Good evening. I'm welcome to the PVUSD board meeting. I'm now calling this meeting to order at 737 PM. We have translation in Spanish. If you need that support, please see Magdalena Maciel. Bienvenidos a la reunión de la Junta Directiva de PVUSD. Disponemos de tradición en español. Si necesita ese apoyo, consulte a Magdalena Maciel. Okay, and I'd like to share that if someone would like to speak to an item on the agenda, they must complete a speaker card and hand it to Eva Renteria prior to the agenda item starting. Each speaker this evening will be given one minute. I also see a lot of new faces here tonight, so I want to take a moment to establish some ground rules. There may be differences of opinions, sometimes strong differences. Please give those speaking the same respect that you would like to receive when you are speaking. This will allow everyone to be heard and the board to conduct its necessary business. I will now move us to item 3.2, the Pledge of Allegiance. I will ask Trustee Daniel Dodge Jr. to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Let me begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all of all. Thank you, Trustee Dodge Jr. Okay, and now we will move to item 3.3, our interim superintendent comments that we have here from our superintendent, Marie Shuckman. Thank you, thanks for being here. I got to see some good instruction outside, and I really appreciate the teaching that's going on in democracy in action. I have been invited to a very special presentation in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. I'm going to witness a Watsonville High graduate from the class of 2010 defend his PhD dissertation. He was one of the founders of the Chem Club at Watsonville High, and he's my son, I'm so proud. From the class of 2010, I also want to say thank you to almost everybody, our campaign to raise money for a brand new synthetic turf at Pajaro Middle School is going well. The Monterey Peninsula Community Foundation has indicated they will allocate 250,000. And we have a list of other donors that is quite sweet. We're about halfway there. I'm really proud. Thank you so much. Thank you, Superintendent Shuckman. We will now have moved to item 3.4, governing board comments with reports on sending committees. This is opportunity for each board member to make a few comments, and we will start with our student trustee. Thank you, President Acosta, and thank you everyone for being here this evening. I want to use my time to speak on the renewal of the CRA contract. For several months, the board has repeatedly disregarded community voices by not renewing the CRA contract, which has contributed to power imbalance. Teachers undergo a two-year ethnic studies training program as part of this contract. It is important to note that, one, many of the teachers in our district who teach ethnic studies have degrees in other subjects and need further education. And two, due to teacher turnover, when a trained employee leaves, their knowledge goes with them. And the replacement will need access to this high quality training. Moreover, the accusations against Dr. Tintiaco-Cubales, including those of antisemitism, have gone unrepresented within the curriculum, as no evidence of antisemitic or divisive content has been found by investigative bodies to date. Personal concerns of outside community members and individuals on the board shouldn't interfere with the progress our district has made with the support of the liberated ethnic studies group over the last two years. I want to re-emphasize to the board that the renewal of the contract will have no financial burden because the grant funds it. We need our teachers to develop their capacity to become more responsive to the needs of the community that they serve. The prolonged silence and deflection by members of the board are injustice to students and deprive our district of its potential to deliver the quality of education that ethnic studies aims to provide. Further, it deprives educators of our district to work in collaboration of BIPOC professionals and experts in their field, as was formally directed by the board back in 2021 by board member Otosco. In my years in the ethnic studies pathway, I've learned to address personal biases and contribute to objectives in ways that do not uphold abusive ideologies. I invite you to consider enrolling in the liberated ethnic studies professional development with the district upon renewing the CRE contract. So you may too develop this essential framework as you pursue continued leadership in our community. Thank you. Thank you, we will now move to Trustee D'Serpa. Thank you all for your comments tonight. Thank you, Trustee D'Serpa. We will now move to Trustee Bellano-Scow. Thank you, welcome everybody to our school board meeting. Democracy in action, I think that's a quote I got from Superintendent Shekman. A couple of, just wanted to know congratulations to the Watsonville Film Festival and Pajara Valley Arts for a very successful weekend. I was there, I know a couple of the trustees were there. The lowrider show was really fun, beautiful art display with some of our students' artwork at Pajara Valley Arts. Please go check out the exhibit. Congratulations to Judy Stabil, Consuelo Alaba and the whole team for making that happen. Thank you to our art teachers and art students for contributing, very cool. Last night, Superintendent Shekman and I were at Cabrillo College for the Cabrillo Advancement Program. Very moving, touching to see middle school students in our schools being awarded scholarships to attend Cabrillo. We got to see the middle school students and then the seniors from six, seven years ago receiving their scholarship. Superintendent Shekman gave a great speech. Thank you to Marta Flores at EA Hall for her contribution to that program and all the teachers who nominated. That was very inspiring and to Cabrillo. I had a great morning. I went to one of my favorite schools, Calabasas Elementary School. Todd Westfall is doing a fantastic job. They're using the Prop 28 money. All of the kids there are getting art and music. I got a green team tour by the fourth graders. The administration and teachers are trying to get the kindergarteners talking, modeling, conversation to get them talking. They believe it helps them read. I couldn't believe how many little kids came up and started talking to me and Todd. It is Todd's birthday today. Happy birthday, Todd Westfall. You are one of the great principals of our district. So thank you for your work. Very inspired by Calabasas Elementary. They had 12 new kids enrolled this year. They are now up to 520. I saw a projection somewhere that said they might be at 390 next year and I don't believe it. I'll get back to that one later. And finally, a musical note, Aptos High Choir. In case you didn't know, they are phenomenal. One of my students will be playing with them this weekend at the performance, at the Performing Arts Center. I'm going to go check it out. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee Bellano-Skow. Trustee Dr. Holm. I did attend committee meetings, but given the large number of public speakers, I'm going to wave my comments for this evening. Thank you, Trustee Dr. Holm. Trustee Dodge, Jr. I'd just like to quickly say good evening, everybody. I'm glad to see a great organization by people at Watsumahai. And I also wanted to say thank you, Coach Gregorio, for an open house last night. My daughter, who is also a junior there, it was a great turnout. And I look forward for Coach Gregorio to continue his vision and making Watsumahai School a great school. And just quickly, I wanted to mention the name Willie A'Hiro. Willie A'Hiro sat in this seat for many years. I didn't know him personally, but he led the way to help to get the turf fields. E. A. Hall and the new portables at many ways. Willie A'Hiro, I know, was a lifelong resident of Watsonville, a teacher, a coach, a leader, a local Watsonville legend. And of course, he was a wildcat. And being a wildcat, once a wildcat, forever a wildcat. And I just wanted to say thank you, Willie A'Hiro. And if it's possible, if we could take a moment of silence. Absolutely, we'll do that. We'll have a moment of silence to honor the honorable Willie A'Hiro. Thank you all. And thank you, Trustee Dodge Jr., for honoring and recognizing our valuable former trustee, the honorable Willie A'Hiro. I'm going to forego my comments other than I want to take the moment to also acknowledge the honorable Mr. A'Hiro, I had the pleasure of serving for two years with him once I was first elected to the seat. And I do have to say he, even with differences of opinions, he always treated with me with great dignity and respect. And I always valued that and also his advice. So he will be greatly missed. Now we will move to item 3.5, our high school student board representative's reports. Do we have anyone here from Aptos High School? Yes? Thank you, come on. Okay, for this opportunity to tell you about Aptos High School. I'm Nico Greater-X, the junior class vice president. I'm Lillian McGee. And I'm Ava Ben-Reloz, the junior class president. March 16th, this Saturday, our flag football team is hosting a dodgeball tournament. There's also a choir concert scheduled at 7 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center, which will also be a ceremony for the ceramics. From March 20th through the 22nd, we're going to have testing for juniors and seniors. And Friday, we are having a senior assembly that basically explains to them all about graduation. And while the upperclassmen are testing, the grade nine and ten students will be participating in a variety of presentations, including the Santa Cruz Sheriff's Department, Monarch Services, California Highway Patrol, and map reading and math. We want to say thank you to PVSD, who provided us with a musical instrument refresh. We have lots of new instruments at our school now. And then on next Thursday, March 26th, we are hosting a math family connection night with dinner and gift cards. A partnership with our UCSC access team. And we'll learn about how to make a math grade of C or less. And we will also be discussing supports and strategies with families and students. It will be in the cafeteria at 6 o'clock to 7 30. And we are very thankful to Mr. Redfern, who is also going to be there. Also, we have prom which is coming up, and our tickets will go on sale April 20th. And we've also, in our ASP, we've been planning a spring rally and a spring spirit week. We have broken up as a class into many committees such as outreach, sound and spirit, activities, and media, which all cover different parts to make it enjoyable and exciting for our entire school. We also have an amazing dance and amazing cheer team that will be performing in the rallies. Also, currently we are in our elections weeks. We have many of our students running for all sorts of role in student government. Campaigns have been going strong with creative posters, stickers, and very unique strategies. All of our winter sports wrapped up and made it deep runs into CCS. All of our spring sports are set to have a strong seasons and we have had an increased number of participation in sports and clubs. We are super prideful of our teams and have been planning many sport tip-off parties to get supported for our amazing teams. Thank you guys. Thank you. Thank you. And next, do we have our student representatives from Renaissance High School? We're students at Renaissance High, and I'm Brianna Macias. And I'm Jacqueline Mora. Here are the students of the month of March. The clicker? The students of the month are Jasmine Garcia and Cameron King. Those are the students, yeah. They have a partnership with Renaissance High School in the Rotary of Watsonville. We begin the school year with 117 students enrolled. Starting on the third quarter, we have 161 students enrolled now. Renaissance has had almost 30 early grads this year. 12 students have went back to their original high schools. And then today, students toured the Adobe Software Campus in Silicon Valley. And there are a few pictures of them learning the technology. We also had a fast-fa night for seniors. Renaissance partnered up with New School. And they provided our seniors with a fast-fa night. Parents and students enjoyed pizza and were able to get assistance for filling out the fast-fa forms. And as well as yesterday, Renaissance High School toured the culinary program at Cabrillo College. They also took visits to the medical assistant and the academic and career counseling. And they also had a little tour at the beach. These are some activities we have at Renaissance. We have nachos at lunchtime. And currently this week, we're having St. Patrick's Day Week, a spirit week. And we're currently getting electrical garage doors for our vans. And the staff room is currently being renovated. And we'll have a lot more updates. We're also getting new signs for a lunch banner, a parking lot sign, and an entry sign. And Renaissance also has sports. They're about to start the soccer sport. And they plan on defending in undefeated championship season from last year. And they're planning on going undefeated as well this year, hopefully. Thank you Board of Trustees and goodnight PVSD community. Thank you, Renaissance. Do we have our student representatives from Watsonville High School here with us this evening? Welcome, come on up, please. Thank you. It should be from Chris Grant. So while they're getting ready, we're just gonna start with our information. So good evening, everyone. Thank you for having us. So we're gonna update you guys on the semester two from Watsonville High School. So last night we had our open house where we have a successful night with our students. Many students attended with their parents to learn more about their work they were doing. And also we had the freshman orientation that same day. So this is for the students from a grade to see what their future campus is gonna look like and what their future environment is gonna be at Watsonville High, which was really great for them to have a peek on what they're gonna do. In a couple of months. And then currently tonight we had a Gear Up academic recognition event where Gear Up currently hosted an event to recognize about 450 junior and senior students's hard work and good grades at Watsonville High. Gear Up works and helps many of our students. I can personally attest to this and their help through the college application process. So this will come in Friday. We have an event hosted at Watsonville High in the Mellow Center. At six is the Casper Talent. So many of our staff and students are gonna be presenting for this show. And also ASB is gonna put up the prom fashion show for students to see what they can wear on prom. And we also have upcoming a blood drive next Tuesday sponsored by the American Red Cross and our Watsonville High Health Academy. Student staff and everyone is welcome to donate blood. And the donors get a goodie bag and then if they're students they get two Saturday schools cleared. And we have a sign up form posted around campus as well. So on March 20th we're celebrating World Down Syndrome with the Food Day Sale Music, Infographics, and Reavents. Also we have a spirit day which is mismatched socks and also students from the department are helping with this event. So we're gonna put some students on the spotlight. So this past Friday FFA participated in the regional competition and one of our students, Andrea Puente, was elected as the South Coast Region FFA Vice President. And she's here tonight so we can give her a round of applause. Also, Sebastian Perez placed third in the job interview and will be competing in state this April. And Tiffany Molina, top in the A&M public speaking contest. One of our students, Jennifer Gonzalez Huerta, was nominated for the scholarship every