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

Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the June 3rd, 2026, regularly scheduled board meeting of the West Contra Costa Unified School District. This meeting is called to order at 5.04 p.m. Para acceder a la traducción en Zoom, haga clic en el icono de globo en la parte inferior de la pantalla. Si se encuentra de John y necesita audífonos para traducción, puede recogerlos en la esquina trasera del auditorio. The board is about to go into closed session, but before we do, we are here to listen to any public comment on closed session items. Individuals wishing to speak on closed session items listed, if you are here in the auditorium, and you haven't done so already, please submit a WCCUSD public comment card, which you can find on the entryway table. Or if you are participating via Zoom, individuals will need to raise their hand on the Zoom app. If you are accessing the meeting by phone, press star nine. The time allotted to each speaker is two minutes. The total time allotted is one hour. Speaking time shall not be transferred from one person to another. There is also no substitution of speakers. We alternate between Zoom and... Zoom comment and in-person comment. The public comment period is a safe space where diverse viewpoints may be expressed civilly without interruption or intimidation. Please listen attentively to each speaker's comment and respect their time as if it were your own. Be open to another point of view if one is offered. Due to the Brown Act, board members cannot discuss items that are not on the agenda and do not usually respond to items presented in public comment. The items listed on the closed session agenda for tonight are student discipline, public employee appointment, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, and then we will adjourn and reconvene to open session. Is there any public comment?

Yes, we have public comment. Jane Kishner, please unmute yourself.

Hello, board. This is Jean Kinsher. I don't have a comment on your closed session. I just noticed on your board agenda meeting, it called this a special board meeting, and you just said it was a regular. That's all.

That concludes public comment.

Thank you to all who made public comment. We are now adjourning to closed session at 5.06 p.m., and we will return to open session at 6.30. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the June 3rd, 2026. 2026 Special Board Meeting and Regular Board Meeting for the West Contra Costa Unified School District. This meeting is called to order at 7.03 p.m. Para acceder a la traducción en Zoom, haga clic en el icono de globo en la parte interior de la pantalla. Si se encuentra Dijon y necesita audífonos para la traducción, puedo recogerlos en la esquina trasera. The board has scheduled both a regular meeting and a special board meeting at the same day and time. We will take up on the agenda items on the special board meeting agenda simultaneously and will identify which agenda items will be taken up. Now to access translation on Zoom, please click on the globe icon in the bottom of the screen. If you are here in Dijon and need a headset for translation, you may pick one up in the corner, in the back corner of the auditorium. In a few minutes, we will begin with public comment agenda item. Members of the public are invited to speak to the board on any matter that is within the subject matter jurisdiction of the West Contra Costa Unified School District, but it's not on the agenda. Please prepare now for public comment. If you are here in the auditorium, and you'd like to make public comment, please fill out and submit a WCCUSD public comment card. You can find them on the table in the entry hallway. If you are participating via Zoom, please raise your hand in the Zoom map prior to the beginning of this item on the agenda. If participating by phone, please press star nine. After your comment card has been turned in, the cards are placed in the order received and we will call speakers one at a time, alternating between public comment here, Dijon, and one on Zoom. Public comment generally lasts one hour. The time allotted to each speaker is two minutes. In the meantime, we're moving on to the rest of our opening procedures. B2, Pledge of Allegiance.

If you are willing or able, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic to which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.

We'll now move on to item B3, land, labor, and body acknowledgment.

Land acknowledgement. We recognize that we are presently on the lands of the Chochenyo, Muwekma, Karkin, Ohlone peoples, and acknowledge them as the first inhabitants of the land we currently occupy. I acknowledge that the burden of environmental exploitation and systemic injustice falls upon the labor of Black and Brown bodies in the building of this country and its institutions. I remember that Black and Brown bodies were born and died working this land against their will for generations. I also acknowledge the contribution of the labor of survivors over centuries to today of all immigrant labor, including voluntary, involuntary, forced and undocumented peoples in the building of what we refer to as the United States.

Well, now move on to our West Coast Unified School District Board anti-racism statement.

All right. The governing board is committed to the work of anti-racism, the conscious and active effort to identify, challenge, and correct racial inequities in the systems and institutions within our schools and community. Racism, explicit or implicit, stands in direct conflict to the fundamental principles of district education. To carry district education into the future, we recognize that we must continually renew and reflect on the roots of racism and defend new ideas to meet the times. Unjust ideas and policies and the racial inequities they produce have shaped us, our schools and society. The board strives to uncover unconscious biases and practice anti-racism as individuals and as board members. We challenge ourselves to persist through the discomfort necessary for growth and learning, to deepen our listening and our examination of racism and oppression, and to develop a strong understanding of how our personal experiences and feelings fit into a larger picture of continual oppression. Each member of our governing board, individually and collectively, is responsible for creating and nurturing an anti-racist learning environment where each student, staff member, and community partner is a respected and valued member of the district community. The governing board is uniquely positioned and it is our responsibility to identify and dismantle racist ideas and inequitable policies in ourselves and across the district. Therefore, we commit to supporting anti-racist policies, programs, and practices for our children's education and well-being while being strong and inclusive school communities. This board commits to holding each board member accountable towards these goals and moving the work of anti-racism forward. We also commit to holding West Contra Costa Unified School District staff, students, and community to living these standards of the anti-racism in our schools.

When I move on to item five, roll call. Superintendent Conner, will you please take roll? Yes, good evening, everyone.

Student Trustee Hung?

Present.

Student Trustee Whitten?

Good evening, present.

Trustee Reckler? Good evening, present. Trustee Smith-Fold? Good evening, everyone, present. Trustee Hernandez? Buenas tardes, presente. Clerk Gonzales-Hoy?

Good evening, present.

Board President Ayanna. Good evening and welcome everyone present. We'll now move on to reports ratification of closed session. Superintendent Cardin, is there anything you would like to report out?

Yes, regarding agenda item A21, the board voted to approve the appointment of Randa Booker as principal of Mira Vista Elementary School. The vote was as follows. Moved by Trustee Smith-Fold, seconded by Clerk Gonzalez-Hoy, Inyana, yes. Gonzalez-Hoy, yes. Hernandez, yes. Reckler, no. Smith-Fold, yes. That concludes the report.

We will now move on to agenda review and adoption. Does the board have anything that they would like to adjust on the agenda? Seeing now, we will proceed with the agenda as posted. We'll now move on to item eight, the 2025-2026 West Contra Costa Unified School District Retiree Recognition.

I'll ask Dr. Greenwood if she can take the lead.

Good evening, board. The district would like to recognize employees for their dedicated service, including celebrating 20 years of service, and also honoring the 25, 26 retirees for their years of commitment, contributions to students, staff, and the school community. The board would like to thank them also for their appreciation and dedication and service and the lasting impact of these employees throughout their careers within the district. And so I'd like to present at this time, Colleen Gwenza, who's present. And we'd like to thank everybody. We contacted everybody to let them know about this evening. So we appreciate everybody's hard work and commitment to the West Contra Costa Unified School District. Thank you.

Thank you for that, Dr. Greenwood. And to our employee who is here this evening, but to all of our retirees, we just thank you for your service. We appreciate all of the hard work that you put into your work. Everything that we do here in this district goes in support of our students. And so I just appreciate our retirees. I appreciate all of the work and the years and the commitment and the love that you've shown our students over this time. Thank you.

Thank you for that. When I move on to item nine recognition of 20 plus years employees for 2025 2026 school year.

Dr. Greenwood. Again, we'd like to thank and recognize our employees for their dedicated service and impact to our to our employees and students throughout this school year. And again, thank you.

There's no staff here tonight?

There's no staff present tonight for that portion. That's okay.

Thank you. And can we ask for our retiree who is here this evening, can we all go down and do a quick picture with her, please?

Excellent. Thank you.

We will now be moving on to our special board meeting agenda. And we will start with item one recognition of student board trustees for their participation. Superintendent.

Thank you, board president and Yona. I'm so excited. to be able to recognize two amazing student trustees. I am so excited for you guys, and I so appreciate all of the work that you've done. Devin Whitten, Trustee Whitten is a senior at Hercules High School, and Trustee Hung, Student Trustee Hung is a a sophomore at El Cerrito High School. And just the trajectory of these young people is amazing. Your futures are shining so brightly. We appreciate all of your engaging and interesting questions that you have asked. We do behind the scenes, a gender review with our student trustees and they wanna know, show me the money. They have been very involved in wanting to know. Our interim associate superintendent of business services and I meet with them prior to each board meeting, and they are always listening and engaged in really great questions. really thoughtful work. You've also, I've seen your leadership in action with all student Congress and appreciate that. And just your leadership across the district. Devin, you're everywhere. I don't know how you do it, but very proud of you. You are very engaged. A lot of gas. There you go. But also it shows a true commitment to community engagement. And I see that in you. And Trustee Hung, just your awesomeness. So proud of your science fair achievements. But that's just a small part of who you are. And I see all the amazing things that you do and will be doing in your future. And so, again, I appreciate your leadership. I appreciate your thoughtfulness and I appreciate just the scholars that you both are. I have a plaque for both of you. And when we're finished with this item, we'd love to stand and take a picture with you as well. But I will give you your plaques, your flowers now.

Do you want to do statements from the board? Do you guys want to do after?

Do you guys have any statement you guys want to say?

They're ready.

Trustee Hunt?

Yeah, so it really was an honor to be able to be on this board and help act on the most diligent that I can provide at 10 p.m. at night and trying to evaluate everything. And I feel like just the feeling of what this is doing is quite directly influencing and just shaping the society around us is really important. it's quite empowering to just be here and really a great honor and just working alongside all of you guys. And it was lovely to work with Mike, uh, amazing trust, uh, trustee Devin and just his passion for the work too. It really helps, uh, almost helps me move forward every single meeting with like the very long dragon, but yeah. Devin, you have anything to say?

He'll get there. He'll get there.

I would like to start off by saying my time on this board has been nothing but opportunity after opportunity for me. During this term, I've met a lot of supportive people, saw plenty of things and was in plenty of spaces and will forever be grateful to this role and the experience that it has given to me. Growing up as a kid who didn't have it all, getting a taste of what all would look like is something I sit back and reflect on, calmly asking, how did I get here? Being an advocate for others changed and having hard discussions is how I got here. This job wasn't easy by far. With the help of Trustee Smith-Fold and Superintendent Cotton, the push and uplifting comments of Ms. Tierra and Ms. Tenese and the backing of the communities that I serve is how I was able to get through. Through you all, I learned that advocacy is one of the most important techniques that you should have as a leader. I understood the phrase, you never know who's watching. And the one that's the funniest is learning how to ask 10 questions within a three-question limit, which is what I like to call question stacking. I started my very first board meeting fresh out of a strike, one of the most controversial things that has happened in our district in a long time. The most controversial agenda item I've ever done or voted on will always be item E2, fiscal solvency plan for the 26 through 2028 school year. In this meeting, I pulled out a lot of heavy-handed questions and slammed them on the table left and right. A little later down the line, I was invited to a community engagement event, not knowing what to expect. I sat at the event, studied my surroundings, and looked at the greatness that unifies and creates WCCUSD. Something I learned is that sometimes when the kitchen gets hot, a lot of people want to make comments from the living room. But when someone infiltrates the scene with their thoughts and suggestions, we come together and show that we are one West Contra Costa. Being one WCCUSD isn't a one-time thing. It's an everyday thing. The position that we sit in as student trustees is one that came with few directions. The first thing we knew that we could do was comment and vote yes, no, or abstain. Then I started venturing out and doing the same thing every other trustee does, which is attend meetings at schools, community events, or going to a dance showcase and supporting those who make up West Contra Costa, which are our students. There are things that can be improved with us being a student trustees, as many understand breaking barriers is something that a lot of us have to do in order to be the most comfortable. Running into roadblocks as a trustee wasn't uncommon and created plenty of questions in my head. I asked those questions. Sometimes I got a good response and sometimes I was like, that response doesn't sit right with me. But honestly, a part of breaking barriers is testing the waters to see what the reaction is going to be. Um, there was a little bit of pushback, especially when it came to my age, you know, being 18 and a work permit does not go together, but, um, it made me hungry to make policy for future trustees who are 18, who are at my age. This is just, I only said that to understand what the reality of being an 18 year old student trustee is. It's different when you're younger, but when you're my age and there's no age number attached to a work permit, I ask a lot of questions. To the board and to the cabinet, there are some things I want to leave you with as a student trustee, have more conversation with us. Unfortunately, we do only get to communicate at board meetings, but it would be lovely to get to know each member individually, even though we are only here for a term, you know, We're here forever. I understand that, but I think there are definitely things that we can take from one another. Two, I would say establish a way that we can fully participate in board meetings with a time limit. Time limits are necessary because no one wants to be here all night, even though I do it faithfully. That would kind of look like rearranging the agenda so that we can comment on more things and actually do the full potential of our job. Because sometimes there are meetings we sit here silent. So that's what that would look like. And three was having conversations when difficulties arise. This leaves a little room for hidden animosity and more room for growth. My last and final comment is to show, it's for all of us to show that we are one WCCUSD. Unfortunately, you can see the separation and cut the tension with the steak knife. We can argue in private, but respect another in public. This is our way of truly fixing the system for the kids. The kids are what matter. That's what we are here for. And that's what we do the work for. So let's show that. To the community, I appreciate you and value your input. I will still be here fighting for your families. That is my life duty. That is my life goal. That is my purpose for life and the purpose of why I said yes to accepting this position. I appreciate all of the lessons that you have given me through all of your encouragement and board comments. Nothing ever goes unnoticed. To my family, my ASC family, Hercules family, thank you for supporting me on these Wednesdays and these Thursdays after a board meeting. It means a lot. I appreciate the fact that you all have faith in me. You all put faith in me when sometimes I don't have faith in myself. Thank you for helping me succeed. My journey is not over. I may be attending UCR in the fall, go Highlanders, but I will always be a WCCUSD alumni and supporter. Thank you.

Do we have any board comments to our trustees and can we keep it to a minute, please?

Staying on time, staying on time.

Trustee Smith's vote, minute countdown.

I have to say that sitting on the dais is nothing better than seeing student trustees step up to the plate and raise the standard. Calvin, thank you for your participation in being a student trustee. I really do value all the things that you have said and the questions that you have answered. In the last little seconds that I have left, I would like to say that Devon is everything that we ask students to be in WCCUSD. from the way that you keep your grades up the way that you participate in activities the way that you lead the way that you you stand in the gap for students you are everything that we've asked you to be and you've done it a lot without the support that we should have given you so thank you for being more than we've ever asked for and you really have raised the standard of what a student trustee is and it will never go back down so thank you very much i appreciate you and i'm so super proud to call you a fear of my children and a colleague on the board. I am complete.

I have a comment. I just want to say thank you to both of you. I think sometimes we have hard conversations or we're also trying to figure things out, you know, really Figuring out what a trustee should be. I think how Calvin, you know, you really set the tone for every other sophomore, right? You know, being up here, you know, saying that you are a new coming into high school, but really showing up. And all the things that you guys have brought to the table, I applaud you for that Devon. I don't think I've my time. I've only been here on her short time, but I don't think on the time that I have been on the board, we've had such an active. Student trustee, so I applaud that about you too. I think. You know, we need to give our student trustees every opportunity to move with us, to walk with us, you know, to incorporate themselves. So I think you are you have shined light onto changes that we might be able to push through and take off and say, hey, you're welcome to and have those conversations, because I think we've wanted it, but we've never really put it into work. Right. And I think you've shown up and you've shown that, you know, sometimes you guys are of interest to do the stuff that, you know, we're doing. So I thank you for that. And I really do appreciate those questions. And I appreciate what you brought to the board and how you set the tone to like deeper conversations moving forward. So thank you. Thank you to both of you. And now we'll move on to, oh, now we'll go down and take a picture. Okay, we'll now move on to item two on our special board meeting agenda, the presentation from our All-Student Congress.

I was gonna say they need to assemble, but they know what to do. So I'm gonna just sit back and watch. So proud of our All-Student Congress. All-Student Congress is a representative students from across our district. who are here to share with you some of the work that they've done this year. Extremely proud of this work. Thank you.

Okay. Yeah, good evening, board members and district staff. My name is Ashton. I'm a freshman at El Cerrito High School and a member of the All-Student Congress. We're the subcommittee on the anti-racism policy, so we're focusing on how to better implement it and enforce it to make it where the effects of racism in our school is less for students and is better overall.

Next slide. The current WCC us the anti racism policy states that any racist, explicit or implicit actions go against the core values of WCC us the education. This means that any discrimination faced by students is unacceptable. And and students must provide a safe and supportive learning environment. Next slide.

Throughout the school year, our group met three times every month. We all shared our personal experiences with racism, and we wanted to address these issues. We brainstormed some ideas to create a more inclusive and less racist district. To back... To back our efforts with data, we surveyed WCCUSD secondary schools about campus racism and gathered more than 600 responses from the school community. Each meeting taught us and helped us learn more about one another and also to understand different perspectives within our school community.

Next slide. So we did a survey for secondary schools. One of the big problems we had is 40% of students who took the survey said they heard six or more slurs in school. Next slide.

Our short-term goal is to improve identification and reporting. This means strengthening anonymous reporting systems for student experiences of racism. This could be done by launching a user-friendly survey pairing reporting with visible accountability and promoting use through signage. This matters because anonymous accessible tools increase reporting and help schools better understand and respond to student experiences. Next slide.

And long-term we want to provide training for all such as students, teachers, staff with culturally aware training on how to recognize and respond to racism. We will offer school-wide classroom and staff training, prepare staff to respond effectively to increase reporting. And this training ensures responses are consistent and supportive. Next slide.

This slide discusses potential drawbacks related to quality and efficiency. First, there's a risk of false or mass reporting. To combat this, implementing simple validation steps is crucial to ensure reports are accurate and high in quality. Second, increased reporting may demand more staff time and system resources. The system here is to process optimization specifically by scaling systems. This allows to manage higher volumes of efficiency without increasing manual or workload stress.

