las tasas de reclasificación lingüística, que son las más bajas en las escuelas de USD y cómo las familias pueden ayudar.

In March, we informed the families about the 2026 summer programs and how they can participate. And we also informed about the rates, the reclassification rates, which are the lowest in the OUSD. Families also learned how they can help.

Abril. Aprendimos sobre el boletín mensual publicado por la Oficina de Aprendizaje del Idioma Inglés y Logros Multilingües, ELMA. Discutimos los cambios que producirán nuestro presupuesto 2026-2027 en las áreas de interpretación y participación familiar que afectan directamente a nuestra comunidad.

In April, we learned how the monthly newsletter published by the Office of ELMA provides important information, and we also discussed changes taking place in 26-27, in the budget of 26-27, in the areas of interpretation and family engagement, and how this directly affects our communities.

Nuestras recomendaciones continuas para ELCAP son repetidas del año pasado.

And for now, we're going to talk about the recommendations that we have. We are actually repeating the recommendations that we had from last year, and we asked Cynthia Molina to present them.

Felipe was heading here from San Francisco to be her counterpart, and he didn't arrive, so I'm stepping in as an understudy. So they're asking that recommendations that were not adopted become implemented in the new LCAP 2730, so requiring that everyone in OUSD use disaggregated data when they speak about English learners to show gaps within English learners The basic request is that English learner data be disaggregated by disability and special ed status, by home language, and by language program. So whenever anyone stands up to present, that's the disaggregation they're asking for. They're asking that there be indicators strategies and investments for disabled English learners, not just for reclassification, but the way to reclassification. Establishing an LCAP action that is dedicated solely to increasing and improving access to language translation and interpretation that is buried within the family engagement action and they want it as a distinct action. And you restore the family engagement team as essential to parent participation and leadership within school committees. And focusing on ensuring that all English learners are receiving daily designated English language development, that there is no data that shows that that is happening. And a special thanks to Nicole Knight. Amy Stauffer, Arcelia Gonzalez, our interpreters, and myself, and a special thanks to all the parent and family leaders who are the heart of our work. First meeting, August 27th, and the routine is every fourth Thursday, except for some holiday exceptions.

Hello, I'm Sayuri Valenza, I'm a moderate support needs a self-contained program teacher at Bretthart Middle School, and Anna Rialini, who is a parent, was prepared to present with me tonight and had a family emergency at the last minute, so we wish her well. The Community Advisory Committee for Special Education, CAC, is comprised of parents, family members, community members, educators, district leaders, and usually we have students. We have 18 voting members currently. And also at our monthly meetings, we have a format where we have a special education update from our district leaders like Jen Blake gives a really thorough sort of update on everything from her end and brings in whoever else is relevant. And then we give CAC updates. We have different committees and goals that we're always working on or board resolutions. And then we also have monthly themes and topics that we talk about. So this year, just some examples are hiring of all special ed staff, so teachers, our support staff, and our specialists. Also looking at literacy rates for students with IEPs, looking at suspension rates of our black students with IEPs, always analyzing the data that That work is led by Cliff and Aubrey. And then also impact of enrollment trends and of course budget and facilities are just some examples. So we are evaluating the benefit of our participation in the LCAP process and the LCAP has not been useful as a document or mechanism to plan for the success of disabled students. For the LCAP to do so, we would need a complete mindset shift from many administrators within our district. So historically, our recommendations for the LCAP have had minimal impact. The LCAP must help all in OUS, like everybody in OUSD, plan how we will increase and or improve disability-related services and support for all disabled students. This will impact all outcomes. to ensure equitable access to disability related services and support for low income students, English learners, foster youth, and other focal student groups. This would require that we always disaggregate our data to show if different groups of disabled students are receiving services and benefiting from them. Three, ensure that disabled students who are also part of other focal student groups are accessing the targeted support and services that they are eligible to receive based on their membership in those groups. Again, this would require that we always disaggregate our data to show how different groups of disabled students are receiving services and benefiting from them. Four. Design for greater disability accessibility across all programs and services. This is called universal design or inclusive design. All disabled students are entitled to participate in all of the educational and socio-emotional experiences that their non-disabled peers enjoy. They are entitled to participate. Those experiences must be made accessible by design, and those who coordinate them must presume the participation of all disabled students. The civil and human rights of disabled students are expansive. Those rights intend for the full participation of disabled children and youth in all educational experiences and all aspects of school life. These rights are enshrined in a lot of different laws. So it's also in our SELPA, our plan, it ensures conformity with Title 20, full educational opportunity. It shall be the policy of this LEA that all children with disabilities have access to educational programs, non-academic programs, and services available to non-disabled children. So the law does not limit the education of disabled children to the discrete goals and disability-related services outlined in their IEPs. And we have a lot of ongoing access and improvement Initiatives which the board has supported some of those in the past and we're still working with the board obviously Kerry Kaufman special ed One of our directors is you know an administrator and so we are all working together And I feel like we have a really strong team, but there's a lot that we can improve on We want to appreciate and recognize the tireless work and dedication of our special ed administrators Jen Blake rain Johnson and others who always show up to our CAC meetings and The breadth and depth of information they provide, their data collection is amazing, and the responsiveness to families within our meetings is truly remarkable. And we really want to appreciate Director Lara, who comes to all our meetings and has been really essential in moving our work forward and doesn't miss an opportunity to collaborate and dialogue with us and actually get things done. And of course, to Cynthia, who none of this would happen without her. and then just all the staff and parents and students and community members who do show up to do this work. So thank you.

This would be our last presenter. If Patty Juergens is visible within your participant list, we could promote her.

Hi there, I'm Patty Jurgens. I'm a member of the Foster Youth Advisory Committee as well as the CAC. Go ahead. We have members in various areas. We have foster parents, caregivers like me. the Community Law Office, Children's Law Offices, Kristin Windley. We have OUSD Foster Youth Services, a very strong voice for foster youth in our district. And we have other OUSD staff and leaders, Mr. Jerome Gordine, Office of Equity, Michelle McKnight, Dewey's Office Manager, and Director Williams, the school board liaison for us. And as I said, Tara Gard is also a central administrator. This year has been largely dedicated to promoting the full implementation of the policy changes adopted by the board last year to prevent foster youth suspensions. Our focus on this work is essential. It brings up and helps to address the most urgent needs within the school experience of foster youth. The policy changes are intended to ensure that number one, pre-suspension interventions take place before a child is even suspended. Number two, the staff communicate and collaborate with the foster youth's adult team and the foster youth themselves. Number three, specific post suspension actions are taken to prevent recurring suspensions and to strengthen the connection that foster youth have to their schools. Some related end of your data. This is by grade level, so we have a total of 162 foster youth currently compared to last year. It was 161. can you go back to that 1? Sorry I just wanted to bring something up in there. You may notice that the high school has has dropped. the number of students in high school has dropped by a pretty significant amount and the number of school children in elementary school foster youth has increased by a significant amount. Just wanted to point that out, even though the total number kind of stayed the same. Next, this is our disabled foster youth with IEPs. It has risen from last year, which was around 36% or 30 something percent up to 46% this year. Next slide this is the end of the year suspension data. We have decreased our percentage down to 11% compared to 18% last year. And since our numbers are small, this was 28 students last year and 21 students this year. And then go ahead end of year suspension data. Suspension of foster youth with IEPs is 14.8%. Foster youth with IEPs make up 57% of all foster youth suspensions, basically 12 out of the 21 students suspended. They made up 61% of all foster youth suspensions last year, 17 out of 28. The percentage of foster youth with has increased from about 39% last year to about 46% at the end of the school year. Thanks to our foster youth services team. our program manager, our district and community partners, our members and all of those who collaborate for the success of foster youth. See you at our public meeting on Tuesday, August 25th. And we meet regularly on the last Tuesday of the month. So it could be the fourth Tuesday or it could be the fifth Tuesday. Thank you everybody.

Thank you. Are there any public comments on the PSAC report?

There are no registered speakers for this item, Madam President.

Board comments? Director Smith?

I just want to say thank you and show my appreciation to all of you. This entire school year, you guys have showed so much committed support to our students and our parents, so the work that you're doing is really, really important, and I hope that you guys continue to support us. Thank you so much.

director lotta yeah i um uh wanna appreciate um all of you who are here presenting tonight and everybody who isn't here right now um but has done so much work to make all of this happen i have um even before i was on the board you know participated in psec and i think i i hope that everybody understands just how much volunteer time the staff and students and parents put in it's not only a three-ish hour meeting every month but it's also all of the preparation that the participants do to review the materials and to prepare for the meetings because it is really one thing that is unique here is that the parent and student leadership of the committees are really the ones that are preparing the agendas and they're really the ones running the meetings and that takes a huge amount of effort and so I just want to again just thank you all so much I know sometimes everyone has their season where they have time to participate and so thank you all I hope you're all coming back next year but if not just really really deeply appreciate the work and I would just want to say that if folks who are listening to this haven't participated it's a really great all of the meetings all of the advisory committees are opportunities to dive deep and have a really rich conversation about the decisions that we make as a district i do think that um we as district leaders need to do a better job of incorporating all of the work that these advisory committees do we have for years mostly ignored the recommendations that the committee members have put so much time and effort into and really deep thought so i would just Underline, I know Dr. Sadler is not at the dais, but I see Tara Gard and I see Dr. Aguilera in the back. So a lot of our leaders, I would just really highlight that every single committee is asking and continues to ask for their feedback to be meaningfully incorporated. And then one other highlight that you all didn't mention that I just wanna give additional credit for is that this was the first year that the young adult program got their measure N and H funding. And that when we talk about how disabled students are entitled to access every part of the educational experience that their non-disabled peers have access to that requires us as a district to do the work to again disaggregate that and make sure that that participation is happening because without the work of the community advisory committee those students in the young adult program who are by definition supposed to be getting their only their it's all high school students and postgraduate students should be getting linked learning and they weren't And I just wanna say that that is a huge win for those students, but also I think reflects the work of the committees and how meaningful it is. So thank you again.

Director Williams.

Yes PSAC just really want to take this time to personally thank you for all the work you have done I think it is we're talking about extreme amount of hours unpaid hours that make this particular group very successful and what we know is when parents participate at the school site as well as at the district our schools and our district become more successful so there is a relationship there that we as board members should be able to participate in and support in crafting that LCAP as well as the budget process we want to make sure that the work that has been done by not only the students, the parents and the community, but we as board members should be involved in that. My heart really is around foster youth and I really appreciate the work that is being done in foster youth. I think a lot of times our kids are unforgotten in that particular space. but I have seen the dedication that our foster youth social workers as well as our fearless leader Jane is really moving forward and as well as our deputy superintendent being in that space i think that we are at a challenging moment um that we have really been trying to stabilize our district through a number of reductions and now that i feel pretty confident that we are in a stable place it's time for us to really get back and dive deeper into the relationships that we have to really build the school that we like to see. What is our vision for OUSD doesn't happen with one person, but it really happens with all of us as a community. so again for the work that all the parents have put into it i just want to thank you very much for that and i look forward to doing a better job myself next year probably starting off with the retreat and august 14th thank you again

I just also want to, again, I've always appreciated PSAC's work. The questions, the in-depth, and I echo the fact that I think we need to get this information sooner from PSAC so that we can actually use it. I mean, oftentimes I think we look back at the reports after we have particularly the LCAP. um same thing with cac i think again to see um the level of the the discussions the information i i have always really learned a lot from those meetings um i i also really wanted to give a special um notice i this thing of these um this sorry the segregating data for our EL students who are disabled I know as a former teacher in that situation that wasn't done and I think the needs of our students were not met either in their language development or in the needs of their their IEPs so I again I think that is something I would like to see the board take up particular conversation around but again I also want to give a shout out I know we talked a little bit about it but the multi stakeholders holders engagement I forget what the G is sorry group was actually was a really informative group and I think that being able to sit and talk with parents and teachers and administrators in that setting really was a start and I hope we have more of those because it was very informative so thank you and again thank you to Cynthia Molina for really pulling it together so President Brohard Director Berry's hand is up Go ahead Director Berry

Thank you. I just wanted to, this is two things. First, thank you. And I think it's on brand that you all started your presentation expressing gratitude to board members and to staff when you also so very deeply deserve so much gratitude for the work that you all continue to do and do that on a volunteer basis. So I just want to start with just thank you. I appreciate and respect you all so much. Two things that I wanted to respond to and to lift up came up in the earlier part of your presentation. There was one slide when you reported out some of the consensus language that you all put together. At the end of the year, the number item number 10 is the impossibility of reaching the state at target without cutting school site and district programming. And I wanted to just flag that because it's something that I feel like we continue to observe and. If we. prioritize a commitment to that, continue to attempt that, I do think it will undermine our ability to build and maintain a cohesive system. And so I just wanna, Everything on your list should be heeded by the board and by the district, but that in particular feeling really urgent for me right now. And then item number one on additional lessons from our process this year, we need a clearly outlined and predictable budget process that engages all stakeholders right at the start of the school year, which I also think connects to item number two. There is an opportunity. I keep bringing it up our retreat, putting so much hope and faith in that. a little bit of time that we'll have next Monday, but I think that that is a good opportunity for us to prioritize that as a real outcome, a material outcome of our time together. And at the very least, I do think that should be reflected in the financial stabilization plan and clearly outlined. I think right now, the only mention of community engagement is like public meetings and website updates. And I would argue that's probably not enough. And I would also, reflecting on conversations I have with staff, intent is to do even more than that, but it should be explicit in the formal plan so that you all have an opportunity to hold us accountable to that and can lean on those opportunities for weighing in on the process. And I think the sooner we establish that, those opportunities, the more we'll be able to address that second opportunity or the second lesson that you all shared, which is not falling prey to lack of time so that we are forced in a position of reacting to poor circumstances instead of being in a power position to do things strategically, thoughtfully. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no other board comments, and we have done the public comments, we'll move on to item N, which is comments from bargaining units. Mr. Sachau, are there any bargaining units online? Are there any current bargaining units that are in the room that would like to speak? Please line up.