student succeeding. So that's very exciting for our cats. And then also we want to recognize our counselor Ms. Nunez who's going to be participating in the TEDx Santa Cruz on April 13, 2024. And then out of 130 applicants she was selected, so 22 were selected. And they're from the Santa Cruz County and she's the only educator K1 through 12 participant. Through her presentation she wants to inspire others to create help clubs. And a help club is the Watsonville High School Club where students support each other on their grief journey to bring healing to others and themselves. So good luck, Ms. Nunez. We don't have a slide, but we want to recognize our sports and our winter sports that had a very successful season. And specifically our senior Jocelyn Gonzalez, who went to state for wrestling. And then testing this coming Monday, we have the PSAT for the ten graders. We have the OPA testing coming back from Spring Break from April 9 to the 11 and the 16 to the 18. And then our map testing, the window for Watsonville High is open from the May 6 to the 17. And the AP testing, of course, is going to be from May 6 to 17 as well. Now for the fun stuff, we have prom coming up, which is going to be on April 20th. It's going to be at the General Civil Community Center in Seaside and the theme is Met Gala in the Garden. We offer many things and our tickets are $100. And there's also a personal fundraiser that we're allowing students to participate in. We give free barbecue tickets that they can then go and sell and make money back that they spent on their prom ticket. And prom serves as our fundraiser for grad night. And grad night is when all the seniors get to go to the boardwalk and get food and enjoy the night as their last time in high school. And this allows for equity and our prices for grad night will be cheaper for the tickets, allowing more students to be able to attend. And then lastly, we want to acknowledge everybody who, all the Watsonville High students and staff who took time to be here and asked for their voices to be heard, valued and our education needs to be met. We value the ethnic studies classes at Watsonville High and we can both personally attest to their value and impact on our campus. Thank you. Have a rortastic night. Thanks. Thank you, Watsonville High. I will now move us to item 4.1. Can I have a motion to approve the agenda? Second. No, I need a first. You want to be a first? I'll make a motion to approve. Second. Yeah, thank you. Okay, I have a first and I have a second. All those in favor? Aye. And all those opposed? And the motion carries 502. And a quick sort of programming note that should have been in my board comments. I'm sorry I missed it. Trustee Vice President Soto and Trustee Flores both have excused absences from this evening's meeting. Moving on to item 5.1, approval of the February 28, 2024 board meeting meeting minutes. Can I have a motion? Move to approve. Second. A second. And all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Carries 502. 5.2, approval of the February 29, 2024 special board meeting minutes. Can I have a motion? So moved. Second. I have a first and I have a second. All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries 5, any opposed? Sorry. Motion carries 502. And now I will be closing our regular session and opening a public hearing. For item 6.1, the public disclosure of collective bargaining agreement between PBUSD and CSCA, this report will be presented to us by our very own director of fiscal service, Jenny. I'm welcome, Ms. Jenny, or you're not Jenny. Good evening, President Acosta, Interim Superintendent Checkman and Board of Trustees. I'm Brian Saxon. I'm the Interim Assistant Super of HR and I'm presenting a public disclosure for the collective bargaining agreement between PBUSD and CSCA. So assembly bill 1200 and government code section 3647.5 requires school districts to disclose the major provisions including costs of all collective bargaining agreements before entering into a written agreement. The AB 1200 was attached to the board agenda and has gone through its approval path with the county. And we are asking, well, this is a public hearing. So at this time, if there's any public comments or questions. Is that the end of your report? That's it. Thank you, Mr. Saxon. Do we have any public speakers to this item? Okay, seeing none, I will bring it back to the board for discussion from the board. Any comments, any discussion? This is not an action item at this time. All right, seeing none. Thank you again, Mr. Saxon. Thank you. I will now close the public hearing and reopen our board meeting to item 7.1 for public comment. This is an opportunity for members of the public to address issues that are not on our agenda for this evening. Please know that through the Brown Act, the board is prohibited from engaging in discussion for non-agendized items. We are listening. Do we have any public comments this evening? We have a few and before we get started, there's a couple of people who wrote down their name, but not the agenda item. So I will call out the names. David Romo, are you here? Yeah, right here. Could you please write down your agenda item that you wish to see? Or point one. Okay. Providence M. Agenda item. Cynthia Lewis, Virginia Mendoza Hernandez. Okay, so to keep this moving, I'll call up three at a time. So if you could please line up so we can keep this and everyone will be allowed to speak. So Virginia Mendoza Hernandez, Cynthia Lewis, and Providence M. Could you please step up? So hi, my name is Virginia Mendoza Hernandez, and I'm here today because my son is being wrongfully targeted as a bad student at Aptos High School. My son is kind, respectful, and understanding when it comes to authority, yet like all humans, sometimes he falls short. My son and his friends are continually being followed all around campus, into the bathrooms, accused of false accusations, belittled by the admin figures at Aptos High School, ever since the beginning of the school year. More recently, the conduct of the security guard named Fonsella Guzman, who intentionally targeted him for walking without a hall pass. Ms. Guzman continues to initiate arguments with my son. And if she's not satisfied, she continues to follow him into class and continue the conversation after the class. So she has made comments to my son yelling in his face, being centimeters away, telling him I am the authority. At that time is when my son realized she was trying to antagonize him in losing his school, so he did what he should have, he excused himself and walked away. I attempted to bring this up to the vice principal, Mr. B, only to have my child followed again into the bathroom today. That was a minute. Next up. Hi, my name is Cynthia Lewis, and good evening. I'm currently associate dean of diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice for the social science division at UCSC, and I'm also former chair and current professor of education. This is the second time that I've come to speak to the board, to ask them to trust their hardworking and knowledgeable teachers and students and reinstate the CRE contract. Last time I talked about the fact that there's no evidence of anti-Semitism in the work of CRE. This time I'm going to speak to you as a scholar of education, who is well versed in the quantitative and qualitative research that supports the teaching of K-12 ethnic studies. Since qualitative research tends to hold more sway with school boards, I'm happy to report that there are quantitative causal studies that show that enrollment in ethnic studies has positively impacted attendance, overall GPA, credit accumulation, increases in standardized pass rates, student performance, high school graduation, and the probability of enrolling in college. You might hear from non-experts who tell you that this isn't true, but those people are not scholars of education, and they are not knowledgeable readers of the research. That was a minute. Okay, thank you very much. Good evening, board, and everybody here from the community. My name is Providence Martinez-Alanis, and I just wanted to tell you that it's extremely important to have ethnic studies in our curriculum, in our community, because by including these perspectives and histories in our education system, we can ensure that all students feel seen, valued, and included. It's also allowing students to better understand the complexities of the world around them and to develop empathy and understand for people from different backgrounds. In order to truly make our kids a priority, we need to prioritize their education by providing a well-rounded, inclusive curriculum that proposes them to thrive in a diverse and interconnected world. Our staff should also make it a priority to incorporate ethnic studies into the teachings to ensure that all students have access to the important knowledge. Thank you very much. All right, so the next three that we have David Romo, the Pajaro Valley Historical Association, and Edgar Guerrero. And just a reminder, we have a minute, so please stay within your... All right, I got it. Thank you. Last December, we met with your organization, specifically Brian Saxton, and he basically gave us no hope.  So as of now, I'm getting a 4% decrease in my pay. So I'm getting paid less to do the same job I did last year. And it doesn't seem like anybody's listening. Nobody is listening. I understand, I just found out today that the classified staff got a pay increase. Great for them. Bonuses, $4,000. Give us $1, give us $2 an hour.  Did you know that 29 ethnic peoples have come to the Pajaro Valley? Did you know that in 2012, 24 languages were spoken in our school system? Did you know that in 1900, the second largest Chinatown in the US was here? It burnt down twice. Did you know that in 1900, the largest Japanese population in the US was here in the Monterey Bay? Did you know that in early California, some wanted to make this a slave state and have the indigenous and Asians be slaves? Did you know that one third of the Chinese or Japanese children born in the first two decades of the 20th century died in the first seven to 10 days? Did you know that Mexicans were deported in the 30s and then brought back in the 40s with the Bracero Program? Of course you did not know this history. I did not know this history a year ago. I invite you to a board training session on the rich but complicated history of the Pajaro Valley presented by the Pajaro Valley Historical Association. Thank you. Hello, my name is Edgar Guerrero. I'm in eighth grade and I go to Rolling Hills Middle School. I've been watching the past couple of board meetings and it seems like you're consistently ignoring the community. I'm coming to this board meeting to ask why are you refusing to support the ethnic studies teachers? Renewing the CRE contract is the best way to support the teachers and students. I have been hesitant to come because I don't feel that you will listen to my voice. I feel that an opportunity is being taken away from me and my classmates. I want to learn about my history, culture and identity. I want to get the class that the students are currently taking, not a watered down version because of your decision to not renew the contract. Please put this back on the agenda. Thank you. The next three speakers are Judy Baker, Giancarlo and Barbie Marsalt. Hi, good evening. I'm back and thank you, Superintendent Scheckman for coming to our school yesterday and giving us so much information and hope for our campus. I brought photos today because while everyone can't come to everything and photos say so much, am I allowed to distribute this or hand it to you guys at all? Okay, cool. If you guys could just take a look at it. It speaks to the, well, we don't have operational bathrooms at this point. We have one portable at our elementary school that still operates, but it's more so for the middle school kids. And we have porta potties for the rest. So we love bathrooms. Good evening. My name is Giancarlo Lomendo. I am a senior at Waswell High School and I'm here to talk about the CERI. The CERI contract needs to stay. This class just by itself has impacted me and many others in so many different ways as well. It has taught us ways of oppression and what is right from the wrong. It is also very unacceptable that we are also being ignored. We have been to many meetings to speak about what we want and we feel ignored. Please and just please bring back the contract, not just for us, but the future generations of our schools. Please consider bringing back this contract. Just look at all of us. We need your support. Thank you. Hi, board, Bobby, teacher, parent, please put CERI back on the agenda. I don't have time in one minute to go into some of my work as a minister in interfaith dialogue, but I'd love to have that conversation if you ever want. What I am concerned about is it seems to be an ongoing concern for me that our district does not respect our teachers. And the reason I say that, number one, you have had, I think you think that it doesn't hurt the Ethnic Studies program because we have it, yet you've had paid professionals continually showing up saying, no, we need this. Please believe them. I say it's a trend because we are also, the district is about to spend a whole bunch of money on attorneys for arbitration for days that teachers took off that you decided to dock pay and would rather pay attorneys rather than the teachers. Why has the board not stepped in to change that? Why has our superintendent not stepped in to change that? Please, our money should not be, pay the teachers, not the attorneys. Please trust the teachers who are telling you that this is a helpful need in the district. Put it back on the agenda and share what your concerns are on the record. Thank you. Thank you. The next three speakers are Mike Floor, Bill Bunzel, and Christine Hong. Hello, hello. Because I only have a minute, good evening board. I'm gonna address what David brought up about LPAC tester pay. Last December I was gonna come talk about it and Brian Saxon talked me out of bringing it up with you. He said that we could handle it on our own and then we went into his office, me and David and our director and we were basically bullied and told there was no hope for us that that was the rate that we would get paid. Now we're an LPAC testing season right now. There's 6,000 kids that need to do it. It's a state mandated test, yet we're being treated like it's superficial. So CWAR union, I'm a steward of the union. I'm invoking my wine garden rights right now. We are gonna be talking about LPAC tester rate in our union. So I will continue this conversation when I have my five minutes with David during the CWA time and I'm gonna continue to talk about LPAC testing rate during CWA time. No one's gonna stop me, thank you. Good evening board. Good evening board.  I'm gonna speak fast because I got a minute. I'm a new substitute teacher at Watsonville High School and it'll be my fifth season as a football coach here and I've coached 10 years at Watsonville. I'm sorry, Aptos, professionally I'm a retired probation officer at Santa Clara County after serving 30 years.  