I like to call to order the Pajaro Valley Unified School District Board meeting for Wednesday, February 12, 2020. Item agenda item 1.2, public comments on closed session. Are there any public comments to closed session items? Seeing none, we will now go into closed session to discuss the following agenda items, 2.1, certificated public employee appointment, employee governance code section 54957. Item 2.2, classified public employee appointment. Employee appointment, employee government code section 54957. Item 2.3, negotiations update, 2.4, public employee discipline, dismissal release leaves, 2.5, anticipated litigation, one case. 2.6, anticipated litigation, one case. 2.7, real property, Prop 39 charter counter offer. 2.8, approved settlement request for keen and claim. Number 570600. 2.9, resolution number 19-20-26. Possible reassignment or release for certain certificated management. Thank you. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Welcome to our board meeting, Wednesday, February 12, 2020. For the pledge of allegiance, I would like to ask Trustee Acosta if she can lead the Pledge of Allegiance. All rise to one nation under God, individual with the liberty and justice for all. Welcome to our PVUSD board meeting. I'd just like to say we have translation in Spanish. If you need that support, please see Virginia. Is Virginia here? Is she here? Okay, she's in the booth. I would just like to say, and I know we have a busy program time. I'd just like to say welcome back, everybody, and don't forget to vote. Next up, we have Super Intendent. Dr. Rodriguez, our Super Intendent, will make a few comments. Well, yesterday, so they'll put up on the screen for you guys. So yesterday, we had the pleasure to recognize two of our employees caught being all in. Cabinet first went to Radcliffe to recognize Arifa Cheverea. Their office manager. And then we went to Hall District to recognize Simone Siqueiros, one of our awesome second grade teachers. It's truly one of our favorite events each month. And congratulations to them both. So ayer tuvimos el placer de reconocer de dos de nuestros empleados trabajando con ganas todos los días. El gabinete primero fue a la escuela Radcliffe para reconocer Arifa Cheverea, el gerente de oficina. Luego fuimos a la escuela Hall para reconocer a Simone Siqueiros, una increíble maestra de segundo grado. Es verdaderamente uno de nuestros eventos más favoritos del mes y felicitaciones a los dos. So we started our LCAP meetings last week. We encourage our parents and community to come learn about what is occurring at both the site and district level, as well as give us their input. The next meeting, we do have a D-LAC and DAC meeting, but the next one open to the whole public is Monday, February 24th at Pajaro Merosco, and we hope to see you all there. So empecemos nuestras reuniones de LCAP la semana pasada. Animamos a nuestros padres y la comunidad a que vengan y reconocen todo lo que está ocurriendo en nuestras escuelas a nivel distinto, así como dar a su opinión. Nuestra próxima reunión que estaba abierto de todo el público será el lunes, 24 de febrero, en la secundaria de Pajaro. So esperamos ver a todos allí. So we're having another Paso a Paso reading challenge starting Friday, February 14th to April 14th, and the students reading the most will win donated Green Valley Cinema tickets. Our students have already read over 100 million words since we started the program. So estamos teniendo otro reto de lectura de Paso a Paso empezando este viernes, 14 de febrero hasta el 14 de abril. Los estudiantes que leen más ganarán boletos donados por el cine de Green Valley. Nuestros estudiantes ya han leído más de 100 millones de palabras desde que empecemos este programa. So thank you very much. Thank you very much. Agenda item 3.4, I also want to mention real quick that we have cards in the back. If anybody wanted to speak on an agenda item, each speaker will have two minutes. So starting off with the governing board comments, I would like to ask Tristie Holm to speak. Thank you. It's been a busy past few weeks. I attended the Santa Cruz County Civic Summit where students from all over the county got to meet with over, I think, 22 elected officials in our area. That was remarkable. Also went to the Sex Ed Curriculum Review, the Santa Cruz County Office of Education Strategic Plan Presentation, the Pajaro Valley Education Foundation. We had our meeting and the Rio de Mar Science Fair, the Pajaro Valley Chamber Annual Awards Dinner and the SELPA Community Advisory Committee meeting. Tristie DeSerpa, Tristie Roscoe. Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us at tonight's meeting. A couple of odd days for me. I am happy to announce that we are in the process of organizing the PVUSD Cares Backpacks for All Initiative in partnership with Tristie Holm and the Watsonville First United Methodist Church. We're all very excited, and we'll provide more details to everyone as we finalize the date and time and the time approaches, so we're really excited. We also had our Pajaro Valley Education Foundation meeting. We're making great strides in planning process of our second annual gala, which will be held May 14th, and our Innovator of the Year Awards, which will be in June. Our foundation has applied for its first grant, and if selected as a recipient, funds will be allocated to support our Summer in the City program. In addition, I wanna congratulate Erika Padilla and PVPSA team on their grand opening. I got the opportunity to attend their ceremony, which was beautiful, and tour the facility. Thank you for your partnership in providing our students with vital preventive services. About two years ago, I brought up the idea of workforce housing. Even though we're in the process of our dating, our facilities master plan, I have asked staff to look into the possibility of incorporating this as part of the plan, and maybe also as part of a future facilities bond measure if we choose to go in that direction. My son and I also got the opportunity to support his preschool, Duncan Holbert, at their PIXA fundraiser. I wanna thank everyone who attended their fundraiser. It was a fun event to be at. And lastly, a huge thank you to our counselors for your contributions and support of the success of our students. I also wanna acknowledge the concerns you have brought up to my attention from not being recognized at school sites, but your administrators to the concerns you have on workload ratios, late grades, among others. I am working with Michelle to explore ways on how to reduce a counselor to student ratios. So thank you so much. Thank you very much, Trustee Satcher. There, it's on. Thank you, I'll be quick, because I know there's a lot of people here today. Been busy, I've did a lot of school site visits the last couple of weeks. Meeting with sites and teachers and some students and getting tours and listening to things that the schools need. I'd also like to congratulate all the counselors for the job well done they do. I got to visit the Cesar Chavez Counseling Center this week and the team there is so amazing and they do such a great job for all of our students. So thank you for supporting our students the way that you have. I've talked to various teachers over their concerns. We're working on those, we hear you. And thank you all for showing up. Thank you very much, Trustee Acosta. I'll wave my comments tonight, thank you. Item 3.5, High School Board Representatives Report. I'd like to invite the schools that are present. I believe Watsonville High, Watsonville High here. Is this on? Yes. Hello, okay, now it's on. Good evening, members of the board, audience. Just to start off, where's the clicker on this thing? Oh, I see it. Just to start off, my name is Omar Casillas. I'm a senior from Watsonville High School representing them today. I'd like to begin this presentation by thanking you for the construction that we've been seeing on the cafeteria and the extended communication. We really appreciate it when you guys communicate the progress that's going on or any issues that are coming up because it keeps us in the loop and not questioning everything that's going on. I'd also like to thank you for the heat that we've gotten back on our campus. Most of our classrooms are with heat and the classrooms that aren't however heater but are small enough to be heated by the small heater so it's way better than it was a month ago. And then I also want to keep an update on the career and career pathway recumbent days I mentioned last meeting. Freshmen got to explore the career path that we offer at Watsonville High as well as the study services such as the mayor's office, fire department, police department, amongst others. Upper classmen got to enjoy the day with 60 unique presenters such as army recruiters, estheticians, cosmetologists, fashion designers, engineers and other great careers. They got to see four sessions per day which was very good and like a lot of them really enjoyed it and got to visit different career options. And also this week we will be having a vote on the schedule they changed. A lot of our students have been wanting a 70s period day because of this initiative usually comes from the average students that get a period taken away in order to take the avid class and they want to get that back including a seven period schedule which has a lot of benefits but like our block do have a lot of benefits so this week they will be taking a vote on it through their teachers. And the students have put a lot of work into this as they do every year. Hopefully this year it might pass for them. They surveyed around 800 students and around half the staff which is really impressive work to do considering we do have a very large population and change is really hard to make happen so it's like from a student perspective like I can see how they are struggling and how they are trying to achieve