Madam Vice President, currently there are none raising their hands online.

Great, thank you. I do see SEIU 10 to 1. Come on up, President Phoebe.

Hello, I'm Femi Nguyen. I'm an occupational therapist with special education, and I'm a newly elected president of SEIU. And I am here to say that for those without institutional power, such as IAs, noon supervisors, clerical staff, attendance clerks, reading tutors, and many others, Our protection when violations occur in unfair practices require attention comes from systems and not our status. A healthy democratic process is where one office investigates, another advises, another provides an avenue for appeal, and different departments bring different perspectives and function to check one another. When authority becomes concentrated, concerns are less likely to receive objective consideration and outcomes rely on the judgment of a single office. This is why the proposed employment agreement for the general counsel is deeply concerning, particularly for those with the least institutional power. Under this agreement, the general counsel serves simultaneously as chief lawyer, labor relations strategist, governance advisor, risk management supervisor, charter oversight supervisor, ombudsman supervisor, and board office supervisor. Each of these functions plays an important role. However, responsible governance depends on independent review and multiple pathways for concerns to be heard and evaluated. When oversight, labor relations, governance, risk management, and compliant resolution functions become consolidated, the people most affected are those with the least power to challenge it. Democratic structures and protections only exist when those entrusted with governance authority, such as this very board, it only exists if you choose to build and maintain them for the greater good. Thank you.

Thank you. Go ahead, UAOS, and then we have BCTC online.

Hi, good evening, Board. I'm Shalonda Gregory from Midwest. Good evening. I'm speaking up today for Fair Pay Safe Schools and Management Workloads. Not just for myself, but for every member in UAOS who shows up every day to serve students and families of Oakland. I have worked in the OUSD for five years. During this entire time, I have been underpaid, overworked, and expected to lead in conditions that are often unsafe and unsustainable. Some of my closest friends have left this district to take assistant principal positions in neighboring districts. They are now earning about $30,000 more than me. Meanwhile, I'm the lowest paid principal in the small high school category, while principals on a lower step than me or the very same step than me make significantly more. The constant failure to compensate me fairly or even equitably compared to my colleagues does not make me feel valued. It sends the message that my contributions, my expertise, and my commitment doesn't matter. I am one of many talented principals in this district, and if I leave OUSD, it will not be because I do not love our students, our families, or this community. It will be because this district has repeatedly shown educators and leaders like me that you do not care or value us, and we are expected to sacrifice endlessly while receiving little in return. Every employee in OUSD deserves fair pay, a safe place to work, and workloads that are manageable. These ongoing cuts are devastating to the schools. More cuts mean fewer supports, more responsibilities, and even a greater toll on the well-being of the people holding our schools together. If this district has money for senior leadership pay increases and bonuses, then it has a responsibility to invest in the people who are doing the day-to-day work of educating and supporting students. Today, I am demanding what we all deserve, fair bargaining, fair pay, manageable workloads, and safe schools, for myself, my colleagues, and for students who are counting on us to stay. Thank you.

Good evening, board members. My name is Anissa Rashid. I've been employed by Oakland Unified School District for 33 years, both as a teacher and administrator. I'm the proud mother of two Oakland Unified School District adult graduates and four grandchildren who also attend Oakland Unified School District. I'm also on the UAOS board member. I'm gonna go backwards. I'm just hearing one thing, more trusted adults. That will not happen with the cuts in staff. Hattie Tate, long time trusted adult. Her position will not be filled and the work that she did with the connection between juvenile services and Oakland Unified School District is not gonna be good. Social media, cell phone misuse is a huge influence on our children. It's largely responsible for the violence that we see on our school sites. Until we as a society or district figure out a way to work with that with our kids, we're gonna see the violence continue. The world global reality is increasingly violent. It would be silly for us to think that our children are not influenced or affected by it. Of course they are. Everything around them in the world, you know, murdering people on the high seas, bombing a school. Our world is truly, truly violent right now, and we need to be cognizant. We're gonna see that reflected in our children in this environment. It's just a fact. How we deal with it is something we can choose to do. Lastly, as a long-time administrator in Oakland, school district, I'm now at Montero Middle School. Please come to the bargaining table and talk to us. We are your boots on the ground. You know, and you keep, don't crush us underneath the weight of what's going on in this district. You need us in your schools. We shake out a lot of experienced administrators and don't replace them. We're gonna see fallout from that, absolutely. And we cannot attract young, vivacious, innovative administrators with the paying conditions that exist in this district. They might come for a while, but as soon as they see something better, as Sister Gregory just said, they're gone. They're gone, and then we're stuck holding what's left. Please talk to the United Administrators of Open Schools. Let us agree on a fair contract.

Thank you. We have BCTC online.

Yes, Vice President. I will allow Bedrudin Kukajewic to speak.

Good evening. Can you guys hear me? yes go ahead okay good evening board good evening everybody i want to um better with the bctc uh chief steward uh great to see you all i just want to echo everything that uh our union siblings just said before uh we keep getting it understaffed we definitely need to work on that how to employ more more members more people so we don't the schools and kids don't feel uh Uh, left behind as well as also, uh, having a good faith in the bargaining and get everybody to the contract that they deserve and they need. Uh, in standing with in solidarity with us, and everybody else in that matter. As well, also, uh, in the, we are. very understaffed as everybody else and just want to try to bring attention to the that even now with the retirees and everybody and a couple of people layoffs we are very understaffed that our school is going to feel much more neglected than before so we need to work on that maybe rehire open vacancies create the position whatever it needs to be so the schools don't feel left out and i want to bring also the one of the item that it's an r11 26-1205 about uh vegetation that comes from the julian tree care that it's a costing the district 85 000 uh i'm wondering and why this job is not done in-house because literally it's getting from the general fund restricted funded And 85,000 dollars would definitely help my members. To get stand a little bit on the money and actually getting more work and then so we, so it's then this is a job about talking about. Vegetation pretty much removing the loose trees, the grass and all that. That's something that we can definitely do inside. in building grounds, either we are understaffed, we could probably hire somebody to do that and give the members overtime or something like that so we don't keep spending this much money on outsourcing. That's all I have to say. Thank you so much. And I just want to flag it out that we finally got out TA with a labor relation in the district. I just want to congratulate all of you for the hard work and pushing for that. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Are there any other lay reunions?

There are currently no hands on Zoom for collective bargaining units.

Thank you. Mr. Sachak, can we have an interpretation check?

Yes, moving to our interpretation check. We will start with Arabic. I will lower our attendance hands. Please don't raise your hand if you need Arabic interpretation. Ms. Abdi, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Arabic, please.

Good morning. Arabic instruction is done. Great. Thank you, Ms. Abdi. Chair Attendees, I see if any hands raised for Arabic interpretation.

Seeing no hands raised, we will now start with Arabic interpretation. Next, we'll go to Cantonese. Again, please don't raise your hand if you need Cantonese interpretation. Mr. Yuen, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Cantonese, please.

Hello, everyone. This is a meeting of the Education Committee of Oakland Union College. If you are new to the scene and need Cantonese translation, Cantonese announcements done.

Great, thank you, Mr. Yuen. Check attendees if any hands raised for Cantonese interpretation. Seeing no hands raised for Cantonese, we'll now start with the interpretation for Cantonese. Next, we'll go to Spanish again. Please only raise your hand if you need Spanish interpretation. Mr. Copenhagen, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Spanish, please. Or Ms. Vargas? Yes. Okay, go ahead, Mr. Copenhagen.

Buenas noches. Estamos haciendo un breve chequeo para ver si alguien en la audiencia necesita el servicio de interpretación simultánea. Para saber si hay personas en la audiencia que necesitan el servicio, por favor levanten la mano. Thank you.

Great, thank you, Mr. Copenhagen. Check attendees to see if any hands that needs Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we will now start with any interpretation and we'll check in later in the meeting. President Brewhart, turn it back to you.

Thank you. At this time, we're gonna reopen the public hearing to allow for additional public comment due to the error in the June 3rd meeting. Ms. Gard, do you wanna?

President Brohard.

Both items, I'm sorry, on both the LCAP and the budget.

I would again like to recommend that we hold the public hearing separately and not combined. And if we would have done that at the last meeting, this first item, we wouldn't have to redo the LCAP because that's not where the violation was. So again, we are repeating the same mistakes as last time. And again, this public hearing was not re-noticed in the newspaper, so it's going to be out of compliance anyway.

Madam Madam president. The agenda item as noticed is pro is properly noticed what the statute requires and I think Council will confirm is that there be a hearing on the El cap and the district budget at the same time and at the park. Event that occurred last week. It was in order to hold the hearing concurrently so if we are now reopening the hearing and i want to address any of the other issues besides the posting it is properly posted for a joint rehearing because that's what the statute requires that requires a public hearing is to be on the lcap as well as the proposed district budget for the next year so it's one hearing on three two different items

Is there a presentation? No? Okay. We'll take it this time, we'll take public comment and then board comment. Is there any public comment on this item?

Yes, Madam President, there are 15 speakers. Okay. Call the first 10.

Yeah, first 10 and we'll do two minutes.

All right, first 10 speakers are Carol Delton, Jonathan Mates-Mutchin, Jolanda Gregory, Angela Lloyd, Sandra Su, Carmelita Reyes, Pinti Tarpeh, Stacey Morrison, Lisa Newby, Martel Price, first 10.

If your name was called, would you approach the dais, please? And it doesn't look like they're here.

Carol Delton has her hand raised.

Okay, let's go with Carol Delton. He just called the first 10, Mrs. Huffman.

Thank you very much. for calling on me. I'd like a clock, please. I'll start, but it would be, are you hearing me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Great, okay, then I will start. So I am very glad actually that the LCAP and the budget are being considered together because they are really interconnected. And that said, I think there's a lack of explicitness in both of the presentations that I'm hoping will be addressed in the coming year. With respect to the LCAP, it would be important to have metrics, goals of some type for for each of the goals to have a measurement so that the investments that are made can be compared from year to year. In the public domain, there was some chitchat about whether some of the goals that represent items being taken care of under the LCAP that were previously from the unrestricted fund, a worry. that that was new spending. And that is not new spending, but now that these items are being handled, I believe, appropriately through supplemental and concentration funds, they do need to have metrics to measure the value to the students in the district. With respect to the budget, I have listed a number of times that having a variance report would be very important and having assumptions would be very important. I think I appreciate the work that has been done substantially on getting to positive. And now I think the public really needs a roadmap to how is that accomplished, at least a comparison from I would say first interim, because that was the last time we saw any type of assumptions, but from first interim until the next budget. And thank you very much.