I'm a certified expert trainer on the topic in the state of California. And I've conducted trainings nationally. I've been invited by Senator Elaine Alquist to testify for a safety committee. And I was recognized by chief probation officers throughout the state for my work with sex offender population being awarded the probation officer the year for the Bay Area region as well as the entire state. My dealings with principals as a probation officer, I have found that they're collectively unprepared to deal with sex offenders. That's why I reached out to Mr. Shackman through Ms. Renteria. And she provided me with a copy of the policy and I have it here, which is, it's kind of scary. Any person who is, well, speaking of that, I have in my hand today's minutes and it says two minutes each. You guys had an opportunity to say one minute on there, but may I just say that this policy is a disaster and it's followed with no procedural rules for principals to follow. And you're putting students and staff at risk and by the way, I haven't received any response back. Thank you. My name is Christine Hong. I'm at UC Santa Cruz where I served as the inaugural chair of the department of critical race and ethnic studies. Ethnic studies is a structurally transformative field of study. It dares to center an analysis of power and structural violence from the perspectives of the people most impacted by it. It dares to imagine that our struggles for liberation are deeply connected. It dares to put knowledge into action for the benefit of the greatest possible collective, not just the powerful few. The irony is not lost on us that there is a racialized power structure here and the autocratic power wielded by the PBUSD board and figures like Kim Disurpa are precisely the kind of undemocratic status quo that ethnic studies seeks to challenge. Watsonville is majority people of color, but what you have shown us is that the power structure here is ideologically white. 90% of the students in this district are from communities of color. The California student body is 80% students, people of color. Thank you very much for all of your minutes. Yet you deny them ethnic studies. You have a slender chance to do right by the people of Watsonville, but don't overestimate your own authority. The tide of history has shifted. Do the right thing. Thank you. The next three speakers are Alma Sanchez, Marina Moreno, and Gil Stein. It used to be a clock up there. Anyway, my name is Gil Stein and I disagree with about 99% of what's been said already here. Back in September, you voted not to end ethnic studies, but just to not renew the contract of CRE. That was the right decision then and it's the right decision now. I believe that six months ago you made the correct decision and what has transpired ever since has just verified my thoughts. There's been a 400% increase in anti-Semitism in our country since those last six months. Anti-Semitic attacks against Trustee Serpa have increased because of her opposition to renewing the contract with CRE. You've just seen that right now. That by itself should tell you folks something. It is time to let the board continue dealing with the pressing issues that directly concern the PVUSD, such as finding a new superintendent, enacting a budget, dealing with declining enrollment, and other issues that require immediate attention. Complaining about issues that have already been decided is not the best use of your time. Thank you, thank you. Before we move to the next public speaker, I'd like to remind the public of the comment that I made in the beginning. We all need to treat one another with dignity and respect in this room, so everybody's voice can be heard, even if you disagree with that voice. Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna talk as fast as I can because one minute is nowhere near enough. Good afternoon, my name is Alma. I was born and raised in Watsonville, California. I'm a graduate of Pajaro Valley High School. I've attended all my years of education at PVUSD. I'm a current student at Cabrillo College studying environmental studies. I'd like to ask to reinstate the CRE contract into the next meeting's agenda. I took ethnic studies one and two in high school and I wanna emphasize that I would not be who I am today in the spaces I am today. Making the change in my community I am today had I not taken these courses in high school. These courses allowed me to explore so many concepts that shaped my values and goals in my personal life and the goals that I have for my community. These were the first classes I had ever taken in school that encouraged me to ask why. Why don't I feel connected to my Mexican culture? Why are the teachers from my school leaving to teach somewhere else? Not only why, but what can I do about it? It gave me, wow, okay. Thank you. Hi, buenas noches, my name is Karina Moreno and I'm also here to support the CRE contract asking you guys to please put it on next meeting's agenda so that we can actually have a conversation with you. It's really hard to come up here and talk to you about it and then hear nothing for months and months and months and I wanna thank everyone who's come out today and continue to come out. And I really wanna emphasize that ethnic studies is about learning our specific legacies, the social, cultural, economic, and political experiences of our people. We just want our stories. They just want their histories. Let them stand on the shoulders of their ancestors and let them know who it is that they're representing, how far they can go because people have already brought them here. So if you'll please look like everyone wants this and don't listen to the people who had the privilege actually to learn their own histories. Please allow us to learn our own histories. Before we go out into the world, let them ground themselves here. Give them that education, please. To learn empathy, community actualization, and self-worth. Thank you. Thank you. The next three speakers are Manuel Barasameen, Yersenia Jimenez, and Angel Boncent. So if you guys could come line up, please, thank you. As the first mayor of Watsonville of Asian descent, first Mexican-American mayor, farm worker family of Watsonville, educated by Stanford Jewish professors, I wanna invoke the spirit of William Hero. William Hero would never say no to learning the rich tapestry of ethnic communities in this valley. Willie was a fighter, those of you who served with him knew he was a fighter, and he'd be here saying we need the whole community to learn about the Japanese-American, the Chinese-American, the Filipino-Americans, the Mexican immigrants. So I gotta tell you guys this, in eight years on the Watsonville City Council, did we never limit anybody who came to speak to us to one minute? Never. So I just hope that the superintendent entertains a proposal to have a special meeting on restoring ethnic studies in this district. Our youth represent the new demographics, and they need to know who they are so they know where they're going. Thank you. Okay, hi, my name is Yersenia Jimenez. I do environmental education in the district. I grew up in this district. All of my nieces and nephews go to school in this district. And if you cannot hear by how much those types of classes or critical race and ethnic studies classes affect the students, like literally Alma does so much work with Esperanza Community Farms. I see some of my other students here. This is really impactful. I was a super nerd in high school, like 4.2 GPA, like fives and fours on my AP test. And history was one of my favorite subjects. And even getting to college, I felt like I didn't know anything. And even though I majored in biology, I minored in Latin American studies because it was mind-blowing to me how much intersectionality I had missed in the basic, basic education that I got in high school. You hear other students talking about how impactful it is. I always wondered if we had that kind of stuff in high school, if more of my peers would have graduated and someone just said that statistically, it improves class attendance. So if you want better test scores, students need to be excited about what they're learning. And it's sad that you guys even voted to take this away. Disappointing. Hi, my name's Angel Boncer. I'm also a graduate of PVUSD district. I graduated in 2018 and I live in sector seven, I think. And I want to echo the voices here saying that CRE is needed. And I want to say that I didn't take ethnic studies in the district because it wasn't exposed to me. I had to go all the way to LA to even learn any Mexican history because it wasn't emphasized here. I had to join Mecha, which many students here don't even know what it is, but guess what? They also had to fight for ethnic studies in the 60s. Your cycle of history is repeating. Do not erase these voices. Do not allow white people to teach our history or to like overpower that history. Let us do our own curriculum and emphasize the voices of students. Thank you. So the next three are Syria Sorenson. I think it's Shrestha and Sarah Salazar Hughes. So you're both coming up to speak in one minute on the same card? Yeah, they're just gonna stand. And right behind you is Sergio Jesus Medina and Andrea Puente. Good evening. I'm Shreya Shrestha and this is Sarah Salazar Hughes and we're here together because we both teach ethnic studies and racial justice related courses at Cal State University, Monterey Bay. And like many of the people here, we just wanna express our concern about the ending of the CRE contract. As instructors at CSUMB, many of our students come from the Tri-County area. We have many students from PVUSD and similar districts and we know we've also been involved in a lot of projects to localize ethnic studies and we can really attest to the fact that as many people have already stated, having community engaged ethnic studies courses at the K through 12 level is invaluable in supporting the success of all students, but particularly students of color. And programs like CRE are actually incredibly important because of their emphasis on getting K through 12 educators to localize their curriculum to engage with the histories and experiences of their students and the communities that they come from.  Thank you. Hello, I'm Sergio, I'm a senior at Watsonville High School. I'm pretty sure you know me from last board meeting. And I could be honest, I really wish I shouldn't be here. I just got out of volleyball practice and I'm trying to not worry about the CRE contract and not being renewed. And as my, Mr. Pell's my ethnic studies teacher told me, I'm gonna speak from the heart and I hope you listen from the heart. There's a such thing called institutional oppression and that is when you people have power compared to us people, commoners, use your power in the way that you're not supposed to that oppresses us a minority. We are not a minority here, but to the world we are, but we may not know that because we're just in our small little area of Watsonville, Pajaro and every other section. So ethnic studies taught me that I'm really a minority and I'm challenged. And the fact that you're not here to support my teachers, support your students, support the next generation that wants to learn about themselves really saddens me. And I really wish you could come to a decision that would help us in having a good education and helping your students. Hi, good evening board. My name's Andrea Puente. I'm a junior at Watsonville High School. And I don't think you guys should get rid of ethnic studies. I think it's the first class. I will say I've had the funnest in. And I think it's because of what we're learning. And I think having the support of our teacher, Mr. Pells, makes it so much more engaging because he helps us realize what's happening in the real world. And I think if you guys come into one of our classes, just one, and you hear us talk and you hear the smiles and the conversations happening, you'll realize why keeping ethnic studies is so important. And sitting here in this room, I'm looking at your mission statement and I think you need to really help prepare students. And this class is definitely preparing students for the real world to go out and see what's happening and not be in a classroom unaware of what's happening in real world problems. Thank you. The next three speakers are Consuelo Fabian, Lindsay Martinez, and Fernando Garcia. It was out of order, but we hope we have it. Good evening board. We are here to advocate for the district's partnership with Liberated Ethnic Studies team and a Revolt for CRE contract. You claim the curriculum has been developed and teachers are already trained to teach in an attuned manner. However, our district has an extremely high turnover rate. Therefore, we must think about who is expected to train new teachers if those accredited teachers are not here to teach next year. We need our teachers to be trained by experts in the field of ethnic studies, regardless of whether they're teaching ethnic studies courses, particularly when 80% of our teachers are not BIPOC educators. Failing to adequately train teachers to impact their ability to teach in a culturally responsive way, inviting teachers through this training to reflect on preconceived ideas they may subconsciously hold. This is called implicit bias, something we all have. Thank you board. Another point you claim is that our school district doesn't have any money. However, it is vital to recognize that grant money will cover the cost of this curriculum. Therefore, the district will be at loss of no money. And your concerns are questionable since you already authorized the allocation of money for various programs like soon to grow that are not fulfilling the intended purpose. With this in mind, our school board should recognize that money is in the barrier here. It is crucial that student input is taken into consideration. After all, the voices of students and staff are more reliable on what is happening in our schools. It is the responsibility of the school board to take student, parent, and staff input into consideration when making governing decisions or else this results in students developing a sense of hopelessness around influencing necessary changes in our school. We elected you to represent us. Don't forget that. Remember community you serve. The next three speakers are Jessica Abelos-Lado, Kimberly Aguirre and Regina Arisa. Arisa? Thank you. Hello, my name is Jessica Abelos-Lado. I senior at PV High and my thoughts on the board refusing to vote on the CRE contract renewal is that it is plain and simple ignorance. How can you decide without even understanding the whole situation? The excuse that the contract would be too expensive is a lie. This contract will be covered by a grant. So the $110,000 that would be allowed sounds like a distraction. CRE training leads to a positive increase in student engagement and understanding and encourages them to become people who could ask critical questions about everything around them. CRE is an important addition to any district and those serving a majority BIPOC population because it helps all individuals address racial biases and thus classroom practices. A one-size-fits-all approach to education may not meet everyone's needs, which is what we have right now. You either fake it, perform adequately, and fit in, or file it into the school to prison pipeline. An understanding, informed, and safe learning environment gives students space to grow. My groups in Ethnic City started Colinear Club, which, while we pursue Colinear, OK. Thank you. Creating a district-wide shift to foster individual cultural identity and simultaneously bridging the gap that the students in this district experience with the content that they are taught is only possible through the active teachings of this curriculum and training by experts in their field like the Liberated Ethnic Studies team. By incorporating this curriculum, we nurture and empower students to embrace and celebrate their cultural identities from a young age, fostering a stronger sense of community and belonging once they reach high school. We must equip our youth with knowledge and tools to appreciate, respect, and celebrate this diversity. By introducing this culturally responsive curriculum at an early stage, we can instill in students a sense of pride in their heritage and encourage them to embrace their unique cultural backgrounds of their peers. Once our students are equipped with this knowledge, it will shape their experiences and interactions in high school. A strong sense of cultural identity will guide students to establish meaningful connections with their peers, create a supportive community, and contribute positively to the school environment. Thank you. Additionally, why are we seeking to sense effects that are known worldwide? Day by day, students are being informed about current events through social media platforms. Every time this happens, students are exposed to a biased point of view from news outlets that may not be reliable. Instead of letting our students be misinformed or duped into a biased algorithm, we should have access to proper instruction from our professionally trained teachers so we interact critically with the information we encounter. On that note, censorship is an act of oppression. The next three speakers are Alina Aguilar, Bella Martinez, and Valeria Garra. Or Lara, I'm sorry. Hi, my name is Alina Aguilar. I am a first generation Latina who went to Watsonville High School and graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz. I'm here to advocate for the renewal of the CRE program. Since 2016, I have been involved with the Pajaro Valley Historical Association, like my colleague here, Bill Beecher. I did not have an ethnic studies course like the younger generations that came after me. Learning about one's ethnic background, history, and identity is no longer a right, but a privilege.  