Next slide. So the positive to our recommendation would be that this can help address racism and bullying early before the issue escalates. As you know, some of our suspensions are sometimes race related. So if we can get to the issue beforehand, it would decrease our suspension rate. Anonymous reporting will also increase student trust with admin and staff on campus, which I know is another issue that we have. The data can also inform school support, such as a wellness center, admin staff, and then care teams, so that way we know how to help our students more. And then also, if this is successful enough, we would like to provide mandatory training for staff so they know how to effectively battle racism on their campuses. Next slide.

Next slide, please. These policy recommendations are cost-effective, easily implementable steps to advance our district's anti-racism policy, and above all, transform the day-to-day experiences of students facing racism across this district. Therefore, we in the Anti-Racism Subcommittee hope that you, the board, will take our recommendations into consideration and implement them for the 26th to 27th school year. Thank you.

Hello, school board. We are your All-Student Congress student engagement team, and we are excited to share our plan on how we can better student engagement across the district.

In my biology class, we had a teacher who was only there for about half of the year, and the time she was there, she either had us doing assignments online or we were watching movies. Then in the last three weeks of school, we had a substitute teacher who got a bunch of microscopes and a bunch of slides and had students look through the microscopes at those slides. There were so many students who showed up to class who had not been there for most of the year. And I was astonished that this simple action of having students doing something physically in the classroom that showed them something relevant really got a lot of students to participate and be really excited about an activity that I would not expect those students to be excited about.

So next slide. Wait, no, go back to the other slide. We figured that this isn't a problem that simply affects us as students that are engaged, that are on the student Congress. And so we put out a survey that surveyed over about 650 students across the entire school district. and found that 33% of them have no extracurriculars at all and other signs of lack of student engagement. In turn, we also found that students feel more engaged when their teachers support them in such a way through specific activities like workshops, like labs, like games, and like hands-on activities. And we'd like to highlight these specific kinds of hands-on activities further in our specific policy plan.

Therefore, moving on to our recommendations, where number one, we're going to make mandatory teacher trainings so that we can have teachers be able to reshape their own classroom environments to be able to be more geared towards engaging students. Because we know that this district is very large. A classroom in El Cerrito might be very, very different from one in, say, Kennedy. So, like, a blanket policy might not affect and get the same responses from all across the district. But this will allow us to have teachers reshape their own environments in ways that they know will fit their students so that we can achieve the same results across the district. And now for the placement measure, we will be using, we need... responses from students from surveys after these courses in order to see how the students themselves feel about these changes in order to make tweaks so that we can have the most optimal because this is a plan for the students. So we should be increasing it by based on data from the students.

Our goal as WCC student body is to improve curriculum and teacher training for a more welcoming school.

Next slide. We look forward to driving this change in the district. We'll be at the district's action forum next week to continue to uplift student engagement policies.

Thank you so much for listening, President Inanna, Superintendent Cotton, and members of the board. We appreciate your time here. Thank you again.

Excellent job. Excellent job. Thank you so much. Students, for everyone who's listening, this is truly what student engagement looks like. Identifying a problem, gathering data, and really thinking through and sharing out solutions to these problems. Very realistic solutions. I appreciate you and I applaud you. You guys are amazing. Amazing. I also want to take a moment just to recognize there was an adult that worked with you, but all she did was enhance your voice. She didn't tell you what to do. She didn't demand time. When you raised a question, she said, let's figure out how to make that work and offered suggestions to you and guided you through that work. Thank you so much, Tiara Shelton. And I know that Miss Denise in the back was quite involved as well. Thank you, Denise. In guiding our students and just supporting them through this work. And again, to all the students from across our district, job well done. Job well done.

So impressed.

Okay, board, can we go down and take a picture with Austin and Congress? Thank you once again to the All Student Congress for that report out. You guys did a magnificent job. I think you guys are really demonstrating what our students are capable of and that they can also partner up with us to come up with solutions. So thank you very much. Now we'll move on to item 10, WCCUS public comment. If anyone out in the audience has not turned in a public comment card, please do so now. Anyone on Zoom wanting to speak during public comment, please raise your hand now. Once public comment opens, we will not continue to take any public comment cards or any new hands up on Zoom. Members of the public are invited to speak to the board on any matter within the subject matter jurisdiction of the West Contra Costa Unified School District, but not on tonight's agenda. Public comment will last approximately one hour. The time allotted to each speaker is two minutes. Should additional speakers remain at the conclusion of one hour, public comment may be extended. The time allotted per speaker after the first hour is generally one minute. Individuals wishing to speak, please submit a WCCUSD public comment card or if participating via Zoom, individuals will need to raise their hand in the Zoom app. Prior to the beginning of this item on the agenda, if you are calling in by phone, press star nine. Speaking time should not be transferred from one person to another and there is no substitution of speakers. Speakers can also make public comment again for each discussion and action item on the agenda after staff presentations. The public will have 10 minutes per item and one minute per speaker. The same protocols recited above apply. The public comment period is a safe space where diverse viewpoints may be expressed in a civil manner without interruption of intimidation. Please listen attentively to each speaker's comment and respect their time at the podium as if it were your own. Be open to a different point of view if one is offered. Due to the brown neck, board members cannot discuss items that are not on the agenda and do not usually respond to items presented in public comment. Now, is there any public comment?

Yes, we have public comment. And now we will do three in person and three in soon. We have eight in the Zoom queue. We have William, Dominic H, Savannah, Jim Kitchener, Andrew Wilkie, Heather, Christian Vigil, and Nick Crescenzi. Bashton Barbert.

Hello, my name is Bashtin Babbert. Ms. Hernandez, I want to repeat some of the words that Ms. Cotton said. You enhance your students' voices. When kids raise a question, You asked them to find those primary sources, to bring out the solutions and find how people navigated those problems. You guide your students. You facilitate them. We love you. You're amazing. Thank you for the rallies. Thank you for the parties. Thank you for celebrating so many different cultures on campus. Thank you for putting together a soccer tournament. Did I say soccer tournament? Maybe you should be the athletic director. Oh, what else? Is she incredible academically? You bet. Let's have her be the WASC coordinator. I think we also have some general ed funds available. Why don't we push hard so that you can be at Kennedy another year? You have been here since your student teaching, and instead of celebrating her, We have had first-year white teachers getting privileged positions at Kennedy. Seniority matters. Community matters. This teacher is a delight, but she does not have the same level of roots in our connection the way that Ms. Hernandez does. She also is bilingual in a way that I can only dream about being, connecting with students, having beanbags in our classrooms, as well as flowers and dressing up the best, the most. You want to talk about functioning schools? Thank you. Our entire campus has been on fire. And if we were shouting for a little bit of water from the kitchen, I apologize. Lots of love to the students. You both have been doing an incredible job. And we need to see that your schools had Japanese programs connected and protected. Ethnic studies was protected at both of your schools.

Thank you for your comment. Thank you for your comment. Your time is allowed.

Luis Mendoza. Luis Mendoza.

Buenas noches a todos. Primeramente, como saben, mi nombre es Luis Mendoza. Actualmente soy un junior en la high school de John F. Kennedy. Pero esta vez quiero contarles sobre este problema. No le están dando una oportunidad de trabajo a una de las mejores maestras de esta escuela. Por favor, quiero que se pongan desde mi punto de vista. Yo llegué en el segundo semestre de mi grado nueve completamente perdido. Y en ese semestre yo no la conocí, no tuve ayuda. Hasta que en el grado número 10 la conocí gracias a un amigo. Y a pesar de que nunca tuve su clase, ella siempre estuvo ahí para ayudarme. Ella siempre estuvo ahí para escucharme a mí. No solamente problemas académicos, pero problemas sobre mí, sobre mi persona. Y gracias a ella puedo decir que este año ha sido... un año súper bueno, súper productivo. Ella me ayudó cuando no sabía qué seleccionar para nada para mis clases de Junior Year. Ella me ayudó cuando yo no sabía que todavía necesitaba créditos de mi grado 9. Y es algo que nadie te busca para hacerlo. Es algo que nadie te va a decir, ven, yo te ayudo. Pero ella era el tipo de maestra que se va a quedar 15, 10 minutos más solo por ayudarte, solo por contribuir a la comunidad. Gracias a ella, el otro año yo quiero participar en leadership. Créanme que esa es mi única razón que me inspira a estar en leadership. Apoyar más a la comunidad, a dar de vuelta a la comunidad, así como ella me ha enseñado este año. Y ver que no le están dando la oportunidad a personas, a estos tipos de maestros, que hacen que estés más activo en la escuela. It's super contradictory. And please, thank you so much for listening to me. And please, this opportunity for people who deserve it. Thank you.

Kim Chamberlain.

Good evening. Kimberly Chamberlain, IAPTE Local 21 SSA Chapter President. Tonight, we recognize a lot of our retirees, people that put in several years of service to assist our school district. SSA would like to recognize Lisa Bassey and Wendy Pangilina for 20 years of service. Raylene Baca, Julie Loera, and Mr. Thomas Scott for 25 years of service. Eric Marino, Mercedes Castro, and Mary Kitchen for 30 years of service. Those are just some of the years that they've put in. I realize we don't recognize all the in-betweens, the 21s, the 24s, the 10s, the 5s. But together, those people have spent years. multitudes of years and hours servicing our students and staff. I would like to say thank you to all of them from the bottom of my heart. And it has been a great honor to serve in SSA with you and to serve the students. I know I'm going to be venturing into a new role, but my heart is very much glad I had the opportunity to work beside these people. I know there are Teamsters out there that are also serving us several years. I can't go into all of their names, but I would like to say thank you to them also. Now, switching hats. Hi, I'm Kim Chamberlain. I am the Student Information Services System Supervisor. Tomorrow is our last Office Managers Meeting for the year. I am so excited because I've already got a date for next year to kick off. We will be doing it August 14th. Save the date. Pinal Middle Site. Thank you.

William, please unmute yourself.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

All right. Good evening, board members, Superintendent Cotton. My name is William McNabb. I'm a parent of two VISTA virtual students, and I'm here to urge you to stop the proposed teacher cuts, reinstate the second and third grade that are being eliminated, and carefully reconsider the long-term effect that these reductions will have on our students. Education is a foundation for every student in future success. Teachers provide critical instruction in reading, writing, mathematics, and social-emotional development. Eliminating these teachers in classes may create short-term budget savings, but it risks cause long-term academic setbacks that can be far more costly to address later. I'm also deeply concerned about about the impact that these cuts will have, particularly at the middle school level. These students deserve the same access to high-quality instruction and academic support as their peers in traditional classrooms. I respectfully ask the board to provide clear answers to the following questions. How will the district ensure that our middle school students at Vista continue receiving meaningful access to subject area expertise in English mathematics? How will the district maintain rigorous academic intervention services that and college career readiness support after eliminating specialized content area positions. Most importantly, how will the district ensure that our students continue receiving the depth of instruction support that they deserve rather than the minimum level of supervision required for compliance. Families choose VISTA virtual because it offers flexibility while still providing access to qualified educators, targeted intervention and specialized academic support. If experienced teachers and content experts are removed, students lose the very resource that help them succeed. Budget challenges are real, but students should not bear the burden of decisions that demolish educational quality. Before moving forward with these cuts, I urge the board fully evaluate the academic consequences, engage meaningfully with the families and staff, prioritize solutions that deserve districts.

Dominic H, please unmute yourself. Savannah, please unmute yourself. Can you hear me? Yes.

Okay. Dear board members, my name is Savannah, and I'm a seventh grader at Vista Virtual. I am speaking today because I'm very worried about the decision to cut our amazing teachers. Teachers are not just employees. They are the people who help us learn, grow, and feel supported every day. They explain things when we... are confused encourage us to be our best self and make school a safe place where we can thrive taking our teachers will make it harder for students to get the help we need for students in middle school having teachers who specialize in subjects like english and math is extremely important these teachers help students understand difficult lessons and stay on track academically without our teachers many students could fall behind or feel disconnected from school Cuts like these may save money now, but they could hurt students' education for years. Students deserve support, attention, and quality instruction. We should not have fewer opportunities because of budget decisions. Please listen to students and families before making cuts that will affect our future. We need our teachers. They make a difference every single day, and our education is too important to lose them. Thank you for taking the time to listen to me speak and consider these impacts that the cuts will have on students like me. Thank you.

Dominique H., please unmute yourself.

Dear school board members, my name is Dominique and I'm a third grader at Vista Virtual Academy. I'm writing because I don't want to lose our teachers and I don't want the first and second graders to lose their school next year because there won't be any more second or third grade classes for them. Teachers help kids learn how to read, write, do math, and believe in themselves. If there are fewer teachers, students won't be able to get the help they need. Some students may fall behind and feel forgotten. Every child deserves a teacher who wants to help them succeed. Our teachers show how much they care about us every day. They help us when we are confused, encourage us to always do our best, and make learning fun. Cutting our teachers would hate students and families in our community. Please do not cut our teachers or our second and third grade classes. Please protect our school and our futures. Thank you for listening to students like me.

Zoe Mennonix? Zoe Mennonix?

Hi, I'm Zoella Mendez. I'm in fourth grade at Fairmont. When I'm in class, I hear, everybody, the field is closed today over the intercom. I hear a lot of kids grow because they want to play soccer. That's the only place they have to play. So instead, they just find ways to be mean at recess. And they don't get the energy out, so it brings stress. So they bring it back to class and disrupt our learning. Imagine if the field was closed every day. It would be hard to learn. That's what will happen if half the yard supervisors get cut. Our yard is really big. And with so many portables, it's hard for the yard supervisors to see if someone is hurt or being unsafe. If I'm in the courtyard, I can't see a yard supervisor and sometimes it makes you feel unsafe. Please don't cut our yard, supervisors. I want to feel safe at school. Thank you.

Ira Mennonix.

Hi, my name is Ira, and I'm in second grade at Fairmont. I want to talk about recess. When a yard supervisor is out, they already close our field. That's with the yard teachers we have now. If you cut it in half, the field will probably just always be closed. There's already a lot of cursing happening. and kids saying mean things to each other at recess. When something happens, when a kid was punching me at recess, most kids didn't even bother looking for a grown-up because we know there is one near. That's not how school should feel. Please don't cut our yard supervisors.

Sarah Mennonix. Good evening. I'm Sarah Mennonix and I am here on behalf of Fairmont again.

Can my time be restarted?

Thank you. First, I want to acknowledge actionable progress. After the last meeting, Michael Booker committed to a safety review at Fairmont and two district staff walked our campus yesterday and are writing up recommendations. So thank you for that responsiveness. I also am here to make sure that this leads to action and follow through. Fairmont is over capacity. We were built for 396 students and we currently have 540 with an additional class set to be added next year. That's 150 students shoved into portables. This means with the portables that our yard is fragmented, which makes it really difficult and a challenging space to supervise. Maintaining current levels of supervision is so imperative to school safety that our SSC is talking about eliminating all other site budget needs just to cover the additional site supervision needed. I'm asking that you find a way to fund this now at Fairmont and to commit that if additional funding materializes through the SSPD grant or state budget negotiations that restoring yard supervision is the first priority. Additionally, pushing the cost of translation for parent-teacher conferences and SST meetings onto individual sites is an equity issue that schools shouldn't be penalized for. With over 38 languages spoken by our families, our costs for translation run roughly $10,000 a year. This is essentially a tax on diversity. With the large site budget cuts, our SSC cannot cover this, and they've asked the PTA for help. We're talking about parents paying for their own translation services, translation services that they are legally entitled to. That's not equitable. We're asking the district to fund translation services centrally so that no school is penalized for the diversity of its community. Thank you.

Jen Kitchener, please unmute yourself. Good evening, Bert. I'm Jean Kitchener, and I work at Verde Elementary. The last time I talked to you about how disgusting our floors were, I would thank you for sending out the scrubs crew. Unfortunately, they came, and our floors are still just as disgusting. I don't know what they did, but it didn't improve. Somebody borrowed our floor scrubber, big machine given to us to help clean our cafeteria floor. It was never returned and no one even knows where it is. Please help us find our floor scrubber or at least give us a new one. Also, I'm very, very concerned about the lack of stripper and wax and even the use of the carpet cleaner for the kindergarten TK classrooms. We are, myself and those children are on those floors for a lot of time of the day, all day long. They need to be clean. I don't even think we were allowed to have the carpet cleaner last year. And if we did, the floors were still wet on day one. But I think that was actually the year before last year when they were still wet on day one because we didn't get them to the last minute. I also am wondering about the garden crew. They come out and they cut the little front patch of grass and it looks cute, but they don't always cut the patch over by the parking lot and they don't get back into the kindergarten and TK area. I would say playground, but we have no... playground structure for the past year and a half or so, but it's supposed to be coming this summer. We have weeds. They're so tall that now some of our playground balls are like hard to see in them. I don't understand why they can't get back there and finish the job and take care of the whole campus. We're supposed to be one, but we don't feel like we count. I really want my community to have all the resources and everything that they need and that they deserve. Please look into these inequities and please do what you can to help solve the situation. Thank you.

Andrew Wilkie, please send me yourself.

Hello. Good evening, everybody. This is Andy Wilkie at Richmond High School. So I'm wrapping up my 12th year at Richmond High School, 15th in the district. I'm here tonight, and I have an email I swear I'm drafting to send all you guys about some of the wonderful things you've done, which is find money to restore programs across the district. So I wanna thank you guys for that. I think it's great. I have to speak up for my school and my student population whose voices are not heard for many reasons. Our school has been forced to go to a six period day next year. I'm so happy that Kennedy was given the funding to be able to go back to their eight period day. However, it adversely affects our students. And I hate to be in this position of... Impoverished school pitted against impoverished school. But I'm going to just give you some numbers really quick, and I will send you an email with far more details on my observations in the past 12 years. Richmond High School, 1,200 students. Kennedy High School, 825 students. Of our 1,200 students, we are 97% socioeconomically disadvantaged, 88%. Outside of town. Our EL population is 41%. Of that 41%, 15% of those students are new to this country three or less years. The K, 22% English learners. I don't understand why we're taking things from these students. I don't understand why funding formulas are not being used equally across sites, especially when the sites have very similar needs and inarguably higher needs due to twice the amount of human beings there. You are taking programs like mine away from so many kids. All we do is play ball and figure it out at Richmond High. And it seems like we are always punished for finding a way to make it happen. I look forward to talking to you guys soon. Have a good night.