their goals. I would also like to invite you to have some events coming up this month. February 22nd we have Donkey basketball hosted by Future Farmers of America. They do this every year. It's a really fun event. Everybody enjoys it. We'd also like to invite a girl soccer senior night which is tomorrow evening at the Geyser field. The varsity team usually starts around seven and the game before starts around like 530ish that usually go in those ranges. And then the boys soccer season has been a great season for them. They are first in the section of the league, 11th in the state and 64th nationwide. Their CCS game is next, not this Saturday but the following Saturday. They are very excited for it and it is actually coach Hedgepeth. The varsity coach is 50th year with Watson-Mohai. We actually got to give him a plaque during our Royal Hearts rally which was yesterday. And he was really touched by it. A lot of his players have like been influenced by him and do enjoy working with him. So it was an honor getting to see that happen. And then also, Magtral is in competition season right now and we had our first competition last Wednesday and a competition yesterday. We finished our fourth round last night which is like two rounds for the defense side and two rounds for the prosecution side. We placed a lot in total correction. I just got the news like 30 minutes ago. We're still second place and we're going to semi-finals next Tuesday. So it is at the Santa Cruz Courthouse if you guys would like to come and join and see us. I'm on prosecution, so hi. And that's it, thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Aptos High School here. All right, good evening, I'm Oscar. And I'm Marlena. And this is our January, February kind of wrap up. We are giving a shout out to the choir because at every event, this was taking out the Mariner Expo that just happened. They're always there, they're always showing the art that the performing arts that we have at Aptos High School and they always just, they sing so nice. It's incredible. And recently both Oscar and I are in ASB so we've been extremely busy coming up as Valentine's Day so kind of to celebrate that we're doing Valentine's Day grams which we'll pass out to students which is pretty fun. And then we recently, about two weeks ago had our winter formal dance and it went really well. It was super fun and all the students had a really great time. And then Mark Trowell competed in the Ethics Bowl at UCSC and they did really good there. Our Mark Trowell team is like really good so yeah. And then. We also have the small point in redeem day which is part of the five-star and PBIS program that is at the schools and that will be happening the 18th next week. The Mariner Expo was an event put on for coming in freshmen and also the current Mariners and we had an event. All the teachers were there or most of them and they kind of talked about the classes they have, what they offer and got to interact with parents and really just get to know the new incoming parents and create that sense of community. And in the athletics area, recently all of our new sports have started. So swimming, track and field, baseball and softball. And this last season the basketball team did really well both the girls and the boys. And so yeah, the new season of sports is running and last season is like wrapping up and going into their finals and they're all doing really good. Thank you for your time. Thank you very much. Are there any other schools, a new school, anybody? Okay, I guess not. Next agenda item 3.6, the LGBTQ plus student conferences and leadership opportunities. This report will be presented by Stuart Rothstein, Director of Queer Youth Task Force of Santa Cruz County, PVUSD staff and students. Thank you. My name is Stuart Rosenstein, I'm the Chair of the Queer Youth Task Force of Santa Cruz County and we've been having pleasure of working with PVUSD now for many, many, many years. And we want to thank Dr. Rodriguez and the board. Y'all have been doing buses for leadership conferences for nine years now and it just really shows the commitment from the board. Y'all also have been supporters and sponsors of the Queer Youth Leadership Awards and just many things that you'll have done. But I want to give the voice now to the students and the teachers and the parents but I just want to say my gratitude. I also want to thank the staff, Ava has been amazing and everyone in transportation, Katie and Felicia, really just go beyond the call of duty really supporting us and supporting the students to make sure everyone is safe and doing the times and figuring it all out. So thank you to the board. Thank you to Dr. Rodriguez. And so now we're gonna have some students kind of thanking y'all personally. Thank you. Hi, my name's Providencia and I go to Lakeview and I attend a QSA over there. I'm in eighth grade and I wanted to... They thank you for the transportation to the yes conference. Hi, my name is Audrey and I go to Alianza. I'm a seventh grader and I participate in the GSA club. I wanted to thank you guys for supporting us in our yes conference. Hello, my name is Desi and I'm in sixth grade at Watsonville Charter School of the Arts and I wanted to say thank you for providing us with buses to go to the yes conference. So thank you. Hi, my name is Audrina, I'm in sixth grade. I go to Watsonville Charter School of the Arts. I'm in the GSA there and I just wanted to say thank you for providing us the buses to the yes conference. Good evening, my name is Mikayla Bacon and I am a part of the LGBTQ plus club at the Power Road Valley High School. And I would like to thank you for funding our club and creating a safe environment for us to meet. Our club has greatly benefited from you from providing transportation to the conferences and meetings and you have allowed us to expand and even have our own voice in our community which we can't thank you enough for that. And the workshops at the conferences has helped out the club on our campus and we hope that you choose to continue to fund the buses and thank you for your time and attention. Hi, good evening everybody. How are you guys? I'm Providence, I'm sorry I lost my voice. So I don't, I can't be quiet so I can't, I haven't found my voice yet but I'll find it one day. So I'm a parent of Providencia and she's a part of the QV, QSA club and as a parent I just wanted to thank you guys for supporting these kids and for providing the transportation to the conference where my daughter has benefited very much. She's grown as a person and she's very outspoken now and she's an advocate and she's like a leader.  And it's very exciting to see her very involved. So I wanted to personally thank you guys, all of you guys. Have a good evening, bye. Hi, my name is Annette Palkin and my daughter, Audrina has been in the GSA program at Watsonville Charter School of the Arts since fifth grade. Since fifth and sixth grade and I just want to thank the school district for being so open and providing this kind of opportunity to the children who are discovering themselves and allowed the opportunity to be themselves and figure out who they are because it's hard as a parent to understand and support them when you don't even know who they are and what they are. And just to be able to be there and support them and see them grow and be able to go to the yes conference was awesome because I got to see so much growth in each of the children. I got to see all of, I got to go on the field trip. So it was really nice to see each of the kids have so much growth in that program alone just to see, just to be able to get information that they hadn't had previously and maybe weren't given by their parents or by other support systems and were given by Jen or who is our GSA leader. And so it's nice to see. It's nice to be a part of it and thank you for the transportation because I was also on the bus and it was awesome writing back with, I don't know how many kids singing the whole out two hours back. It was awesome, it was fun, yeah, Hamilton. That was the number one song, so it was great. It was great to see, it was awesome. Thank you guys. Hello, thank you so much for having us here. My name is Jen Salinas-Holtz. I work for the technology department and I am very privileged to also get to be the advisor for four different gay straight alliance and queer straight alliance clubs. Three of them are middle school clubs. One of them is an elementary school club, which I'm particularly proud of at Watsonville Charter School of the Arts. And I have had the honor of chaperoning many field trips to LGBTQ and ally youth conferences, including three times at the Yes! Conference in San Francisco, which I'm not sure if you're all aware of what that is, but Yes! stands for Youth Empowerment Summit and it's an annual conference for middle and high school lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, ally students. It's a really fantastic event. It's free, so we are so happy that we can invite as many students as we want because we have transportation paid for. It's very meaningful. It makes a big difference in their lives. I just really briefly will tell you the first time I went to one of these conferences was when we had just started a gay straight alliance club at Lakeview Middle School. The first year I worked there, it became clear that we needed a GSA club. We had a student who was a teacher, found him sobbing literally in the closet of her classroom on the floor. She asked him what was wrong and he said, I can't talk to you about it, but I'll write you a note. So he left the class, she read the note.  