History connects people in the present and in the past. It allows us to have empathy so that we can look at people of color whose stories are not focused on and say, your history matters. You deserve to be remembered. What you are showing the students today by ignoring their pleas is that you do not care about them or their right to learn about ethnic history. That the historic credit due to the Indigenous, Black, Asian, Latin American, and more does not matter. Hi, my name is Bella Meki Martinez. I am ASB President at Watsonville High and President of our Asian American Pacific Islander Student Union at Watsonville High. And as a Japanese and Mexican person myself, learning about history and impacted intersectional communities is extremely important. And the classes that I've taken in ethnic studies have been severely impactful. I've also been involved in the Filipino-American history curriculum creation in partnership with UCSE. And seeing the care and intention that goes into the planning and the creation of the curriculum by me, my teachers, peers, and professors is so important and it cannot be ignored. So seeing that go to waste would be really sad. And as a senior, going through the application process to attend predominantly white institutions and colleges that were not made for us, not made for students of color is hard. And I'm not the first and not the last student of color to aspire to achieve a higher degree. And knowing my history and others' history of impacted communities and a diverse and inclusive history is important to all future generations to strengthen. Thank you. I'm a senior at Pahorabadi High School and I want to say that ethnic studies is essential for students as it offers a comprehensive understanding of diverse culture, histories, and perspective. By including ethnic studies in school curricula, we foster empathy, critical thinking, and cultural confidence among students. It helps create a more inclusive and tolerant society by challenging stereotypes and promoting social justice. Keeping ethnic studies in schools provides students with the opportunity to learn about their own heritage and the heritage of others promoting a sense of belonging and appreciation for diversity. It also equips students with the tools to navigate the increasingly multicultural world, preparing them for success in a globalized society. Personally, ethnic studies has been invaluable to me in my understanding of different cultures and histories. It has challenged my assumptions and biases, allowing me to approach the world with a more open mind and empathetic perspective. It has also empowered me to advocate for social justice and equality in my community. Overall, I believe ethnic studies is not just important but necessary for fostering a more inclusive and equitable society. Thank you. Thank you. The next three speakers are Dianita Vermontes, Daniel Sanchez, and Emma Fathom, student at PV. Good evening. My name is Dianita Vermontes and I'm a senior at Power Valley High School. And I want to emphasize what many before me have been stating. I wish to express my deep concern for the adamant refusal of the CRE contract that many arguments have stated that many arguments fail to recognize and consider the narratives and wisdom from underrepresented people and groups that may be missing from textbooks, from art, from history, from science, from foreign language. I also want to include that the school board has been inconsiderate to the needs of teachers and students. The board has failed to uphold their mission statement and has failed their communities. Thank you. Hello, trustees. My name is Emma and I am a student at PV High. I wonder what the responsibilities of school board actually were. So I went to the California School Board Association or CSBA website and found a few things. First, the role of trustees who sit on locally elected school boards is to ensure that school districts are responsive to the values, beliefs, and priorities of their communities. Meanwhile, many members of this board are allowing their own biases to override the larger school community's beliefs. That partnership with the liberated Ethnic Studies team helped to develop courses and curriculums that prioritize the success and empowerment of students over the past two years. Members of the district, teachers, students, parents, and members of the community have all advocated for the third year renewal of the CERI contract. Second, the board's responsibilities include both, making decisions and providing resources that support mutually agreed upon priorities and goals and upholding district policies that have been approved by the board. I'll remind you, the CERI board of trustees on Wednesday, the 28th of October, 2020 unanimously approved a plan to add Ethnic Studies as a graduation requirement. This makes the development of enough Ethnic Studies courses to allow every student in the school to meet the graduation requirement and mutually agreed upon priority and goal. Now you're failing to support the training of additional teachers in our admin, which impacts the development of new Ethnic Studies courses and CREALCAM, which fails to allow students the opportunities to access graduation requirements. That's one minute, thank you. As everyone already stated what I was gonna say, I'm gonna move on to the next topic, the unhand that I wanted to talk about. What's about the Pajaro Valley system on how it's the lack of like allocation of resources. Like we lack a pool. We lack various courses that like other schools have like Watsonville and Aptos. PV doesn't have those courses like other AP classes. Like Watsonville and PV have like, no, Watsonville and Aptos has like 20. Well PV only has like seven AP courses. And I wanted to advocate for my school and for my community since we live nearby and we also suffer from like the same financial barriers and we want to proceed higher education but we can't due to limited resources. So I wanted to a point that we get like better teachers, more classes and also maybe a theater. The next three speakers are Bernie Gomez, Chris Webb and Alexander Lopez. Buenas tardes, good evening board. Keep it simple, bring back CRE for discussion. After your discussion, approve it. It's that simple.  I believe I heard it was an administrative support for administrators, right?  You know, I get it, Serpa, Acosta, you know, but what I see is that you're being anti-people of color, right?  As someone that's running to be on a higher place of governance, it kind of, you know, just it scares me, right?  Thank you. Hello, my name is Alexander Lopez and I'm currently a senior at Pajar Valley High School, graduate of 2024. As of right now, members of your agenda setting committee currently aligned with individuals who have no children in this district who believe that our ethics studies program, which was supported by the Liberated Ethics Studies Group, is potentially teaching its students how to negatively view or exclude certain culture groups. I have been in this class for three years and although I will be graduating pretty soon, I would like for all future students to have this same opportunity and take part in this experience as I did. Now, I've heard about the concerns expressed by community members that because of Dr. Ellison, our existing curriculum may have bias and been anti-Semitic. However, I think the board and these community members are unaware of the fact that in our 10th grade world history classes, our curriculum includes standards 10.8, where students analyze the cause and consequences of World War II, including the Holocaust, as well as standards 10.9, which requires we understand how the factors of nationalism developed in the Middle East, how the Holocaust affected world opinion regarding the need of a Jewish state, and the significant effects of local and establishment of Israel and world affairs. There is a fear of bias and single lands being applied to our curriculum. But we are receiving a well-rounded education in between our history and ethics studies courses. We access multiple perspectives while being empowered to develop our opinions using our critical thinking skills. Thank you. Good evening. At this point, I feel like anyone who is speaking against the CRE contract and the board itself should, if they're committed to that, they should bring some evidence. As a teacher, that's what I would want to see. It's been a while now. It shouldn't take, if it's really that bad, like we should have been able to come with some kind of damning document, we'd be like, well, here, community, shut up, right here it is. It's been a while. So at this point, it almost feels defamatory to continue to save things about this organization and the people in it and not have the evidence. Also, I think it's really important to renew the contract because we do need the admin trained. We need everyone, even the teacher, still again, and then other levels of management, because if we're not on the same page, then teachers could get reprimanded or subject to hostile work environments just for doing their job when they're just following their district training. So we really need that. And this is long overdue to be on the agenda at the very minimum. It should be renewed, of course, but at least put on the agenda. Thank you. So next, three speakers are America Lopez, Bobby Pells, and Ayano Viegas, student in Watsable High School. It is frustrating that a board that is made up of white majority can decide the education of so many students of color. In my ethnic studies class, we have learned about four types of oppression, ideological, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized. When you guys refuse to bring back a curriculum that teaches people of color their history, it is a denial of their culture, of their person, and therefore a form of institutional oppression, one that we have seen repeated throughout history many times before. So I must ask you, how does it feel like to wield a weapon that has killed so many people, just because of their color? The best part about history is that you can learn from it. It is a shame that you guys have not had the opportunity yet. So I invite you tonight to look back and learn, because when you look forward, you will see that your denial of our history will not stop us from being heard. The very opposite, it empowers our voices. Support PBSD students and bring back CRE. Good evening, Bobby Perl, Watsonville High. I'm here once again to speak on the CRE contract. Six months ago, when I first spoke on this issue, I pointed out that it was our collective responsibility to ensure that we provide the best educational experiences for our children. And I'm grateful that tonight the community has come out to collectively hold you to that responsibility. Although I can't help but notice when the kids show up, you start cutting us off in one minute. I am most grateful to my students when they wrote to you on their own behalf. I applauded their courage in standing up to protect the education they feel that they deserve. I hope they know that I am beyond proud of them. Although I thought that surely you would be too, that you would listen to these people that you have been elected to serve, but so far they've been ignored. So tonight we are all here together in solidarity to tell you that we will not be ignored. Support ethnic studies, bring back CRE. Thank you. Good afternoon, my name is Ayanna. I am a senior at Watsonville High School and I am here to support renewing the community responsive education contract. And I would like to begin with stating not renewing this contract will have a huge negative impact on not only our future ethnic studies classes, but our future ethnic studies teacher and current ones. Our overall department will also suffer. As this contract provides our teachers with training resources and provides us with a successful ethnic studies course. We need this. I have been taking ethnic literature studies for three years and have been awarded student of the year for one of those. And I can say with confidence I haven't seen a single case of anti-Semitism throughout those three years. In fact, we are taught to value and respect other cultures and ethnicities, not just our own. We also have yet to see a more impactful and positive class in all my years of schooling. I really do love this class. This is also in part to CRE. But as it affects us and our teachers, shouldn't we have a say in this? The next three speakers are Elias Gonzalez, Jasmine Cornejo and Austin Martin, Watsonville High School. Buenas noches, good evening board. Full name is Elias Gonzalez. I sit in Oliva Flores' district. So fortunate she's not here today but I understand things come up, right? First of all, I just wanna stand here today and acknowledge the whole community, right? These are young people that are standing in your district, right? Their parents, their family members, their teachers. This is what we're trying to do. I think I heard the term brought up by one of our little brothers over there, institutional oppression. I think this is what we're trying to avoid here, right? We don't wanna organize the next generations, right? We're scared of organizing this next generation because an old generation, I'm not calling you old, I'm calling that old generation too, right? But we're too scared of that. We actually need to motivate them. We need to set them up. Look at the community. I mean, this is what we need. We don't need to be told what we don't need but this is what Watsonville needs now. We need you all to be leaders. We all need you to bring that contract back to the space. We need to talk about it. Let's teach our community to have conversations. Let's include all of us. Let's have a dialogue about this. Let's have an entendimiento to figure this out collectively. Thank you very much. Have a good night. I'm good evening. I'm Jasmine Cornejo, a senior at Watsonville High and I'm here to talk about the renewal of the CRE contract. As a student, the only time I've ever felt proud of my background and my culture was once I began learning ethnic studies. This class has been the only one to speak to me and have me interested in learning. We learn about institutional oppression and how the system is set up that may not always be in our best interest but that we can still succeed if we play our cards right. It gives us hope to escape our stereotypes and not fall into the cycle that everyone tries to keep us in. I have been in