Heather, please send me yourself.

Good evening. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Good evening, board. My name is Heather Harvey McNabb. I'm the parent of two VISTA students. I'm urging you to reconsider the proposed teacher cuts, reinstate the second and third grade classes that are being eliminated to prevent the displacement of 39 students whose educational stability and success will be directly impacted by these decisions, and also to preserve specialized English and mathematics teachers providing intervention and meaningful academic support. While budget challenges require thoughtful planning, the proposed cuts extend far beyond operational efficiencies. They threaten the quality of education students receive and fundamentally alter the educational model families choose and trust. Eliminating second and third grades will disrupt the learning environment that many families specifically selected for their children. Displacing 39 students, this disruption sends the message that students and families are expected to absorb the consequences of decisions made without sufficient consideration of their educational needs. I'm also deeply concerned about the impact these staffing reductions will have on middle school students, the elimination of specialized teacher positions, raising several important questions that deserve clear and transparent answers. How will the district ensure that middle school students in independent study continue receiving meaningful access to subject area expertise in English and mathematics? How will supervising teachers without specialized secondary content backgrounds be expected to provide effective intervention and support for these struggling students? Most importantly, how will the district ensure that our students continue receiving the proper support they deserve rather than the minimum level supervision required for compliance? Families did not enroll in VISTA merely to receive assignments and basic oversight. They chose VISTA because they offer meaningful academic support, access to qualified educators, intervention services, and pathways to long-term student success, reducing specialized instructional staff risks, transforming a robust educational program, into a compliance-based system that falls short of students' needs. Students deserve more than the minimum. They deserve access to teachers with content expertise, timely intervention when they struggle, meaningful academic guidance, and the opportunity to throw... Gian Maldonado.

Hello, school board. I would first like to start off with thanking the Ciara and thanking the All-Student Congress. So I joined not that long ago, and it's been an absolute honor to get to work with the All-Student Congress and especially the engagement team, the student engagement team. And I just love that every time that we look at our data, our statistics, we make our slides, we make... I see what students want. Students want to be engaged. They want to be engaged. And a teacher that I see that in every single day has to be Ms. Hernandez, Ms. Nayeli Hernandez. Her position, she wasn't offered a position for next year. We fought for ethnic studies. We fought for our academies and our programs. And thankfully, with the support of the district, the school board, the cabinet, and ourselves, we were able to protect them for the following school year. But her position, one of the leaders, an inspiration for so many students, an inspiration for me, an inspiration for every single student you see here is in support of her because she has taught us what it is to be an inspiration. She has taught us what it is to be inspired, to be a leader. She is the definition of underpaid and overworked. The countless hours she has spent after school, on weekdays, all the time. If I send her an email in the afternoon, she will reply right then and there in the afternoon. She has special needs children that she has to tend to, and yet she still makes time to support the leadership class, to support her U.S. history class. So I inquire the school board, the cabinet, everybody please look into allocating the FTE that is left over and allocating it to a teacher who wants to be at Kennedy, a teacher who wants to continue inspiring and continue teaching. Thank you.

Christina Huerta.

Christina Huerta, Kennedy High School. First, I would like Kennedy students to please stand for a second. These are the amazing Kennedy students here on a Wednesday night. Less than a week before their finals, fighting for their programs. Thank you so much. The way that you all fight for our school inspires me every single day. Thank you, guys. You can sit down now. Thank you. We know why I'm here. We know why we're here. We need stability at Kennedy, and Ms. Hernandez gives us that. There's .4 FTE being reserved for I don't know what. She can do it all. She's done US history, government, econ, ingenuity, college and career readiness. Her first year at Kennedy, we needed somebody to teach an extra section of ELD. She did it. She took on leadership last year, which means that she is a very, very brave person. And we need people like that at Kennedy in order to ensure that our school can continue to thrive. It makes no sense It makes no sense to continue to cut positions at Kennedy and then rehire new people. Last year, we were here, again, fighting for positions. Positions were cut in social studies. Somebody was hired, somebody brand new. Position was cut in English. We have a vacancy all year. Thanks for that. We had a position cut in our ITA Academy, and that position was rehired as a different elective. Why are we doing things that are hurting our students? Our students who are here on a Wednesday night asking that you use the FTE that was already set aside for Kennedy for a person who makes our school better. WAS coordinator, athletic director, those positions are open and she can take them. We do not need to wait and give somebody a 1.2 next year so that

Jen Douglas? Jen Douglas?

Hello, it is nice to see you all again. My name is Jen Douglas. I'm the mother of a two-year-old and also a second grader at Fairmont Elementary. I am here to literally beg you to not cut our funding for site supervision and for translation for our most vulnerable families where the parents are unable to communicate with their children's teacher during parent-teacher conferences if we do not have appropriate translation. I don't know what, I'm just gonna be loud. um at this point we are relying on school site funds which have been heavily heavily cut in order to deal with the issue of safety on our yard clearly our kids will not be even allowed to literally touch grass if we lose feet

Can we please have you speak into the mic? Can you reset her client? Because our Zoom won't be able to pick you up. Oh, I see.

Okay. So we are relying at this point in desperation on cut site funds in order to try and get some of our safety back onto our yard. But our grass will be closed for the entire year. For many of our children, this is their main spot to play and experience friends, and this is gonna get taken away from them. These wonderful Kennedy students are here and participating because they have schools that have cared about them and shown that they're gonna put their resources for what matters most for these children to feel safe. This starts at a young age. We're experiencing issues of... racial slurs, violence, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric on the field and on our campus during recess. And the only way to stop this is adult supervision, which is being cut in half. Additionally, we are asking you to allocate site funds or to allocate district funds for our translation services. At this point, we're desperate enough that we're going to use PTA money, which then takes that money away from our only access um to certain enrichment programs that our children will not have in grades K through six thank you for considering this Christian vigil please unmute yourself hello

My name is, good afternoon board members. My name is Christian Vigil, a Swedish studies teacher and Swedish studies department chair. I'm going to follow the example of my student, Luis, and I will say my comment in Spanish. En primer lugar, quiero agradecer a la comunidad de Kennedy. Me han enseñado a luchar por nuestras familias. Son mi constante inspiración. Y gracias a los miembros de la junta directiva por su colaboración durante esta lucha. para proteger nuestros maestros y nuestros programas. Esta es la primera vez que he podido comunicarme personalmente con los miembros de la Junta y aprecio mucho su esfuerzo. A pesar de nuestros logros, aún tenemos inquietudes en nuestro departamento de estudios sociales. Existe confusión respecto a la asignación de puestos docentes de tiempo completo. In particular, we want to verify that Nayeli Hernández is being considered for a sufficient number of positions so that she can continue with us next year. Hernández is a fundamental part of our school community, an excellent organizer and a colleague who inspires us to be better teachers. We continue to receive many questions about these positions, in particular about seniority, antiquity and accreditation. So just to sum up, just please look into Kennedy to see that Ms. Hernandez has the FTE possible to continue with us. She has been an amazing colleague. She was my student teacher during her first year. And Nayeli, if you can hear me, I appreciate you being a thought leader, someone who listens, someone who cares about our students. We need bodies in Kennedy. We need people that care. We need people that will allow our students to survive and thrive. Thank you so much and have a good day.

Last person on Zoom, Nick Crescenzi, please unmute yourself.

Good evening board, members of the staff. I'm here to discuss with you the observation of what most people are saying. They want, our public needs to realize that Money is what drives everything. And you look at the school district budget and you go, there's lots of money. The thing is, is that every dollar is spoken for. Every dollar that gets cut is taken away from someone who has a vested interest in it. You cannot cut money without affecting someone. The only way to drive and increase the amount of money the district has is there are two methods. Either the parcel tax, which will be up for renewal and really should be increased because it hasn't increased since 2004. Everybody out there has gotten away since 2004. That money has just diminished. We as employers, we as the public are employers. If we want to pay good wages, we need to tax ourselves to pay those good wages. The other way that we can increase our funds is to increase our enrollment. We need to stop acting like a 1980 school district where we just expect everybody to come to our schools. It doesn't work that way. Our district does not serve a population at the same rate as the rest of the state. We have only 80% of the student body in our area. The charter schools have 20%. Statewide, that number is 85% in public school districts. We need to look and make our schools, advertise them and be attractive.

Susan Davis.

Hello, my name is Sandy Davis, and I'm a Fairmont parent here again to ask you to restore our yard supervision funding and not to post translation funding to school sites. The proposed cuts to yard supervision are a safety issue, as other parents have mentioned. And while we are grateful that district staff from the safety department came to visit our school this week, I want to say again that our current staffing is barely adequate to safely monitor the yard, with students often having a hard time finding an adult when they need one. Please do not make this situation worse. As for translation services, asking sites to fund translation for all parent-teacher meetings except IEPs unfairly burdens schools like Fairmont, where we have at least 38 languages spoken. Providing translation services so that all of our parents have access to all school communications in a language they can understand, as is federally mandated, would cost us an additional $10,000 per year, which is a quarter of our site budget. Asking schools to carry additional costs for essential services while also cutting site funds by 40% doesn't feel like putting students first. It feels cruel, and I strongly hope you will reconsider. Thank you.

Kumi Chanahihara.

Good evening, board. My name is Kumiya Nihihara, and I'm here to speak on two concerns about Kennedy. A few weeks ago, the board voted to return 2.4 FT to Kennedy, which thank you for that, but that action was not only in response to making teachers whole, but to bring back programs that students were asking for, like Spanish for Spanish speakers, ethnic studies, and CTE programs. But leadership wasn't asked, too, and there are still plans to surplus the social studies teacher who teaches leadership, Ms. Hernandez. There are currently FTE available that are still unassigned that could go to Ms. Hernandez. The board didn't give us 2.4 FTE so that 0.4 could be used as reserves just in case we need more classes in August. We need leadership now. We need to make people whole now. It's also absurd that this is happening to a fourth year teacher in a core department. Please let Ms. Hernandez stay. Secondly, there are also issues in the English department. We learned that not all ELD students will be in a designated ELD course next year. ELD is a priority at Kennedy, not just because there are many multilingual learners, but also because the reclassification rate is low. If we truly want to help our students reclassify, the move should not be to reduce the number of their English acquisition courses from two to one. Additionally, we learned that there are some ELD one and two juniors and seniors who are to be put into the ninth and 10th grader international academy rather than give them their own designated ELD one and two course. This is not an appropriate placement as internationals has grade level specific content, not to mention that the internationals academy is meant to be cohorted with other academy subjects. I know we've already asked for FTE, which many of us have expressed gratitude for, but it is unjust of a school district to not offer courses that are grade level and ELD level specific to all of our students, no matter how small that course may be. And lastly, happy belated AAPI month. Happy Pride Month. Give sixth graders their computers. Don't cut yard supervisors or Vista or ELD and Ms. Hernandez from Kennedy. Reprioritize the budget. Thank you.

Zach Porter.

Hello, everyone. I want to start by highlighting and amplifying the voices of my colleagues and our students. Ms. Hernandez is a vital resource at Kennedy, and we need her to stay. I'm mostly here to talk about ELD. I'm going to make the argument that the new model of ELD prescribed by Director Orozco does not sufficiently meet the needs of our students. The efficacy of the new model is untested and it forces us into a bind where we can only serve certain populations of English learners at the exclusion of others. Replacing sections of ELD one through four with sections of 11th grade expository reading and writing for ELs creates a major gap in our ELA pathways. A student who doesn't fit specific criteria or who has needs not addressed by ERWC for ELs will essentially be deprived of services. In practice at our site, Orozco's model is not in compliance with California Ed Code Sections 305 and 306, as well as Title V of the California Code of Regulations, which requires schools to provide programs that ensure English acquisition as rapidly and effectively as possible. I want to talk a little bit about the efficacy of the program, this expository reading and writing program. Teachers have not been trained. Teachers do not have access to the curriculum. And as a district manager aptly described, he used the metaphor that piloting this program is like building a plane while it's in the air. The only benefit to running this program right now is obvious. It creates a loophole for management to artificially reduce FTE. So the English department really requires 0.6 FTE, which will allow us to meet the needs of all English learners, not just specific ones who would benefit from this ERWC class. It will allow us to be in compliance with Ed Code, increase graduation and reclassification rates, and create stability by retaining Jeff Subramanian, who's an amazing teacher that we want to keep at Kennedy. Thank you so much.

Athena Powels.

Good evening, board members. My name is Athena Powels, and I've been working at Kennedy as an English teacher for five years. And this is my first year as the English department lead. I want to thank all of you, all of the members who voted yes for Kennedy to get the 2.4 FTE. We really appreciate that. I do want to highlight the wonderful students who are still here and my wonderful coworkers who have talked about Ms. Hernandez. She is a staple at our school. She does so, so much, as well as this English problem. I want to highlight I do want to make you aware that in the past three years, we have had a vacancy in the ELD 3 and 4, which is a Williams violation, letting you all know. This has had lasting effects on our students, so much so that we barely have any students reclassifying this year. Last year, there was also English FTE reductions. However, due to getting a higher number of student enrollments than expected, the need for another English teacher arose over the summer. We were lucky enough to find this wonderful teacher. His name is Mr. Subramanian, who connects with the students and cares about them so much. His position is now on the chopping block once again. How are students supposed to succeed in learning English if they don't have a teacher that they can turn to in years to come? I worry this position will continue to be a revolving door if we keep cutting a position in ELA. Also, I want to shout out Dr. Shin. She has been a wonderful principal, and I'm wondering where ours is. Thank you.

Marie Anayam.

Shout out to the landscaping team at Dover. They completed all the weed whacking and the leaf blowing before the school doors open. We enjoy seeing the regular beautification of the campus that helps to welcome staff and families. Thank you for hosting the facilities master plan meetings. The parents and I were heard and our ideas and concerns were documented and it included feedback from staff, students and family. Today is my 19th speech this school year. I have only missed one school board meeting this whole year. I think that shows how dedicated My kids and I and the other parents who help support me are two of the causes that I've been talking about. I've repeatedly advocated for STEEGE and SPED. I had to make a big fuss because of track records and other parents' experiences. Sometimes you have to get bold and loud so your voice is heard. and the highly alarming concerns get addressed. If you had a child experiencing the same issues, I think it would have hit home the same way. Thank you for bringing the much-needed resources. I understand the last two concerns at Steege are being worked on. Since Lydia is promoting the kinder, she won't use the future-painted TK yard, but the incoming TK class sure will enjoy it, along with the trikes. Both yards also have access to water fountains and shades. It's helpful to have our updated transportation handbook and security measures in the sped cars. Thank you to all. Please consider adding the cameras and GPS on the sped buses soon. Our children are the most precious packages ever being transported in this district. I have two children who use the SPED services and I have to acknowledge that the app has been updated. I now get told when Lydia is picked up the car.

Lydia and I am. Lydia and I am.

All right. Okay, tell me what's your name? My name is Lydia.

Good. How old are you?

Four.

What school do you go to?

I'm about to say it.

Almost. Martin Hensley. You go to Steege? Hensley. Steege Elementary. And what grade are you in?

TK.

TK.

Yes, TK. Okay, all right.

Wait, Lily. And what's the name of your teacher?

Miss Ryman, Miss Kay, Miss Alicia. Yeah.

Good. And who are some of your friends?

Wait one minute. And then Lydia, tell them what do you like to do at recess?

I want to ride a bike. Yes, she loves the new tricycles that have come to Stitch. I wanted her to come up here and speak to you guys. You see her at every, almost every board meeting. It has taken a village here. I know at times they have ran around. But I'm grateful to everyone who has helped support me. I had to eat some bananas. has been receiving special education services here in the district since she's three years old. And she's doing very good. I thank you very much.

Malik and I am.

Okay. All right. Now I should do this. Tell them, what's your name? Buddy.

How old are you?

Buddy. No, you're six. No, I'm Buddy.

What school do you go to?

Harding.

No playing, okay.

Person school.

You go to Harding Elementary.

No, you go to Person.

Okay. And what grade are you in?

First.

In first grade. And what's the name of your teacher? Mr. Marsh.

No, I don't know. Misbreeding? I don't know.

So Malik is in the full-enclosure program at Harding, and he's had a very successful year there. The support team has been there to help him access the educational curriculum. I hope the FI programs can continue in the district. It has made a difference for my son. He didn't need to be in the SEC anymore, but he still needs that support. He also started in Cameron at age three and now is in first grade, going into second grade next year. Thank you again for the SPED support program.

Patty Blanco.

Good evening, everyone. In fact, it's Blanca Patricia Blanco Vasquez, my dad's decision. Okay, Spanish teacher in Kennedy High. I'm here to speak on behalf of Ms. Nayeli Hernandez. She's a wonderful educator, brilliant, and she's devoted to her students. Her purpose of life is to support students because she sees herself in them. She wants them to succeed. It's too sad for me and frustrating to see that someone who has given so much to Kennedy and our community, it hasn't been supported to remind our school. I urge you, board meeting members, please, Let her stay in Kennedy. We have the EFT and Ms. Hernandez is willing to teach all these different classes for staying in Kennedy and continue supporting our students. You can see that my words are supported by all those students who are here and who love her because she's an awesome person. She's emphatic, sociable, intelligent, and she cares a lot for their students. I have to say this in Spanish. Realmente no sé qué están esperando o qué quieren de nosotros. Kennedy sufre mucho. Es una población que todo el tiempo está hecha a un lado. Necesitamos personas profesionales como ella que trabajan, que les importa, que es bilingüe. No nos dejen de lado, por favor, necesitamos hechos, no necesitamos palabras, y es bastante difícil para nosotros venir cada día y tratar de hablar con ustedes y parece que le hablamos a la pared, porque no sucede nada, y nos dan excusas tontas. Gracias.