Thank you. Next public speakers.

I'll call the next five. Next five speakers are Arlene Herreta, Teresa Lozac, Anissa Rasheed, Adina Anderson, Asada Olagbala.

Mrs. Asada.

One thing my father taught me, you always have a choice. You always have a choice. Now the choice I have right now is to be put in a position of responding to three separate items at the same time, which is almost an impossibility to do. And I choose not to do it because I take the time to prepare for these meetings and I abide by your timelines I do get overexcited sometimes, very much so, and out of place. And I wish I could do a better job related to that. But this is not fair. And you do have, this is legal though. I read that you can do this and it's not illegal. Why do you choose to do it is the question I have. Particularly when you know ahead of time you don't have that many people participating at these meetings. So I respectfully decline because this is an unfair process for me to participate in related to this particular item.

Thank you. Are there board comments? Director Hutchinson.

Yes, thank you. And I agree with what the last speaker's father taught her. We always have a choice. That's why it's been so frustrating what's been going on because time after time, people have made a choice that's cut out the community and really brought damage and trauma to the district. I wanna point out the reason why there were so many speakers signed up who are not here now is in the agenda, this was agendized to happen at seven o'clock or as soon after as possible. It's now nine o'clock. So at any time over the last two hours, instead of going on to the next item, President Brohard could have had the public hearings at a time where most of those people who signed up were here before, but instead were two hours behind, and now people can't even comment. And that's that people even knew this was happening in the first place, because there wasn't real notice that this public hearing was being redone. and then we show up for a public hearing that's supposed to be redone and there's no presentation for the LCAP so if you're going to redo things then you redo the presentation that's kind of the requirement and actually I was expecting a lot better than that because when this was presented in an out of compliant way a week ago I asked questions about the LCAP report for example how come there weren't any numbers in the report How do we make the correlation between the LCAP plan and the budget? I was told by Diana Sherman that there'd be a spreadsheet available that listed out all of those numbers. I don't see that included here. It wasn't emailed to me. So what happened to that question that I asked last week? Superintendent Sadler, what happened to that document, a spreadsheet we were told by staff last week would be presented? Actually, last week on Wednesday, we were told it would be available the next day on Thursday. So it's not like a rhetorical question. Where is that? We were promised. And I'll take the silence for an admission that, again, nobody did that work. this is really scary what's happening here we all just heard the peace act report where they talked about for two years they've been bringing up issues that haven't been addressed they brought up questions about the budget process and there and and here we are and the beat continues so this isn't compliant really nothing in this meeting looks compliant there's no numbers here and again superintendent sadler Diana Sherman promised at our last board meeting that the following day there'd be a spreadsheet available for the costing and the changes, specifically for supplemental and concentration, but implied for the other things on the LCAP plan. And when I asked, I was told explicitly it would be available the next day. So where is that document and how can the community find anything with the numbers that we were promised?

Thank you, are there any other board questions?

I just asked a question of Superintendent Sadler, so we're not going to get an answer to that? We're not going to ask staff to come and present it? I know people are used to just ignoring me, but I just asked a specific question based on what I was promised by staff at the last meeting.

I'm going to ask our Deputy Superintendent to respond.

for the question it was posted the day of the meeting diana did on the lcap site and we'll we'll make sure to um send the link so that you have that as well so so that means then when this agenda was put out when this agenda was made on sunday and posted why wasn't it included with this agenda to update everything so we could have the information and so the community could have it

Could you ask that question again? I'm sorry.

So if you're saying that it was posted last week Then why wasn't it included in the packet for tonight's public hearing with the LCAP because if it was posted last week It was available when this agenda was made. So why isn't it included? Why isn't there a hard copy? why hasn't that been made available with everything else if it is available and

especially since I asked about it specifically at the last meeting thank you for your feedback I just want to add one thing that I do think I have been looking at the LCAP website and there is a lot of information on so I mean again we could have that available but it also is available on the website are there any other comments

President, I have my Henry.

Sorry. Sorry. Go ahead.

And just so I understand process. Because we're taking the cap and the proposed budget together. The questions and comments are together. Is that correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Okay, so 1, 1 of the 1st things I'm trying to do is connect the dots between the cap and our budget and at a budget and finance meeting. I asked a question about. You know, the vision for teaching and learning how we're leveraging that in future. Budget decisions and so I feel like this is a, I'm trying to. To do that right now, since it's up 1 question I have because the memo. For the proposed budget states that each school site received a budget 1 pager. My 1st question is, if we can see those, if those can be published. And mostly because I'm assuming they can help us understand how the budget work impacts. Implementation and I could get that I could have that assumption wrong. So that's my 1st question. And then on the equity weighted allocation. Used to determine site budgets I'm assuming. Or can can you help me understand how we're implementing that with the use of the restricted 1st strategy and whether there's any impact there? And then I have other questions, but I'll pause.

I think Ms. Sherman is coming up to answer that question.

Good evening. My name is Diana Sherman. I am the LCAP coordinator, and I will try to address some of those questions, and if I miss them, please let me know. The first is that I believe the one-pagers are posted, although those are done by the fiscal team, and so we're confirming where those can be found. I do know that a quick place to find that information is what we call the OUSD School Site Funding Profile website. And we will make sure that there is a link to that website that is placed on the LCAP page, because that's going to be the easiest place. I can't rattle off the link on the top of my head. But that includes a year-over-year, going back to 2021, I believe, outline of exactly how we've allocated positions and dollars each year by school. It also provides basic demographic information around the unduplicated pupil percentage and also the free and reduced lunch percentage for each site so you can see some of the need and how that is related there. We also, I think you found within the LCAP document, there is a link in the PDF to the funding formulas, and that's the best place to look if you want to know very specifically how a particular investment is allocated and what is used for that investment. You can also go to last year's LCAP to find the 2526 methodology.

Thank you. Are there any further questions director?

Yeah, just a quick clarifying question. So there's a few things coming. Happening at the same time, so 1 question is how you reconcile the planning with the budget development and what the dynamic relationship is like, what's driving what and how it's negotiated.

Sure. So that's an iterative relationship and it starts way back in the fall as we're doing enrollment projections and as we are looking at what the priorities are going to be for the upcoming year. And at that point in November and December typically decisions are made by the senior leadership team under the direction of the superintendent around which investments are going to continue, which might change based on the funding that is available. And sometimes that involves tradeoffs as we saw this year including determining whether we're going to continue a particular staffing position or change the formula in some way. And I think that has happened in some version every year I've worked on this, which goes back to the 1920 school year. Each year we have had to figure out how to adapt the formulas, both to include new funding, to include funding that is ending, and to shift priorities as different leaders are looking at that work. So that's one piece. That happens in the winter. We provide one-pagers typically out to schools for principals to review right before the winter break. And from that point forward, it is a budget development kind of mad process through January and February to get all of the budgets in. So at that point, we are collecting from schools the information about how they want to use staffing allocations that may be somewhat flexible, like teacher positions, like what are the particular teachers that will be funded. and also how they're going to use the dollars that are allocated to those sites. So they may determine if they, for instance, have a school site council that has voted to use their Title I differently for the upcoming year than the current year. We capture all of that in the budget sessions, which are held in the winter months. And then from that, we get the roll-up of everything that has been entered into a central department or a school site budget. That feeds the LCAP, and so I get a gigantic spreadsheet of that from the fiscal team as soon as budget sessions close and begin working on that. Where we are right now in that process is we have the budget model, which is actually in ESCAPE, which is our financial system. So we are able to pull directly from ESCAPE to see exactly how much does each position cost, exactly how much is budgeted for each action that may not be a position. And that is reconciled with the LCAP. I just did probably the second to last pull of that this morning, and that will be a revised draft. I think as we've talked about in the PSAC context, we do post upcoming drafts in between the public hearing and the final adoption so that folks who are interested can review that. You can also see the line items as they were last week in the spreadsheet that is on the LCAP website, ousd.org slash LCAP, which I did post during the close of the meeting last week. That is also provided as part of adoption. We will do the final version there. So it's a process basically of continually adjusting as we find out, for instance, if a position costs a little more, something may have to be adjusted down. And you also heard PSAC speak to that at a higher level in their feedback, which was around having to reduce the non-labor investments in order to ensure that we have funding to cover the rising cost of positions based on our new bargaining agreements. So that is a piece that has impacts on some specific LCAP actions more heavily than others, because some of our actions are predominantly funded with non-labor, meaning not people, investments, and some of them are almost entirely people. So that's where we see that discrepancy.

And so is it safe to say that what we're looking at tonight reflects our best thinking of how we'll fulfill the LCAP, meet the goals with the resources that we have? Yes. Okay, thank you. And then on, and thank you so much. I mean that even though I was rushing to my next questions. On the budget and just thinking about the conversation we need to have to make a decision on the 24th, I think that one of the most important things is building out or continuing to build out the stabilization plan since that's the roadmap. And I think I've said some of, at least some of this before, but I want to reiterate it. I think that We iteratively iteratively have improved that plan because now you have like a status. But right now, a lot of what's on the report, I think there's like three parts where we actually have real numbers, but in a lot of places it says TBD. So I think. either having real numbers so we can have real estimates around target savings that we plan to generate from each individual strategy or what the plan is or synopsis is around the work that we need to do in order to get the target. Related to that is like a timeline of the implementation of those strategies when we might be able to see those manifested in our budget reports and can begin tracking them. I also think that knowing whether those savings are one time or ongoing so that we can understand the structural work that we're doing simultaneously with this, I think it's also important And then one big thing, especially after PSAC's presentation that I wanna flag is that I think the way we talk about community engagement in the financial stabilization plan is limited and I wanna see that more built out as well. Given how much feedback we've we've received on transparency when I say community engagement, it's like, at every level of our system from network soups, principals, teachers or staff, like, everybody and students and families and some of the folks who are likely in the room tonight. So. The other thing so that was a comment, I think additional context would also be helpful. I've heard other people say it, but budget assumptions that are driving the decisions that are currently reflected in the proposed budget. I don't think I've seen that. And if I've missed it, someone wants to flag that for me tonight. That would be great. And then, because so much contingency language is built into the proposed budget today at the very least. us clarifying and further elucidating what the implementation risks are, I think is also really important. And related to that, we've acknowledged that many of the strategies that are in the financial stabilization plan have been things that we've attempted or that have been proposed in prior years. And so I wanna know what is our current diagnosis of like why we haven't done that work in the past so that we understand and you've built into the plan, the strategies we plan to deploy to overcome some of those challenges we've encountered. So I wanna know what the diagnosis is and I wanna know that should be part of the plan that we're looking at, especially if we're trying to approve a budget with a deficit. And I can get on board with sort of like whether that deficit is manageable, but I think some of these other questions should be answered if we want to go into the school year with a deficit like this.

Thank you.

Are there any other board comments?

A point of clarification, especially since nobody even attempted to answer Director Berry's questions there. In the packet for this public hearing for the budget, There are three different sets of budget numbers in here. There's one set of budget numbers with the SACS form for next year's budget. There's a different set of numbers in the multi-year projection in the SACS form. And there's a third different set of numbers in the presentation. So my question is, which of these three sets of numbers are the real numbers that we're talking about? Because they're different. There's both different total expenditures and total revenues in each of the three sets of numbers within this presentation. So which is the final budget out of these three sets of numbers, especially since only one set of numbers even lists the $30 million deficit for next year? So are we supposed to look at the numbers from the presentation, the numbers from the SACS form, or the numbers from the multi-year projection, and then according to which one we're supposed to look at, what is the projected deficit for next year? So again, this is an important question, Superintendent Sadler. There's three different sets of numbers in here, which I don't understand. Which one is the real set of numbers? Because this is supposed to be a public hearing on the final budget. And I brought this up at the last meeting a week ago, and it's really troubling that there's still three different sets of numbers in here. So I would like clarification on which numbers are we considering our final budget numbers from within here.

I'm going to let Superintendent Sadler speak to that, but I do want to address, I do believe Diana Sherman did answer Director Berry's.

Not the second one, she just asked questions.

I'm sorry, Director Berry. May I speak? Yes. Are you talking to me, Director Berry? I'm sorry.