So that's when we decided to start the club and the student managed to be absent from school. Every day we had the club meeting for several weeks and then finally he came and we went to an LGBTQ and Ally Youth Conference in Scotts Valley that year and he came back and said it was the best day of his life. He came out to everybody the day after we came back and that alone made a huge difference in his life. So by funding a transportation to these conferences, you all are making a difference in the lives of LGBTQ and Ally Youth. And I can't say enough about what a positive experience these conferences are for kids to just get to be around. Other students who are like-minded know that they are not gonna hear any homophobic comments from their peers which is a really big relief. They come back, thank you the parents who have supported their kids and come to these conferences. Several of them have come back and said, I wanna present a workshop next time. We had students from Alianza, middle school students from Alianza present a workshop at the Yes Conference a couple of years ago. So I don't wanna take up too much time but I can't say enough about how important this work is, how important it is to support LGBTQ and students and their allies. We have most of the students who attend our clubs. Many of them have come out as young as third grade. We have students in third grade at WCSA who identify as LGBTQ. But many of them identify as allies and maybe that means they're just not ready to come out yet or maybe it means that they just really care about supporting other people. So I also hear from middle school students who say, oh my parents said I couldn't come to your club anymore because I'm too young or they don't want me exposed to that stuff. And I wonder what parents think we're doing in these clubs.  We make buttons. We make posters. We talk about supporting other people. We talk about why it's important to be an ally. Tell me what. We make bracelets. We make crafts. We do all kinds of fun things and we help educate our peers and our school communities to make things safer and more welcoming for all students. So thank you so much for supporting us. We all appreciate it. And I hope that we will be able to continue to take students to the yes conference. I have eighth grade students who are already really excited to go next year as high schoolers and get to stay later and go to the pizza party. So this is a big deal. Thank you all very, very much. Do we have any public speakers to the side of? No, okay. Any questions or comments from the board? Trustee Hall. I want to say thank you for the work that you're doing. You know, when I was a kid, it's like you couldn't be out in school. You couldn't even be out to your friends. And for those of us who were within and are within the LGBT community, it was incredibly isolating and frightening. And that's not something I wanted for my kids. You know, if that was how things went and it's not something I wanted for any kid. And so thank you for providing the connections so that kids can have that kind of connection that can feel safe. I mean, it saves lives. It does. So thank you. Trustee Satchin. So John, I want to thank you. I know you do a lot of work and I've had the opportunity to talk to you every once in a while. And I think that this is important for our community and for our children. There's a highway to suicide among teens in the LGBT community. So I think having clubs like this gives them a safe place to feel normal and to be without judgment. And I have a friend in high school who committed suicide because they had no support. So this touches my heart and my heart goes out to all of you. So thank you. Anybody else? I also just wanted to say thank you to the task force of Santa Cruz County. I also like to say thank you to my friend Providence and my classmate from multiple high school on that Falcone for letting your children find out who they are. As Annette said, we don't know either. When I was in high school, I noticed friends that were just always quiet and didn't want to say anything. They were really good people, but I always ask, hey, what's going on? What's up? Like, oh, just having issues at home and my parents.  And it's good to see programs because we didn't have programs like that, but it's good to see supporting your kids and say, hey, you know what?  We support you and we love you. And don't be afraid. Speak out and use your voice. So thank you very much. So next up, we have item 4.1, approval of the agenda and see if I could get a motion. I'll move approval. Second. Second. All right, I'll now call and vote. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Next up, item 5.1, approval of the Johnny 22nd Board Meeting Minutes. Can I have a motion? Move approval. Second. I'll now call for a vote. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Next up, item 6.1, public comments. And I have a point of clarification on 5.1. Yes. I don't think that Tristia Costa was at that meeting. I wasn't sure if she had spanned. I could still vote yes for it. Thank you. Record my vote as a yes. Thank you. I'm not sure how she can approve minutes when she wasn't at the board meeting. That doesn't mean I'm not aware of what was in the minutes and that I didn't see it. Thank you. I need a point of order on that, please. Do we need? She is able to do it as long as, as she stated, she watched the video. Okay, great. Thank you for the clarification. Thank you very much. Thank you. So, that'll be a yes vote for me. Thank you. Item 6.1, public comment. I will call the names in groups of three. We have multiple comments. So, the first three are Bill Beecher, Lillian Dean, and Jillian Reaves. Good evening, Bill Beecher. I'm back for a second time because I didn't have enough time the first time. So, let's look at, we have a math problem. Hey, Mr. Beecher. Yes. Can you raise your podium up? Because I'd like that microphone to be closer to your mouth. Want me to check? Because we can't hear, when the microphone is far away from the mouth, we're not able to hear very well up here, so I don't know, I'd like the public and the viewing public to be able to hear the comments of everybody here tonight. Thank you. Then again, I can just lead forward. Let's continue from where we were last week or a couple of weeks ago. There are some possible causes, one of which is students are in high school, behind in math, hard to triage. Now, I've been working with a college student who understands calculus, but she doesn't finish her tests because she didn't have to learn her multiplication tables because they were taped to her desk and they were hung on the wall. And so she's slow in arithmetic stuff, but she understands calculus. Elementary teachers are not capable. Students, and the way you look at that is students are two to four years behind in the eighth grade. If the teachers were capable, why aren't the students doing better? There's a pressure in high school to grade on the curve and not to the standard, and this only applies in the math area, not in any of the other subjects. I have a high school principal who told me this doesn't occur, but the teachers told me, yes, it does occur and the state data says yes. And as I showed at the last time, over half of our students should be flunking in high school math, and yet that's not the way the grades are handed out. So there are remedies. I are better math teachers, but this is almost impossible without a major pay increase for math teachers. There's a high demand for data analysis and artificial intelligence out in the community, and here's what mathematicians get paid. Bottom 10% makes 60K, the average is 106, and the top 10% make 160K. So how can the school system compete? Grade to the standard in high school, put it on the agenda. Continue to do the same thing. We've seen this one before. Thank you for your time and please put it on the agenda. Thank you very much. Hello, okay. My name is Lillian Dean and I'm a speech and language pathologist who worked very briefly in your Duncan Holbert preschool. I would like to speak to you about high quality early education. From birth to age five, a child's brain develops more than at any other time in life. At least one million new neural connections are made every second. The quality of a child's experiences in preschool helps shape how their brain develops, which has a lasting impact on a child's ability to learn.  Children who experience more positive interactions in their early years go on to be healthier and more successful in school and in life. The opposite is true as well. Poverty, family instability and lack of access to quality early learning experiences can negatively impact a child's early brain development and thus their long-term success. Investing in early education improves student achievement overall. Children who attend high-quality preschool require less special education, are less likely to repeat grades, have fewer behavioral problems in school, graduate at a higher rate and have lower incarceration rates. As adults, they are more likely to be employed and earn higher incomes. For every dollar invested in a high-quality early childhood program, $8 is saved, leading to a public benefit of over $100,000 per student. Children who are at risk for school failure are the most strongly affected by the quality of their preschool. Sadly, the most vulnerable children often attend the lowest quality programs. Aside from the obvious of skilled teachers and adequate facilities, a high-quality preschool program also needs the following, a minimum class time of a half day or three-and-a-half hours, a full day is better. And I don't think I'll have time for all this, so. Two of the classrooms I worked in at Duncan-Hobart were two, can I go one more second? Two, 20 more seconds. All right, that's time. Okay, I have articles that support, the research articles that support everything I just said, plus the things I didn't have time to say. Thank you. Good evening, members of the board and Dr. Rodriguez. I wanted to address the issue of our low attendance rate. I understand the need to raise our ADA rate, but implying this relies solely on teachers and admin is