Jacqueline Avendano.

Good afternoon. My name is Jackie Avendaño. I'm WCCUSD alumni and fifth year ethnic studies teacher at Kennedy. I want to start off by saying thank you. Thank you all to the trustees who voted for the 2.4 FTE allocation for Kennedy. Today I announced to all my ninth grade ethnic studies students that we, meaning our community, defended ethnic studies and it is indeed in the schedule for next year. Despite the many wins as a result of the 2.4 allocation, my dear colleague, Ms. Hernandez, who teaches leadership, continues without a position at Kennedy. However, there is still FTE left over that has not been allocated from various pods that is being denied to her. I do not comprehend how our site continues to neglect Ms. Hernandez, even after the 2.4 allocation that would not have been possible without the support of leadership and leadership students. Our students have spoke endlessly on leadership. I hope you show them you are listening. Miss Hernandez deserves to stay at Kennedy. She is committed to our site, and she is being so flexible with her position. She is willing to step in as WOS coordinator, teach credit recovery courses, be athletic director assistant, and teach leadership. It is feasible to work out a position for her, and we need your support to keep her at Kennedy. Just to say a little bit more about why she's so important to our school. She's a UC Berkeley alumni. She has a firsthand experience as an immigrant herself. She went on to Stanford where she got her master's degree in education. She is more than qualified to be at Kennedy and she wants to stay at Kennedy. And there's a way to make her... make it possible for her to stay there. Please listen to our students. Please listen to our community and help us keep Ms. Hernandez. Defend Ms. Hernandez. Thank you.

Nayeli Hernandez.

Good evening. My name is Nayeli Hernandez, and I'm a social studies and leadership teacher at Kennedy High School. At the last board meeting, I spoke about the importance of retaining teachers who are committed to our students and our school community. Since then, there has been no clear resolution regarding my position, nor there has been meaningful communication despite multiple emails sent to site leadership seeking clarification. Tonight, I'm not Simply asking for a position. I'm asking for transparency and accountability in the decision-making process. I've been told that the reason for my displacement is insufficient enrollment and a surplus within my department. However, I would like to understand how the original decision was made beyond those numbers. At what point were my background, experience, seniority, service, and contributions to Kennedy students considered? Were they even considered at all? I believe I deserve a clear explanation. More importantly, I believe all employees deserve professionalism, communication, and respect when decisions that affect their careers and livelihood are being made. i also heard discussions about reserving a point for ft for next year if there is a position that remain unallocated or staffing decisions that are still being considered i ask that management clearly explain the process by which those opportunities are being filled how are candidates being considered what criteria are being used and why would available staffing opportunities result in additional assignments rather than being used to retain existing teachers who are already serving our students and school community. As decisions continue to be made, I respectfully ask for greater transparency, timely communication, and a clear explanation of how staffing decisions are being reached. Our students, our staff, and our community deserve nothing less. I also want to take this time to thank all of you guys for being here today. I love you guys so much, and this is the reason why I want to stay here with you guys. Thank you.

Jesse Spears.

Thank you. Good evening. I am a parent of a student at Fairmont Elementary. I want to thank you for being mindful of all of us asking for you to save our school from budget cuts. My daughter, she broke her arm because one day at recess they cut the site supervision for the field. She was running around on the blacktop and broke her wrist. It's really important for us to have the ability to access our grassy field so students aren't getting hurt. Additionally, our students need to be able to communicate, and it saddens me to find out that we're on the chopping block for our translation services. Right now, our PTA is kind of pushed to the very limit about supporting school programs. We're already paying for various programs that normally are paid out of, like in a typical school district, are paid out of just like the general fund. I do make a point to shame the fellow parents who end up leaving the school because they're looking for other schools with better services. I am never leaving WCCUSD. And I want to make sure that we're keeping other parents who are borderline, keeping them in the fold and get them to be motivated and enthusiastic about staying here. Thanks.

Chelsea Guadamuz.

Buenas tardes, Consejo Escolar. Soy estudiante de Kennedy y vengo aquí a apoyar a mis Hernández. Todos hemos visto que una manera, que un buen y verdadero y gran maestro se esfuerce mucho y tanto para guiar al alumno hacia el buen camino de la educación. He visto la firmeza que mis Hernández tiene. siempre firme siempre lista para dar la clase siempre organizando todos los eventos para la clase de leadership lo cual no queremos que vayan a quitar esa clase debido a a su despido y También como maestra de la escuela Kennedy, es injusto que le quiten ese puesto como la mejor maestra, bilingüe, segunda madre educativa de sus estudiantes, la que nos apoya siempre en todo momento, al igual que todos los estudiantes de Kennedy, aquí, apoyándola a ella, incluso yo. Y que nos guía siempre por buen camino, así como la intención de los demás maestros. Y para mí, ella es el corazón de Kennedy. Ella es el corazón de la clase de liderazgo. Y sin duda, ella incluso no se perdería el día que nos vayamos a graduar para nosotros los del último año. Y nos sentiríamos felices de que ella esté presente ahí. Y que ella vea que su gran trabajo dio grandes frutos y que nunca olvidemos quién fue el que nos apoyó y que nos dejó que pudiéramos experimentar más en la escuela, así como estudiantes. Y que le rogamos que no vayan a quitarle ese puesto a Miss Hernández. Gracias. Jacqueline Valencia.

Good evening, my name is Jacqueline Valencia. I'm a Kennedy alumni, community organizer, former soccer coach at Kennedy High School. I'm here today in support of keeping Ms. Hernandez at Kennedy High School. Ms. Hernandez has been a dedicated educator, mentor, and a leader for our students. Because of teachers like her, Kennedy students have opportunities to develop leadership skills and their voice, as you've heard many of them tonight and at other board meetings, and to become active members of their school community. Removing Ms. Hernandez would be another damaging loss for Kennedy. We all know how difficult it is to recruit and retain quality educators at Kennedy High School. So why are we getting rid of teachers who are committed to being here and investing in our youth like Ms. Hernandez? I also have to ask, why does it seem like Kennedy is always constantly facing cuts while other schools are not? Why is Kennedy always being asked to do more with less? We have... We have already seen cuts to programs, classes, and opportunities that our students deserve. Why Kennedy? Why leadership? Why Ms. Hernandez? Our students need stability. They need mentors. They need educators like Nayeli, Ms. Hernandez, who believe in them and who choose to show up every day and for this community. I urge you to keep Ms. Hernandez at Kennedy High School, as many others have expressed. She is a mom. She is an educator. I also know her through Caliber. where her kids go. And Nayeli will run to a parent meeting and then say, I have to go because I have to attend to other things for my leadership class. Nayeli will say, I will join you via Zoom, but then I still have to work two, three more hours because I have to do something for leadership or I have to go cook or buy something for leadership. So Nayeli is going above and beyond. So please, please, please, I'm asking you to keep her at Kennedy High School. Thank you.

Arely Cruz. Arely Cruz. Antonio Velasquez.

Hello, board members. I'm a 12th grader at Kennedy and throughout all my four years at Kennedy, I've never met such a good teacher like Ms. Hernandez. I honestly regret not having her class sooner. This year was my first year participating in leadership and I've had such a good time. One day in particular, I stayed in class helping to finish a project for a certain event. I stayed there the whole day, the whole class from first to eighth period. That whole day, I saw Ms. Hernandez do things that I had never seen any other teacher do. She was in calls. She was gathering items. She was talking to students. She was doing so many things that I can't even recall. But that day, I realized how much she had on her plate. Ms. Hernandez is such a great human, teacher, and just such a good person to be around. She pushes everyone to go above and beyond. I have other siblings who went to Kennedy as well, and every single one of them considers her like a family member. She's done so much to influence them, and she does that not just to my family, but to every other family in Kennedy. So if you guys can't see how much the interaction that people... Sorry. Just see how much interaction she causes because of how great of a teacher she is, then you guys need to keep looking into that. She does so much... And she continues to do so even in the last week of school. She keeps planning more and more for students who are graduating and for students who are graduating next year. She has a schedule already full for students of next year because she's not sure how the next leadership teacher will be. So she's continuing to do a great job while also worrying about not having a job next year. So please consider her to stay at Kennedy.

We have reached our one hour of public comment. We will now be moving on to one minute per comment.

Crystal Bennigan.

Good evening, everyone, board members, Superintendent Cotton, and especially those from my community who are still here in the audience. Go Eagles. I wanted to talk to you guys tonight because we're still fighting for the equity in education for our black students. We're still behind. We're still the most affected. And we need your help and we need the community's help. And so I wanted to talk to you guys, especially since I don't have that much time, from the ancestors. Because we all know that they had the best thoughts. Somebody said once that education is the movement from darkness to light. And somebody once said that the greatest thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you. That's what I say. And so I want to just remind everybody that education really is the foundation and no one can take it from you. So we need to fight.

Kay Kefkin.

Good evening, Ward. I would like to thank you for listening to our All-Student Congress presentation today. We worked really hard on that and it was all thanks to Ms. Tiara's wonderful leadership. I also wanted to say that something that does not help student engagement is having a teacher stay for a year or having a brand new teacher in a classroom. because students don't know who they are and they don't have any kind of reputation among the student body. So students aren't hearing from other students, oh, that teacher's awesome, their class is so much fun. So they're walking in there thinking, I don't know what the heck to expect. Having a teacher like Ms. Hernandez in a classroom brings so many students alive in everything they do in the day. Letting them have a safe space to be able to talk to somebody, letting them have a space where they know that they can be supported is so helpful to students. I don't want to see us lose a teacher who is so valuable to the Kennedy community and then be replaced by a bunch of subs. If we have a single sub in a classroom next year, I'm going to be so upset because we have so many amazing teachers and knowing that we're going to lose some of them hurts my heart so much for our community because we deserve to have our teachers. Samantha Cabrera.

Um. creer en sus estudiantes, ella ha ayudado a crecer, no solo académicamente, sino también personalmente. Sinceramente, sería muy triste que esta gran maestra ya no esté en la escuela, que la ha visto crecer profesionalmente, personalmente, y conectando con todos sus estudiantes. Porque ella es una de las principales maestras, la mejor maestra de Kennedy. Erika Padilla. Erika Padilla.

Hello, board members and fellow community leaders. Thank you for dedicating the time, energy, and energy to be here today. My name is Erica Villegas Padilla. I'm a West Contra Costa Unified School District alum and currently serve as a crisis intervention specialist and prevention educator for Contra Costa County's Rape Crisis Center. My position allows me the privilege of visiting all school sites K through 12, and the disciplinary practices I've seen concern me. I am a survivor of sexual violence, and as mentioned, work with survivors of sexual violence. We now have data that reveals the perplexity of PTSD and the way trauma can show up. Why have we not invested in building the capacity for understanding? A lot of the youth I serve are amongst the vulnerable populations listed in the LCAP that listed in that the LCAP fund seeks to serve and further engage to truly uplift and empower all students begins by nurturing understanding for all students.

That concludes public comment.

Can we have a five minute break? Let's take a five minute break. Thank you.

Thank you, everyone. We are now back from our five-minute recess. Trustee González-Joy.

Thank you, President Yena. I wanted to just very briefly just apologize to the public and to the board for stepping away for the last 30 minutes. As many of you know, I am the union rep for Fairfield Unified. Unfortunately, Fairfield is soon unified. just had a shooting at their continuation school graduation. And unfortunately, a couple of students have passed due to the shooting. So I wanted to just let you all know and send my prayers to the students, family and staff and what they're dealing with at the moment. And just let the public and you all know that I might be stepping away from the dais at various times tonight as well. Thank you.

Okay, we'll move now on to item 11, our standing reports. Do we have any reports for tonight?

Yes, we have standing reports for ASAP.

Good evening, board. We're planning to present with a DL cap. So are we supposed to present now? So because we're on the agenda item for to present with DL cap.

So this is the item to study reports from ASAP. If you wait for the L cap, we are not doing any reports. You'll have the one minute for public comment.

Okay. And DL cap will have a five minute standing report as well. ASAT has their own, their own five minutes right now. And then DL cap also has five minutes.

So we're not going to do it all together. It's going to be separate.

These are just standing reports after this item or later in the evening, we'll move.

I'm sorry.

I think I understand. Hold on. Zalon, you're presenting for both the LCAP and ASAP? Yes. So you're reporting out on both for both committees? No.

No. So what we were told that tonight we were going to be able to do our DLCAP report because we're part and then we were going to each parent committee was going to be able to present within the LCAP. That's what we were told.

President, I think that what they're saying is that instead of doing the report now, they would do it after the LCAP presentation to be able to share their thoughts on the LCAP itself and that each committee would be able to do that at that point. But I'm not sure how that would be.

Can we talk to Catherine right quick to make sure we're...

Five-digit LCAP record.

Thank you.

Thank you. Okay, so then we'll have the cap committee presenting first.

It's gonna be Lucas that's presenting first, and he's on zoom. Good evening.

Can you all hear me?

Yes.

All right. Good evening Board Trustees, District Staff, and Superintendent Kahn. My name is Lucas Madenix and I'm speaking as the chair of the LCAP committee. I also have with me our parliamentarian, Joey Knapp. We really appreciate the time the District Staff has spent considering our recommendations for this round of LCAP review and we're excited to see that most of our recommendations have been adopted into the draft of the LCAP that will be presented later this evening. Tonight, we will focus on the recommendations that were not adopted, and we want to register significant disagreement with some of those points. We asked the board to consider our arguments and to direct the district staff to take action. So the first one is the Reparations in Education Fund, our third recommendation. It is not included in the LCAP, and staff cited feasibility concerns and the need for further consultation. We want to be clear that what this proposal actually is, and it was designed to draw funding from outside the district's general fund from county, city, and community partners precisely because the district alone does not have the capacity or resources to close the gaps facing our Black students. Five years after Resolution 46-19-20, those disparities still remain. We appreciate Superintendent Cotton's openness to learning more, and we respectfully ask that the board direct district staff to schedule a formal working session with ASAP before the June 24th hearing and to provide a written response before that date. Second, the resolution itself, our recommendation number two, was included but with modifications. We appreciate the district acknowledging that the resolution has not been fully funded or implemented in over five years. But district-wide funding tied to this work was reduced from $200,000 to now $9,000. This really tells us about the priority. Revisiting the resolution through the governance committee is a start, but it's not accountability. We are asking the board to attach real accountability measures, a timeline, name responsible parties, and regular reporting back to ASAT and to DL-CAP. Our community is looking for measurable results for black students, not another written commitment. Third, site funds. Our recommendation number 12 was not accepted. The district cited the fiscal solvency plan as one of the key reasons. Within this latest LCAP, site allocations have been cut from $3.8 million to $2.3 million. That's a reduction of nearly 40%. While this is a large cut, it's actually been compounded over the last few years. In the 2022 and 2023 LCAP, it funded sites at a tune of $4.7 million. So when we look at this year's funding, that represents more than a 50% reduction since 2023. We understand that the district is in a difficult fiscal position, but what we're asking for is the board to be clear-eyed about what these cuts mean on the ground at our school sites. These are the dollars that let our principals respond to the real specific needs of their schools. These are things like counseling and interventions. At the same time, you're asking sites to now cover things like site safety and translation services. This is not sustainable, and the students who feel it first are the ones that are already furthest from grade level standards. I'm going to pass it over to Joey now. Thanks.

So our fourth point is a question that we've had repeatedly throughout the LCAP cycle. If a position is funded through the LCAP, how do we know it is producing the intended results? In the past year, the district has made great progress connecting their strategies to theories of change with measurable outcomes. They have also agreed to include additional language around data collecting in the LCAP. All of that is terrific, but the last step is for the district to share those results with the committee as we evaluate and make recommendations about these programs and positions. We ask the board to require that every strategy funded through the LCAP carry not just a linked metric, but a clear reporting structure so that efficacy data reach this committee during monitoring cycles. We shouldn't need to request outcome data. Its inclusion in district presentation should be the default. We will keep working this process, but we want the board to hear us plainly. The committee's confidence in the district's follow through is not high. We have been given commitments before. Tonight we are asking for four concrete things. A working session with ASAP before June 24th with a written response, real accountability measures on the resolution, an honest reckoning with the site funding cuts and reporting structures for every LCAP funded positions. We are asking for actions, not assurances. Thank you.

Thank you.

ASAP? Good evening, trustees, district staff, superintendent, and the WCC community. I am Yolanda Vieira-Allen, and my partner Zolan and I, Zolan Harrison, are speaking on behalf of ASAP. We appreciate the district's work thus far on the LCAP and its support of ASAP and our recommendation. We, however, do have significant disagreements with their responses to us and appreciate this time to address those concerns. Recommendation two that seeks collaboration with students and families to create a long-term plan and actionable engagement strategies. The district's response was that this was a continuing action, but that it looks to expand outreach efforts led by the Office of African American Student Achievement, OASA. ASAP's response to this is that OASA is one person. This is not a one person task. It requires deliberate focus and intention that OASA has been unable to provide. We remain steadfast in our commitment to raise the academic outcomes of black students and are seeking equal partnerships that work with us. to that aim. ASAT experienced more support and efficiency working with FACE, whose purpose is to create engagement plans and implementation processes. Delegating this effort to one person is a setup for failure and gives our community the impression that the district is not serious in its commitment to support Black families. Furthermore, OASA was designed to work with principals, district staff, and our superintendent's cabinet on behalf of students and families. It was envisioned to support ASAT's engagement efforts through its interface with upper-level management. Please let us utilize our engagement professionals so that we have an exciting student-driven and family-supported strategic engagement plan. Bazan, Zolan, excuse me. Reparations.