Or anybody who's talking now. Thank you. I did pause, not because I was necessarily finished, but if there were answers to any of the questions, I would love to have that discussion. and then there are additional questions that i have related to like making sure because i even just threw out 30 million just now and i also noticed that it could be 42.5 million um because i saw that number as well and i don't know what number is right so there's um some curiosity that i share with what director hutchinson said but i hadn't gone there yet because i was waiting to hear if you all had anything to say about the other questions i raised thank you tara

Thank you. And so first I want to apologize to you, Director Berry. I thought Diana had answered your question, and then what you were saying to me I thought was what you want to see coming up. So I didn't hear it as a question. If I had, I would have answered. I just took notes on, yes, bringing assumptions, yes, bringing the plan with the actual dollars in it coming up. at the adopted budget. I took other notes that you said and understood it to be what you wanted to see coming up. So was there a question there that I didn't hear you and may have just not heard it correctly?

Yeah, I honestly can't remember if I framed it as a question or as a statement. I think I framed it as a question. But what you're saying to me now is that you plan to sort of present that information on the 24th. And I do believe that's adequate. And I'll just look forward to seeing it. And hopefully we get those materials in advance so I can look at them to prepare for the meeting on the 24th.

Yes.

Yes. And Director Hutchinson, thank you for your question. There's three different reports and each report gives different information. So just if you let me. The MYP is where you'll see the projected deficit. And you wouldn't see it, it's not. It was in the presentation as well, are you saying that those?

It's not listed in the presentation.

You're saying that the numbers are all different? Yes. And so what I'm trying to say to you is that when you put, we don't make up, numbers just make it up so when you're putting it in the sacks it goes into the sacks forums and it comes back out so that's we're not giving you different

The numbers are different in these reports. So the SACS report for next year's budget has different numbers than the SACS multi-year projection. And it's the same form. So our draft budget for next year should have the same notation and unrestricted general fund as the multi-year projection. And they're different sets of numbers. So it's not true that you put them in and it comes out different. Which one of these are real numbers? Because they're not all the same.

All of them are real numbers and the reports are generated at with different.

They can't all be the real numbers for our final budget because they're all different.

It's the reports are different. The reports are asking for showing different information.

not the multi-year projection and our draft budget for next year. They are both showing the same exact information in a SACS form. One of them has projected expenditures of $869 million plus a $30 million deficit, which should be added into the total expenditures. The other one says $974, which is $30 million off. they should both be the same because they're both in the sax forms which are both different than your presentation in the powerpoint which doesn't delineate a deficit any place so i'm saying there are three different sets of numbers and if staff and the superintendent is saying no actually it's the same then that's a bigger problem because anyone can read these documents and see that the numbers are different And I emailed this to you to both to you directly and to the superintendent a week ago to let you know once these numbers were released that there's three different sets of numbers in the presentation. And it's not going to work to gaslight me and try to tell me, oh, it's all really the same when I'm looking at it and it's not.

I'm not trying to gaslight you.

So which one is our, how can we have a final presentation of the final budget and you're giving us three different sets of numbers that mean different things? How does that work? So I just again wanted on the record this statutorily required public hearing on the final budget we're now having three sets of numbers presented I emailed them to you ahead of time I will be sharing them publicly later you can't say that it's all the same and again it shows how this meeting isn't compliant when you can't even just have one final budget in the document

i'm going to ask dr frutos to come online good evening board members can you hear me yes we can hear you

Good evening. Let me just very briefly address some of the questions from the board directors. Different budget documents serve different purposes, and I know the board knows this. A board presentation summarizes the items for public understanding. The one that matters is the SAC Form 01, which reports fund level revenues, expenditures, and the fund balance. and in a state required format. The MYP reports future year projections, as you know, and it's based on assumptions. And obviously we all have gone through the cash flow reports. I heard somebody mentioned final budget and statutorily that's a misrepresentation and it's actually inaccurate. A draft budget is presented at the hearing And the staff and the board have a couple of weeks to make adjustments or revisions as necessary. So the whole concept of a final budget being presented in advance is an absolute misrepresentation of the actual process.

Not at all what I was asking, sir. Excuse me. Our board bylaws say that at the end of May, a draft budget is supposed to get forward. I'm not going to let the consultants come up here and run this game on us anymore. So in the SACS form for next year's budget, there's no deficit listed, and the numbers are different than the multi-year projection. We're paying him $400 an hour for this? So who's gonna explain the difference in here? Who's gonna explain it? He's not gonna tell me how this process is supposed to work. I've sat through this process year after year, and I'm sorry, I know it better than he does. So we missed our board bylaw requirement to have a draft budget. A draft budget by the end of May, the state statute says there must be a public hearing, which for us serves as our first read on a final budget before we can have the final vote on that budget. And my point is, when there's three different budgets in here, this ain't a first read, or at least tell me which budget I'm using for this first read. And it doesn't get more basic, Superintendent Sadler, it doesn't get more basic than the question of there's three different sets of numbers in here. Which ones are the real numbers? And what's being told to me, it's just not accurate. And so the form he said to use, the first SACS form, Then I'll use that, which is different than the multi-year projection. But the problem with that SACS form is there's no budget deficit for next year listed on it, even though last week we were told we had a $30 million deficit. So what's really going on with these numbers? And it is shameful that there's not a district staff person that can answer this basic question. I can ignore that people don't answer my emails and people haven't spoken to me. People want to be rude when they come up here, but it doesn't get easier than this. I'm asking which of the sets of numbers are the real ones? And I don't want to hear it from a consultant. I want to hear it from a district staff person who I can hold responsible for what they're going to say. So which sets of numbers are real? Because if it's that first tax form, there's no deficit listed on there. This can't be our first read because the numbers are going to change then on the 24th. So what is happening and which budget numbers? And please don't have him come to answer me anymore.

So again, California Education Code 42-103 requires the governing board to hold a public hearing on a proposed budget, not a final budget.

As the district staff, not him who's not even in the room, he's not even here to address, And I have serious issues with what he said to me in the past. So who, superintendent, you are responsible for this packet from staff. I am asking you directly, which of the budget numbers in here, of the three sets of numbers, are the real ones for me and the community to use, so we know what we need to adjust coming into the final budget. Otherwise, if we just show up with numbers on the 24th, that means we have no ability to make an adjustment to it.

Can we just take a breath and let the answer, let our staff answer this question?

Yes, I would love for staff to answer. Dr. Frutos is not district staff.

Board President, I'm happy to answer the question.

Excuse me, I asked a question of Superintendent Sadler.

I think we really have to stop interrupting people.

Can we just let- So I'll do it when you stop interrupting me. Superintendent Sadler, I asked you a really basic question that any superintendent should be able to answer. We're going to recess for five minutes. Okay, we're going to recess because we don't like what Mike's saying.

Instead of answering what our budget- Mr. Rakeshaw, can we have a roll call to establish quorum, please?

Yes, on the roll call to establish quorum following the recess. Student directors are absent. Director Lara?

Present.

Director Williams? Director Hutchinson?

Present.

Director Berry?

Present.

Director Thompson? Present. Vice President Batchelor? Present. President Brohard? here okay quorum present director williams just arrived he's present present sir thank you uh the public meeting the public hearing is now closed

Wait, wait, I was still waiting for an answer to the question that I asked. Excuse me, point of clarification. I was still waiting for an answer to the question that I asked the superintendent. And you can call a recess to try to avoid that, but where was the answer to the question I asked? And actually, the questions that Director Berry were asking also. So I very specifically asked the superintendent to tell me which set of numbers are the real numbers in here. I didn't get an answer. I had a staff member be rude and disrespectful towards me, and now President Brohard is trying to just move on again without answering. I am. So Superintendent Sadler, I would expect you to step in and clearly state what our budget numbers are for next year. Which form do we look at to use those numbers? Because that's how we're compliant under a public hearing. So other people can try to gaslight and try to talk over. It doesn't get more basic than this. And when people can't say what the numbers are for next year's budget, That's why we're in the problem that we have right now, because we have no way to pass a balanced budget by June 30th, because there's still a deficit in these numbers. If this is being intentionally done to try to hide that fact, then we move into more serious accountability. So by you saying nothing, you're okay with three sets of numbers being in here? And that's what I'll hold you accountable for, Superintendent Sadler.

Director Hutchinson, we have a student who is waiting, I believe, to do the community schools report, is that correct? Okay, and I apologize again for the lateness of the meeting and the decorum on the board. Do you want to come forward?

How about the decorum of staff or yourself? You're the one who caused us to have to do a Brown Act cure today and redo the public hearing. What about your own behavior and how you manage meetings and call a recess in an attempt to try to shut somebody up? It won't work with me.

I'd like to hear from our student and the community school steering report. Do you want to come forward?

What time is it?

Do you need the clicker? Do you have a presentation?

I'm sorry, the clicker is gone. Hi, good evening, board. We are actually item Q. We're the community school steering committee presentation. Is that okay? Do we need a vote or anything to change? Great. Hi, good evening board and community. Thank you so much for waiting and allowing us to present tonight. My name is Sara Shepesh. I am kindergarten at ICS and I am here with Wally Scott and...

SPEAKER 9- Hi board. I am a student at Oakland High School. I'm a rising senior and my name is Lee-Chen Chan and I'm here to represent the student body. I'm one of the four students in this committee.

SPEAKER 10- And Wally is the Black Firing TSA at. Grass Valley. Thank you. Next slide. Oh thank you. So tonight we're gonna do a little short presentation. We're gonna talk about a little bit of who we are, how the background of the committee came together, our work up until now, it's taken a couple of years, and then some time for some feedback from the committee and then recommendations that we're making to the board. So who we are, we are Community Schools Steering Committee. There are four parents, there are four students, one who is here tonight, four members from OEA, from teachers, and four other labor members, including AFSCME, BTCT, SEIU, and UAOS, as well as other staff members from the district. The committee started a little bit before 2023, but it is something that was grown out of the OEA contract that was settled in 2023 with regard to the community schools MOUs. And we were finally able to establish the committee in the fall of last year, 24-25, and talk about trying to get the vacation out of the chat. The purpose of our committee is just to help guide the community schools work so that we have kind of all of the stakeholders involved and we all understand we're all on the same page.

Good evening everybody. So we have three main goals of the steering committee, and these come straight from our collective bargaining agreement with the district, the OEA. The first one is to make recommendations to the board, which we're here to do tonight. The second is to expand student supports and enrichment opportunities, and the last is to support collaborative leadership throughout the district. One of the things we did as a steering committee is we realized through our work that we didn't have a definition of collaborative leadership. And this is something that came up quite a bit. And we realized that it was actually central to what we were doing and that we needed to have a working definition. So we spent a lot of time coming up with a definition as a steering committee. So I just want to highlight the main bullet points. The first one being the authentic engagement. So not just having a meeting with the 10 people who happen to show up and taking their information and running with it, but actually engaging all interest holders. Making sure that input is actually reflected in the decisions that are getting made. Making sure that the community has access and understands the decision-making process. And finally, the authentic action steps. So the steps and decisions that are made are actually reflective of the community agreements and the community decisions. So we've been together for two years. First year primarily was just getting ourselves staffed. We also dedicated a lot of time to putting together our bylaws. We did a little bit of background work about community schools. And we spent time just getting to know each other. This year was really the crux of our work. And we built a lot of background about community schools. Primarily we looked at a lot of things going on in our district, in our community schools. So we did some reading different articles, but we also looked at the APR and the community schools implementation plan just to see what was happening. And we also wanted to see if it was reflective of our experience at our sites. And so we got to see the reports, but also report firsthand as students and administrators, is this actually reflective of what's happening? We were able to find collaborative leadership, and this really culminated in the recommendations that we're going to be sharing with you tonight. The recommendations focus on three main areas. That's engagement, funding, and collaborative leadership. The way we came to these recommendations are through a lot of discussions, a lot of building background, but also really looking at what the reports were saying and making sure that they're reflective of what we saw. So we're going to give you an overview of our recommendations. We encourage you in the future, perhaps at the upcoming retreat, that you take some time and really read them over. We have recommendations, but also we give a background as to why we have these recommendations, and also the expected impact we want them to have. We're just going to go over the recommendations with you tonight.