ethnic studies for three years and have never learned anything anti-Semitic. What I have learned is about the real history that isn't taught in history class. If these topics are not discussed, people will continue to live their lives ignorantly without realizing that some ideas in their head could be harmful to others and contributing to inequality or hate upon a certain group. What ethnic studies teaches is that we all deserve to be equal but in the system to be equal you may have to fight for what is right. The curriculum is essential for a balanced education and something that will carry on with people for their whole lives beyond high school. If any money should be spent, it should be on the education of the next generation including providing the proper training for our teachers who teach this subject. Thank you. Hello, I'm Austin Marion and I'm here to speak again on the CRE program in support of renewing the contract. I am still confused onto why we are being ignored with no one asking us what we want to do. We are the community, we are the ones in schools. We are the one being affected by a CRE program. We are the ones in the classroom actually learning about ethnic studies. We are the ones who will be affected by the lack of CRE. We are all in support of it here. We have over 50 students here in support with teachers and parents too and still rather take the side of two people opinions on the program, it's over us. Many of our teachers and classmates has spent our time to gather many people here in the community to support the CRE program and come out to the board meeting so you can no longer ignore us. Our restate that are the student of the ethnic studies I've never seen an instance of anti-Semitism or bigotry in my three years of taking this class. I would try, I like to personally talk to Trustee D'Sirpa of any anti-Semitic comments given to you. I apologize for, but that was not us. That's not the CRE program. We do not, that's not the CRE program. We do not do that. We do not promote that. That's all against our policy. That's all against us. We do not support any of those comments made. I'd like to end my statement with asking you to please bring back the CRE program. Thank you. All right, the next three speakers, Alexis McNabb, Isabella Leon and Sophia Gomez. Hello and greetings, Board of Trustees. My name is Sophie and I attend Parro Valley High School. It's come to my attention that the board before me is refusing to renew or support the CRE contract, an incredibly beneficial contract out of fear. Fear of resistance, fear of dismantlement and fear of change. This change is good. We need more ethnic studies classes. We need more teacher training. We need more options for students to meet the graduation requirement. We need our students more aware of our nation's potential as well as its issues and flaws. Our school community needs ethnic studies. We are your future. We deserve knowledge, safety, comfort and support from as many teachers as possible. We also deserve educators who are provided expert training by leaders within their district. I'm sorry, messing up. People who the district already has a two year relationship with. My class is important to me. I've learned so many things about myself, my community and the world I live in in this class alone. And I plan to stick around for all four years of high school, eager to learn more. Did you hear that? A student is eager. There's one thing in my ethnic studies class that's taught me that sticks out the most and that's that every voice matters. Each and every one of here, as active members of our community, has a voice that matters. A voice that deserves to be heard, considered and not pushed into a corner, disregarded or forgotten because we're young and you have power to ignore us. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is Isabella Leon and I'm a student at Pajaro Valley High School. As an Afro-Latina student, I've enjoyed, I've experienced so much racism in this school district, from students and to my teachers and to even the district here. I've never felt so neglected by a school board in my entire life and you not renewing this contract is detrimental to students who look like me and to students with other ethnic backgrounds. I've never felt safe in my school once in my life. You, it's constantly saying the N word, constant microaggression. And for once in my life, I felt safe in an ethnic studies class. I felt hurt, I felt seen for once in my life. And the fact that you're not even considering that this is not just for student, for teachers, this is for students too, for students who look like me, who students, all these students here who are trying their best and who are learning so much from this program, yet you're denying us the right to learn.  Thank you. Woo! My name is Alexis McNabb and I'm here actually to read a statement by Watsonville High School student Mariana who could not be here, but their voice is important. So I'm here to read what Mariana wrote, which is, the board should bring back the CRE contract and have it stay permanently. I have been taking the ethnic studies course for the past three years now and I can say that I absolutely love that class. I not only stay informed with what's happening around the world now, but learn that people have faced oppression since the beginning of time. Removing this contract is like taking the first step in pretending that this unfairness never existed. We need to know what happened in our history in order to change our future. Ethnic studies is a class where everyone should be able to take. What we learn in there are things that we actually use and need in life. I learned that as a minority, I have to work twice as hard to succeed, but even then can still be looked down on because of these ideals around us. Taking an ethnic studies class made me wanna beat this stereotype. Some families may think that taking this class is harmful to a student's mind, but they're wrong. Instead, this class will motivate and encourage you to do better because minorities can do it too. You get to learn about the four eyes of oppression, what components make up your identity, white privilege, color blindness, and so much more. Being a part of an ethnic studies class means that your voice will be heard and you get to express yourself and learn about the challenges you may never knew existed. Thank you. All right, the next three speakers are Sandinong Gomez, Nat Lowe, and Ellie Davies. Good evening, board trustees, Supervisor Linda Scheckman. My name is Nat Lowe, District 7. I'm here for the sixth time. I've said pretty much all that I have to say in the last five board meetings, so I'm gonna read you these excerpts of these letters that was written by 62 Jewish community members that they sent to you this week. If you didn't read your emails, I brought you copies. So from their letter, I quote, we are writing as a coalition of Jewish constituents. We stand in strong support for the renewal of the CRE contract in support of keeping the highly successful and impactful ethnic studies curricula at PVUSD. We echo the overwhelming support from constituents that has been articulated in meetings and letters. As Jews, we want to challenge the accusations of anti-Semitism that led to the suspension of the initial contract. In addition, we strongly affirm the importance of ethnic studies in putting histories of diverse experiences in conversation. We deepen our knowledge and arrive at more compassionate understandings of each other. In fact, Jewish values of education demand this of us. Continued, we are asking for our histories of Jewish oppression to be taught in tandem with other histories of persecution, including that of the Palestinian people. Acknowledging this injustice doesn't erase Jewish history or anti-Jewish oppression or our real concerns about Jewish safety in a world with rising anti-Semitism. This letter states, our Jewish path to healing and to safety has to be a path of compassion for and listening to other stories. In addition to sharing our own stories and being heard, we object to false allegations that teaching the accurate history about the Israeli occupation of Palestine is anti-Semitic. Perpetuating this myth makes genuine anti-Semitism much more difficult to identify and confront. The history of what has taken place in Palestine for the better part of the last century, in line with all histories of oppression, must be taught and intended to in a K through 12 curriculum. And quote, the authors of the letter regret not being able to attend this meeting, but they are planning to be here at the next meeting to speak to you themselves. Thank you, signed by 62 local Jewish community members. Good evening, everyone. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to us, even if you did cut our time. I'm a proud former member of the Watsonville Brown Berets, and I'm so proud of PVUSD that you have moved forward with Ethnic Studies curriculum in such an innovative and groundbreaking way. Our history classes, our art classes, and our English classes are clearly working. Listen to our students, please. I've benefited personally. I took two years of the CRE training. In those two years, I never heard anything anti-Semitic from Allison or any of the other trainers involved in that training. And you can ask every teacher that took that training. In the three years I've been teaching Ethnic Studies, I have never shared any anti-Semitic content, and I never will. I teach liberation in my classroom for all people everywhere. I teach celebrating our diversity and looking at people as equals. CRE taught us how to teach Ethnic Studies. They did not teach us what to teach. They never handed us lessons. They never handed us curriculum. They taught us ideas behind Ethnic Studies so we could be more effective Ethnic Studies teacher. We are encouraged to teach local history and to celebrate the diverse community of PRV. CRE taught us to do this. And I'm proud of PVSD and what you all have done. Please finish the job by hiring CRE back so we can be better educators. Thank you. Thank you. The next three speakers are Victor Moreno, Takashi Mizuno, last name Ornela, student, Pajaro Valley High School. Rivero Rivera Ornelas, student. Hi, I'm Victor Moreno. I'm a senior in Pajaro Valley High School and I wanna say, why don't we have the same opportunities as other high schools? They have French, they have pools, they have theaters, but our school, we just have a football field. That's it, I'm like, because I wanna be a drama kid, but I don't have a good proper theater room at all. We have like this size here and it's nothing for me.  And our school doesn't have that, but why does Watson and Optos have that, but not us? Yeah, I'm fine, I got eight, seven seconds. Anyways, I wanna say, why can't we have like French in our schools? Because honestly, I'm going to Europe in 17 days and I do not know French. I wanna learn new languages, new cultures, but our school is just Spanish, like came up options to choose what languages we wanna use, say. One minute, thank you. Yeah. Oh, good evening. My name is Takashi and this is my fifth time to say public comments on the same issue. And today I was with American Indians and our native Hawaiian and Guatemalan American at our Indian Canyon in Hollister. And we had a great time there and it remind me that we are the guests on the land of Indian Canyon in Hollister. And we are here in Watsonville area, Barbaray. How many of us know the name of the village, Indian village here? How many of us know that? The name of the Indian village is Tewbuta, Tewbuta. And we are the guests on the land of the people of the village, Tewbuta. They were forcefully taken to the Mission San Carlos at Carmel by the Sea near Monterey. One, that was one minute. Okay, I'll continue next time. My name is River Onellas. Our ethnic studies program will be severely impacted by the CRE contract not being renewed and more so by it not being on the agenda. The curriculum to other schools doesn't focus on the myriad of oppressive systems present in our society or the experiences of countless underrepresented individuals as these studies was created for the sole purpose to teach about the non-dominant narrative and educate about the systems of oppression our day-to-day, about our day-to-day life studies and more importantly, the SRE contract allows people specifically teachers and administration to address their own personal privilege and biases. Without proper education and training, how are we supposed to properly learn? I am aware that you are concerned about the cost of the training within the CRE. However, we have a grant which would make the training completely free. In addition, I am aware that you were scared of biases and own personal politics being involved in the curriculum. However, Deserpa, why is yours involved? Also, look at your voters. The next three speakers are Angel Alcantar, Eli Romero and Marlene Vega. Good evening, my name is Elie Romero, Ortigosa and I took studies, Agnes studies two years ago and when I was in that class, I learned about my history. I learned how to regain my power that was stolen and has been oppressed since many years. And I want that the same thing for my brothers, for the younger generation. I wanted to learn they have the power to thrive in this system where we often oppress. I wanted to know they can thrive out there as whatever they want, not just because this is frustrating. And then yeah, we need Agnes studies, not just for people who are being oppressed but for everyone to learn how to embrace diversity. We'll learn about ourselves but also about others to appreciate each other, to learn how to communicate, to learn how to thrive in a society where often we find ourselves very individualistic. So we need to come as a community like we did tonight to fight for what is right for us and to stop being oppressed. We are tired of being oppressed and we are gonna regain our power back. However, it takes us to get it back. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, my name is Angelica Cantora and I am a senior attending a Power Valley High School. And I just wanna say what is something that we don't, what don't we have that what's about high school has and after us has that we don't have because we don't have the same facilities they do. We don't have a pool, we don't have a theater and there was plans for that when our school was built, no, when there was plans to build our school and it took us so long just to get a football field and a track. How many years did we wait for that? And there was also talks about building a bridge to go to and from our school for pedestrians and for bikes to go through and they were giving, that was given $11.7 million and where are the plans for that? What's the process on that? What are we, what's the progress on that? When is that gonna get started? Did that get passed through? Are we gonna get feedback for that? And the same thing for theater and our pool. I think every school there should be like swimming lessons. I think everybody should learn how to swim. I think everybody should know that and for previous high school alumni from our school have died because they drowned and I think if we had a pool and we guys, if we gave swimming lessons that could have been prevented unlike Watsonville, they have swimming pool and they get taught six weeks of swimming. Thank you. Hello, my name is Marlene Vega and I am a senior at Pajaro Valley High School. I think homework should be reduced because homework gives students a lot of pressure and a lot of stress when we are at home. It also gives teachers more stress for grading and coming up with assignments for the students to do. We don't know what's going on in each other's lives and not everyone has time to do work when they get home.  