Thank you. I just would like to say ASAP is pleased to share that we have been in conversation with the superintendent cotton and our board trustee lays on, and they're definitely interested in finishing the conversation about reparations and education for our black students to change educational outcomes. And also in conversation about including our districts, why plan to ensure that this is you driven and our youth have a voice in this process. So we are thankful to hear that. We do look forward to that. And this is in the spirit that we are one. We have to look at outcomes and changing things to come together and see how we can build to do better for our students in our district. I'm complete.

We asked for math intervention specialists to which the district said it agreed. It had received a grant and is able to secure funding to support specialists at Nystrom, Highland, Downer and Riverside. While we appreciate the inclusion of this, please do not restrict this to only four sites. Black students across the district are in desperate need of mass support. Haven't we learned from our literacy strategy that restricting support to only a couple of sites has no significant impact on our academic data? Black students in our high schools are in dire need of math intervention and need our immediate attention. Please find an implementation plan that supports students at every school and not just at a few sites. We requested that we establish an anti-bullying policy to include no tolerance for anti-Black racial slurs. which was not implemented. But the district has agreed to explore existing policies related to bullying and anti-racism to increase enhancements needed to more explicitly address anti-black racial slurs. Please understand, ASAT's response is that we need you to understand the difference between being anti-racist and being anti-black. They are not equal. What black students are experiencing in our schools is happening in elementary, middle, and high schools. It's been suggested that it's only happening in a couple of sites. This is not true. And if we heard anything from our all student Congress tonight, we have learned that this is a problem at all of our sites and especially being challenged in our high schools. And so what we are asking the WCC community is to please, every time parents, students, you receive or hear an anti-black slur, document, document, document. Not just tell somebody, write it down. CC your principal, CC our trustees. Let's keep a record of it. Let's move forward with this and show the district that we have a serious problem that requires serious attention, that this isn't just about people hating a few kids. This is a big problem. And we also want to challenge our African-American community to begin the work to stop using the N-word as slang. We need to step into this, and this is a task for our families especially, that we need our families to change the mindset of their children, of themselves. I was part of that generation that used the N-word as a slang. Thank you, Ms. Yolanda, for your comments tonight. Thank you so much. Let's keep moving forward so that all students feel safe and respected in our schools. Thank you.

Our next standing report, we have CAC. Do we have anybody in virtual and Zoom? Community Advisory Committee for Special Education.

Point of order. Can we take a slight recess? Take like a three-minute recess?

We just have our standing reports. Can we continue with standing reports?

They all just walked out.

Yeah. So we'll be continuing with our standing reports.

Angela Silver Lima. Good evening, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead.

Good evening, President Inuyana, board trustees, Superintendent Cotton, and members of the community. My name is Angela Silver Lima, and I am the chair of the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education, also known as CAC. CAC started the year by setting goals we hope to accomplish in partnership with district staff. Empowering families through knowledge, building inclusive schools and supporting the whole child. Throughout the year, we met monthly with each meeting focusing on a specific topic. We had presentations on special education laws and understanding the IEP process, stressing the important role parents play as equal members of the IEP team. We also had presentations from special education staff on school transitions, assistive technology, AAC, and multi-tiered systems of support. We expanded our transitions topics this year to include transitions across educational settings, from early education through adulthood, strengthening parents' knowledge and easing anxieties about what to expect in the next stage of their educational journey. We also had the opportunity to hear about some professional development taking place across our district to better support students with disabilities. But CAC is not just a place where parents and community members come to hear presentations from district staff. CAC members are active and engaged in our community, as well as fierce advocates for our students. And I am proud of the work we have done this year. This year, CAC partnered with Care Parent Network for an IEP clinic and immigration workshop at Chavez Elementary. We participated in the district's transitions and resource fair and attended Cookies with Cameron last month. CAC members also had the opportunity to travel to Sacramento for the annual SELPA legislative sharing day, where we met with state senators and assembly members to advocate for the needs of students with disabilities. Earlier this spring, CAC collaborated on a framework for a potential work group focused on special education students in the general education setting and exploring ways to make our schools more inclusive. Although we did not get this effort off the ground this year, we are hopeful that it will become a reality through partnership with the district next year. In March, DAC also hosted the annual You Make a Difference Awards with a very special guest emcee, John Joya. We recognize 18 members of our district community who go above and beyond in the lives of students with disabilities, ensuring that students are seen, supported, included, celebrated, and advocated for. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. The promise of IDEA is not simply access to education, but belonging, opportunity, and the belief that every student can thrive. For five decades, IDEA has helped open doors to opportunity, inclusion, and access for students with disabilities, and we are proud to continue that work in our district today. As we celebrate 50 years of IDEA, I'm reminded of Helen Keller's words. Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much. The progress we make for students with disabilities is only possible when families, educators, staff, administrators, and community members work together. I would like to take a moment to thank Dr. Guthrie Fleischman for his leadership as SELPA director over the past three years. Throughout his tenure, he consistently centered equity, belonging, and inclusion in his vision for students with disabilities. He challenged us to think broadly about what is possible and to keep students and families at the heart of our work. We thank him for his service and wish him continued success in his ongoing commitment to equity and inclusion. Thank you.

Community Schools Initiative. If you are here in person or if you are on Zoom, please raise your hand. Okay, we will move on to UTR. Francisco Ortiz.

Good evening, President Añana, trustees, Superintendent Cotton, and community members. This is Dr. Francisco Ortiz, president of the United Teachers of Richmond. Tonight, I want to begin by congratulating every single graduate who walked or is going to walk the graduation stage as members of the 2026 class. Your commitment and dedication to your future is a milestone that you and your loved ones can celebrate and take great pride in. On behalf of every educator that supported you on your journey, we want to say that we are incredibly proud of you. As a middle college alumnus, I watched the MCHS graduation on YouTube and want to send a special shout out to my former student, Denae, who crossed that middle college stage. Congrats to you and all my former students at Ford Elementary who graduated this year. You all know you are a very special class. Second, I want to congratulate and thank Richard Barrera. Richard recently advanced to the November general election for California State Superintendent of Public Instruction after finishing second in a crowded field of 10 candidates. Richard has demonstrated that districts do not have to choose between fiscal responsibility and student success. Under his leadership, the San Diego Unified School District has become a statewide model for academic achievement, equity, and student outcomes by investing today's dollars in today's students. We appreciate Richard for speaking with UTR members during some of the most difficult moments of this district's history and for helping our board demonstrate that austerity is a choice, not a necessity. We look forward to continuing to support his campaign in the months ahead and encourage all West County voters to support Richard Barrera in the November general election. His leadership as State Superintendent of Public Instruction will be transformational not only for West County, but for the entire state. I also want to thank the board for continuing to make student-centered decisions. Over the last several months, students and educators, parents, and community members have consistently advocated for programs that keep students engaged, connected, and successful. We appreciate this board's commitment to protecting elementary music and ethics studies, programs that students themselves fought to preserve. Particularly, the Kennedy High School students have repeatedly shown up, spoken out, organized, and advocated for the educational opportunities they value and will fight for. We hope this board continues to listen to those students. When we listen to our young people and the educators who work alongside them every day, we create stronger schools and brighter futures. We also want to acknowledge the student-centered budget before you tonight. For years, UTR has argued that this district could prioritize students, classrooms, and school sites without resorting to unnecessary cuts. We knew it was possible. We are pleased to see a budget that reflects a different vision, one that prioritizes educational opportunities over scarcity and demonstrates confidence in the future of this district. We appreciate the leadership of this board in moving this district toward a positive certification and a more stable path forward. It truly does take three to move the board. On a different note, I want to lift the concern from kindergarten teachers who are being directed to move classrooms. Currently, there is no district guidance provided to kindergarten teachers regarding Ed Code compliance on having restrooms contained within the classroom or within the kindergarten complexes. As we approach the last week of school, there needs to be a coherent process and explanation for these changes before the school year ends. Finally, I want to address a recent arbitration decision involving the Teacher Support and Assistance Program or TSAP. UTR has now prevailed in four arbitrations against the district in the last three years. That's tens of thousands and thousands of dollars that go to law firms that our district could be investing. Most recently, arbitrator Carol Vandrila ruled that the district violated Article 51 of our collective bargaining agreement by failing to adequately staff TSAP and by failing to include newly hired educators when determining coach caseloads. The arbitrator found the district must comply with the contractual staffing requirements and that newly hired educators are entitled to the support and assistance stipulated in the collective bargaining agreement. This ruling is about more than contract language. It is about ensuring that early career educators receive the coaching, mentoring, and support that they need to be successful in their classrooms and remain in our district. At a time when districts across California are struggling with recruitment and retention, investing in new educators is not optional. It is essential. We respectfully ask that this board direct the superintendent and staff to fully comply with the arbitration award and work collaboratively with UTR to ensure the program operates as intended. Thank you for your continued service and for keeping students at the center of your decisions to all of our members, to all of our classified staff. I wish you all a amazing summer full of rest, restoration, and fun, and we look forward to starting the next school year together. Take care, everyone.

Next extended report will be DLI. If you are present and soon, please raise your hand. Next standing report will be MDAC. If you are present in Zoom, please raise your hand. That concludes standing reports.

Point of order. Would any, President Nyong'o, would you consider moving up all the action items and the discussion items so that we can get to them since we're at 9.37? Yes, let's move.

So we would know is everyone in agree to move in all the items from my only concern is around consent items and if there's no items that are being pulled. Can we address that quickly.

Okay, what do I don't want to the actual items. Does anybody remember wish to pull any items for the consent calendar to discuss later in the evening. Okay, see none. We will accept the consent items as posed. Now we will move on to item E action items. We are at student discipline and student discipline.

Correct me if I'm inaccurate, but I don't believe there's any discussion. We just make a motion. Okay. So I'll go ahead and move. Oh, do they need to all go at the same time?

I think they need to go at the... In closed session, we received information pertaining to...

I don't know.

To the recommendation stipulated expulsion of student number 252609, is there a motion to approve the recommended or approve stipulated expulsion of student number 252609?

I'll go ahead and move 252609's stipulated expulsion.

Is there a second? Smith follows second. So we have a motion moved by trustee regular second by Smith folds. Now we'll move on to the broker. To the vote trustee. Abstain trustee wouldn't abstain trustee regular. Yes, trustee Smith folds Smith falls. Yes, trustee. Yes, trustee. Yes. Yes. In closed session, we received information pertaining to the recommended expulsion reentry of student case number 252603. Is there a motion to approve the recommendation or approve expulsion reentry of student case number 252603? I'll move. Do I have a second?

Second.

Moved by Ayanna, second by Trustee Gonzalez-Hoy. Trustee Hahn?

Abstain.

Trustee Nguyen?

Abstain.

Trustee Riggler? Yes. Trustee Smith-Fold? Smith-Fold, yes. Trustee Gonzalez-Hoy?

Yes.

Trustee Hernandez? Yes. Trustee Ayanna is a yes. In closed session, we received information pertaining to the recommended expulsion reentry of student case number 242505. Is there a motion to approve the recommendation to approve expulsion reentry of student case number 242505? I'll go ahead and move 242505 expulsion reentry. Is there a second? A second. Moved by Reckler, second by Gonzalez-Hoy. Trustee Hahn?

Abstain.

Trustee Whitton? Abstain. Trustee Reckler? Yes. Smith-Fold? Smith-Fold, yes. Gonzalez-Hoy? Yes. Hernandez? Yes. And Yannis, a yes. Okay, we'll now move on to Authorizing resolution number 2, 5, 2, 6, dash 9, 5, declaring the. But the utility of public bidding for additional work on the college elementary school paving improvement project and approving change order for that work.

Good evening, board, community, and staff. Staff is asking for the board to move forward the resolution for additional work at Collins Elementary School as part of the paving improvement project for lime treatment and regrading. This course of action was recommended by the design team after the removal of the blacktop surface to stabilize the subbase.

Do we have any board questions? Do we have any public comment on this item?

Yes, we have public comment. We have Ms. Hamada Hamadi. Ms. T. Hamadi. Ms. Hancock.

Up there. Go ahead, say hello. Don't start talking. Hello, my name.

Hello, my name is Melody Thomas, and my school is Washington Elementary. I don't like it when people call me Monkeys or Goose. That makes me upset. And the teacher, the teacher. If they don't help. If they don't help, that makes me sad. But if the teacher screams at them. I put them in timeout for 100 seconds. Then they'll be good and nice. Be the change you want to see. Thank you.

Bless y'all, thank y'all. My name is Trianonette Hancock, and it's time to take action. With Resolution 4619, the anti-black, anti-racism policy practices and training, change will come. Our students will be consistently, our students who have been consistently groomed into mental oppression and told that they don't have a right to protect themselves, now will find resolution. Without resolution, they will continue to be bullied and harassed. With reparations, bring on the reparations. There will be restorative action that protects the black children and children from the African diaspora from being abused, neglected, and overlooked. We thank you for your time and attention to this matter. Good night.

Good night.

That concludes public comment.

I was wondering if someone from staff could follow up with the family that just spoke about the incident. Thank you, President.

Can we get a motion on the table?

I'll go ahead and move resolution 252695, declaring the futility of public bidding for additional work on the Collins Elementary School.

I'll second.

Okay, motion by regular second by Gonzales Hoy. Do we have any additional board comments? Seeing them, we'll move on to the vote. Trustee Hahn?

Yes.

Trustee Whitton?

Yes.

Trustee Regler? Yes. Trustee Smith-Fold? Yes. Trustee Gonzales Hoy? Yes. Trustee Hernandez? Yes. And Trustee Anyana is a yes.

Okay, point of order. We're at 946. Do you want to extend?

I would offer, excuse me, point of order. If I could offer a motion on the floor to dismiss the meeting tonight where we are right now and reschedule the discussion items for public hearing for the local control of Yonah Pity plan and the public hearing for the proposed budget. It looks like if we continue on the trajectory that we own, we will not be adhering to these things till late tonight. And I think with everything that's happening in the school district of Fairfield, it may be apropos for us just to dismiss. I'm complete.

That's a motion.

Sorry, that would be a motion.

Okay, motion on the table. Do we have a second to that motion? I'll second. You second the motion?

I'm not. I'm just wondering because it's a hearing of the LCAP. And even though I completely empathize, of course, with what's going on, I don't think we can call a special meeting on the LCAP hearing. It has to be an actual board meeting. And then we have to approve the budget on the LCAP. by the next meeting. So we actually cannot, we have to hear the items tonight. If we don't do it, we would be out of compliance with state rules. But unless someone please correct me, I'd be happy to stand, you know, if it's not.

Okay, I'm being both of them are both of them are time sensitive. Both of them have to be heard tonight. They are both public hearing. So public hearing has happened tonight on both items.

I believe that staff is ready to present on those two items. I think those presentations will be about 20 to 20 minutes for each presentation. That doesn't allow for board conversation and public comment, but at least knowing it'll be about 20 minutes for each.

we are at 9 48 49 now 20 minutes each i'll make a motion that we extend that we extend the meeting until um 11 30 to finish the discussion items well i'll second that

So we have a motion on the table to extend meeting to 1130 by Gonzales Hoy, second by Trustee Reckler. Do we have any board comments on that? Okay, seeing none, Trustee Hahn?

Yes. Trustee Whitton?

Yes.

Trustee Reckler? Yes. Smith-Foltz? No. Gonzales Hoy? Yes. Hernandez? Yes. Yes. And yeah, that's a yes. We will now move on to item F discussion items and reports. We have two items. Number one is the public hearing for 2026 2027 local control accountability plan. At this time, I am opening the public hearing on the 2026, 2027 local control accountability plan of the West culture costs to unify school district. And I have invite them to come out and make a presentation.

Thank you.

And can I ask staff, please set a timer. Thank you.

Started it now. Thank you. Good evening. President Yana clerk, Gonzalez, Hoyt trustees, superintendent cotton and community. Tonight we're presenting our 2627 Local Control Accountability Plan, which provides an annual update around our effectiveness and actions. Next slide. Before I begin, I want to make sure that everyone knows that this presentation is a summary. The complete LCAP is attached, including executive summaries available in English and Spanish. And there's also a very descriptive appendix that has more detailed data. Next slide. The development of this LCAP is a year-long process and it has included several rounds of goal reviews, in-person work sessions, and joint PAC meetings. And tonight you will be hearing the adjustments that we're making and we'll be approving the LCAP on the 24th. Next slide. For us, one of the biggest and strongest indicators of authentic engagement is whether the PAC feedback results in action. And you can see here that in total we received 43 recommendations and all those recommendations, only four were not included. This reflects our commitment to listening and responding to our partner voices. Next slide. So I'm going to jump right into goal one, which is really focused on creating engaging learning environments where students feel connected and supported. And you can see in the green that we've got some positive outcomes, including an increase in district-wide attendance, a reduction in chronic absenteeism, particularly within our African-American students. We've seen a reduction in our suspensions, particularly to African-American students. and we've seen an increase in our VAPA opportunities, we still need to focus on family participation and particularly take a look at our foster youth around suspension rates. Next slide. So now we're going to review the actual program. So across positive school and climate program, all the strategies were implemented as planned with no material differences. And you can see that the three strategies marked in green were effective and five were yellow as partially effective. And we do have some several proposed updates for the 26-27 year that came from staff and from our parent advisory committees. The first is really what LCAP, DLCAP just spoke about, which is adding specific metrics so that we can make sure that every strategy can be clearly measured. And we've also adjusted our strategies around attendance and engagement to now get student feedback around particularly how we can cut back on class cutting behavior. Next slide. across the parent engagement and volunteer outreach. You can see that all of our strategies were implemented with three strategies effective and three partially effective and one not yet effective. We're going to strengthen our efforts by adding accountability metrics to our SCOWS strategy. And we've also included a recommendation around the Parent Leadership Council designed to build connections and strengthen our community partnerships. Next slide. Across whole child education we've implemented all the strategies and four were effective, the only shift here is that our VAPA programming at elementary will now shift based on our fiscal solvency plan to operate with seven FTE across all of our elementary schools next slide. And here you can see the estimated actuals for goal one and next slide. you can see the proposed expenditures to maintain this positive school culture and climate goal. Next slide. And now I'm going to pass it over to Dr. Greenwood to review goal two.