So first off, we're going to talk about engagement and the way we're going to go about that is firstly considering the diversity of community school sites and to serve a broader range of parents, we want to provide them with family walkthroughs and tours. In doing so, we can be able to receive feedback and also data that we can use to cater to family needs and also to allow for parents to understand how school is for their students and also being able to support them. advocating for their child since they're the ones that have more voice and students are often overlooked. And doing so, we're better able to understand what a community school is and also serve and align the school's vision with what parents need.

We're also making a recommendation regarding funding around the CASP funds. We are encouraging and support, encouraging the district to support schools that are community schools, the CASP funding to allocate like a more, a higher percentage of funds to tier two and three SEL and behavior supports. I read in another presentation that a huge drop happened in OPD calls after the George Floyd resolution, and that's so amazing, but we also need to fund all of the other programs that support that. And I think with that, we will be able to see more community schools and students really thriving with these tier two, especially restorative justice supports, based on looking at suspension rates, which for us, it would really benefit students who are very, very vulnerable in our schools. Another recommendation around funding is to prioritize stability for community and family relations positions, which are... A lot of times these roles are staffed by community and family members, which right there is a huge connection to our community and bringing people in. But that also needs to be funded and supported in all the ways that make it work, which in that we will definitely see increased community engagement even higher than what we already have. And then the last one is we understand that the CASP grant is a five-year grant, which every year it rolls over, and so my school at ICS, this is our last year, we are then gonna be running on the fumes of what we have left over, so supporting advocate, supporting state funding, and asking the state for more funding so that we can continue the work that we've already started, what has taken a long time to get to.

And so lastly, in regards to collaborative leadership, we would like to see the district really support the development and implementation of inclusive and transparent decision making. It happens in the district, but not consistently. And not just at school sites, we'd like to see it throughout the district. You know, we call ourselves a community school district, but it's not often reflected in all aspects of what we do. We'd like to see that more. We'd also like to see the district support sites in really doing a thorough needs and asset assessment. It's really what all the work at community schools is supposed to be grounded in, and again, this is something that happens inconsistently, and oftentimes we see that sites end up putting out fires as opposed to doing long-term planning. And lastly, this is more on communications, just an audit of how communication systems and how we're reaching out to interest holders. I think we're sending messages and making requests, but it's unclear as to who's actually responding and if we're actually getting the interest holders we want to hear from. So we're really doing a thorough reflection on who we're reaching out to and how effective those systems are. Thank you. Are there any questions or comments?

No questions? I have a question, actually. one of the things i think that we've thought a lot about here on community schools is how are decisions made for funding and i think you talked a little bit about it in terms of short-term planning and long-term planning i'm just curious what you saw as you looked at schools throughout the district were there schools that were using their money particularly I don't want to say efficiently, but effectively, because I think the intent of the grant is site-based. did you i guess because the question i have about funding is it feels like we spend lots of money on community schools grant and i'm not always sure it's dealing with the specific issues or needs of each site so i just i'm wondering if you saw instances or sites where you felt that was particularly strong um and it would be worth i think the board to take a field trip and visit those sites you're talking so that's my first question

I would say it's a little unclear. It was easier to see from the reports how it was reflected at our sites. And there was definitely a lot of check boxes, like this group made this decision around this particular activity or project, and it wasn't as, I would say, honest as it could be. I would say, you know, Oak Because they were two schools that merged they had a very thoughtful process and so When they do their planning they go back to that feedback that and the priorities that the their communities set out and so they know You know as something comes up or funding comes in where it's going to be dedicated to because they know the priorities of the community I'd say this is where the needs an asset assessment comes in which Hasn't been happening consistently or if it does it's not a very robust process And so it does become a lot of the stuff we see are very similar. People are funding a coding project or a robotics project, but it's unclear as to whether or not that's actually connected to the needs of the community, the needs of the students, or if it's a priority.

I guess the other question I had, too, is linked to the student report on safety that we heard earlier tonight. And how do you see integrating some of the things that they also raised in that report in community schools? Maybe that's a question for the high school student. Sure, yeah.

So my thoughts on this is, so the previous presenters on safety. They mentioned RJ, and that was also something that came up when we were reviewing papers. And I think part of the connection with their recommendations and ours is funding. So I guess we can allocate some of the funding that we are given and using it towards RJ in sites that need it. And that also connects back to what I was saying. So basically, through parent feedback, it's also important to provide translation services so we can better understand a more diverse set of needs from parents. And by doing so, we're able to assess needs in terms of safety and we can implement RJ services in schools and that depends on the school i guess but overall i think it's important to assess the safety of schools through parents and you can do that through family walkthroughs and tours with translation services thank you and then i'll just add to answer that part of the question like one of the kind of

I think of it as kind of a caveat to community schools funding is that eventually it will end. So building, it's really more about using the money to build capacity for school site staff and teachers and everybody involved. Because at some point the money will run out. So I think like what I've seen at my site is that we've spent money on uh there's a process for parents to get like vetted so they have fingerprints and so they can be at our school longer than this just drop off so what i've what we've seen at ics is that a lot of our parents are coming in and like they're staying longer now we've hired a couple of parents to be noon supervisors now they're being hired as tutors and so we're really like providing that pipeline which definitely costs money to to bring in our community to actually work there

Thank you, Director Williams.

Thank you President Brohard thank you very much for the presentation I really appreciate it and yeah it really I'm really glad that we're talking about this I just really know that the intentions that we have to really make our whole district a community school district is nothing like any other district around so what we're doing is we really are creating the blueprint to do a district-wide community school and i really appreciate that also i just wanted i i didn't see much conversation in here about community school managers and seeing how they play a role in this. I think as Wiley said about the needs assessment, I would be expecting that they would be the folks to be moving that work for the needs assessment and then documenting all those things that need to happen. I think also the challenge we have is that, and I don't know how many community schools we actually, is the whole, all 77? No, I didn't think so. Kinda, sorta? Okay.

Yeah. Short answer is it depends on how you define it. Not all schools have the grant.

Okay.

But all schools are implementing community school elements.

Okay, great. That's perfect. Because what it comes out to is that then we have that number of schools that may have different needs every school has a different need different community different families and those needs may be different and so we're looking at the totality of all those needs right and trying to look at the data to see you know how do we support uh those individual schools that need something particular for that school. So I think there, I'm sure you're doing a lot of conversation about how to make that happen. Really look forward to seeing what the outcomes are. And that last part is, we identify the needs and then at the end, how do we measure outcomes? What would the outcomes look like? Is it increase more students attending school? Lowering chronic absenteeism? Is it more parent participation at the school site? um is it more teachers participating like so from those particular needs to what the outcomes are it'd really be nice to see what that looks like sometimes but i really i'm so ecstatic to see that the committee is moving forward i think that's sarah and i know it's been a long dream of ours for a long time and i'm so like ecstatic right that we're doing it yes thank you very much

Thank you. Are there any other board comments? Director Hutchinson.

Thank you. Oh, okay. Sorry, Director Hutchinson.

Thank you. Sorry, that's why I had to step out of the room for a minute during the beginning of the presentation. Sustainable community schools, not just community schools, but sustainable community schools was something that I care about a lot. I was a part of the national working group that helped develop the pillars that were then adopted by both Eros Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and by NEA nationally. And those pillars called for certain things as we were building sustainable community schools. Unfortunately, OUSD kind of went a different route to get here. But we had already started establishing community schools before those pillars were developed. And then when the state was talking about making grants available, then we aggressively tailored our programs to be able to qualify for as many of the grants as we could. And just about all of our schools that meet the unduplicated threshold have now qualified for those grants. But it's left us with a lot of inefficiencies and a lot of holes as we look to do this, especially district wide. And so for example, for the national model of sustainable community schools, it's not having a community school manager on an administrative pay scale. There was a different model created. That's put a lot of strain on us as a district once that's been established. and so one of the things i tried to do in 2023 when the board passed a policy on school redesign if you read the policy written into the policy was school redesign based on a sustainable community schools model and designated brookfield as the first school to go through that process unfortunately the district didn't follow through with that and instead put a montessori at brookfield And so where we stand right now, we don't have policies as a district to even reinforce the idea that we want to be a community school district. And especially now as we're in this financial crisis, it's become even more apparent. A resolution that I tried to introduce months ago looked to codify it. It would have had the board designate what threshold of unduplicated students we're looking at to designate a community school. Or are we just gonna designate schools that are receiving the state grant as community schools? We had a policy that would build in the fact if the grant disappears, then those schools might not be that model. And also, it would address schools that currently are not receiving a grant, which then don't receive the funding to allow them to go to a community school model. And so as we're looking to do this, and there's all of these pillars and frameworks on the books nationally, it's been really difficult because we've been playing catch up to try to fill in the gaps. So what I would really like to see for us as a district, have an overall policy for community schools. A designation on who's going to be called that, what that means, and an explicit determination of how we are going to address the fact that that funding might expire at a certain date. I would highly recommend we adopt the pillars of sustainable community schools nationally it's the same pillars NEA adopted years ago unfortunately that's not what we've seen here so hopefully this committee can help push for the board to do its part to establish a firm policy so we know these things so we can replicate it and so there's clarity district-wide what's a community school which schools are designated that way and how are we going to sustain these programs that we all feel are important Last thing, one of the reasons why I'm really a backer of the sustainable community schools model is it built into that model a joint decision making process. It built it into the school redesign process with a community team to lead that process that then has power vested in them going forward. And again, since we never did that, we now resort to a plan where it flows through a community school manager who's on an administrative pay scale and is kind of with the principal. That's not really, in a lot of ways, the main intent behind a lot of these programs. So just hopefully this is great that we're getting this reporting out, but I would love to put in your laps and everyone's laps here. How do we create the lasting policy in the district to ensure something that we all value is able to continue indefinitely into the future? Thank you.

Thank you.

Director, Director Batchelor.

thank you appreciate the presentation and really appreciate our students as well for engaging in this process and our staff um i'm really excited about what you've presented here today and i think what would be really helpful is um you know the legislature when we had our lobby visits um you know had some clear ideas in mind around transitional kindergarten around some of the state priorities and community schools is definitely a state priority I wonder if there's a way and I know I hate to ask this but like to have almost like a one pager to showcase like the work that we've done and possibly even start having those lobby visits with legislators over the summer and into the next school year because I think that they're really excited about these programs I don't think that they know what's literally happening at our school sites and how they are transformed by these types of programs so in order to have us really advocate for them to be like long-term like this isn't a five-year deal this is like a multi-year a future budget I think it's really going to be important for us to be the ones that showcase these things I don't know if that can be in a video format or some sort of document that we can also share as we're doing lobby visits, and I would welcome being able to partner with you all to have that advocacy. I'm also curious to see, and I don't know who would be able to answer this question, because I know that we have school sites that have community school dollars, but we also have what the state has provided us with equity multiplier dollars for school sites that have had there's different criteria for that so i'm wondering like how we use those dollars to like best maximize the additional dollars that we get for school sites that um that get those dollars i don't know if you all would know that or miss bustamante behind you would have some thoughts around how school sites use those additional dollars

have to go back and do a little research because the planning process for community schools takes place earlier than sometimes the equity dollar confirmations come through. So we can go back and see how they're leveraging and funding them.

Yeah and I feel like if we were able to articulate how we're using those dollars as well we can see if they could be like multi-year because I do realize that some school sites fundamentally because of what their program is will get those dollars every single year but other school sites will not. and hopping in and out of a project is just, that is what we're trying to avoid. And so I think being able to provide some of that information so as we have those conversations, we can just very clearly articulate the need for ongoing additional dollars for the work that we're doing and that legislators can visibly see what are some of the ways that our schools are being transformed by those dollars, thank you.

Any other comments? Thank you very much. And again, I apologize for it being so late. I know it's a school night for everyone. Thank you. Next on the agenda is item Q2, which is 2025-26 school safety. Oh, public, I'm sorry. Are there any public speaker comments?

Yes, Madam President. We have Sheila Haynes. I see her hand. I will allow her to speak.

Hi, you hear me okay?