ridiculous and misguided. For instance, I have a student that has only been to school seven-and-a-half days. This has been a pattern since kindergarten with her not showing up at all, the second and third trimester of second grade. I have gone above and beyond offering to help her find rides to school, ride the bus with her, sitting and talking with her on my breaks and lunches. Her PVPSA counselor has taken her and her mother to doctor's appointments, helps her mom fill out important forms and documents. I also had her brother several years ago and helped him get into sports and went to several basketball games. Admin has also done several home visits and still, this year, she has not been to school. It's not only me, I've heard several stories of teachers doing amazing and meaningful things, not just at my school, at tons of schools around the district. What else can we do as a district to get our ADA to 97%? Truthfully, I feel like we, as teachers and staff, are doing all we can to support our students. If you have strategies backed by data, we are open and willing to try them, but putting up a superficial banner and hoping this changes anything is a waste of resources. Thank you. Next, we have Barbara Knapp, Chris Webb, and Julie Valens. Good evening, I'm Barbara Knapp. I'm in my 20th year with PVUSD. I'm a kindergarten teacher at Bradley Elementary. I've got two daughters who went through PVUSD schools. One is about to graduate from UCSC in June, and the other one is in the teacher credential program at CSUMB. We love our PVUSD schools. I'm here to talk about the salary negotiations and being connected with the attendance. I'm a little confused how you can ask us to have anything to do with the student's attendance. I'm wondering, are you expecting us to make phone calls and demand that parents bring their sick children to school so that we can get our extra $40 a month that you're offering, or what a colleague said to me is that this might be just a wink, wink from you all to tell us not to take roll so that we can get that butt in the seat money. So we don't know what's going on. How are we supposed to control the attendance? It just doesn't seem right. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Chris Webb, teacher at Renaissance. I first want to thank Joe and Ruth for coming out and informing us that our water situation is being addressed and that we'll have new RO filling stations. And I trust that we'll also have transparent monitoring with distinctions between Chromium III and Chromium VI going forward. I also wanted to raise some concerns I have about maybe over emphasis on PBIS. I'm all about lowering suspension rates and different trends and stuff, but I worry sometimes we're looking like too much at the numbers and missing some of the big picture. Last year we had some admin issues and then this year some of the things I'm seeing with the new admin who's been really good is suggesting to me that there's just an overemphasis on this and it's degrading some of the academic standards of the school, which I'm a teacher who's, ever since I've been there I've been trying to overcome some of the stereotypes that are at that school and we have a very successful progress monitoring system which we achieved model continuation school status with this system. And I would invite the board or anyone who's interested if they have questions about this system, come, let us present to you, let us speak to you and let's clear up any misunderstandings there might be about it. Because this seems to be a negative influence that is playing upon our admin and it's undermining student accountability. It's there's lower standards for academics. It's almost like we're being turned into like a babysitting program. That's not why I got into teaching and that's not gonna serve my students well when they leave. There is gonna be real consequences when students leave and then they get the wrong message that there's no accountability for anything. This is like when, you know, with our students this is increased charges. This is losing their car repossessions and I also think one thing that's particularly crazy about it is it undermines even attendance. So then to say that our raises would be attached to attendance, a system that's being undermined, it's kind of like stabbing us in the back in a way. So I just wanna make that point. Thank you. Good evening. My name's Julie Valens. I'm a teacher at MST school and I was here a couple of months ago to talk about a specific trilingual student I have and the fact that we had no SLP or speech and language teacher at our school. And now I can come to you and very gratefully say that we have a wonderful new SLP and we're very grateful and excited. And I wanna thank Mr. Clappenback for his support after I spoke. And also I wanna thank Carrie Knot who is the interim SLP when we didn't have an SLP. So I wanted to come and give that happy update but I also wanted to use that as a plea to please, please make it competitive to work here so people wanna stay. I've been at MST 19 years and I'm always scared that we're gonna lose all these passionate, dedicated, educated, capable teachers and support staff. And we have to be competitive so that we can keep people. We've become sort of a joke in the area of having a reputation of having such high turnover but we have such amazing families and kids and teachers. So please Dr. Rodriguez on the board and everybody who's involved in the negotiations take into account that we need to make salary caseload benefits competitive so people will stay and I don't have to come and ask you for help when we don't have an SLP. Thank you.  Lorenzo Holkwin, Josue Vega-Hungo and Lizbeth. Good evening. My name is Lorenzo Holkwin, the current bike tech teacher at PV High School. I'm the last one to recently get my teacher credential in the Civil Subject of Transportation in November by the state through Ventura High School, County of Education. I'm here to advocate for a program and ask if you can put Project Bike Tech on the next agenda and I encourage you guys to come and visit Project Bike Tech at PV High. I've only seen one of you. So I encourage you to come visit. This is a certification that we give out to our students. This is a current student, he's a, he's an awesome student. He's a, I'm a little nervous but it's okay. This is Caleb and he's here. I didn't ask him to come in here to show that. I was like, whoa, okay, cool. You could tell he has four badges, these badges each student has, you have to complete the modules, you have to get it 80%. These are things that bike shops that the bike owners make them get. This is something we offer at Project Bike Tech. We started here in Santa Cruz County, now we're in six states.  One for our program. We've also expanded, you know, we're out with the rental bike program after school. We're helping mentor high school students from PV for incoming kids from Cesar Chavez, Rowling Hills, Pearl Valley Middle School. I know it's kind of out of the way but they still come. These young kids are getting mentored by Project Bike Tech students as well as PV students. I recommend that you put us on the agenda, hopefully we can do a presentation. Thank you. Hi, my name is Lisbeth. And I would really hope that you guys reconsider of us being the, I don't know if I forgot what it's called. Part of PV because it really helps out with job experiences. It really helps out us have like community hours. It helps us connect with kids. It helps us be like role models to students saying like, you may come like from a bad place. Like you may be not being doing good at school but you could pass it on to kids who are not doing good at school and say what opportunities you can have. Like we always be stressing out and then I'll go home, be all stressed out, even more. And but since I earned the bike, it helps me release stress more. It helps me release stress because I get to tell kids who are also maybe dealing the same thing as me how they could deal with it. Like my bike got stolen and I have some kids who also have experiences of their bikes getting stolen. But in earned a bike, they get to learn how to make new bikes. If they ever get stolen, they get to make new bikes. They get to fix bikes. And then they get to pass it on to other students, their own like students or their own family members. So then they could get out in nature more. Cause it really helps you kind of connect out with nature and also helps you be aware of cars also. Cause we also teach them of their signals. We teach them how they should be aware of cars cause there are crazy drivers. And now bikes, and then if they use bikes, they know to be more aware. They know what signals. And then if they ever end up in a court case, they could win because of the crazy drivers. They'll have, they say like they do the signals. Thank you. Thank you. So hello, my name is Josue Vega. And I am an 11th grader at Power Valley High School and I am a mentor for earned a bike. With earned a bike, I have been able with earned, with the bike Santa Cruz County. Ultimately these programs help us interact with students and learn further about ourselves. But also these programs help students. Helps us, helps my peers because it helps us prevent to stay somewhere after school and learn further about ourselves and the world. Yeah, so there are many things wrong in the world, unfortunately, but we learn further about things and we are able to make connections. So yeah, instead of trying to take a program away like this, you should probably raise the teacher's salaries, give them fair counteracts, and instead of posting pictures on social media saying that everything is fine when it's really not, maybe you should actually do something about it. Thank you. And if I can have the next three speakers line up, Caleb Hamlin, Elizabeth Hernandez, and Brandon Dinnis. How's it going? I'm a