When we are at home, I'm sure everyone would want to spend their time as they like with their personal life and not need to worry about school. Extra homework should be an option for students to get if they need extra work to bring up their grades. Thank you. The next three speakers are Izzelle, Maxine Milano and Dr. Parosa. Good evening, Board of Trustees. All right, so my representative is Trustee Flores who unfortunately could not make it and I am from area five. I am appalled that this issue is not on the agenda yet. Even after so much effort from the community, you make it so. Time and time again, teachers, parents, students have shown up and you ignore us. You deny students the right to an education that reflects their lived experience. You take away teachers' access to informed training. You deny district admin the opportunity to receive valuable training and you remain silent on. Why? To trust these Flores, the Serpa and Acosta, your inaction brings doubt to where your loyalties lie. Are you loyal to us? Are your constituents or actions speak louder than words?  We will not let you so disgracefully ignore us. We will keep growing in numbers and we will not stop until you actually serve your public, acknowledge your bias and add the CRE contract back to the agenda. Just one minute. And I'll close with the statement to Trustee Sotno. As the voice of the people and a decisive vote amongst the board, recognize that you're not doing your job. Stop avoiding us and listen to the people. Bring back CRE. Thank you. Hello, my name is Isshun. I am an eighth grader and this is my fourth time asking you why you haven't done anything to address the discontinuation of the CRE contract. You have yet to provide evidence for your accusations. You see that our group is growing and you choose to ignore us as if we're going to stop. Us students are here on school nights asking you to bring back CRE, which should be a clue of how much we want this contract back. How are you helping the students? How are you listening to the community? I am here and I have testing tomorrow. This is how much ethnic studies matters to me. You are discouraging people, especially students, from being involved in the community. Multiple students have expressed wanting to speak at board meetings, but they see you ignoring us. How are you encouraging kids to speak if this is how you treat them? I'm extremely disappointed and I hope next time you represent your community who elected you and put this back on the agenda. Thank you. I am Dr. Barraza and I am very disappointed that Trustee Soto is not here because on his campaign site, he says I will be your voice and fight for you. Why is he not fighting for us? How is he listening to our voices? If he won't return messages, if he won't return emails, and then when somebody finally reaches out to him, he says respect me. Well, he lost that respect because he's not representing us anymore. And you know what, Trustee D'Serpa, back to you again. I am so glad that Nat brought that letter to you because you consistently keep lying and saying that every Jewish group is against the RE. That's evidence that it's not. Where is your evidence that every Jewish group does that? That is against it. You have yet to give me any evidence. I asked you weeks ago, give me evidence that supports your point. You have yet to give me anything, but yet you continue to lie to the public and say every Jewish group is against this. Lies, right there. Also, in case you didn't know, one of the biggest groups, Jewish Voices for Peace, a national group, supports CRE. So I think you need to check your facts before you go around lying and saying that it's every group. And just for all of you who weren't here, the gentleman who was here and said he disagreed, that was the person who started this. It was that person and one more, two people is what caused this. Two people, the rest of us are being ignored. And one last thing, I'm going to check to see if you guys are actually following your rules about giving us one minute because if that's a violation, we're going to report it. Thank you. Okay, the next three speakers is Maralda, Tony Tepiz and Gabriel Barasa. Good evening, board. My name is Tony Tepiz. I'm a parent and also a founding member of Watsonville in the heart. I want to start off by saying, I love my community. I love the school district. Whenever I've been called upon to help, I've been there. For eight years, I sat on the special needs committee. Didn't see a lot of board members go in there. To her credit, I did see Kim there. I also have been a site council president for Diamond Tech. And as many of you remember, my son had the first service dog to come into use in the district. And what's going to happen if we don't have ethnic studies? For me, I have my grandma. I went and saw this picture at her house. It's from 1935, Pajaro school. And I said, grandma, how come you're not smiling? And she said, probably because they had just beaten me for speaking Spanish. Who knows that? You know, there are four of these kids disappeared one day. I found out that was because they were taken to internment camps. And that happened here in Pajaro. Who knows that? How many of you guys know that? It didn't happen at somewhere else. It happened here. And these kids need to know that. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Gabriel Baraza. I live in area five.  So I'm going to say this. Antisemitism is real. And it is an increase. And it is horrible when any group is targeted. But the way that Mr. Stein represents that is not in the service of the Jewish community. It's in the service of conservative power. People can be oppressed and oppressors at the same time. And when you use words like anti-Semitism as a cudgel to stop other marginalized groups from learning about their history and you can intimidate a school board or maybe align with their own principles, Miss Acosta, that's disgraceful. That is disgraceful. And you guys are allowing it to happen by not putting CRE back on the agenda and allowing us to have a discussion about it. Thank you. I wish I could say good evening, but sadly it hasn't. Many students, teachers and community members have come up here. But I feel like you have failed to listen to us. Time and time again, we have come here together to show the importance of the CRE contract. You guys claim that it's too expensive but it's covered by a grant. Many other points have been made by my classmates and it is sad that we are being ignored. But please know that we will not let you guys stop us. We will continue to fight for what we believe in and we believe with teaming up in the CRE contract. So please stop putting your political agendas ahead of your constituents. Please listen to us, because what we have to say is important. Thank you. The next three speakers are Maria Perez, Sean Henry and Marilyn. Hi, my name is Maria Perez. I'm a PB high school graduate. And at UC Berkeley, I realize that our schools here don't have all the same programs like many other schools around the state do. Yet here we are again fighting to keep one of another program. So please look at how many of our youth care about this. Please bring this item back to the agenda and please consider all the efforts, teachers, parents and youth of the youth showing up today because it takes a lot. Ednex Studies allows us to think critically, do this for our youth and future students. We need this commitment from you and please renew that CRE contract. Thank you. Hello, Sean Henry in School Psychology of Watsonville High School. And I just want to start off by saying I'm tremendously proud of all these young people and the speakers. And our future is bright with these leaders. The proof is in the pudding is an expression that means the value, quality or truth of something must be judged based on a direct experience with it or with its results. You have a lot of people here that know the pudding. We're actually on the same page.  He brought up Willie's name because he said Willie would support this. So the most important thing is sometimes when you're stuck you're gonna be announcing a superintendent. Do the new superintendent a favor and rethink and give an option to basically go on the record or do something like hold a town hall meeting, a special board meeting or something, but you have to go on the record and explain. There needs to be dialogue about why someone is against this and it needs to be heard because all the voice is saying the proof is in the pudding. First of all, I want to applaud the students. Stand up, speak out, stand up for justice, stand up for help. Don't be quiet, keep doing it until we get what is needed and what is just. I am very thrilled that you're all here and very sickened by this district in your type of response. And I think most people aren't anti-Semitic but they're anti-genocide, anti-colonial settler state, anti-apartheid, that's what people are talking about.  I taught for 20 years in this district and it doesn't say two minutes to speak and I think this is illegal and it shows how you don't want to hear the students, it's outrageous. I taught at a MST in Calabasas and retired in 2000 and I am so disturbed at all the radiation exposure. Ms. Garrett, your time is up, it is one minute. Cell phones, et cetera, that is engaging your students. Your time is up, Ms. Garrett, your time is up, you're over a minute.   How about the time being up for wifi and cell phone recognition, harming students and replace it with wired safe technology. Thank you, Ms. Garrett for being here. So I have a card right here, I'm not sure someone crossed up their name, Carlos Rivera? Okay. And behind them is Hilda and Martha Bollach. Well, I had a speech as well, but you cut our time, thank you very much for that. But my name is Mr. Carlos Rivera, so I'm a PV student. I've been really been interested in history for a very long time. But the simple fact that I can't learn my own history, my culture, that I wasn't born in Mexico, I was born here in California. I was actually the very first Mr. Christmas baby in the Waspville Community Hospital. But the simple fact that you all decided, or three of you specifically, one not even here, you all, those three decided to say, no, we do not need that contract anymore. And specifically you, Ms. Kim, you keep looking at your computer, why? What is so important in your computer that you cannot listen to all these students, these parents and all these teachers, huh? Why can't you listen to us? Why did you also remove, you, Georgia, why did you remove one minute from us? We want to talk. We can continue this conversation for hours and hours. Why this contract needs to be renewed? But instead you decided to take minutes, a minute, a precious minute from us. Continue this. And you guys, man, you might not have our support anymore. Continue. Good evening. This is Hilda Gazanferi. During the two years that we've been in ethnic studies classes, including world history, we've learned to challenge and evolve our perspectives, increase our understanding of cultural and historical impacts on different aspects of society, and how different elements of our identity can empower us and help us come together to improve the society as a whole. In order to develop these understandings, we need to be exposed to opportunities to think deeply and critically about ourselves and all groups who are affected by the exploitative system within the society. As a piano teacher and a career college math tutor, I know it's very hard to teach a subject that you have not fully mastered, as it will lead to misunderstanding of the curriculum and even failing to properly educate the youth. Today, we are asking to put the CRE contract back on the agenda so the board can vote again and hopefully bring back this essential partnership. Remember, without training and knowledge of the curriculum, it's almost impossible to teach. Our teachers, in order to not confuse us, not give us misinformation and appropriately support us, need education just as we do. It's interesting to us that ethnic studies is a graduation requirement, but we pose a question. What about you? Have you gone through any cultural responsive education? Like, for instance, the one offered at teachers and administrators across the district, the good news is it's free. Because of a grant secured by the district, that is still available. Perhaps if you took this training, you might can reconsider your position that this training leads to division and potentially even anti-semitism. We hope to see you soon in one of our ethnic studies classes. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Marta Baleich. Saba Charter School commingles its school-based operations with operations of Golden Brand's bare-distributorship property. For years, Golden Brands has been expanding its business on an undersized industrial lot, causing its trucking operations to spill over onto Highway 129, resulting in moving violations that put the community at risk. Golden Brand's property has one driveway that prohibits trucks and another that is shared with Saba. The shared driveway is substandard for Saba's related traffic. The driveways are under the jurisdiction of Caltrans. Despite the dangers of these driveway encroachments, it appears that neither the city of Watsonville, nor Golden Brands nor Saba ever contacted Caltrans regarding the expanded and changed use of these driveways. And students are routinely exposed to vivid alcohol ads. Rand Corporation research on the impact of minority youth exposure to alcohol advertising is relevant as these ads increase the likelihood that adolescents will start to drink alcohol. I urge you to intervene and require Saba to use a safer bus protocol. Thank you. Is that all of our speakers for this evening? Yes. Thank you. I will now move us to item 8.1 or items eight for employee organization comments. Now is the time that we hear from our employee organizations. We will start with 8.1, Harrow Valley Federation of Teachers, PVFT. Good evening, President Acosta, Board of Trustees, Superintendent Checkman. Just before everybody leaves, wow. Wow, wow, wow. That was incredible. I am wondering if the board really truly understands what culturally and community responsive education is. After all of the public comments devoted to this topic, not just tonight, but over months and months of time, I just can't help but wonder if there aren't certain personal issues that are clouding judgment on the topic. Not only do I treat teachers and quite obviously our students want this training, we need administrators to be trained as well. They are the leaders of our school sites and they must uphold the professional standards of their staff, as well as their own professional standards. One of which is advocating, nurturing and sustaining a school culture and instructional program conducive to student learning and staff professional growth. Since you are unable, it seems, to hear the words of the community and your constituents, I'm gonna share some words that you all have approved yourselves. These are some promises that U.S. trustees have made through various resolutions over the time. I don't have time to read all of them, so I'm just gonna highlight a few that share what CRE education looks like. In your Resolution on Women's History Month, you stated, Pajaro Valley Unified School District and its partners invest in the empowerment of our young woman through everyday lesson plans, as well as programs such as ethnic studies, girls in engineering, and girls who code, among others. In your Resolution for Raising the Pride Flag, you wrote to inspire equity, create alliances, celebrate diversity, and establish a safe environment in our schools and community. In your Resolution for Latin XE Heritage Month, you wrote that the Pajaro Valley Unified School District continues to partner with our community for events and