Yes, we can hear you. Hi, I just walked back in so I'm not sure if our picture showed from our last meeting on Cinco de Mayo, but I'm honored to be a member of this committee and I appreciate the various backgrounds of all of our members just sharing different perspectives of how to improve school experiences. I appreciate the welcome environment at all the meetings, even my son has been to a few of them. As well, as a discussion about ongoing goals of the schools with the hopes that all schools can function as a community school model, I continue to stress and appreciate the focus on inclusive services for all students as well as keeping the focus on restorative practices. All through this meeting tonight, there's been many discussions around violence prevention. So there's still uncertainty about the budget. At the very least, student staff and community should feel safe. So I just look forward to ongoing meetings with this committee and hope for better changes moving forward with not letting grants roll over or be used in ways that don't really support our students. So thank you for the presentation.

Thank you. With that, next on the agenda is item Q2, which is the 25, 26, excuse me, school safety update. And I believe we have a report from Mr. Allegra.

Perfect. Good evening, President Brohard, board members, Superintendent Sadler, and the community. Hopefully today after you've heard from our student presentation and all the other ways safety has come up in the different presentations around budget, around community schools, this is just how some of our systems are working in the school district throughout the school year. And these were really laid out by the priorities created by the George Floyd resolution. We'll also be sharing some of the focuses that we have accomplished from the last year, also some new priorities coming in for the next school year built off of some of the student engagement we've done and some of the other listed safety updates we need to do. And again, always emphasizing that we are still creating systems and capacities for this, for prevention, intervention, student wellness, and reducing that reliance on the law enforcement response. So everything we do in the safety work is really grounded by these guiding principles. First, it's that commitment to creating schools that are places of joy, inclusion, belonging, and beauty. Second, is the direction that was established by the George Floyd resolution in partnership with the Black Organizing Project that called upon the district to not just eliminate its school police, but to reduce the reliance of overall policing to build those systems that support the students through restorative justice practices, anti-racist practices, and have a focus on mental health and community-centered approaches. And finally, how we operate our day-to-day facilities, our school culture and climate at school sites, how we respond to emergencies, and what type of central supports we have on campus. So again, it's not just important just to acknowledge the GFR work, but to continue to dig deep and highlight what it means for our safety infrastructure overall. With the removal of the police department, we had to create new systems to still respond to the daily incidents that happen on campus. We now use a lot of our in-house services. We've redirected the funding and expertise to address and expand upon the behavioral mental health supports and the student support services. These systems help create our village response teams, on-school sites, our internal intake line, and our central office coordinated response. From that, we have been able to see a dramatic drop in the number of calls we make to police since implementation of the GFR. That means less negative interactions with law enforcement and more positive and appropriate interventions to address the student issues, their root cause issues for students and the community. It also reflects some of our capacity right now to respond to situations using internal staff, our behavioral support staff, our restorative practices, and our community partnerships that we have with the city or the county before law enforcement involvement is necessary. Over the past year, we've continued investing in both the people and those systems. On the system side, we strengthened tools like our intake line that we'll dig into deeper, our intervention guides that we have for principals, our discipline matrix, and our village response team structures, which are supposed to respond to incidents on campus. On the staffing side, we maintained nearly 90 culture keepers and culture and climate ambassadors across the district, and we provided them with professional development and leadership, professionalism, and de-escalation. We will be continuing to refine and expand on those trainings based on a lot of the community feedback we've received, especially from our students around our culture keepers. We've also trained more than 300 administrators in the beginning of the school year through our leadership institute. Over the year, we have onboarded approximately 700 new staff members and we've taught them what our safety framework is and what our police-free school guide is. We've trained over 500 staff in human trafficking prevention continue to expand on the partnerships with the behavioral health providers and the community organizations that exist. A critical component of this is our OUSC central intake line. The intake line provides a single point of contact for administrators to call when the situation escalates. From there, our team coordinates an appropriate response whether that involves behavioral health professionals, culture and climate staff, central office support, community responders, MACRO, CAT, emergency services or when we need to call 9-1-1 and There are times where we legally must call the police and we've created those guides for our staff to navigate those incidents when it is necessary This year alone the intake line had received over 877 calls Nearly one-third were health related including behavioral health and medical concerns and This includes consultations on behavioral needs or suicide risk assessments, which we saw the highest number of. The next largest category involved investigative matters, such as surveillance requests, CPS reporting, or law enforcement related inquiries, where law enforcement may need videos, they may need other information on students for incidents that happen. The next is calls involving student conduct, which represented 9% of all of our incidents. And then many of the challenges that our schools face are still being addressed here, whether it's investigative student conduct or operations or adult conduct, which we have seen a large increase of this year as well. And this talks about, for all of those type of calls that we receive in the breakdown, what services we may apply to those. And then we talked a little bit about whether it's central culture climate ambassadors, whether we need a threat assessment team to come out. whether it's our student support and safety staff, or community crisis responders, or if we need to call an external partner. And here we're gonna just briefly kind of walk through what a day of an incident may look like. Imagine a student is rumored to have a knife based on social media activity. Most of these concerns come to our administrators first, so they're typically the first to handle an incident. That school administrator will call the intake line, A central culture and climate ambassador and the behavioral team help support during the search and the threat assessment. That student discloses to us that they're carrying a knife because of a safety concern to and from school in transit. That student support and safety team provides discipline consultation and given the presence of a knife, a disciplinary hearing may be required. but that student support and safety team also provide a reentry circle and a safety planning process which lays out the support for the imminent concerns how to get to and from school. Planning includes engagement of that family, of a trusted adult on campus, members of the village response team, and any potentially network superintendents as well. A school staff and supervision plan is then developed that lays out the ongoing safety measures that we have to implement for the student and to keep the campus safe. This may include a supervised pickup or drop off, as well as a cost referral that results in supports like behavioral health services. After that school program engagement, they may connect to a life coach, may have additional parent engagement, and or an RJ process. With those supports and progress monitoring, including reports from the life coach, they have a decrease in the high-risk behavior, they have an improved student-adult relationship, a positive engagement on campus, and eventually lead to graduation. Historically, this type of response may have immediately focused on law enforcement involvement. today's schools can coordinate and with our team at the central office to really address that underlying issue of the student's fear, trauma, and ultimately safety concerns in the community. As you've heard from many departments today and even here in the scenario, safety is not just a responsibility of three of us here, Emily Zanoli, who ran the safety committee, Misha Karagasha, who is our director of safety as well, who presented a few weeks ago around expulsion and suspension data, Safety is really supported through an ecosystem that includes behavioral health, restorative justice, MTSS, special education, our emergency preparedness team, our risk management team, school teams, the student leadership groups, and then many other partners as well. This is the umbrella of that ecosystem and the investments we've made to each of those departments and how we interact with those departments. And while our focus is still on that prevention and the intervention, there are situations where law enforcement is necessary. During the 25-26 school year, police activity on campuses remained relatively limited. We had three on-campus school-related arrests. We had one on-campus non-school-related arrest, which means it was not related to a school issue. Five off-campus school-related arrests, which means it was an issue that started on campus, which led to an arrest when they're at home. and five off-campus school-related detainments. These students were detained to a school-related issue, and they were questioned, but they were not arrested. And again, these are the priorities that were brought to the board last year. This was before I was here, so one of the first things they did was hiring this position, the Executive Director of Safety. We also wanted to make sure we expanded on our school threat assessment protocol to the community school managers, which we did, as well as our school safety teams. He explained expanded on the village response teams And we made sure that they weren't just writing a plan that they were implementing that plan and we provided several trainings throughout the year The most notable one is was really well attended one was around de-escalating adults on campus We did a workplace violence training which was in compliance with the new bill that came into the last school year again expanding on what that culture keeper training is and We did a assessment for our large events, which is our graduations and our OAL events. OAL hosted a training in the beginning of the school year for our culture and climate keepers on how they will handle events. And again, we built more partnerships with the city agencies. We were at the Ed Partnerships Committee meeting presenting on safety. We had several meetings with the city managers, with the deputy chiefs of OPD, with our CAP members of the county, as well as other partners in the city and the county level. For next year, we want to make sure that we focus our priority on strengthening reentry supports. For students that are returning from expulsion or justice involved, we want to make sure we're expanding restorative justice responses to adult conflicts. We'll be implementing a peer restorative justice at the middle school level, where we've seen a lot of conflict. We'll be increasing intensive life coaching supports and continuing the district-led violence interrupter work at the high schools, which was created by the DVP. We want to expand on that student voice from that student committee that you heard earlier today and expand on the members. We already had some eager members from a presentation the students did on Monday at Castlemont, where Castlemont and Fremont wanted to make sure they were represented. We also have to implement requirements of Senate Bill 1318, which emphasizes mental health supports and furthers the limit on involving law enforcement. And again, as you saw and heard through many presentations today, it's very complex work to be able to handle safety. And it is continuously evolving, whether it's within our budget, whether it's within all the services we provide and the departments that help. And continuing the GFR work is not just reducing the incidents that we have on campus. It is building those systems and that capacity to make sure that our students feel safe, connected, supported, and engaged in learning, which our students have asked for as well. That progress this year reflects on the dedicated school staff, the central office teams that support the work, our community partners, our students, and our families as we look to close out the year. Thank you and happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Are there any public comments?

Yes, Madam. Yes, Madam Presidents. We have three. Sheila Haynes, Jonathan Mates-Mutchin, and Asada Olukwala. Two of those members I do see online. I will call Jonathan Mates-Mutchin first and Asada Olukwala.

Okay.

Thank you.

Good evening, board directors and superintendent. You know, this is it's been a challenging few years for for me and my student student and students at Skyline High School. I you know, there were a few moments of the presentation that, you know, just bring to me, the reliance that we have on our administrators to do this very difficult work. And what I'm feeling tonight is that we're not, I don't know that those onsite staff are really being supported in the way they need to be supported. in some of these really difficult instances. And I don't know what the right answers are, but in the moments after the shootings at Skyline, definitely the support of our community did not feel like it was there. The district did not like listen to our, the parents did not feel heard. you know, and it was a really serious matter and it was taken care of better in previous incidences from years before. I've been at Skyline for a long time, as you guys know, and the last time it did not go well. And I also just wanted to uplift that what we say, what I see over and over again at Skyline is we need the adult presence to actually be present for the students. And that's what I feel is the failure at the high school level. If the if the adults that are paid to be there are connecting and doing their job I think that we would have a much better success. Thank you.

DIRECTOR RIVERA- Thank you. Ms. Asada.

FRED PODESTA. Next is Asada Olegbala thereafter. Sheila Haynes Asada Olegbala allow them to speak.

Can you hear me?

Hello?

Yes.

Hi, we can hear you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm wondering if the district still has a relationship with the city's Office of Violence Prevention, where they have violence interrupters and case managers assigned to certain schools. I didn't hear in the presentation if that still exists. I'm concerned about the annual safety plans that are presented. Those safety plans do not have any detail of how they're gonna handle safety issues. And I think we could do a better job of developing safety plan with specific issues related to each school. The safety plan is very generic. I'm concerned about your policy of volunteers and not necessarily requiring everyone volunteering have a background check. That is something you really don't have the ability to do because the state requires that every volunteer has a background check. You created a policy that doesn't allow that to happen with every volunteer. As it relates to the safety of individuals who are riding our buses and what kind of incidents can happen, how we can deal with that. If a child has an encounter that impedes their well-being, I don't know how that's dealt with. I am concerned about the Oakland Police Department's You say that you make calls to them, but you also have Oakland Police Department having to deal with students when they're not in school, and that's truancy. And they have a required stop data report that every month comes out, and they divulge students who are stopped by the police because they're truant. And what we're gonna do with that, I don't know. And lastly, I would hope that you would deal with this issue of having our culture keepers have a voice on any safety plan from their perspective being presented. They play an important role. What they perceive is necessary, what they have dealt with. I appreciate the director doing whatever he's doing, but we need to see from our culture keepers what their recommendations are. Thank you.

Do you want to address any of those, Mr. Allegra?

So for the question around the DVP, we do work with the city Department of Violence Prevention. We did put on an RFP for continuing the services that they implemented for the last four years to keep those services, whether it's the violence interrupter, life coach, or gender-based violence specialist for our high schools. The other question around... Safety plans we are looking at those safety plans as specifically the one I know this Assata has talked about is around skyline We met with the city last week or and the deputy fire chief as well around how we can better plan on evacuation for fire We do have a meeting next week as well to continue that conversation as well with the city emergency services staff Around the question there was a third question blanking out right now

I think it was on culture keepers being included in the plan.