Goal 2 focuses on ensuring every student has access to high-quality educators and learning environments that are anti-racist, inclusive, and accessible. This year, we saw a significant improvement in teacher retention, increasing by nearly 25 percentage points from baseline. This reflects the impact on our investments in recruitment, retention, and educator support. We also maintained 100% access to standards aligned instructional materials district wide, ensuring all students had access to resources needed to engage in grade level learning. At the same time, the data highlight opportunities for growth. Teacher absences increased by nearly 6,000 days, and the percentage appropriately assigned and fully credentialed teachers declined by 6.4 percentage points, reflecting on ongoing workforce challenges across California. Overall go to demonstrates progress in maintaining a stable and supportive work force while highlighting areas where we must continue strengthening recruitment retention and staffing supports next slide. Across additional staff for high percentage of UPP, all strategies were implemented as planned with no material difference. With all two strategies are partially effective for changes in 26-27 school year, the district commits to provide a transparent list of positions funding through 1760 program as has shifted with our fiscal solvency plan. Next slide. Across program employee recruitment and retention, all strategies were implemented as planned with no material difference. With all three strategies are partially effective and all three strategies are effective. There are no plan changes to this program for the 2627 school year. Next slide. Here you can see Gold II estimated actuals and the proposed expenditures maintain support for universal systems and access support in the 26-27 school year. Passing it back to Katherine.

All right, thank you, Dr. Greenwood. So goal three remains our largest instructional goal, and we saw some encouraging academic outcomes. You can see that college and career readiness increased by seven percentage points, graduation rates increased, English learner reclassification rates improved. and our distance from standard in ELA also improve. At the same time, foster youth outcomes remain a focus that we saw in goal one and goal two. And this reminds us that while we see some improvement, the work is not complete until all of our student groups experience success. Next slide. So jumping into programming, across allocations to schools, there was no material difference and all strategies were effective. However, some changes for the 26-27 school year include a reduction in program from $3.8 million to $2.3 million, which is part of our fiscal solvency plan, as well as the discontinuation of the I-Ready assessment and the addition of M-Class stibles and lectura, the Smarter Balanced Interim Assessment Suite, and the use of our local curriculum for math, Eureka, and Desmos. Next slide. across the elementary school program you saw three strategies were partially effective and one was effective, with one not yet effective. The changes here include the addition of our elementary math and reading teacher leaders to support our focus on capacity building across our schools next slide. Across the secondary school support program, we saw all strategies were effective with one not being yet effective. And then the changes include the elimination of the IB program at Pinell Valley High School and the addition of the articulation of our alternative school setting program offered through special programs like Vista Family of Schools, Greenwood, and Middle College. Next slide. Across our supplementary instructional program, all the strategies were implemented as planned with three strategies being effective. And at this point, we have no planned changes to this program. Next slide. Across our multilingual support program, all the strategies were implemented for being effective, and we are updating our recommendation for DLI programs to consider the exploration of a 50-50 TK model as a general instructional setting for schools in our dual language programs. Next slide. Across professional development program, all strategies were implemented and there are no planned updates to this program. Next slide. And across the evaluation and program monitoring program, all strategies were implemented, four were effective, and we are going to discontinue the CSI PLC because we don't have any schools that are designated as CSI. However, the improvement science sessions that we utilized in that space are going to be incorporated into our principals collaboration space for all principals to benefit from. Next slide. And here you can see the estimated actuals and one more slide, you can see the planned expenditures and now I'm going to pass it over to Dr. Fleischman to review goal four.

Thank you. So goal four is to support students with disabilities as well as to provide early intervention to avoid over-identification. Some positive data that we can share, as you see, chronic absenteeism is down, graduation rate is up, and suspension rate is down for students with disabilities. Some opportunities for growth is you see the lack of growth in I ready reading and actually a decline in aspect la next slide please. Here you see the strategies on the implementation were planned. No material differences from the program budget. The strategy for school psychologists has proven effective as we are no longer disproportionate for white students in separate schools and we are no longer disproportionate for African-American students. Classified under emotional disability. The supplemental and adaptive curriculum has proven beneficial. However, we've moved it to a different funding source and staffing support has been partially effective. Updating strategies for next year is supporting resource teachers, funding resource teachers to be able to provide early intervention through our learning centers and to provide response intervention. Next slide, please. Here you see the 25-26 estimated actuals and for 26-27 the planned expenditures. Next slide, please. And moving on to Goal 5.

Okay, back to me. Thank you. So Goal 5 addresses outcomes for our focal student groups, and we're seeing some good progress that's worth celebrating. Our English learner chronic absenteeism decreased and graduation rates increased. For our African-American students, we saw graduation rates increase. The percentage of students identified at at-risk long-term English learners declined dramatically from 14.8 to 3.4. However, we did notice that we need to continue to focus on our English learner suspension rates and our African-American ELA performance. Next slide. And so across our program designated to support English language learner support, we were able to implement all of the strategies as planned with no material differences with four being effective and three being partially effective. Changes include what we've already discussed around the discontinuation of I-Ready. And for this area, we are adding an EL-focused assessment, the OPTEL, which is an observational tool to better give us data around the specialized EL needs for our students. Next slide. Across our African American Student Achievement Program, all strategies were implemented as planned with four strategies effective and three partially effective. For this program, we're including a shift where the literacy strategy that used to have classified staff pull students out are now going to be flipped, and we're going to allow the certificated most trained educator to provide that intervention to the 10 schools that have this support. In addition, we are incorporating the family engagement walkthrough tool, which was created in partnership with ASET to support school success for next year. Next slide. And you can see here our estimated actuals for goal five, as well as the 2627 planned expenditures. Next slide. And so that's the five LCAP goals. However, we are also legally required to present out are equity multiplier school progress. And here you see that Lincoln Elementary School exceeded their equity multiplier goals. They improved in ELA by 18.1 points and in math by 23.2 points. And as a result of this growth, they are no longer qualified to be an equity multiplier school. Next slide. And so you can see here how those funds were spent, but this is a really important accomplishment and reflects the effectiveness of this targeted approach. Next slide. Greenwood is going to enter the 26-27 year as a new equity multiplier school. However, they're shifting their goal into a graduation-focused goal. Currently, they have an 89.9% graduation rate, and their target is to get to 91% by next year. Next slide. You can see here that their investments are really going to focus on attendance supports, intervention systems, family engagement, and individualized student supports. Next slide. And here's their actual estimated actuals. And in the next slide, you'll see the allocations for the 26-27 year and how they're going to be focusing those strategies on supporting and expanding on those recent gains. Next slide. For Steege Elementary School, we also saw great academic growth. ELA improved by more than 110 distance from standard points and mathematics improved by 96 points. So like Lincoln, Steege success is resulting in them no longer qualifying for equity multiplier funding. And we're very excited about that. Next slide. Here you can see their estimated actuals and their program review. And one more slide, please. I want to take the opportunity to conclude this presentation by highlighting our commitments to transparency and authentic engagement. This year, we sustained and were able to hold 13 DL cap meetings where we reviewed every goal twice, expanded partnership and membership, conducted in-person sessions, and provided multiple board updates throughout the year. We also continue to work on the Parent Bill of Rights and strengthen that alignment with the board policy 6020, which is currently undergoing the workbook session review. And lastly, and most importantly, our LCAP reflects a collaborative process that's shaped by families, students, staff, advisory groups, and our community partners. So thank you so much.

Thank you. Now we'll move on to public comment. Do we have any public comment on this item?

Point of order, I think it's board questions first.

OK, we'll take board questions. Okay, we'll move on to public comment.

No public comment.

Okay, now we'll move on to board questions. Do we have any questions from the board? Trustee Reckler?

Thank you very much. Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for the LCAP. This is probably the best one I've seen ever, so thank you. The first is I'd like to talk about teacher retention, where teacher retention is at 90%. Would you be able to talk about what happened and how that was able to grow so much? It's fantastic.

We believe the strengthening of our teacher support programs helped with this process. So with our teacher residency program, our teacher support and assistance programs, and our teacher induction program, we believe this is what made the increase.

Okay, thank you. I'd like to next ask about the public comment, yard and translation. Would someone be able to discuss any feedback or what will happen around yard duty and translation and PTAs paying for translation in that whole discussion?

Absolutely, I can address that. comes up in goal three around program allocations to schools. And so part of our fiscal solvency plan was a reduction in the funds that schools get to be able to implement their school site plans, their SPSAs. And so we saw a reduction of $1.5 million or $3.8 to $2.3 million. Schools with their PACs decide how they want to make those investments. All schools are allocated a basis of yard duty supervision, which is an allocation of about one hour per 100 kids. And schools can supplement that base allocation by utilizing their SPSA in order to do that. They're also, they are able to allocate funds for translation services through their SPSA as needed as well.

Okay, thank you. I'd now like to go to special ed and talk about inclusion. One of the one of the things that is a needs improvement is work on on inclusion, practices and procedures. Would you be able to talk a little bit more about that and the work that may lay ahead to strengthen that?

I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?

The question is, one of the challenges and one of the areas of improvement was about inclusion, special ed inclusion. Would you be able to talk about some of the strategies and what might happen in the future so that that could be strengthened?

Certainly. So what we've been looking at is trying to find ways in which we can build out our inclusion programs at early elementary. Data across the country show that when students enter TK kindergarten, first grade in self-contained classes, they typically remain in those self-contained classes In perpetuity, the data show that most of the time students don't eventually go back to a general education setting. This isn't specific to West Contra Costa. This is nationwide data. So we've been really putting a lot of energy and trying to build our strategies around how can we include, increase opportunities for students with disabilities to be enrolled in general education classes at the early elementary levels. This is not a quick and easy task. This is something that takes several years to build out the capacity. We have to train our general education teachers. We have to ensure that we have appropriate staffing levels. And so this is something that we've been discussing within the special education department and beginning to collaborate with our early education, or sorry, early childhood education partners on the general education side. We have our first co-taught state preschool and Cameron classes this year, which is a new collaboration. So we're trying to build that out, expand those opportunities at the early childhood education levels so that we can have those students progress through early elementary and into secondary school.

Thank you. Okay, I've asked three. I could ask 12 more, but...

Do we have any more questions? Okay, Leslie, go for it. Three more. Nobody has any more questions?

You've asked some of my questions, so I think you're doing great.

Okay, then. I'll move on. Could you talk about parent engagement and... uh, I'm going to assume that what happened this year may have been because of the work stoppage, but what, what might be coming next year to, uh, beef up?

Absolutely. Um, there was definitely a slowdown, um, as you saw in our data around our impactful engagements. We also had some staffing leaves that really impacted the work in that department. And so, um, We have a new assistant superintendent who's going to be holding community engagement, and I know that she's working really closely with both our PACs as well as our recommendations already received about how to have more authentic engagement and really have a targeted outreach to be able to support our families and knowing how to best partner with schools. I think I see a really strong opportunity with the ASAT recommendation around the walkthrough tool being something that can be used really broadly to create recommendations and next steps for every one of our schools, but also more broadly for the whole district. And we do have plans to expand what has been an existing successful program, Parent University, that just wasn't able to come to fruition this year. And we've heard time and time again from families that that's a really strong program that we wanna see come back to the district.

Then I'd like to talk about attendance and how was this calculated with the work stoppage? And the same thing goes for teacher absences. Did that affect those numbers?

It most certainly did. As we look at our attendance number, you're going to see probably a significant dip, and that's also why you saw the attendance of teachers in Goal 2 spike really high. We had lots of absences. Ultimately, I believe, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jeff, it is an average that's used at three years for our attendance rates, and so that's not going to be reflected yet. And so we will eventually see the outcome of that. However, our broad independent study offering helped to mitigate some of those impacts, but it was a lot of students out for more than five days.

Okay. And then for many years now, probably at least three or four, I've heard the comments about positions and whether they're effective. I have some ideas about a rubric that I'd like to send to you, which would be like, what's funded? Is it filled? How many students does it serve? Was there an increase or a decrease? And I'd like to send it in and just see if people would look at it because I have heard that many times before. Would you be open to that?

Absolutely open to it. You can see we actually added quite a bit of metrics. And then after every strategy, we do have in parentheses the metric that it is. But we can certainly take a look at that tool to make sure that as a system, we're being really thoughtful about presenting that data every time it comes forward. So please send it up to me.

Okay, thank you.

Seeing no further questions from our board. The public hearing is hereby closed. Now we'll move on to the second item public hearing for 2026 2027 proposed budget. Yeah. Yeah. Do we have any public comments for the LCAP from the board? Trustee Reckler?

Thank you. So thank you for the work. This is really a great LCAP. I'm still going to be reading it for four months. A couple of things. Attendance, if kids don't show up. You can do everything in the world, but, you know, so attendance, attendance, attendance, attendance, attendance. Also for the parent engagement, the walkthrough tool, I remember that and that was very popular. And then we also used to train our SSCs. We used to have those meetings where we would invite parents in and have a training and it was like a big deal. But I think you'd get much better results out of SSCs if you did that. I definitely agree with starting parent university again. And there was... pretty good progress and there are still some challenge areas but uh overall i'm um i'm really happy with how this was put together and how much information was included and um thank you trustee gonzalez

Thank you, President. Thank you, Trustee Reckler, for all your questions. You sent a lot of questions that I had. First, I want to thank staff for your work on the LCAP. I also agree that it's, in my six years on the board, I think it's definitely one of the strongest I've ever seen, if not the strongest. So I want to thank all of you for the work that you put in. And I know that the LCAP and our LCAP groups still had recommendations that we could not put forward. So I appreciate that there's already some plans on how to hopefully achieve some of the requests through other conversations. And I appreciate that. I heard tonight from one of the groups specifically that They were thankful that there was an avenue to have those conversations. So I definitely want to acknowledge that I agree with what they're asking for. And of course, we have a lot of competing priorities in our fiscal solvency plan and our budget. And I know we're about to go into that. in a minute, but I'm feeling really hopeful with the budget from the state right now. And hopefully next year we can have additional conversations with all the groups about what are our priorities, right? As a district and what are their priorities and how can we continue to achieve them? So I wanna thank you all for that work. um and uh miss costover prascus i just want to thank you specifically because i know this is your last lcap with us um and uh which is such a sad thing because you've done such an amazing job and i just wanted to give you a shout out because you deserve the flowers because a lot of parents um have expressed how open and transparent and um uh great you've been to work with them so i just want to thank you for that

Trustee Hernandez?

Yes, I just want to echo what my fellow trustee Gonzales Hoy said. I want to personally thank you, Ms. Acosta, I can't say your last name, your second last name. Okay. I'm sorry. Acosta. Okay. For all your hard work and through this LCAP process and, you know, developing a plan that reflects our student voices, our families, the community and staff. It's no small task, right? And here's just your leadership in your 20 plus years here in the district. No, I'm so sad to see you go, but you know, This is your last LCAP with us, and we're moving forward, and thank you so much.

Okay. I think the board has said it a lot. I think they echo a lot of the things that we're all feeling. Sitting as an LCAP member for many, many years and many, many nights and many heartaches, I know the sentiment, but I think this really inspires to what we can continue to do as a district. I've never seen so many of the recommendations be included, fully implemented in LCAP compared to many other years. So I really want to thank you for that and for really capturing the community voice in the work. So I appreciate it and thank you. Now we'll move on to the public hearing for the 2026-2027 proposed budget. At this time, I am opening the public hearing on the 2026-2027 proposed budget of the West Contra Costa Unified School District. I invite them to make a presentation.