to provide activities in the classroom where students talk about their identity, their culture, and to continue the historical traditions that have been part of our community. In your Resolution on Native American Heritage Month, it wrote, recognizes the importance in the education and celebration of Native North American culture with appropriate and accurate programs and activities to honor the rich history and culture of the Native North Americans. In the Resolution for Black History Month, the Pajaro Valley Unified School District recognizes that current research supports the positive effect of ethnic studies courses and other culturally relevant approaches to engage and motivate higher academic performance of all students. That is not the community's words. These are resolutions that you yourselves have passed. So I ask you to really look at why this is an issue and why this cannot be brought back before the board. I wanna congratulate our CSEA brothers and sisters for ratifying their TA and closing negotiations. It is a big deal to close negotiations as I very well know. On tonight's agenda though, you are also being asked to approve raises for administration, management, as well as cabinet. Administrators are on the front lines with our students and we are fully in support of the increases to their compensation along with management. However, I just wonder about the optics the board is presenting tonight when just a few weeks after a presentation on declining enrollment and the fiscal solvency of this district, you are now looking at providing a raise to our cabinet level employees, the highest paid employees in our district. It states in the second interim that these increases are in alignment with PVFT and CSEA raises. However, I would like to point out that our lowest paid members, our adult educators and early childhood educators only received a 3% increase, not a 5% increase. We know that there are difficult decisions that are gonna be need to be made in the coming years, but with our interim superintendent and interim assistant superintendent of HR, no current CBO that I'm aware of, I just ask, is this the best time to make that vote? Thank you. Thank you, PVFT, and thank you, Roddy. Now moving to item 8.2, California School Employees Association. Do we have anyone here this evening from CSEA? Seeing none, I will move to item 8.3, the Pajaro Valley Association of Managers, PAVAM. Good evening, President Acosta, Board of Trustees, and Interim Superintendent, Mr. Shekman. I'm Peggy Pugh, the Executive Director for Teaching and Learning, and I'm proud to be here tonight with my colleague, Rich Moran, as we speak to tell you a little bit about what we've been working on as the managers in PVUSD. We are on the move, we are busy folks, and just a couple of events to highlight to show how our PAVAM members are working hard in support of our students, our families, and our staff. So this coming Saturday, right in this very boardroom, we will be here along with colleagues, site administrators, district level administrators, and we will be encouraging all of our community members to come on down. We're recruiting for teaching positions, lots of classified positions. So we're proud to do that work because we're proud of the work that we do in PVUSD. We believe very strongly in the assets that our families and students bring and share with us every single day, and we want everyone in our local area to have the opportunity to work here in PVUSD right alongside us. Same day, on Saturday, we've got another amazing event. PVUSD families jump into summer, so we are celebrating our families, and we are having a wonderful event put on our parent engagement team, and that is on Saturday at EA Hall. The times are there on the flyer, 8.30 to 9.00 registration and breakfast, and then some welcoming, a couple of sessions, and then continuing that recruitment, we will do the recruitment efforts that are happening here in the boardroom on Saturday morning. I'll be working alongside Alicia at a recruitment table so that any family who wants to join our wonderful event at EA Hall doesn't have to choose between the recruitment fair and joining jump into summer, it's gonna be a full stop for everybody we can't wait. So again, at the central office, we've been super busy planning for our kinder roundup. There are two dates in March, the 18th and the 19th, and there are two additional dates in April and plans for a May date if required. Putting this event together has been quite an undertaking requiring our best collaborative effort. As a result though, more families will have access to more resources in one location for one of our favorite days, hopefully enrolling many new kinders and T-cares into the Pajaro Valley Unified School District. This is accomplished through collaboration with Ed Services, SELPA, State and Federal Programs, Student Services, Expanded Learning, who's also offering the Pajaro passport. It's the Monterey Bay FC Soccer Club, free for afterschool students in grades TK through eight and their families. Transportation, migrant head start, healthy start, and early childhood education as well as our administrative and classified staff that are there for support. Our community partners will include healthy start, Aptos Public Library, Watsonville Public Library, and Salud Palajente. At our site level, our administrators are in the midst of one of my favorite times of the school year. They're busy supporting and monitoring academic progress, social-emotional learning, and parent engagement as they begin to bring this school year to the finish or to the end, and then simultaneously, they're also busy looking to the future and planning for next school year. They're in the midst of another iteration of refining processes, procedures, and the efforts of their teams to improve student outcomes. They're considering current data and plans for future professional learning and staff development. As we all know, it takes a village, and as a villager, I can tell you that at each and every level, it takes strong administrators, strong instructional staff, and a strong classified staff to support our students' growth and engage our parents and families as partners. We do this work together, proudly, never one without the other. So in closing, please know that together we're planning both a strong finish and a momentous beginning for PVUSD. And finally, we just wanted to say Pavan members are on the move in support of our students, families, and staff, and we're looking forward to hearing your support as well. So thank you very much. You guys have a great evening. Thank you. Thank you both. And now we will move to 8.4, Communication Workers of America. This is our substitute group, CWA. Do we have you here? Thank you, welcome. Testing, testing. All right, good evening, Board of Trustees, Interim Superintendent Shetman and President Acosta. My name is Mike Floor. I've been a substitute in the district for 20 years. I'm a certificated teacher and an LPAC tester. I'm also the first union steward that the local, from this district, representing CWA, David Romo, similar credentials. He's a certificated teacher as well. He's been serving longer than me. He's been LPAC testing longer than me. He trained me to do the LPAC testing. And then the two of us trained all the new LPAC testers because in 2020, during the COVID era, with the double computer-generated test, it was too complicated for the existing team. 98% of those testers quit and retired. So we are responsible for training all these new testers. They got a big raise. We got a pay reduction. The pay reduction is a byproduct of a negotiated contract that included a supplemental rate standardization before we got involved. It was negotiated by someone that isn't from our district. So we are living and learning. And the aforementioned moment with Brian Saxton, I was gonna come and bring this up in December. We had a meeting earlier in the day. He kind of persuaded me to handle this in-house. And he said, maybe me and you and David and director Brook Hopkins can have a sit-down and we'd negotiate this privately. So you don't have to take it to the board. He did not want you to hear about this. And when we did this two weeks later, he told us, matter of factly, that we had no pot to beep in, that that was just the way it was and there was nothing we could do. And I talked about unionizing us. He threw out all these resistances to it, citing that anybody can do LPAC testing, that it isn't necessarily a certificated position, yet they don't hire anybody except certificated people to do LPAC testing. So it's sort of like we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. I got some responses from a couple of people on here about this. And we just want to make what we were making last year. We got a $1.71 pay reduction. His attitude towards us is sorry, that's just the way it is guys. Now we are versatile, colorful, experienced, classroom managers and teachers and testers and after-school employees. I've done like every other job in this district. On top of that, I did work a year as a teacher, which you might remember Mr. Schekman, that was 10 years ago at AVCI before it became Diamond Deck, the worst year of my teaching 20 years. That was a horrible experience and I'm glad that I got through it the way I did. Now I would like to work with the teachers union with PVFT, I'm not sure exactly what that looks like, but judging by the movement of all the ethnic studies people and then the long negotiated contract that CSEA has just finished, get ready for us Mr. Saxton, because we're organizing, we're gonna be collective bargaining as soon as we possibly can. And I'd like to give the rest of the time to introduce David Roma as a brand new union steward. He's been freshly trained too. Yeah, we actually work for the federal and state programs, which is this is the test, the LPAC test is a federally mandated test. And a lot of your students in this district are ELs, English learners, and they continue to be English learners. We try to make a difference because a lot of times you're in the classroom, you don't get a chance to opportunity to even speak. So we give those students for up to an hour to talk and to share who they are. And we can make the difference in a positive score or a negative score, just based on our attitudes and how we are, we do a great job of testing the students. And I think the district right now is lagging in respect to getting these students re-designated. And the numbers are very, very low and it could be even worse because what's happening now is, I started with the LPAC test, I mean the cell test. After a while, the students started to hate the test because they were consistently given the test year after year after year and they're not being reclassified. I'm seeing that resistance now at the high school level especially. Kids are avoiding the test. They don't even walk to get the test. They take off, they leave campuses. We do a great job trying to get these kids motivated to take the test. I tested 200 people my first year doing this type of testing. I told them, do well, you will never have to take this test again. We do our job, we hope the teachers do their job and we hope you guys do your job and pay us fairly please. Excuse me, David, and I'm sorry, I caught your name, David Romo, and sir, what was your name again? What is your name again? I'm sorry. Mike Floor. Mike Floor. Mike Floor? Thank you, I just wanna, huh? F-L-O-R, I just wanted to be able to acknowledge you by your name, thank you. Thank you for being here this evening. Get the pen. Okay, thank you both. Now moving on to our action items, I'm gonna move us to 9.1, the adoption of resolution to authorize the general obligation bond election of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District. This report will be presented by our interim superintendent, Murray Shekman, of schools as well as Dale Scott, president of Dale Scott & Company. Lisa's gonna kick it off and turn it over to you. Good evening, board president Acosta and board trustees, interim superintendent, Mr. Shekman. I have the privilege this evening to kick off for looking at the next bond possibility. When I first entered this district roughly nine to 10 years ago, we just passed Measuredell. When I came in here from a different district, I had the opportunity to look at the facilities from an outside lens perspective. Our facilities were in really bad shape. We had holes in ramps, we had holes in buildings. We had a lot of work to do. Measuredell provided us with some of the monies that we use to upgrade our buildings to have spaces where students can feel proud of. When we went out for that bond, we knew that it wasn't the amount of money that we would need to completely upgrade our facilities. Some of the comments you heard this evening from students, there was in the original plans for Potto Valley High School was the pool and also a theater. Because we ran out of funds, this was not able to be completed. So in the next round with the next bond that we have the opportunity to go after more monies so that we could have excellent facilities for all of our students across the district in places that they'll be proud to learn. And so with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Mr. Shekman. Thank you, Ms. Aguilier. I really wanted Lisa to start it off because she was here while the discussion and the planning was going on. And so her background and knowledge helps us. Oh, he'll need it, I won't need it. I'm gonna introduce our presenter. So Lisa's knowledge and background is a good way to kick this off. I was involved with Measuredell and expressed concern to cabinet that are we really ready? And my concern was mostly based on the fact that I wasn't here. The planning was good, Clint was our CBO at that time and he helped bring me up to snuff. And I made sure he was here tonight for the bond presentation in case questions come up. And he's very grateful to be here for this evening's meeting. The bond that we had before was led by a very active CBO. We are advertising, hopefully beginning tomorrow and we waited till tomorrow for a reason so we can get the best CBO somebody with experience who knows how to carry the torch for a bond. Dale reached out to me and spent several hours with me and made sure I had a really good understanding of the good work and planning that's gone on into this bond. One of the board members asked us to look at a bond that was a little bit less and so we are bringing you two proposals but you'll also hear if you look at the study of our master plan and the facilities master plan, we really could use 900 million to do everything but we won't ask the taxpayers that. So with that I'd like to turn it over to Dale Scott who's got some really good information for the board. Thank you, Dale. Thank you. I have been asked to give you a very short presentation. Just to give you as much of this we've gone over already but I thought it would be good to reacquaint you with it and then I'll talk a little bit about the resolutions and the issue before you. Just to remind you, we always look at the type of election that we are looking at and we're thinking about putting a ballot on. There's a tendency to always believe that all elections are created equal but they're just not, there's just a big difference and who turns out, you obviously know this, you're elected officials, you can see on this chart the turnout for the presidential elections in Santa Cruz County, which is in blue, in November, for example, for the November 2020 election, the turnout was almost, it was approximately 85%. Look right next to it, the June 2022 gubernatorial primary, the turnout was less than 50%. The data is very clear that the higher, the presidential election produces a higher percentage of school bonds that went in