So we have included our central ambassadors right now and part of the training plans. We did survey them. We did have monthly meetings around what type of training our culture keepers could potentially need. We will be hosting our trainings in the beginning of the school year for our culture keepers. and developing a year-long training plan for them. We identified some of the things that we think every outstanding culture keeper is and how we can train towards that goal, whether it's deescalating, whether it's knowing how to interact with students, how to build the relationships, how to implement RJ practices on campus. That is something that we have worked with our central ambassador teams who go out to the multiple sites to talk to our culture keepers to figure out what the needs are there.

Thank you. Are there any board comments?

Director Hutchinson. Madam President, there was another speaker. Sheila Haynes, I'll allow them to speak.

I'm sorry, Ms. Haynes.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can hear you.

Oh, hi, thank you. So I appreciate the report highlighting behavior support and the ongoing restorative practices I continue to hear about with most presentations. Student safety just has to be at the center. I asked the board to consider my resolution as the arts and language are proven ways to keep our students engaged, learning and with positivity, their minds to be shaped in a positive way. music and arts is critical in shaping their mindsets. And I have decades of experience in music, writing and vocal expression. And it's really critical that Oakland stand for a cultural of respect. There's really been a chronic problem of common decency due to home environments, school environments, workplace, even in the workplace. I mean, but it's, it's it's important whatever environment people are in that the leaders of those environments even businesses i mean they have to enforce respect and i have stressed over and over again as outlined in my resolution that students have to feel safe and valued and respected And so I'm hoping that you can at least mandate a loving environment with positive words that doesn't cost money. I'm just really concerned even from the report last week on prop 28. Just the lack of. Transparency and numbers, and I'm looking forward to getting a more detailed report about the arts in October, but it's clear from the report last week that staffing and. services aren't available for our students as it should be. And as the funding allows for, and if the district doesn't prioritize, then, you know, more of our students will not get the support that they need and music and art should be looked at as therapeutic because when it's done on a consistency, our students can just remain in a really positive mindset. So I just continue to ask you to please consider my resolution and, um, It's kind of similar to the Pledge of Allegiance in terms of what I'm asking for, that daily embrace of just getting together and just reinforcing love and respect. It's important that we engage in a positive way with each other. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Haynes. Board comments? Director Hutchinson?

yes thank you um i wish the presentation was earlier in the evening both when the students were here but also just more people in attendance paying attention um but but i know that's not on you so thank you for the the presentation I think it's clear to everyone that we have achieved the stated goal of the George Floyd resolution, which was to eliminate the police force from the district, and at the same time greatly reduce police interactions for our students. And so as we saw from the numbers, we used to average roughly 2,000 calls a year, and those calls were made to the district police. And when we used to have those reports and you look through the reasons, an overwhelming majority of the reasons were for mental health services, 5150s, students leaving campus, runners, or even perimeter checks of the school. And so to see that we have this, we've achieved what really was the goal, the original intent of the resolution is really good to see. Again, I want to remember and make sure everyone remembers Raheem Brown. and i told the story before when the students were here uh... not only was raheem brown killed by an ousd police officer uh... then that officer stayed on the district police force so for years coming to the school board meeting he used to actually work the front door And everyone used to have to walk by an officer that we knew had killed one of our students in order to attend the meeting. Even the times that Raheem Brown's family came to board meetings, they had to encounter the officer they knew had killed their son. And so we've really moved forward and that's a really good thing. we need to be able to do though a lot better and and hopefully again fill in some gaps and so I really want to lift up like the students said the importance of having trusted adults in our schools I'm really worried because of our budget situation here as a district that we're going to lose some of the services we we have that we're going to lose our violence interrupters and some of these other programs that have really paid dividends. And it's part of the collateral damage as we've failed to manage our finances the correct way. We also still need to really have a solution to off our security, especially of our sites. And that's another piece that's just never been addressed. And we wind up spending a lot of extra money trying to take care of it on the back end instead of having a proactive plan. But really quickly, I just want to tell two stories that really highlight the concerns and what we need to do. When I heard from the Skyline parents over the last few months, they've been very disappointed because they felt like they never had the follow up that they were promised. And we have to be able to do better than that. The board has to be able to do better than that, and the superintendent and staff need to be able to do better than that. There was also an incident at Cleveland Elementary School a few weeks ago where somebody came on campus and in front of the students on campus, the police came and apprehended that individual. Luckily, there was no real threat of danger to everyone, but the kids were locked down. Many of the kids witnessed it through their windows, the person being apprehended. And again, there weren't really support services really provided or discussed afterwards. And so hopefully as we look to really expand these plans and look to figure out how are we going to make up for losing our violence interrupters. How can we have a plan to really serve from our school sites to board meetings to protecting students until they actually get home from school? How can we create this comprehensive plan? And how can we really look to fill in the gaps outside of armed police forces on our campuses? i would really request from you i spoke to mr k before if there are things that are are on the chopping blocks now and that we're losing because of the budget crisis please let me know please let the community know as soon as possible because i know as i look at these numbers one of the first things that's going to be hit is our expanded work that we've been doing around violence interruption and um it's going to be really scary if we're not careful that's real easy to backslide. For context, I grew up in the craziest years in Oakland's history. And so sometimes I get a little jaded these days because there were years where every high school had a student shot on campus. There were years where as a community we had over 200 murders. And so if we're not proactive in really addressing all of these issues, it can get really dangerous for us really quickly. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any? Director Thompson.

It's not a question, but I'm hoping to jog your thinking just a little bit. I'm just going to build on what Director Hutchinson presented, but also throughout. What I had was a cryptic question, and it was, how are you responding to the conflicts we are having on various campuses? But then I just went back to slide number four that you actually showed and then also nine that you showed. And so my big question is, have we thought about or are we thinking about, and again, this is not a question to be answered, it's just rhetorical necessarily. Have you thought about or are we thinking about how we interrupt any type of negative thing that happens on the campus. I think we're really blessed so far because we haven't had a mass shooter come onto our campus necessarily and shoot up everybody. But that's a reality in some places. It has happened, let's be honest. And so I'm sure, I'm hoping that you've kind of thought about that idea and you're really looking at what needs to take place. I appreciate your example on slide nine of the person with the knife. And I appreciate your actually something that some people might not want to hear. I appreciate your saying that some things have to be reported because we know that there are the big five that have to be reported to DHP. We know that. And there are things that we have to report because we're mandated by state law. So, but it's, I'm just throwing all of those big ideas out there because hopefully it's gonna jog your thinking toward coming up with whatever you think is necessary in order to have an effective community school. Thank you.

Thank you.

I will keep it short because we're running tight on time, but thank you so much for the presentation and the walkthrough for what a day looks like. I also just want to say that my experience and also what i've heard from other community members about the work that our culture keepers do on campus has been really profound and i think students who experienced the oakland schools police department and now you know again many of those folks who are our culture keepers used to be school safety officers and i But I think just appreciating that we've supported those individuals to transition into kind of approaching their role differently. So thank you, and I look forward to supporting the work going forward.

I'm going in order, so I'll get through. I sent her a text.

Director Williams.

Thank you, President Brewhart. so i just want to thank you for the report uh it was great to to kind of get some year-end summary to know what we you know what our public safety director is doing uh coordinating with uh schools throughout um really appreciate the info um i see that um We have a slide that says capacity for building for safety, school site, staff trainings. I'd really like to know more about that, if there's going to be, like, annual trainings in that regard. Because one-time trainings don't hold very – it's like taking a shower. You're going to need another shower the next day, right? So there's kind of this sense of regular engagement with staff and with educators, with teachers as well, just learning. And ESPs are classified as well. The engagement is, since they're first online, having these skill sets of de-escalation while the culture keeper comes and handles the situation is really vital. Just want to know a little bit more about that. It looks like 300 administrators were trained 700 new staff were trained and then 543 human traffickers. Can you just elaborate a little bit about that? And second, I'm really excited about this partnership with the Student Support Safety Committee team and ACC, right? Where our student directors really has been advocate for RJ. really pushing that and to see if there's opportunities that they come together to really have those conversations is really powerful and then be able to take those trainings as young folks young adults throughout their high schools or middle schools just be fabulous so can you just speak a little bit about that trainings yes so the

The Leadership Institute is something that we do annually. We actually are planning right now what this Leadership Institute looks like. This focus this year is most likely will be around behavioral health as we're updating our crisis response plan in addition with some other pieces that we need to update. That's where we bring in our administrators for two days of training. They're basically here for the full day on both days before they go back to their sites and they learn what our protocols are, what resources are available to them through the central office, and how to handle certain scenarios. Because again, like I said, our administrators are the ones that are really dealing with a lot of these issues. We also train throughout the year our village response teams. Our administrators come up with a team of staff that is on site to deal with a lot of the safety issues and how they're going to work together. And through that, the village response teams get trained quarterly by our violence prevention manager, which is Emily Zanoli. She is the one who runs our student safety committee. So through that, we continue that training. In the beginning of the school year, we'll be training our culture keepers. Throughout the school year, talent actually has Um, a segment for safety, um, any new staff member that gets onboarded, whether you're the superintendent, whether you're the executive director of safety has to go through this training. Um, and we do cover our protocols, how to use the intake line, what our emergency response protocols are. what the George Floyd resolution is. So we do use that time to train brand new staff, whether, again, classified or not. So that is the ongoing training that we're doing for new folks. And then throughout the year, we'll find other opportunities to train staff in whatever they request. In the ACC aspect and how we connect, we've been connecting with ACC throughout the school year, as well as when we started the Student Safety Committee meeting. Some of our students were part of ACC as well. whenever an incident happened a lot of students had a lot of questions on how to either better support students how to better support their sites because their site may have been involved and we've openly spoken with them and how they can be a voice whether it's a skyline incident where we spoke to a lot of the leaders there or even other incidents of rumors that they've heard at other school sites because again they were the ones representing those that student body so we have met with them several times and we will continue to meet with them It is really important that I work with Adriana, who leads the student group, that as the adult leaders, we aren't just telling the kids, yes, we'll listen to you, but we actually do follow through with them.

That's great. Thank you. Thank you. And just my last statement is we have this coming up year a cell phone policy. you know hopefully that will you know contribute to manage some of the emotions that tend to happen and some of the uh back and forth interpersonal uh challenges that young folks have so i just want to put that out there thank you very much uh director barry

Hi, thank you Nelson for the presentation and just a little public accountability. I have not met with Nelson one-on-one and I need very much need to do that and feel a lot more urgency around that after this presentation. So I look forward to finding the time. One question I had was about slide four and just wanted to know if you could add a little bit more color to what happened between 2021-22 school year and 2024-25, where we saw that tick up and the fall off. Back down to 24 to 41 and whether you think the trend is. With the strategies that we're implementing signaling that we'll get back down to those 2021 rates and then related to that, particularly because of the spirit of the George Floyd resolution would love to see this data disaggregated by race. and maybe that applied throughout the presentation. And then related to the student presentation that we received earlier today, curious about whether you all Collect any qualitative data, and I imagine how valuable valuable it could be to. Have the same kinds of questions that were raised among students raised among staff and other stakeholders who are involved in implementing the work. And then the last question is around the impact on the budget stabilization or fiscal stabilization work that we're experiencing right now and what work will not happen next year. And I feel like that the transparency around that will help us understand what additional work we need to do to either leverage support through other means or opportunities to get work that we value done even in the absence of the resources internally to make it happen and that could include community partnerships

So for the reduction in the number of calls to police, I would have to go back to look at, we do log all of our incidents. And when we call police, I would have to go back and look at to see what were the reasonings we were calling them for. There was a slight increase the year before and again decreased back down this year. Um, I do believe as we continue to build more staff capacity, especially around the mental behavioral health supports, we can hopefully see that decline, or at least stable in that lower number. Um, again, there's that covert year as well, which things just tend to take up right after that. So we would have to just kind of go digging deeper into that data to provide a more accurate response. And we would, we can also desegregated by race and provide that. Your next question was around, let me see here, around the student report, the qualitative data. We do have a lot more data, so what the students presented today were around the issues that they want to tackle the most. Emily Zanoli again has a lot of the other data, the questions and concerns they had. whether it's about culture keepers, whether it's about, you know, restrooms being a hotspot for a lot of the incidents. We are looking at that data and we'll be using it to, again, implement a lot of the things that are some of our safety priorities. One of the priorities that we're working over the summer is around that anonymous reporting system and making sure that our administrators have a tool where they can look at tips and students can feel like they can report things on campus. That is something we really wanted to focus on as well after the Skyline incident. Making sure that our students feel empowered to bring things bring issues up before something happens on campus And last question is more around budget and around what things that might be affected Sandra is here She'll be coming up to maybe answer some of that Because as you saw a lot of the budget items related to safety are tied in so many departments And it's kind of hard to just say one definitive budget will be affected is all comprehensive, but I

And Sandra, before you answer that, and Nelson, before you go, just to clarify one of the questions that I raised, because I think the students did a really good job accessing student wisdom to inform our work. And I'm curious whether there's a feasible opportunity for us to do this same thing to access the wisdom of the practitioners delivering services to students and to our educators, including some of the trainings that you spoke about today that would help inform, especially if there are shifts in staff structure, it might help us understand how the work happens and how we maintain quality practices as things shift and change.