Good evening board, thank you. Tonight we're gonna talk about the proposed budget for 26-27 school year. We'll be back on June 24th for the adoption of this budget. Next slide. Here you'll see the timeline for a full school year's worth of budgets. We're opening up the new fiscal year as of 7-1-2026 and we're updating our financials and multi-year projections for the next school year. Next slide. The proposed budget process here, you can see we started back in January 2026 for building this budget, projections, enrollment, and staffing. We've incorporated the fiscal solvency plan. We've made adjustments based on the governor's May revise, and we've amended our multi-year budget projection for this year and the next two subsequent years. Next slide. Changes since 2526, you'll see we've got additional ongoing revenue coming from the cost of living adjustment from the state, as well as special education base rate funding increasing. We've included labor agreement changes effective 7-1-2026, for example, the 3% salary increase. We've included reductions for FTE materials and contracts based on the fiscal solvency plan. We've added back expenditures from expiring grants. We've aligned with the fiscal solvency plan for the staffing matrix. Our enrollment and ADA projections have increased slightly. A decrease in indirect cost rate from 8.01% TO 4.68% FOR RESTRICTED PROGRAMS AND DECREASING THE FUND 17 TRANSFER AND CONTRIBUTION TO SPED. THIS ALSO INCLUDES THE BOARD COMMITMENT FROM A COUPLE WEEKS AGO FOR THE FUND 17 INCREASE FROM THE CONTRACT COMMITTEE MATCH THAT WE DISCUSSED AT THE PRIOR BOARD MEETING. Here you'll see the budgeting planning factors. These are the out-year COLAs provided by the state, as well as the augmented additional COLA for 26-27 of 1.44%, and the increase to the special ed base rate to $1,340, as well as our CalSTRS and PERS and unemployment insurance projection estimates for the next three years. Next slide. Here you'll see the cost of living adjustment or the COLA for 26-27 is 2.87% with an additional augmented COLA of 1.44% bringing the total augmented COLA to 4.31% proposed that the governors may revise. This is pending state approval of their budget at the mid and end of June. The additional augmented COLA of 1.44% actually comes with new expenditures that they want this new revenue to cover, and that is the paid pregnancy disability leave. This is giving a new mandate for 14 weeks of paid disability leave for complications with pregnancies. And so there are additional revenues, but we do have additional expenditure for increased subs in 26-27. Next slide. THIS IS THE EFFECTIVE COLA. OUR CALCULATION SHOWS THAT BASED ON OUR ESTIMATED ACTUAL REVENUE COMPARED TO OUR 2026-27 REVENUE, WE ARE SEEING AN INCREASE OF ABOUT 7.8 MILLION DOLLARS BASED ON THE 4.31% AUGMENTED COLA, WHICH IS AN EFFECTIVE COLA INCREASE OF 2.31%. THIS IS BECAUSE OF OUR DECLINING ENROLLMENT AND ADA, WHERE WE'RE NOT SEEING THE FULL BENEFIT OF THE 4.31%. NEXT SLIDE. This chart updates our graph for declining enrollment, our funded ADA, and our actual ADA rates, as well as our projections for the next three years. We are still declining, and you'll see a dip in 25-26 due to the work stoppage that temporarily decreased our ADA. And we're hoping to increase that ADA next year, as well as... bring in new TK classes to increase our enrollment and offset some of that declining enrollment. Next slide. Here you'll see the revenue sources for unrestricted, restricted, and combined for 26-27, LCFF sources, federal, other state, and other local revenues. Next slide. The 26-27 new revenue changes, you'll see the COLA and augmented COLA equals $7.8 million. On the restricted side, we see the base rate for special ed increasing to $1,340. This is projected to bring in about $9 million more in revenue for special ed, which will offset our contribution from Fund 01. Learning Recovery has an estimated new increase of revenue to 3.6 million. I will note that in the budget itself, there is 1.8 million for revenue for Learning Recovery, but we are anticipating that grant to be 3.6 million next year. SSPD, Student Support Professional Development Grant, is a massive one-time grant for us. The state is projected to give about $5 billion for this grant, and that would equal about $21 million in revenue for our district. with the potential of increasing depending on where the governor's budget lands when it's adopted later this month. Community schools is now becoming ongoing revenue, and we'll see about nine new schools added based on the new formula, and that will increase our revenue by about $1.8 million for community schools. And then there are additional dollars for literacy coach grants. The amount for us will be determined in a future formula. Next slide. Here you'll see our expenditures, certificate of salaries, classified salaries, benefits, materials and supplies, contracts, and then other outgoing and indirect costs. You can see the total expenditures for unrestricted, restricted, and combined. This is our projections for 26-27. Next slide. I want to remind everybody about the fiscal solvency plan for 27-28. It still needs an additional $27.2 million in reductions, one-time borrowing of Fund 71 funds of moving those expenditures for 13 million. And then we would need to identify 14.2 million in additional cuts in the 26-27 school year by March 15th for the 27-28 school year. And that's built into these projections. Next slide. Our MYP or our multi-year projection is the current year plus the two subsequent out years. These are all the considerations that go into building that MYP. Next slide. Unrestricted MYP, here you can see our revenues are actually outpacing our expenditures for 26-27 by about $992,000. Our beginning fund balance is increasing to the projected ending fund balance. And then there's a transfer of Fund 17. I'll explain that in one second. And then we're committing that $971,000 from the contract committee for increasing Fund 17. The assigned amount, $4.6 million, that is the augmented COLA, 1.44%. We are anticipating that to pass, but if it doesn't, I've built in a Fund 17 transfer of $4.2 million here on that yellow line to show if the augmented COLA does not come to realization, we would need a Fund 17 transfer of $4.2 million to balance the books to zero. If the augmented COLA does come true, we will not need that Fund 17 transfer, and we can remove the assignment, and the revenue up above is showing all revenue from the Governor's May revise for the unrestricted side. In 27-28, you'll see the fiscal solvency plan line of $14.2 million in reductions to expenditures that's being built in for the fiscal solvency plan. And if that comes true, we will have an operating surplus of $3.8 million in 27-28. We will not need any Fund 17 transfer, and you'll still see the assignment for $4.7 million for the augmented COLA potentially passing in the end of June. That would leave a fund balance of five million dollars. And then in twenty eight, twenty nine for the fiscal solvency plan, we are moving back the expenditures from fund seventy one back into fund one. So that's why you're seeing an increase of thirteen million unrestricted expenditures to twenty eight, twenty nine. And that actually leaves us in a deficit of about $13.6 million in 28-29. And that would require a Fund 17 transfer of $4.7 million to offset the prior year ending fund balance. And that is how we will end the year at $0 for 28-29. We do not certify a qualification for adopted budget, but if we did, this would qualify as a positive budget certification. Next slide. Combined general fund MYP, this is the unrestricted and restricted combined MYP. In here, you'll see a decrease in revenues from 2627 to 2728. That is the one-time SSPD funds decreasing for next year, as well as the parcel tax revenues decreasing because that expires on 6-30-2027. So we cannot show those revenues or expenditures tied to those funds until the parcel tax either passes or doesn't. For now, we're showing a decrease in revenue due to that. The rest is all restricted side funding, and we are seeing an operating deficit, but that is intentional to spend down those one-time grants. Next slide. Here you'll see our Fund 17 projected remaining balance. There is some ORs in here if we need the Fund 17 transfer based on the augmented COLA or not. At the end of three years, we are anticipating to have about $8.5 million in Fund 17 after the 28-29 transfer. Next slide. Again, for the MYP outlook, we can meet our 3% required reserve in all three years with expenditures living on Fund 71 for the first two years, as well as fiscal solvency plan reductions in 27-28, and the additional expenditures coming back in 20-29 from Fund 71. Next slide. And that is the presentation for the proposed budget for 26-27. Thank you.

And do we have any board questions on this item? Trustee Gonzales-Hoy.

Thank you, President. Thank you, Mr. Carter. Okay, I have a few questions. First, you talked about NMA revised the Super COLA includes the cost of the 14 weeks of pregnancy leave. How are we calculating the cost of the pregnancy leave?

Yeah, so School Services of California made an estimate of what they anticipate that cost to be for substitutes based on an ADA basis. It's an estimated average. We're projecting about $41 per ADA, which equates to about a million dollars in expenditures for our size of our budget.

Okay. As part of that calculation, is it included that districts already pay 50% if teachers use differential funds?

Uh, so this is, uh, in, in addition to that, this is 14 weeks prior to any other benefits, uh, for disability leave. So this is, uh, a brand new 14 weeks. And so, uh, we do budget for the salaries of those employees. Uh, but the new cost to us is the, uh, substitute replacement for those entire 14 weeks.

Got it. Okay. Thank you. Um, Then you mentioned the 1.8 learning recovery. That is currently sitting in restricted funds. That's correct?

Yes, that is a restricted fund revenue.

Okay. The new SPED ADA of $9 million, when you calculate your NYP, are you putting that in restricted and then releasing $9 million in unrestricted to support the fiscal solvency plan?

Yeah, so the revenues come on the restricted side. The anticipation is those additional revenues would mean we need to do a less of a contribution from Fundo One unrestricted side. And so we are seeing a decrease in the contribution as a result of an increase in special ed restricted revenue.

Got it, okay. Now, in the service and other expenditures for the budget for next year, the assumptions, combined restricted and unrestricted, it showed 117 million. How does that compare to this year? Can you remind me? Is it higher or lower than what we expected this year in our adopted budget?

In this year's adopted budget, it is higher. But that's due to receiving additional revenues in restricted budgets and increasing our expenditures based on those new fundings.

And do we expect that that will decrease next year through additional work that we'll do to reduce contracts and services?

Yeah, we're always looking at our contracts to reduce them in the out years, as well as with expiring grants in the following years, we will see expenditures fall off as those grants are no longer applicable to us.

Okay, and President, I have one more if it's okay, or do you want me to wait? I can wait.

You can wait.

Okay, no problem.

Trustee Reckler.

Thank you. First, thank you for all this work on the budget. I know it is quite an undertaking, so I really appreciate it. So what other funds are not in here that are expected? Is it only the literacy coaches or?

There's also a small amount of CTE grants that we can apply for, as well as kitchen infrastructure grants that we can apply for as well.

But this $5.6 billion that became the $3.9 billion. Yeah.

So the Governor's May revise contemplates a $3.9 billion settle up. That is reduced from his January revision, which was $5.6 billion. The Senate and the Assembly have discussed where they fall on that. They kind of oppose doing this settle up. If those funds were to be allocated back to us, it could result in an additional $15 million to us. But that's to remain to be seen with how the state adopts their budget.

Okay, so for up to now, everything that you listed, you baked into the budget except for literacy coaches. Would that be accurate?

That's accurate. And the $3.9 billion is not in this budget either. So the $15 million would need to be passed before we could include it.

Okay. I want to follow up on the SPED contribution. I always carry around my handy-dandy SPED with it. So what do you think the contribution is going to drop to it was estimated to be let's see 2627 98.9 and I think when we went over the agenda, you said 94 so that's still approximately. What the.

Yeah, so there are increased expenditures on the SPED side. So we did agree to additional raises for SPED teachers as well as paraprofessionals. So there are increased expenditures happening on the SPED side. So we're not seeing a $9 million decrease to our contribution from the unrestricted side. But we are expecting to see about a $5 million decrease in our contribution. In 26-27, about $94 million to special ed.

Right. We'll take it. I want to come back to the 5000s unrestricted 5000 services and operating expenditures and then 5900 communications to a lesser extent. But you're going to you're looking to finish up this year spending 19.1 million only talking about unrestricted. And then in 26-27, that grows to $22 million in unrestricted. So for all the work that the board has done in the contract committee, would you be able to talk about why there's an increase?

Yeah.

Projected increase?

Yeah. So the student support block grant, SSPD, we did receive $7 million of restricted revenue in 25-26 for that grant. that we used to offset the 5,000s in 2526. So we reduced the unrestricted 5,000s by about $6 million and moved that to the restricted side for SSPD and spent that down to bring our 5,000s down. That was one-time funds. That was our plan from 2526. with those funds expiring their one-time funds are gone we bring those expenditures back to the unrestricted side to where they usually live for ongoing costs so those uh increase are in this budget from 2526 sspd and in 2627 we do not have expenditures built in on the unrestricted side for sspd yet those restricted side expenditures are to be determined how we're going to use those dollars

Okay, and then for expenditures on communications, it's small. Once again, I'm talking just about unrestricted, but you're going from 796.7 to 816.3. What is in there that's driving that increase?

Do you have a page number you're referencing?

SACS form, page 8. It's not a lot. You can actually get back to me, but I'm just curious. When I think of communications, I think of all the technology and data types. In the 5900s, a lot of that is our postage.

Postage stamps go into the 5901 object code. The way we buy postage is bulk purchase. We put it on a meter, and then it runs down based on where we're at. Currently, we've not replaced it yet in 2526, so we are expecting a larger purchase in 2627 to replenish our postage meter.

So do you mean to tell me that we're going to spend over $800,000 in postage?

No, that's not that entire amount, but that's the increase that you're seeing. The increase. Yeah, yeah. But we spend about $100,000, $110,000 on it.

Okay. Wow. Okay.

But I can follow up and give you a further breakdown of what's all in that 5,900 line.

Yeah, it's not, that's fine.

Okay, thank you. Trustee Ed, do we have any questions? Trustee Gonzalez, I'm sorry.

You're totally fine. You helped me think of a few others to ask, quick ones. So in the conversations right now between the legislation and now the Assembly and the Senate both released very similar but also different budgets um now in both we're seeing increases both on the sspd grant and a decrease on the 3.9 decrease from the governor's proposal right um would you in your best estimate talking to uh school services, do they believe that in three weeks things will look very different or at least better for school districts than what they even looked in the May revise?

Yeah, so the Senate and the Assembly have both actually agreed on all the revisions in the May revise from the governor except SSPD. And so the governor allocated $5 billion statewide for SSPD. The Senate projected or requested $6.5 billion, and the Assembly wanted $5.6 billion, and to allocate it based on LCFF unduplicated count, not ADA. But it seems as if the bare minimum of SSPD will be the $5 billion, as the other two-thirds of that process believe that the SSPD should be higher than what the governor proposed. And they're... suggesting to use it from that $3.9 billion settle-up amount. So they're still discussing it. There is some likelihood that it will increase from the $5 billion that the governor proposed, but it probably won't be the entire $3.9 billion amount.

And now the only way that our deficit could potentially go completely away for next year is if we were to get the full 3.9, right? So if they only do a part, it's only going to decrease it partially, correct?

Yeah, so... I guess 15 million more in revenue from that $3.9 billion set up could offset the 14 million in reductions that you're seeing from the fiscal solvency plan. But we do not have a deficit in 27, 28, but we would in 28, 29 in current projections.

Got it, and my last question. Now, if the board was to modify the fiscal solvency plan so that we can use the SSPD grant and potentially a combination of funds, Sorry, let me backtrack. If nothing changes from the May revise and we look at your MYP, if the board decided to change the fiscal solvency plan to use the SSPD grant for next year and part of the SPD grant for the second year and maybe a combination of Fund 17 or ending balance, we could see no reductions that we would have to make unless something changes in the district, like further negotiations or something drastic, whatever. But we could use both SSPD and Fund 17 or ending balance in the second year to offset having to make cuts. Is that correct?

That is correct. You could delay the cuts. And I just really want to emphasize, if nothing changes in expenditures, so labor negotiations or partial tax not passing would need additional reductions from what's currently projected in the fiscal solvency plan. Yes, but you could offset those reductions with one time dollars, but there's still ongoing costs in the out years.

Thank you. And this question is both for you and I guess the superintendent. This is my last question, President. If the board continues to keep the fiscal solvency plan as written, as is, and we have to make 14 million and a half of cuts, what is going to be our plan in order to do so in the next two years to approach already a very slim district?

What I can say is that it will be very challenging, but it will be necessary. Some of these funds hopefully will offset and may cause us to revise our fiscal solvency plan. However, I think I've described it as we were deep in a hole. We are less in a hole, but we're still in a hole. We have not reached a place where we are fiscally sound. And so with what you're saying, I would just caution that. Jeff, did you want to add anything?

I would confirm from after doing 40 million in cuts in 26, 27, it would be extremely difficult and some really tough decisions would have to be made to find an additional 14 million in cuts.

Thank you both. Thank you, President.

I just have a couple of bigger things and then a couple of comments at the end. So do you think you'd know by the adoption on the 24th or we're going to expect a 45-day revise?

So the state has to Put a bill out there by June 15th, but then that gives the governor two weeks. So he has until June 27th or 29th to pass the budget as presented to him on June 15th. So there is a possibility we would know by June 24th, but it's probably unlikely based on the last three years trend of the date that the budget passes. It's usually passing on June 29th or 30th right at the midnight time.

Okay, thank you. That's it. I just have some comments at the end.

Do we have public comment?

Yes.

Dr. Francisco Ortiz, please unmute yourself.

Good evening, board staff and community. I want to begin by saying that at last year's LCAP and budget presentation and public hearings, they told two different stories. They weren't aligned. And this iteration shows an alignment. It shows engagement with the LCAP. It shows transparency in the outer years and the increased revenue that is going to be coming. And so we look forward to continuing to work with Jeff, with the rest of the staff to move forward and increase stability for our students. And also want to thank Jeff Mr. Kostover-Praskas for her leadership on the LCAP over the last couple of years and for your service to our students in our community. Look forward to having a great summer. Have a good one.

So long, Harrison. Please let me hear yourself.

Can you guys hear me?

Yes.

I just want to say I really appreciate what you guys are doing differently. There is a lot of work still need to be done, but thank you for doing it differently. And thank you for showing us more of where we can measure the difference. And that's what I see in this. You guys have always heard me talk about LCAPS before. So this one was definitely done up to the finish line today when we presented in partnership with the district. So I hope that this is not a one-time deal. I hope that we can continue to get this type of transparency and type of partnership. So thank you guys for your work. And thank you, Superintendent Cotton, for your leadership on getting this done. And yeah, I appreciate all you guys. And thank you, Catherine, for being there. To the finish, I'm complete.

That concludes public comment. Do we have any board comments on this item, Trustee Riggler?

Thank you. So again, thank you for all the work. I would like to recommend that if you don't have literacy coaches and there's no add up, that you do that because every school district in this area is going to be looking for literacy coaches if that money comes in. If the money doesn't come in, then there's no harm. You can tell applicants that you don't have any work, but I'd go out there and try and get them. The other thing that I just want to reiterate again is that parcel tax, and if it doesn't pass, hopefully there's something put away and there's a plan to ameliorate what could happen with that. So just let's think deeply about that. And then attendance and enrollment are just key. I mean, we get paid by attendance, but enrollment employs our teachers and, you know, it's your enrollment that determines how many teachers you have. So really in the next year, have to think about some turnarounds. I do have some ideas. I don't think this is the time. Hopefully we'll have a retreat and we can all talk about some ideas, but I do have for new programs and, some new ideas. One of the things is both Oakland and San Francisco are opening schools to serve ESN students so they don't send them to non-public schools. I don't know what that would entail, but if two districts are doing it, you know, there might be something there to look at. And that's all I have. Thank you very much.

Trustee Gonzales-Hawaii?

Thank you, President. So I will be making a motion, but I was wondering if I could make a comment first, unless you want me to make the motion, whichever you prefer.

Make a comment.

Okay. Thank you. First, I want to thank staff for the budget. I know a lot of it is changing as we're talking with the state for the positive, thankfully. But I am really concerned about us continuing to have to make cuts next year. I think this year was hard enough. We still are trying to understand how the cuts are going to affect our schools, especially our highest-need schools. I agree with what's been said. I just have no idea how we would be able to find another $15 million to cut from our schools at this point. I think that if we need to do it, we'll figure it out. We always figure it out. But I can't imagine... asking sites to continue to do less and less with what they already have, right? I mean, we're hearing the need needing to be greater. So I think that, like, my recommendation that I'm going to make tonight is that we continue to, for now, for lack of a better word, put a bandaid on it because I just can't imagine starving our schools more than what they are now, what we're hearing. So my recommendation, actually, I'll make the motion and then obviously we can have a conversation.