representative of Power Valley High School bike tech technology too. I mean throughout the class, I've learned so much. We have a little singing class, bike tech, life tech, because it's not only bike tech, but we learned so many life skills and the people there and it's really like, even our teacher, he's really brought our class together as a little small community. And not only that, but we help out the community, you know? Like we go out to like at the bike shack and help out, we fix little kids' bikes, we, you know, we just try to help out everybody and if you observe the school, there's not too many hands-on classes, you know? Like in fact, this is the last one left. So I mean, it kind of helps them out, especially the kids that are more hands-on. It really helps them learn. So thank you. Just to make a note, once an agenda item opens, I can't take any additional public comment card. I did receive an additional one, which I will accept for this time, but I can't accept any further cards for the public comment. Thank you. Hi, everyone. My name's Elizabeth Hernandez. I am a bike tech alumni. I graduated from PV High in 2013. I took this course in 2012 and I was the first TA in 2013. I'm here to support bike tech. It's been brought to my attention that this course elective at PV High is going to get cut to my knowledge. It's the only and last hands-on course to work with our hands. Like why would we take that away from these students? It's not like this course has been a true motivation and given me so much passion with my future career opportunities. I happened to work at the UC Davis bike shop. And in fact, I actually brought my bike that I created with bike tech. Over there, that was created in 2012 thanks to bike tech. And that is my mode of transportation that I've been using here in Watsonville, our community. Didn't we just get recently bike lanes? We got to put them to use. Don't we have high obesity rates in our community? Well, then let's keep this opportunity for the students so they can be allowed to ride bikes and within our community, explore, use sustainable transportation, have a sense of freedom to be out there, to be riding. And I don't know what else to say. I mean, I'm really disappointed that this is even being considered to cut this course from PV High. And I brought my bike here to come to show that how much this bike tech class have really inspired me to keep moving forward. And thank you. Hello, my name is Brandon Denise. I'm a resource specialist fifth year in the district. I'd like to start by thanking you guys for letting me speak here before you. I'm here to speak about the lack of negotiations that's currently going on. The reality is I don't wanna be here. I didn't leave my classroom until six o'clock this evening because of the overwhelming amount of work that you pile onto your special ed teachers. What's unfortunate though is I have to be here because this board has not been negotiating a good faith by attempting to connect an increase in teacher salary to an increase in student attendance because it must be our fault that the kids are leaving this district. And not the fact that we have classrooms without heat, classrooms close to mold and schools with toxic levels of chromium in the water. What you guys are essentially doing has been offering non-starters and negotiating in bad faith. But then again, that's your strategy, isn't it? Lie about the numbers, mislead the public and bank on the fact that your teachers will be so discouraged, so overworked and so disgusted with your tactics that we'll roll over and accept whatever offer you guys have for us. And I'm here to tell you that that's not gonna work.  It will not work. You will not defeat us. We will not back down. We are here to improve the quality of life for our students and to fight for their future. So I ask you, what are you here for? So if I can have the next three speakers, Jesus Magdaleno, Ari Parker, and Sarah Leonard. Hi, good evening. My name is Jesus. I am a former bike tech alumni and I'm very like, you know, it's saddened me they wanna take away this class. I don't wanna explain this to y'all, but bike tech was something so important to me in high school because in high school, it was like, it's like my basically a nine to five job. It's like, oh, I have to go to class. I gotta do this, this, like whatever. Just to get the grade. Bike tech, I was like, wow. I'm gonna get this class in sixth grade.  It's not like any other class. We're actually working on stuff. I believe when I was, I took it junior and senior year. Sure, we read instructions on how to do it, but right after we finished reading the instructions, we got to work on the bikes. And I seen PV, I wanted to PV. I haven't, there's no other classes that offer anything like that. I know there was a fabrication class. They also took it away. So I don't know what to tell you guys and bike tech is also helping me a lot. Thanks to bike tech, I have the job I have right now. I work currently at Cal Fee Design with my former teacher, Patrick Alvarez. And I gotta say, it wasn't for bike tech. I definitely wouldn't have that job. I'd probably still be a custodian at Twin Lakes Church, cleaning up stalls and I sure as heck don't want that job anymore, thank you. Good evening, chairman, president, Daniel Dodds and board members. Hi, my name is Ari Parker. I am a teacher and have been in the Parra Valley Unified School District for 33 years. I also happen to be an elected member of the Watsonville City Council, but tonight I am not speaking in that elected capacity or on behalf of the city of Watsonville. I'm confused. I received an email from Chona and HR and it said the following, 2019-2021% increase contingent upon a 97% student attendance rate. My reactions? Insane, illogical, crazy. Exacerbating an unnecessary division between the district office administrators and teachers out of touch with reality. I've spoken to many former school board members from the PVUSD as well as other districts. They agree. I don't know if you know exactly what they're sending out, but they sent that out to us. And for me, as somebody who is pretty much, I've been here all my life. I went through K through 12, Parra Valley Unified and became a teacher here as well. And I don't, oh, well, I'll go to that in a minute. So my job is to teach. The job I have at Bradley School, I teach. I teach. I would like to see the district bargain in good faith. We're a year and a half right now without a contract. Is that right? And I find it ridiculous that we're gonna move to three years again like we did before because you can't be advocates for us as well as for all the children in this. Teachers are never here to break the bank. We're here to make it happen. Any program that you decide on, we deliver. And you keep adding to it. So thank you. And my last message, two messages, please bargain in good faith and direct your administration to do so. And all my students in fifth grade always knew their multiplication facts before they left the room. Good evening. My name is Sarah Leonard. I teach fourth grade at Valencia. I've been there for 13 and a half years or 13 years and a MST for seven and a half years. It's really nice to see my sisters and brothers from both schools here tonight in large numbers. Woo! I have copies of this if you want but it doesn't seem like that's the protocol but they're here if you'd like them. I'm here obviously to speak about teachers and the bizarre recent situation that we find ourselves in. Education resource strategies conducted a study recently that found that in 30 states average teacher pay is less than the living wage for a family of four. According to the Sacramento Bee, average teacher pay in California public schools is $82,746 as of last year. It is the highest in Mountain View, Los Altos Union High School District with teachers earning $136,500 average salary. This is still not enough for teachers in that district to buy a median priced home at $1.2 million for however. The average teacher salary in PVSD is $60,058 with the median house price of $869,000. When we put standard of living together with our cost of living here on the beautiful Central Coast, we find something very troubling that in fact, Santa Cruz County is the fourth least affordable place to live not in California but in the United States. Think about this for a minute. The solution seems to be to help teachers afford housing by giving us vouchers for teacher loans and subsidized housing. This is absolutely cringe-worthy and missing the target by miles, how incredibly insulting to provide written flyers and emails touting the idea of teachers needing subsidized housing at all. The subtext being that we are not worth more salary. The latest effort is to make the 1% meager salary and increase contingent upon 97% ADA for the first year and worse with an expectation needing to be met with an increase of 4.5% more kiddos for the district average the second year in order for teachers to receive their 1% pay raise. That was two minutes. You see where I'm going with this. It's laden with statistics that don't work and it's not okay and I really implore you who live in this community to accept that we are on the front lines of heroic work every day and we deserve to not be here. We deserve to be at home refueling for another day at the heroic work that we do.  