And absolutely, one of the things that the students did was actually use a trusted staff member on campus to get the word out around collecting the survey data and making sure that the voices of students were heard. That was a big push from the individual to the school site, whether they had connections At the site to make sure the survey was either being distributed during homeroom or in service period, or during 1 of the periods for extra credit, the students really push to make sure that they were getting those voices and collecting them. I think we can still lean on them to do the same for getting those type of responses from either a staff or other people on site on campus. Does that answer your question? Dr Barry?

Yes, thank you.

good evening sandra glara and the chief academic officer for our district uh you can see in the lcap in its goal area three madam president i'm sorry to interrupt but we have less than four minutes we must have a motion i can email director barry the answer um thank you motion to it um extend the clock sound moved second okay on the roll call to extend uh director lauder yes Director Williams?

Yes, sir.

Director Hutchinson?

No.

Director Barry?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Yes. Vice President Batchelor? Yes. President Brohard? Yes. Motions adopted. We're extended to 1130, I believe.

Dr. Aguilera, did you want to continue? Vice President Batchelor.

Thank you. Appreciate your presentation. I'm also pleased to announce that Youth Alive has received funding through the Oakland Fund for Children and Youth. to provide life coaches to at both skyline and rudsdale for next year these trusted adults play a critical role for our students in building relationships with students supporting student supporting conflict resolution and creating spaces that are safer more supportive environments for our students in our schools In addition, with staff support, we are pursuing additional resources to fund the other school sites and the other programs around Department of Violence Prevention. We also eagerly await the final state budget so that we can see what decisions we can make with additional dollars that will support Skyline and other school sites with additional safety supports. i know that safety remains a top priority for students families and staff it does to me as well because i want to make sure that again our schools are safe places for our students and i will continue to advocate for not only skyline but every single one of our high schools middle schools and elementary schools and even our tk hubs to be safe places for our students and get the resources that they need to be able to do so thank you so much for your partnership and i can i will continue to work with you to see if we can where we can get additional funds to support this work ongoing go ahead superintendent

um i just want to thank you for your reporting today we have been i just want the board and the community to know that we have been reaching out within the community working with the city administrator around funding we've talked with foundations We have put out an RFP to make sure that we let community organizations know that we're looking at additional resources. So this has been a priority. I also have attended our orientations of new employees and have observed that training that you mentioned. I do wanna say that in listening to the student report today, it was really resonated with me that there needs to be more communication with students around who the adults are, what the process is when they have a concern at the site. That was really clear to me that there needs to be a lot of work and there are programs where students can call anonymously or share this that are used in other districts. So we need to think about how we can work together around that piece. Thank you very much for the report. Thank you for the report.

Moving on to Director Lara.

I'd like to make a motion to take item Q3 and Q4 together and record them separately.

I'll second that. Three and four. We have a roll call on the vote, please. Do we have any public speakers on this?

there are no public commenters for these items madam president thank you all right on the roll call for the motion is stated student directors are absent director lotta yes director williams director hudgenson yes director barry Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. And Vice President Batchelor? Yes. I mean, yes. And President Brohard? Yes. Motion's adopted.

Thank you. There are no public comments on Q and 3, correct?

Yeah, there were no public commenters.

Okay. All right.

We're now at Q5.

All right, Q5. Director Lada, did you?

Okay.

This is the extension of General Counsel's contract for two years. Her contract expires in a year, and this would keep the contract until three years from now. Is there a motion to adopt? I move that we adopt the motion.

I second.

Is there public comment?

There are no public commenters for this item, Madam President.

Are there board comments? Thompson?

Yes, this is something that I thought about quite a lot. And as we struggle with trying to show stability in our district, I think having a general counsel that will have a multiple year contract will start that process. It would help us and I just think that it's the right thing for us to do at this point in time, especially as we struggle with things right now and we're trying to get things straightened out. The fewer things that we have that are not just bringing out there, I think it makes it better for us. And so I would like for us to move forward on this.

Oops, sorry, Director.

Thank you. Unfortunately, as I'm watching everyone fold up chairs in an empty room, this feels very reminiscent of how the interim superintendent's contract was extended. And so as a board, we didn't make a decision to extend the general counsel's contract, or whether we were going to do that, or go on a search to see if there might be other applicants. We didn't let the community know that this was our plan. I have a lot of questions about what's gone on over the last few months. And in the middle of the night, with a lame duck board, to have a three year contract really doesn't make sense. And what we should do, if we were going to be conscientious about our job, is at most, we would do a one year extension. In January, a new board's going to be sat. When that board sat in January, they could then still have six months to decide what they wanted to do, either extend General Counsel Lindsey to a longer contract from there or start a search to see who else we might want to find to bring in. But to do this now in this way and make it a three-year contract with no real conversation amongst the board, definitely no community conversation, um no review of job performance or any other considerations is not how we should be doing business especially with one of the two positions that the board actually has authority and control over and so again um i don't know why we would extend for more than a year especially at this point it doesn't make sense and when the accountability comes which is coming soon these are all the decisions that are going to be reviewed and there's gonna be consequences for the times we didn't do things the way that we are supposed to do. So again, it's just very disappointing that we're in this situation and there's no way with what's been going on the last six months that we should be looking to extend anyone for three years. Thank you.

Director Lata.

Yeah, I also, I guess I would say, agree with many of the things that Director Thompson said in terms of extending the contract for General Counsel Lindsey. My, I think, probably biggest things are around having some more stability, and I think that's something that we've all kind of have talked about being important. I also think that there has been... a lot of litigation that our district has been involved in and i have really um and unfortunately because a lot of that stuff comes to closed session the public isn't able to see it and we can't really talk about it but i have seen um you know have really felt um general counsel's leadership on that and then i would say the other piece is that um i would just highlight that you know she has been a very i've seen a lot over the last six months in particular in terms of your um support with governance and the way that you've you know i think have seen you show up at um uh in you know kind of listening to parents and committee meetings the work that you have helped shepherd through with getting the school stability resolution over the finish line hopefully in the next week or so I would just say that my only caveat and I think and I think why I've shared this transparently so this isn't the first time I'm hearing it is I do want to be clear around the feedback that our labor partners have had around you know I think feeling like we need some more capacity in that work because I we in previous years have had somebody as a standalone labor relations obviously and I think that given that things are the high level of kind of time that it takes to be the general counsel and the governance support that I think we need to make sure that we're as we do this extension really clear about how we're going to be more responsive with our labor partners but I will leave it at that thank you

I also support the extension of a two-year contract I feel that like others have said stability is important I think the community the county are looking at us to be you know keep our leadership stable but also I just feel in working with general counsel Lindsay that i see her commitment to the district i see her commitment to students i see her commitment to again i think you talked about the resolution really working as to to get the school stabilization resolution over the to a vote but i think you know again i think she's been a really important partner i feel like that i felt for the first time in a long time that um you know we have district leadership that that listens to the board and and carries out um our votes as you know as they can and i really respect that about um general counsel i think that um she's been instrumental in the budget work i think again uh instrumental in huge litigation again which we can't talk about but there's just a lot I would also echo and I appreciate her openness in the discussion about our labor work as well I think recognizing that we do need to hopefully hire another full-time labor relations attorney but I think hearing that hearing that from labor and hearing that from the board as well that I appreciate the way that general counsel Lindsay can take that those comments and some of that criticism so again I do support it both for its stability and for the work that she's done

I do feel that I have some concerns about the contract signing off a contract when we haven't done an annual evaluation there's not many times that I agree with Hutchinson but I think that he's made some strong points in which we as a board need to really do our due diligence in regards to our performance review there's a number of things that I'd like to put out there in a performance review and get her feedback on and so I don't want to do it give you a contract and then talk about I want to have the review ahead of time I think we as a board should do our due diligence Also, there are terms in the contract that we need to look at that should be modified, and I don't think that we've actually done that just yet. trying to put forth this particular contract at this time. I think we can bring this back and bring it back for the new year. I don't anticipate we losing a general counsel at this particular time, but I think that we should actually do a little deeper dive before we sign off. Our particular labor partners have struggled time and time again and we have chosen to put a lot more pain on them and now we're going to go ahead and give away an increase in salary and commend the work that is done. I think we just need to have some questions answered and some agreements set before we give another contract out, thank you.

Yes, I raised my hand and I took it down and then I'm hearing everybody speak. So I'm just going to say a few things and some of which is redundant, but I just, one, it is the board's responsibility to ensure that our general counsel, the superintendent, that there's an evaluation. And where there are challenges, it's the board's responsibility to elevate those challenges to the level of seriousness that's such that a conversation like this doesn't happen because a contract is on the agenda, but because it's so urgent and important for us to prioritize spending time on it during a board meeting. And so some of the feedback yeah i would like to think about more director williams what you just named in particular but i i just not that it's too late and bringing it back isn't a valid idea but what have we been doing to date that this is the opportunity that we that we're picking to to have that conversation. There's nothing really that I also that I wanna add, except that we've committed to do a superintendent search and that feels really important. to make sure that we follow through that process. And I feel like, you know, having a general counsel, you know, be on board for stability and the expertise that she provides could be an asset for us in this particular moment and could be even attractive to candidates. practical reasons why it makes sense. And I also think related to board responsibility, this job description that I see in the contract as someone who has like 12 hats in my day job as well, I think it is an unreasonable amount of work, but is reflective of the you know, financial situation and just the work situation, the environment that we're in right now, you know, regarding all the litigation in front of us. So I do think if we're talking about things that the board can do, yes, absolutely prioritize evaluation and yes, absolutely prioritize how we staff up all the work. that is on Janine's plate so that some of the feedback that has been lifted up, Director Lada, that you mentioned, that we've heard from labor partners, for instance, Director Williams, you mentioned that as well. That's part of the reason. There's just... an exorbitant amount of work for a very small number of people to do. And if we're really serious about caring for our labor partners, we'll get serious about that as well. So I am supporting the two-year extension. I do think that there's a lot more curiosity and investigation and conversation to have, but none of that sort of prevents me from supporting this tonight.

Thank you. Director Batchelor?

Thank you. I have some of the similar concerns that Director Williams and others have brought up around this contract, so I am not going to be supporting it tonight.

And is there, we already did public comment, right?

Mr. Rickstar, can we have- So before that, I'd like to make a motion to amend this resolution to instead of a three-year contract extension, a one-year contract extension.

It's a two-year.

So instead of a two-year, to a one-year contract extension, which we could split the difference because we need to have a general counsel in place. But I'm very uncomfortable extending a contract longer than that, especially given the conversation. There hasn't been any sort of review or anything, but we need a general counsel. So the only way I would feel comfortable is if it was shortened to a one-year contract, which will then give the board the opportunity to make a change a year from now if that's what the board so desires. So my motion is to amend this to make it a one-year contract extension.

Does someone have to second that before I ask a clarifying question about that?

Yes. I'm seeing there is no second.

I'll second it.

Are there any public comments?

There are no public commenters signed up for this item, Madam President.

Dr. Batchelor?

I have a clarifying question to whomever this may go to. From my understanding, this contract is already written. With the amendment, would we be able to amend a contract that's already written?

One year? Yes, you can change all the terms and conditions, but just go from being a two year to a one.