Just a point of order, though. It's a discussion item. So do you want to make some recommendations? It's not an action item.

Oh, right. But I can still make a motion on a discussion item, even though it's not action.

So would we vote on the discussion item?

On the motion for the discussion item. Right? I'm pretty sure. Should we pause for a second? I mean, we could, we could always make it a recommendation. And if everybody agrees, we can whatever you prefer. I just felt like a motion was probably simplest.

But yeah, I just don't know what the answer is. But I want to hear what you have to say.

How do I make the motion? Then maybe in the meantime, the superintendent can find out whether a motion or recommendation. I think, yeah. Okay. So I move to modify the existing fiscal solvency plan by authorizing staff to utilize the full allocation of learning recovery funds, along with the new revenue from student support professional development block grant funding to offset the reductions included in the current plan to the greatest extent possible in the next two years.

So would that need to be done now? Or what kind of a timeline do you have to see what rolls in from the state and what shakes out?

Yeah, I mean, we could bring the resolution on June 24th or on the following board meeting in July if you want to wait and to see what the actual budget adoption is. But we could bring a resolution, uh, to. To incorporate that recommendation.

Okay, so there's no need there's a, there's a runway. You don't need to do it by June 24th.

Uh, you do not need to know you would, you would. Unless you would need to do it before the 45 day revise if we're doing 1, if additional revenue is coming. or by first interim, but the resolution can happen at any time to commit the dollars, and then we will build it into our future projections.

President, through the chair, may I add something for trustee Ricklers? Yes. We can always change this resolution, right, Mr. Carter? Because we can always change the recommendation.

If we bring the resolution forward on a certain night, you could always modify that resolution on the night of.

When giving a heads up to staff about it, what we talked about is that it does commit the funds so that they are not placed somewhere else in the budget and they begin being spent. Um, if that makes sense.

So, I'm not. I think that we should talk before we do that because there might be other things that the board wants to do. There may be new programs you want to see that would increase enrollment. I'm just going to be completely honest. flat out honest if you defer all reductions it might not be a good spend there may be some things that really do need to get let go and reinvested somewhere else i don't know what the answer is today but you know there's a possibility that something else could come along um so i would i would let us talk about it first, and then we have a retreat in July. We can make that a topic to figure out what we're what we what we think or what after the 45 day revise or something. I mean, I just think we have some time. I agree. But once again, it just might be premature to, you know, there are 15 million more dollars would come might come in.

That's the area.

Thank you, Trustee Rickler. I actually don't disagree with you. I think that the idea though is that, we could still find areas on the system to cut. So in conversation with the superintendent, Mr. Carter, talking about bringing back the contract committee next year, continuing to decrease areas of the budget that we might consider are too high to continue to find savings. I think that work can still happen, but then it doesn't put us in this state of urgency of having to find cuts Right. Within the year. That's my that's my concern. We have been in this heightened sense of having to cut, having to cut, having to cut. Right. And even though our goal would be continue to decrease certain things in the budget that might actually benefit us. Right. we would not have that pressure as a system. Schools would not be thinking of like, well, we know they're going to cut $14 million, right? So what's going to go away, right? That constant stress that we've been going through the last few years, which is why I think it's important that we do make this statement, even if it changes, right? In three weeks, four weeks, we might not even have to pass the resolution, but I think it creates that commitment that like we're telling sites, For now, like we're giving a pause for the system to stabilize with what we've already cut, which has been a lot over the last few years.

Trustee, I mean, Superintendent Cardin.

I'm trying to get... a little bit more clarity on this action that you're you want to take tonight. The recommendation of the guidance is that you can discuss but if the agenda item is discussion only action can't be taken.

But from sorry to interrupt, but from my understanding, there's no actual action on the budget is a motion for the revision of the solvency plan. I guess that's what we need. Sorry. We need to act legal.

I am.

It's not the budget itself. It's the...

It's not about the content of what we're talking about. It's about the process. And because it's a discussion item, it would have to come back as an action item. That's the feedback that I'm getting right now.

So does that mean that we can discuss it and it could come back. As a resolution. On the 24th or does that just mean that we could discuss it that we just discuss it.

Additional feedback so. that this point can be brought back in our next meeting because the item will be an action item and that action can be taken at that time.

Okay, so can we direct the superintendent now? to write a resolution that puts $14 million potentially in a committed line to defer reductions in the next fiscal year? Would that be accurate?

Yeah, I mean, I think that's the other way that I see it happening. I think the advice we're getting is wrong, but nonetheless, I mean, who am I to go out? say that there's lawyers wrong.

I think that then we got to have our school board attorney degrees.

Right. Because we've done it. I've seen that we've done it many times. So I'm surprised that we're being told that now. Nonetheless, I agree with you. I think that we could just direct staff to do it. So it's not a motion. It's just direction. Yeah. Yeah.

Okay, well, with that conversation happening, no motion can be taken though, because this is not an action item, so that we would all have to agree to give direction to bring back this item, right? Trustee Gonzalez-Hoy.

Thank you. I will ask that I would like to direct staff to bring us a resolution which modifies the fiscal solvency plan with the things that I mentioned earlier. And then I think that as long as the rest of you agree, then staff will have to bring it at the next meeting. And then at that meeting, we would vote on the resolution directed to be brought back.

Yeah, I agree. Yeah, we'll bring the resolution with the action item of adopting the budget and You can you can make a motion at that point to change it if you foresee, but or adopted as is with the adopted budget.

Okay, so do we are we on an agreement to give that recommendation to superintendent?

I'm not against it, but I'm not sold yet. I would look at maybe something, but I just think it's premature. And as I said before, there really might be dead wood that does need to go away. You may want to build new programs. You may want to, you know, like, I don't know what the answer is. I just think it's premature. That's all. Okay, so I think with the majority. I also don't know if it's possible to cut 14 million. I really don't. But I just, if it doesn't need to be done right now, I wouldn't. There's no rush.

Okay, well, it seems that the majority of the board is. Directed superintendent to bring back a resolution. I'll turn export meeting the direction.

Just for clarity, so bringing back a resolution, modifying the fiscal solvency plan. That uses. 14Million to offset. Reductions for 2627, is that correct?

Kind of. That's why I'm asking for clarity. That uses the learning and recovery grant left, so the $1.8 million for next year, with the addition of the SSPD grant, and then for the 28-29 year, some of the SSPD grant with addition of possibly Fund 17 or ending balance, if we project that there's an ending balance that year.

We're good. Okay. Yes, we'll work on that.

Thank you.

Okay. Well, this now closes our, hereby closes our public hearing. Now we will go back to our superintendent report. I think we did that.

Well, we could also, we have the resolutions. Why don't we quickly move through the resolutions and then I'll do the report at the very end.

Okay. We'll move on to item 12, resolution number 2526-92, Juneteenth recognition in WCCUSD. And that is Ms. Sanders' item.

Thank you, President Inanna. Whereas the West Contra Costa Unified School District opposes and rejects any form of oppression and pledges to support the Black community and their intersecting identities by working to achieve genuine equity, access, and success for our students, employees, and communities which we serve, and whereas the West Contra Costa Unified School District Board of Education approved an anti-racism statement on March 20th, 2024, to uphold the conscious and active effort to identify, challenge, and correct racial inequities in the systems and institutions within our schools and community. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the West Contra Costa Unified School District Board of Education does hereby recognize June 19th, 2026 as Juneteenth, a day of celebration of the past, present, and future of Black resilience, culture, and liberation.

Okay, do we have a motion?

President, I move that we approve Resolution Number 2526-92.

I second. Okay, moved by Gonzales-Hoy, seconded by Hernandez. Do we have any comment on this item, board comment on this item? Seeing none, we'll move on to the vote. Trustee Reckler? Yes. Trustee Gonzalez-Hoy? Yes. Trustee Hernandez?

Yes.

And Trustee Ayanna is a yes. So moving on to item 13, resolution number 2526-93, LGBTQ+, Pride Month, June 2026. And then it's also Ms. Sanders' item.

Thank you whereas the district is committed to fostering a safe and respectful school and community cultures and affirming school and home environment substantially improve the mental health and school engagement of students. And whereas the month of June is an opportunity to celebrate the identities and contributions of the plus community. And by recognizing pride month, we support policies practices and curriculum that honor and respect student staff and their families. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the West Contra Costa Unified School District Board of Education declares the month of June as Pride Month, and be it further resolved that the West Contra Costa Unified District Board of Education directs the superintendent and all district staff to support lessons and activities that engage students in meaningful learning, research, and writing about our LGBTQ plus students and families.

Do we have a motion?

Ms. President, I move resolution number 2526-93.

Second. Motion by goes on his voice second by trustee regular to have an important comment. Seeing that we'll move to the vote trustee regular. Yes, trustee Gonzalez Hoy. Yes, trustee Hernandez. Yes, trustee Yana say yes. Now we'll move on to resolution number 2526-94 immigrant heritage month, June 2026. And that is also Ms. Sanders' item. Ms.

Thank you, President Inanna. Whereas the state of California has played an active role in opening up academic pathways for undocumented immigrant students through the California Dream Act and AB 540, and the state of California's 11 million immigrants make vital contributions to the economy, to education, and to the communities throughout the state. And whereas the United States is a nation of immigrants shaped and supported by immigrant innovation and labor, including that of activists and leaders and immigrants Activists and leaders and immigrants contribute to the cultural, linguistic, and diverse heritage of our communities. And whereas by recognizing June as Immigrant Heritage Month, we support policies, practices, and curriculum that honor, celebrate, and welcome immigrant students, staff, and their families. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the West Contra Costa Unified School District Board of Education declares the month of June as Immigrant Heritage Month. And be it further resolved that the West Contra Costa Unified School District Board of Education directs the superintendent and all district staff to support lessons and activities that that engage students in meaningful learning, research, and writing about our immigrant students and families.

Do we have a motion? Okay, I'll move the item. I second. Okay, it's been moved by Indiana, second by Hernandez. Any comments from the board? Seeing none, we'll move on to the vote. Trustee Regler? Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Yes. Yes. I will now pick up on item D superintendent communication superintendent. Thank you very much.

Yeah. Let's go to the next slide. Just want to highlight a few items, and I know that we are very short on time. We celebrated last week our 10th annual Black graduation. It was a beautiful event. Next slide. We also celebrated our first annual Latinx graduation, and that was also a beautiful event and just appreciative of our community coming out to support both of our cultural celebrations and honoring our students who have made, who are making very important milestones in their lives. Next slide. We also had a Richmond High School senior walk, if we want to hit play, we'll watch a little bit of it, where these students went over to visit with students at Ford Elementary School, showing them the direction that they're heading and what they should be aware of. And so it was an amazing event for our students, our youngest learners to see our seniors who are on the way to graduation to know where they're going. Love this moment. Next slide, please. In addition, we also had Washington Elementary School had their mural day last Saturday. Their community came out to just create some beautiful murals that were developed by local artists. I encourage folks to take a drive by and take a look at the beautiful work that's going on across our campuses, particularly at Washington. Next slide. Also Grant Elementary School participated in the reading challenge. This was a great day for our young learners to really engage with college educated or college students from UC Berkeley and also to promote healthy living and sports the importance of sports for our students next slide so what's coming up graduation season is here it is upon us and we see all of our graduation events that will be coming up starting on Saturday and going through the week and to next Saturday as well Please be aware that with some recent events, messaging will be going out to families in the morning about some of our more heightened awareness and heightened safety measures that we're taking on our campuses. So please make sure that you are making time that graduation ceremonies may take a little bit more time to get into we will be using devices to make sure that there are no metal objects weapons coming into any of our events we're asking folks to limit if you can bring you know your keys your wallet or your your your Belongings in your pockets that would be better than bringing bags into our facilities. We also will have increased security on campuses during our graduations. Next slide please. And so we continue to create safe, equitable, and anti-racist schools together. And so we are very excited. On June 9th, we will be hosting a district-wide equity and safety convening at Alvarado Adult School. This will bring together students, school leaders, district staff, and community partners for a collaborative day of reflection, data review, and action planning. This is work that's led by our students. So you saw a little bit of what they can do. They will be leading this event and this community event. So very excited comes out of it. It is a day of action, not thinking about what we might want to do. It's doing action. But really want to support our students, but also looking for our students leadership as we tackle challenges around racism in schools. They shared with you some of the data that they found in reaching out to over really was over 700 students. And we want to use that data and gather more to make a change for our students. Schools should be safe. places where students feel like they belong and they are treated with dignity, both with their peers as well as between adults as well. Thank you. Next slide. Getting ready for our Juneteenth celebration. We had a very nice resolution that was shared, but Juneteenth is happening. We are looking for our honor roll students to join us to walk in the parade. I think it's amazing for our kids to have an opportunity to be in parades. And we will be celebrating. I hope the board also received our messaging this week to see who's riding in the parade as well. So we're representing the district at this event and, again, wanting our honor roll students to definitely walk with us in the parade. Next slide is our African-American family retreat. It's a day of sharing, learning, and fellowship. It's going to be held on June 27th at De Anza High School from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. We encourage families to apply. Lunch and child care will be provided. Next slide. I also want to lift up the importance of reading over the summer. Every summer story counts. We want kids reading. Doesn't matter what you read, just make sure you're reading. Just a few minutes of reading each day can support vocabulary development, comprehension, fluency, and critical thinking. Next slide, please. And if you're looking for something to read, hey, you should join the library summer reading program where you're able to, between June 1st and August 1st, we're encouraging kids to read. definitely come on out and grab your library card and start reading. Remember, plant a seed, read. Next slide. We also are preparing for elementary summer programs that are coming up. We have a number of elementary sites that are hosting hubs for learning as well as enrichment activities for students across the district. Next slide. And also for secondary, that was for elementary, for secondary as well at Dijon, Korematsu, Richmond High, and Greenwood. our hubs for our secondary sites, most are academic enrichment. There's also summer bridge programs and opportunities. And also with our summer program, the Office of African American Student Achievement will be hosting their summer school program. It is focused for our sixth, seventh, and eighth grade students, focusing on African American and African diaspora history and algebraic concepts. Calculus Roundtable will be working on on a financial literacy focused curriculum with this group, as well as the Hidden Genius Project. We'll be coming out and working with social entrepreneurship. So definitely sign your kids up for a summer program. We want to encourage, again, learning through the summer months. Any questions?

Thank you. I see no questions. We'll move on with our agenda. Do we have any last board comments on trustee Gonzalez?

Thank you. I'll be quick. So everybody gets a chance. I want to thank the sites for flying the pride flag. I think it's been really amazing to see it right now, especially this month. Two, I agree with Trustee Redclair, we really need to speed up the conversation on the parcel tax. I'm getting more and more worried, especially after seeing the election results from last night. We're gonna need to really do a lot of campaigning, not us particularly as a district, but with our partners to make sure it passes. And we have to obviously do a lot of education from now until November of our community. And I know that this year has been especially hard for everyone. from our site staff to our cabinet and superintendents. So I just want to thank everybody for this year. It's been hard not just for the cuts, but the strikes, the difficulties. I really appreciate our district for going through all these things and still coming out on top. And then lastly, again, I want to thank Catherine for all her time. I know it's your last board meeting. I know you won't miss this, but you'll miss us. So I want to wish you the best on your journey. Thank you for everything you've done from your time in Montalvin and before that to The work that you've done now, really appreciate you for that. And then I was just going to ask if we could hold 30 seconds of silence for the students who lost their life tonight. It is the nightmare scenario for all of us, right? Of, you know, a shooting at a graduation. I can imagine something more inhumane than what happened tonight. So I just wanted to ask if we could just hold a quick moment of silence. Thank you so much. Thank you, President.

Trustee Rickler?

Thank you. So first, I want to thank everybody for their work this year. Yes, it was an extremely difficult year. And I also want to congratulate all the graduates because this will be the last meeting before they all get their diplomas and are out of here. And I also want to thank the All-Student Congress for the presentation. That was great. And they did a great job. They were so organized. It was incredible. So they should do all the presentations. And then, you know, to Catherine, thank you very much. We'll miss you very, very much. Thank you for everything. You're amazing. And your new district is very lucky to have you. So wishing you all the best and stay in touch. And that's it.

Just do it. Okay, so I'll go on. My last comments are I I'm just going blank. It's so late. I want to congratulate as well all our graduates through the district. So I know we're getting ready to go through our week of graduations, right? Back to back graduation. So I just want to, you know, really congratulate every student that's graduating this year from West Country Costa. Also to highlight that we did have our Black and Latino graduation celebrations. I think that's really something that moving forward, we could continue. and really highlighting our student achievement around those celebrations. I also was part of the Special Olympics Basketball opening ceremony this week at Riverside. So congratulations, Riverside, and thank you for the invitation. And I also extend that to every other school. If you want the trustees to show up, please email us. We'd love to come out. We'd love to show up. Let us know the activities that are happening at your site so that we can fully engage and participate in all your activities. So thank you for Riverside for reaching out and extending that invitation. It was a great event. It was really fun seeing everyone out there playing basketball. So thank you. And that is my ending of my comment. I also now want to close this up. Catherine. Thank you, Catherine. I think, thank you for the support that you've given everyone. I think the board trustees, but thank you for the support that you've given. I think since I've been around before I was a trustee. So I, I really appreciate the, the hard work and dedication that you've put into like really the, capturing and centering, you know, parent and student voice around the work. And hopefully we'll be able, you set the standard up here, and hopefully we'll be able to continue with that trend moving forward. So I appreciate all the work, you know, wherever you're going. We know where you're going, but they're so lucky to have you. And I just want to say thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You know, it's a big loss for us, but... You know, we send you off well. Thank you. And now I will adjourn the meeting at 1127. Right on time. Three minutes to go. Should I keep talking for three minutes? 1127. Our next scheduled meeting is June 24, 2026 at Lavonia Dijon Middle School. Good night, everyone.