We have Christina Carter, Pat. Alvidrez. Alvidrez and Erin Miller. I'm Christina Carter. I teach at Minty White and this is my 10th year there. I've been, I'm here to talk like most of all my colleagues. I am appalled that my responsibility is to make sure that 97% of my students are there every day. I'm there every day. To today all of my students were there in my class but I'm there every day. How about a tailgate party for teachers? That I really believe that we need to dig deep. I dig deep every day for my students and I think the district needs to dig deep as well to compensate us reasonably and for us to have a caseload of students that will allow students to grow and learn in a safe and environment that will allow them in all their differences to thrive. Please dig deep for us and keep bike tech. Thank you. All right, good evening. Thank you for everybody for being here. This is amazing as a lot on your guys' plate tonight. So definitely taken a lot of things consideration. So my name is Patrick. I work at Cal Fee Design, I'm their production manager. I was fortunate enough to be a predecessor to Lorenzo for the bike tech class, taught for three years. Obviously you heard from my associate, Chewy. Anyway, so again, we're here talking about bike tech and it seems like this is a big question of whether or not this is a worthwhile scenario. I think that's ridiculous. Literally talking about it, this is a class that when I was teaching pretty much had full class the whole time and it seemed like it was also a dumping ground for people that didn't have a place, right?  The amount of effort that we put in as teachers all across obviously in the school district but specifically in our class, we offered them opportunities, he was showing you a lot of what he was doing in his class. He was showing you a small placard that you can earn, that's just a new thing that we're doing. We also offered two certificates, one for, sorry, also really nervous. But these certificates are basically able to take two job sites, right? So as Seuss, I offered a job for him because I worked with him firsthand. I knew exactly what his capabilities were. Amazing, right? And it wasn't because he could type on a computer or write a paragraph or cut a piece of paper into some shape and mold it into something artistic. He had a different type of heart. It was hands-on and it was very skilled, you know? So he's been working with me for what, eight months? So since then he's now taken on a lot of different jobs. He's working with carbon fiber. He's working in the machine shop. He's doing mathematics on a daily basis, right? We teach math in bike tech. Building a wheel has a lot of geometry and arithmetic. And so anyways, bike tech, keep it. If you don't, you're gonna be sorry because number's gonna keep going down. And we're gonna lose awesome people in this community. They're gonna provide more jobs and more ability, right? So please. Thank you very much. Good evening. My name is Erin Miller. I'm a parent of a student friend in the bike tech area at PV High School. And I came here to support them, but like listening to this, just as a community member, I'm really disappointed. Like education should be top priority, not thrown to the bottom of the stack. When I was in school, I went to Santa Cruz. You know, I grew up in Santa Cruz and we had metal shop. We had wood shop. We had, we did plays and drama and all this stuff because every student learns differently. Like you can't just throw them all in one class and say, hey, you know, if you make the cut, great. You know, if not, then good luck with life because it's not the way it works. You got so many dedicated teachers here that are willing to work with their students. Like they should be paid for that. Like it takes a lot out of you to spend all that extra time and all that extra just love, you know, to try and give these kids a brighter future. I still remember my fifth grade teacher. He had so much influence in on my life that he opened my whole mind to a whole world out there. And I'll never forget him, you know, and I'm sure that there's lots of kids that will remember their teachers. And then, you know, second generation comes around. I was fortunate enough to have my son go to the same elementary school I did and he was able to have some of the same teachers I did. You know, that's not always the case because teachers won't stick around, you know? So step up your game or you're gonna have, it's gonna be like the old school Watsonville where everyone's running in gangs, killing each other on the street over nothing, right? Because they don't have the education. They're not learning the way that they can learn. So that's all I got to say. So our next three are Tom Kennedy, Cindy. I'm sorry, I can't read your last name. And Phillip Wise. Good evening, Superintendent Trustees. I'm the Regional Coordinator for Project Bike Tech. We're now, I think, actually in seven states nationwide and we have dozens of schools contacting us every month, interested in opening up new programs because they see the value of bike tech, hands-on education, career technical education that meets kids where they're at with things that they're passionate about, with things that they're excited about. And I really hope that the district reconsiders the direction that you've taken some of the CTE in and you work with us. We have been here, we've been working with you, we've been working with your students for the past 11 years. There's been about 1,000 students who've gone through the bike tech classroom at Paro Valley High School, not to mention all of the hundreds of students who went through the bike tech classroom at Aptos High School, which you closed last year. I'm pretty emotional because this program is very close to my heart. I started the earn a bike program in collaboration with Bike Tech in 2015. As has been mentioned, we brought students from Cesar Chavez, from Rolling Hills, from Lakeview Middle School, from Paro Middle School, to Paro Valley High School into the bike shop, and we worked with students from PV High and graduates of bike tech to help the high school students learn mentorship and job-ready skills and middle school students get inspired and come away with bikes and helmets and lights and locks. And as Liz mentioned, maybe they learned something and maybe if they are in a court case, they will retain that information. I'm kidding, but no, that's... There's a lot that gets transferred beyond what you can calculate on a spreadsheet and what fits into the CTE pathway checklist. So please think bigger than just a checklist and just a spreadsheet. Come visit the class and bring us back for a full presentation, more than two minutes. Thank you. And this is just the people that we called today, so you can imagine how much support there is for bike tech in the community. Thank you. Yeah, the CTE, thank you. Good hour. I'm going to start with you. I'm going to introduce myself. I just want to introduce myself in my language. My name is Cindy Kedinihi. My family, I have family all over the place here in California and also back in Arizona. I'm here because I'm supporting bike tech. This is a teaching that supports the community and it's something that we connect our youth to the area, to the land. And I believe that if you guys take this away from these teachings, the curriculum, then you lose a lot of things. You lose a way of thinking. You lose being conscious of the environment. And the reality behind all that is basically, our life is not getting, just daily lives and daily expenses, it's not going to get cheaper. It's going to get more expensive. So when we have these bike co-ops within Santa Cruz here in Watsonville, different places, we give that chance to have our youth learn this skill, learn this skill to have transportation. And for the school to say that this isn't a form of transportation, how is that justified? When you see the markings on the road, like as the students had said here before, how is that not a form of transportation? How is that a reason why you want to cut this program? So I just want to ask, really consider a lot of these things because if you think about it, the youth, they were supported as soon as their families bought these bikes for them. Literally your parents are holding you to support you, to let you go, to try that experience and to open that first gift, a big gift under a tree. You're like, wow, okay, and we all understand that. So just letting you know, recognize what you're giving up, you're giving up the future. All right, thank you. Good evening, my name is Philip Weas, just here speaking as a member of the community in support of the bike tech program. Just want to say I've seen how empowering it has been and the skills it's giving the youth in our community. We've heard from the students here, some of the skills and empowerment and gives them firsthand. And I think we need more tech programs, not fewer tech programs. And this bike tech program is one of those wonderful programs that we need to keep and we need to support. And as a bike advocate and someone who rode their bike here and seeing our community trying to welcome this, yeah, like has been mentioned with bike lanes and things like this, having this program sends a powerful message that we actually do value this. And also, yeah, as a cyclist, I do need these kids to help fix my bike when I can't. So that alone is incentive for me to keep that bike program here. Having skilled kids to help me out when I can't do it. So I implore you guys to keep this program in, support it. Thank you. Was that Felipe Hernandez that? No. Oh, okay. Sorry. All right, it's a lot. Sorry. The next three I have are David Petino. I already have that one. Julianne, I'm sorry. I can't quite read the last name, but Julianne. Mandojano. Mandojano? Yeah. Okay. Rolando Jarrera and Ivan Flores. Good evening, Dr. Rodriguez and school board members, members of the community. I'm here to support Project Bike Tech tonight as a CTE teacher, one of the few left after the CTE teacher purge last year. I feel it's my responsibility as a CTE teacher to come forward and say what an important impact CTE classes have on attendance. CTE classes have been shown statistically over decades to increase student engagement. I have heard many times that other CTE teachers that share this with me and my students share this very phrase with me. Your class is why I come to school