California, that's been in the case for over 20 years now and especially tilts to those districts which have a high democratic registration such as your district, which you can see in the pie chart. This district has been on the ballot four times. There was a couple of failures in the early, in the last part of the century. However, at that time, there was a two-thirds majority that was required. In each case, the district has always received over 55% and it can look and see that none of these elections were on a presidential date, which is interesting to think about, even in the gubernatorial elections and one primary, the district one. Those bonds that have been passed are still being paid off. One of them, the 2002 election, is going to drop off the rules shortly in six years and that will drop the average tax rate down to roughly $30 per $100,000 of assessed valuation. Looking forward at the 2024 election, there are, as the superintendent said, two proposals, two resolutions in front of you. So it's not, shall we pass both? It's, shall we pass one or the other? Both of them are relatively the same, except for the dollar amounts. The first one, which is for $315 million, is structured so that the tax rate would be generally $60 per $100,000 of assessed valuation. That's all property within the district, except for, of course, government and churches. So depending on the commercial, industrial, residential, et cetera, et cetera. Even though we've shown an example here of how the bonds might be issued over the next six or seven or eight years, that would be up to the district board itself. You can draw on these monies however you want, for however long you want, as quickly as you want or as long as you want. The second resolution envisions a financing, I'm sorry, a bond issue of $195 million and that would, is estimated to drop the tax rate down to roughly $40 per $100,000 of assessed valuation. A question I'm gonna ask quite often is, well, what does that mean? How much does that really cost the taxpayer? So I thought you'd be interested in this slide. This is the district's single family home tax base, broken down in $100,000 increments. So as you can see, if you look at the top bar, you have roughly 1,500 homes in your district that are on the rolls at less than $100,000. On the other hand, the average, if you look at the blue box on the left, you can get some of the statistics, the average single family home is assessed at roughly $600,000. So the median is about $460,000.  There are obviously a very large number of homes much higher than that, assessed over a million dollars. So the assessment is on the assessed valuation. So for example, if you were to pass the resolution for the larger bond, it would be roughly $60 per $100,000 of assessed valuation. Finally, just discussing the activities that are required to move forward. If the board wants to proceed, it would need to take action on one of the two resolutions this evening. I'll talk about that in just a second. We would then submit those resolutions to the elections department of both Santa Cruz and Monterey County, since you have a few voters in Monterey County. There would also be something that's called the argument phase, where the district has the opportunity to place an argument in favor of the resolution that would show up in the sample ballot. And anybody that wants to oppose it can put in an argument in opposition. And then although we still continue to call it election day, of course it's no longer election day, it's election month, it's just that we ended on election day. I do want to go back to this board action, in a sense, I do want to make one thing clear. When the law changed, allowing for 55% elections, there was another change that was made. And that is that even though the threshold for voter passage is 55%, the threshold for board passage is two thirds. Not two thirds of the members in attendance, two thirds of the seated members. So what that means is in order to pass either of these resolutions, you would have to have a 50 board vote tonight. With that I'm happy to answer any questions about the presentation or about the resolution. We also are gonna have Rich do a presentation to connect the master plan of facilities to the work that you guys have done. Thank you. Right Mr. Adiano? Good evening. Not really a presentation, but I can just give a little bit of the background on how the facilities master plan kind of fits into this and where that all started. So facilities master plan was, let's see, we started with a request for proposals back in, I believe 2019, to find a partner architect firm to work with us to develop the master plan. We ended up contracting an award with 19 six architects. And in 2020 everything kind of got derailed with what they were starting up with their community input sessions and kind of starting to gather information on what sites needed, what they wanted, what their constituents for their schools wanted to see accomplished with the next bond. It started way back then. So that is a document that is almost finished. It's about a month away from being finalized and it'll be presented to the board very soon, like once it's ready. The kind of napkin estimate from that facilities master plan shows somewhere between $500 million and $600 million in need for the projects that were identified on the master plan. So that's the brief on what that document is and kind of how it fits in with what we're looking at now. And I just wanted, Rich, to make sure you understood that, that there was some good work in a development of our facilities master plan and Dale has worked with that plan and come up with proposals for a tentative bond. Thank you, Rich. So Dale, back to you and questions from the board. All right, Mr. Scott, I'm gonna have to see if we have any public speakers to this item. Yes, we have two. For agenda item 9.1 we have Chris Webb and we also have one more person. Thank you, Rich. I want to speak to one project that I think could fit with this bond and also with the master plan. And that would be a backup generator for Renaissance High School. You may recall at the beginning of quarter three here, there were three schools that were closed due to weather and Renaissance was one of them. And I think that was the right decision, by the way, to close it when you have no power at that school, there's no water, which means no toilets. So that was a good decision by the powers that be. But it's also like very commonplace and I worry in light of the decline in enrollment conversation, like in climate change, at what point are we losing revenue by not having backup power at that site? And I would pose to whatever new CBO we have for them to actually calculate that. Consider, let's say, 65% enrollment and then also like 95% enrollment. And then also with those two, consider like 65% attendance, 95% attendance for both and then figure out, get four numbers where after this many days of school closures, it actually costs you more to not have backup power. I feel like with different grants and stuff I've seen related to green energy, there should be opportunity even beyond these bonds to get that funding. And I would also remind the board, the Renaissance Student Leadership Survey results for Measure L Funds were shared with you earlier in the year and to your emails. And so you can see the data and one thing you might notice in the data is that when the Renaissance community was asked about the use of Measure L Funds, if you look at the top five priorities and every single one, a backup generator outpolled the staff room which is being funded. So I just consider the stakeholders and what's been said and what the data that we have shows about what people want and then there's a financial case to be made, I think. So thank you for your consideration. The next speaker we have is Nick See from the Parks and Recs, the city of Watsonville. I didn't wanna mess up her last night, so. Good evening, President Acosta and Board of Trustees. My name is Nick Kalabakib and I'm here wearing three different hats tonight, all of which I'm asking the board to consider adopting the resolution to place this on the ballot in November. I'm here first and foremost as a parent of a fifth and seventh grader in the district and have really seen the difference that the projects that have been funded through Measure L have made on the different campuses and really commend the district for using those funds wisely and I think we all know that there's a lot more work to be done, obviously from the facilities master plan and all the work that the former CBO Clinton has worked on as well. Millions of dollars in deferred maintenance needs still and wanted to again kind of point out or uplift some of the voices of the students from earlier today who talked about equity on different campuses and making sure that there's opportunities for students in an equal manner for things like theater and swimming and all of those great things. With my Parks and Community Services Director hat on, we work with the district on joint use facilities and help to open up campuses in the after school hours to make sure that our students have access to parks and open spaces. Here in Watsonville, we have a huge lack and disparity in terms of access to parks and open space compared to nearby communities like the city of Santa Cruz and our school spaces really are those places that help with that. Quality fields and quality playgrounds and whatnot are really, really important to me as well. We all know I think also that a lot of our fields have things like go for holes in them and that sort of thing and it's hard to play sports when you're dealing with that. Finally, I'm here on behalf of Susie Merriam who is our Community Development Director for the city and she wanted to talk a little bit about workforce housing. She wasn't able to be here tonight but she really believes that this bond could help provide workforce housing for teachers especially and that as part of this bond measure, PVUSD would have the opportunity to raise funds to build housing for educators on school-owned property such as the projects that Cabrillo and UCSE are working on. Thank you. Thanks, Jack. Thank you. And that's the end of our public speakers on that. No more speakers. Okay, thank you. So I'll bring it back to the board for discussion questions. I just try to mage posh words together and make up my own. Discussion, questions from the board for any of the presenters. Comments, too. Comments, questions, anything. That's discussion. I'll come up with a new word to mage that all together. Trustee Dr. Holm. It's more of a comment because I feel like we've had great presentations in the past and we've had a lot of really good information and thank you for the additional information that was helpful. I know for myself I'm inclined to go for the larger bond because I'm looking at the amount of need that we have in this district and just having sat on this board for the last five years and going to our sites and seeing the need, I'm just like, there is so much need. There is so much need. And thinking about it's like, okay. Doing the math, it's like if you are fortunate enough to own a million dollar home, which is not uncommon in this area, it's like, it's 11 bucks a week, right? A couple of lattes. If you get the really fancy ones with the extra shots, right? If you get for the larger bond. So it's like, it's 11 bucks. If the smaller bond, it's just shy of eight bucks. The difference between the bonds and what we could do with it, it just, to me it makes sense to go for it because we need it. That's my thought. Thank you, Trustee Dr. Holm. Anyone else? Trustee Dusserba? Dale, do you mind coming up to the podium? So in the past, we've always received a really heavy, robust presentation about what it is that needs fixing and why we're doing this because this is a giant ask of our community that already has bonds on their property taxes. So not only do we have multiple Pajaro Valley bonds, we have multiple Cabrillo College bonds and we also have now Measure N and the hospital's gonna go out for another bond. So we typically have a presentation that makes a case for why this is an urgent need on behalf of our district. Like I know why it's an urgent need, but in order to sell this idea to the public, typically there's a presentation that talks about at this school, here's what the needs are, at this school, here's what the needs are.  I think it's strange to have a bond, like a vote on a bond prior to having a discussion about what the need is in the district. That's not to say I wouldn't register a vote tonight. Obviously, I know we need this, but I just think that this is not the way to introduce this to our community. So in terms of the first and second sums that we're looking at, do either one of those include workforce housing? At the pleasure of the board, both of them have the ability to be used for teacher staff housing. That is something of course after it passes, you would have to actively decide upon, but both of them give you the ability to use those funds for workforce housing. Okay, and then can somebody come to the podium and talk to me about what the price tag is for the workforce housing that's been proposed that we've looked at? Who can talk to that? Is there no one here? Oh, there's Clint Rucker. Oh, thank heavens. That's why he's here. Hey, Clint. Good evening, Ford. It's good to see you all again. Yeah, when we discussed in the past, workforce housing, taking into account inflation as well, we thought it would be roughly around 60 million, would probably be the target of what part of the bond would have to go to workforce housing to actually be able to utilize, I know we all talked about the space next to Amesti as there was extra space behind that school that would actually be able to do it, and that's where we originally talked about workforce housing. When we talked most recently with Dale and kind of talked with Ralph from 1906, the estimated around was around 60 million. So if you take into account the $195 million bond, it only leaves around 130 million for schools, whereas the 315 bond would leave around still 250 for schools, which again, I don't need to reiterate the needs definitely there. So I heard Jen Holmes say on a million dollar house that it would only be about $11 a week. I love it. She's like right there. It's between 11 and 12. Yeah, you think about it. It's $60 per 100,000. So you think a million has 10, 100,000s in it. So to do simple math, 10 times 60 is $600. 52 weeks, 10 times 52 is 520. Plus you have those two other weeks at $10. So you're right about there. It's between 11 and $12 a week. So you know we have. I loved it. So we have the number one, we have the fastest growing population of senior citizens in the entire state here in Santa Cruz County. And so when we go out, for example, a parcel tax, senior citizens can often opt out of having to pay that because of financial need. Is there any similar situation here for bonds for our seniors that aren't fixed in those? I know, but I'll let Dale speak to it. Yeah. No, under the state law, there is no ability to have any type of class based on age or need, but they can opt out of payment of the assessed valuation. Yeah, I have more, but go ahead. You can go. No, it's okay. I'll think on it. Okay. Have me come back to you. Trustee Villano, Scow. Yes. Just for everybody watching, can we just summarize? Again, I wanna make sure that the monthly weekly costs differential for beach bond. So the larger one is around 48 bucks a month. And the smaller one, 60 bucks a month. I'm sorry. To the math that way. I only think of what the tax rate is on an annual basis. And the tax rate on an annual basis for the larger bond is $60 per $100,000 of assessed valuation. That's the estimate. And the lesser amount is $40 per $