today. Your class is what gets me excited. When I hear about more CTE teachers going away from our district, it makes me confused or closing different programs down. That makes me confused. I thought this was about enrollment, boosting enrollment. I'm trying my best to keep my program going with the support of our new CTE coordinator, the grant writer who Dr. Rodriguez recommended and has done wonders for our CTE programs and funding. The classes get more and more exciting and it hurts my heart to think that we would be closing such a valuable program that engages students on such a high level. I want there to be some type of recognition of how important these programs are for students who really feel that this is their passion and that they wanna follow their passion, help those students connect with what's important to them. Let them make the decision and obviously there's more students that want to be in this class than there are seats in the class. I feel like it's an important, I feel like it's an important thing that we'd be losing if we were to close it down. Please reconsider. Thank you. Hello everybody. I thank you guys for being here and actually giving us a voice to talk to you guys about this thing that's going on. So I am an old student from Pajarveda High School. I took this RLP class back in 2013 for bike tech and I wanna say it's gonna be a big mistake getting rid of that class. I owe so much to that class. Everything that I have up to this point, I owe it to them. Especially my, at the teacher time, Jason Carr, he helped me have the job where I am now. I'm a current mechanic at Family Cyclone Center or in Capitola and it goes to show that the program works. It might not work for everybody but it can help any student that wants to do something with what they wanna do in that program, it works. So I wanna say that, I'm sorry, I was blanking at this point, I was not ready for this. But I wanna say that kids need these programs. It's something that will benefit them in the future or prepare them in life. It's gonna help them socially. It's gonna help them just want more.  It may not be bikes, it can also be computers, it can also be building stuff, it can also be even automotive stuff. BB High School at the time, we did not even have a lot of programs to begin with. We were jealous of Watsonville High School because they're like, oh, you guys have automotive classes? Oh, we don't have that. Bike tech was the closest thing that we got to being able to do mechanical stuff and hands-on stuff while being on campus. It was kind of like our little gem that we had and it's something that I valued and I wish that program still keeps on going forward because a lot of us are helping the communities, especially that shop, not just ours, those shops here in Watsonville, deeper in Sanctuary, deeper in Monterey, a lot of those shops get kids from these programs and those shops need us to help run those businesses basically. So it benefits all of us. We are basically the start of something that we're gonna need in the future. So thank you guys for your time. Hello, thanks for having me. My name is Ivan. I attended the Project Bike Tech class in 2010 and it was the only class that engaged me, allowed me to learn about, you know, not just things that you normally learn about in school. I applied myself, they motivated me to problem solve, do all these things that, you know, I never thought I would be doing in life. I had a different goal, but sorry, I'm kind of nervous. Shaking. Please don't get rid of it. It's gotten me very far in life and it's not only working for me, it's working for a lot of other people, as you know, everyone else is speaking here. Project Bike Tech. We can have the next three speakers line up, Aurelio Gonzalez, Colleen Powers, and Salvador Lua. Good evening board, good evening Michelle. My name is Aurelio Gonzalez. I'm a resident of the city of Watsonville. I'm also a city councilman and I'm also a product of the Prochor Valley Unified School District. First I wanna apologize to all the teachers because I was one of those rough students. And, but that didn't stop me from succeeding. I originally came to talk about something else which I'll get to, but just briefly. Classes like tech school, mechanics, small engines, it helped me tremendously. It helped me stay focused. I wasn't successful in school, I'll be honest. I dropped out a week before high school graduation, but that's because the way I grew up. It had nothing to do with the teachers. The teachers are the ones that actually supported me through the whole process. So I thanked them a lot. They do deserve a lot more money than they can make because the headaches that I gave them, I think Sting will still linger. But I was successful, I did move on to construction and I became a very successful person in construction. Now I'm happily retired now. And, but also the ability that the teachers gave me was I am able to be a city councilman. I'm able to troubleshoot, I'm able to look at problems and engage those. But I'm also involved with the community and I think community is really important. The tech bike, we're in a movement right now to promote transportation. We're in a movement in our community to engage our community to get on bikes, to get alternative transportation. And so what does that come? We need jobs that are gonna support those. And if these tech job bikes help do that, then we need to keep those kind of programs alive. With that, I'll leave that subject alone and I'll come back to what I came to address. Last year, I was able with the support of the community to bring the Santa Cruz Symphony and also with the support of the Unified School District to bring the Santa Cruz Symphony here. If you could just give me guys a little quick minute. And so we wanna bring it back again. So I'm hoping that I'm reaching out to you today for the school district to help us bring back the kids and do a concert again, some music in the park. But I'm also looking for volunteers, because I am a doset. I will be attending Calabasas, mini white, and Calabasas is a mini white. It's a mefuelotro. But there's a third school that I'll be going to. But anyways, there is a link up program and it's really important that the community get involved in this because it's not just bicycles, it's music, it's art and sports that bring kids and help these teachers, I guess, get that 97% attendance also at the same time. So with that, if anybody can come out and march, I don't know, I'll get this, because takey ways, I wasn't. Two minutes, I'm sorry. But on March 2nd, March 3rd, at the Mallow Center, we'll need help for ushers and it'll be the school district will be there with the Santa Cruz Symphony in performing. So I hope to see you all folks there. Thank you. Good evening board members and Dr. Rodriguez. First of all, I'm gonna change my comments a little bit. I've never heard of bike tech, but it sounds like a fantastic program and it sounds like a great way to boost student attendance because I would go to that class. Okay, so but back to this. I'm a parent of two elementary school students that go to Alianza Charter School, yay. And I'm also a teacher in my 19th year at Amesti Elementary School. My children are opposite. One of them will go to school no matter what. She is coughing, she will steal the Tylenol to take it to convince me she does not have a fever. At her parent conference, her teacher said, you know, Lucía, you don't need to come to school when you're coughing this badly, okay. But she knows that she wants to go to school. She loves school, but she shouldn't really be there because it's really hard for other kids to learn. My other child has learning disabilities and does not like school. If she has a hangnail, she doesn't want to go. So I have the extremes in my household. I have the girl that is dying to go to school, literally. And the one that really, really does not want to go. Neither of those has anything to do with their classroom teacher. They both love their classroom teachers and they haven't had a teacher that they didn't like. But it's not affecting their attendance. One loves school and one is scared to death. Also, to go to a MESTI, my class mostly has 100% attendance every single day. My students love to come to school. Even if somebody has died in the family, they still want to come after the funeral. They come with fevers.  I'm gonna send her. Then I have a very sick, very infective student in my class that you can figure out what happens to the rest of the class. I have students that go to the dentist, they get a fielding field, they come to class, their cheek is numb and drool is coming out of it. So that's what parents are sending to, parents are committed to our school. So that's what I wanna say. Thank you. Good evening, my name is Salvador Lua. I'm here in support of Project Bike Tech and as a product of the Watsonville Brown Brace Bike Shack, I am able to tell you that I had learned a lot of my skills through that bike program. And I was there when Lorenzo first started off. I was a high school volunteer for the Bike Shack and I was able to teach Lorenzo a lot of the skills that he learned early on. And he took it and he ran with it and with Tom Kennedy. They've evolved this program into something that retains the values of the Bike Shack, which is soft skills learning is helping out the community, is environmental awareness, mindfulness. And they've made it into a curriculum which is obviously changing lives for the better. And I'm just here again to support it. And yeah, thank you everybody. Our next three speakers, if I can have you line up Adam Scow, Eliseo Zepeda and Chris Alonso. Thank you members of the school board for having me today. My name is Adam Bolano Scow. I am the grandson of a farm worker, the son of school teachers, a substitute violinist with the Santa Cruz Symphony and a very mediocre cyclist. Three things on the item I want to speak about. I want to support, I want to thank you for that great music event you had with the Symphony and Aurelio and all your leadership in making that happen. We should make that happen again. We need to have arts in the schools. I want to speak in favor of the project bike tech for that for all their work. I was there with Lorenzo got the award and I want to support that 100% as we move to more sustainable transportation. Green New Deal.  Did I mention I'm running for Congress? We have a climate crisis and an affordability crisis. And so the climate crisis, we're gonna have more biking that's gonna be part of the solution. And the affordability crisis, we got to increase teacher pay. We got to increase teacher pay. And so we are losing teachers throughout this state, throughout this region, throughout our district and our school district. So I want to encourage you respectfully to work with the teachers to increase the pay. I think they're asking for a modest raise. I'm supporting the Sanders plan. We should have a minimum floor of $60,000 a year. We are the richest state in the richest country and I empathize with you. We're fighting over dollars. We're the richest and we have a congressman and an incumbent who votes for every military budget I keys ever seen. We got to do better. There's no excuse for this. This is our survival online. I want to thank you for having me. I want to thank everybody for being here today. And I look forward to seeing you later. Good evening members of the board. I have a son that is an alumni from bike tech. I want to say I'm a proud pop-up because he's working now at a car dealership as a master tech. I've been doing volunteer work for bike tech and such an amazing program. And he goes with the bills of transportation that is kind of going all over the country. Now we have an infrastructure with bike lanes. We need to educate our kids to navigate. I mean, it's good for you. It's good for everybody. It's a healthy motor transportation and bike tech is teaching the kids nutrition, how to be self-sufficient, manipulating tools, visualizing what they need to do to fix their self-power vehicle. That's how I, through mechanics, that's how I'm also a tech. Not only do I work on bicycles, I work with motorcycles, I work with cars, and I can fabricate anything you want. So no joke. So I feel pretty good about it. So when you work with bicycles, they're all different. You have to space things in a certain way and that's where kids get all of these potential ideas on how to fix such thing. I think that consider this opportunity that we have because it's good for our community. Thank you very much. Good evening school board members. My name is Chris Alonso. I am the programs director for Bike Santa Cruz County, or as many have become, have known me now as the new ton. I started a bike club program today in Mission Hills Middle School in Santa Cruz. These are some of their surveys. So kind of going along with that, I wanna do a quick survey. How many of you raise your hands have bikes? Raise them high, come on. How many of you know how to fix a flat tire? All right. Well, that's one of the things that this program does. It allows these students, these youth, to become self-sufficient in something. As you've heard before, you had an individual that learned skills through this program and was able to take these skills over to UC Davis, use these skills while getting an education and was able to provide for themselves. You've heard that from other people that it's a way that these students are able to kind of be self-sufficient, even help their families if they need it. We know that a lot of families here have two income earning parents. Sometimes students have to pitch in as well, pick up a job after school or pick up their brothers and sisters or things like that. So I just want to stress the importance of this program. I just want to also give a shout out to Lodenso and some of the youth that are here today. I know that activity that we did last Thursday helped today, right? But I want to talk about how this program really helps prepare the younger students, right? It helps the middle school students attain a bicycle. These individuals right here are teaching those young students not only life skills, but they're teaching them how to navigate a lot of things, right? They're being exposed to individuals that are working in city government through planning. They're working with individuals that are working in public health. So they're being exposed to a lot of things, not just working on a bicycle, not just learning how to fix a flat tire, but they're really learning a variety of skills. They're going to be the future city council members, mayors, they're going to be the future planners of this community. They're going to be the future school board members. So just keep that in mind. And I also want to give a shout out to all the teachers that are here. Thank you. Our last three speakers are Ramiro Medrano, Wendy San Juan, and Felipe Hernandez. Ha, ha, ha. You're going to tell them right now they're going to bring them food. I had to. Ha, ha, ha. You're with teachers. You're saving the best of lives. You got really excited there, Felipe. Ha, ha, ha. Buenas noches, my name is Ramiro Medrano. I'm a counselor at PV High School, and I'm here today to speak on both issues. I'm going to try to beat the time.  And what that is telling me is that, and I said it last time and I'll repeat it again, what it's telling me is that you're disconnected from this community because, you know, a lot of our chronically truan students, right, are for issues that are beyond the classroom. They are chronically truan, and I know this because I've been in home visits because students are chronically absent. I've been in deep conversations with parents. I've had students crying in my office telling me why they don't want to go to school. It's because of anxiety, because of, you know, single parents, you know, and they have to take care of their siblings because of extreme illness, so many issues, so many reasons why students are not going to school. And as a counselor, I've talked to our attendance office because I've noticed that there are students who haven't set foot in our schools since day one, yet they are still in our roles and they're still on our rosters. So I thought that the policy was that after 10 days they could get dropped, but students are not being dropped, which is affecting then our percentage of ADA, which now you are using against us and saying that if you want to raise, you have to raise this ADA percentage.  I invite you to come to a home visit with me. I invite you to come to a parent meeting where we're talking about chronically absent students. And then you will understand. People that I know, I'm sorry, but someone who and a program that is in touch with the community and that I've called on multiple times to give me bikes, to give to students who have transportation issues is actually project bike tech, okay? And so not only are they, is this an important program, a hands-on program for students. It's also an important program that's in touch with the community and that actually helps students transport themselves to school. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, Mr. Daniel Dodge and Michelle. Well, I'm here to speak in favor of the bike tech program, earn a bike program. You know, we need to continue funding these programs that allow young people to work with their hands. You know, actually holding cogs, flywheels and derailers is important for as part of an education for young people. You know, right now we're in a time where we need more tradespeople. And I think that these kinds of programs allow them to learn those skills but also apply them to other things that they might encounter in life and education in the future. Things like becoming an engineer, becoming an urban planner. Most of the folks that I've seen that are urban planners are avid bicyclists as well and that's why they got into it. So these kinds of programs are really important. We need more of them. It provides well-paying jobs in our community. You know, a while back earlier this year, the city made a decision to fund programs like earn a bike as well as bike safety training through Measure D funds because it falls in line with our strategic goals. We want to transform our city, our city center into a walkable and bikeable friendly space. Recently we've approved both the complete streets plan that promotes to reduce greenhouse gases and promotes active transportation. And we also coordinating with the school district passed our plan for safe house to school that promotes student safety and walkable and bikeable routes to school. I know some of our schools in the center of the city have a lot of students that walk and that bike to school. And I think that those programs are also important, important that we continue to making the city more walkable and bikeable in the core of the city where the schools are downtown. As you know, we now have more green bike lanes in town. We have more coming. We want the city to bike more and drive less. Programs like bike tech and earn a bike are assets in our community and would play a pivotal role in making a healthier and greener community. And last final thing is please bargain in good faith. Teachers deserve a fair contract. Thank you. Is Wendy San Juan still here? Wendy San Juan? Okay. All right. Next up we have employee organizations. Now is the time that we hear from our employee organizations. Each will have five minutes. So 7.1, we have PVFT. Good evening, board. Dr. Rodriguez. All right, let me get my phone in order here. It's not cooperating. Okay, so we're grateful for all of our members who are here. And I know that many of them had to go home because some of them, you know, gotta get the kids to bed, gotta do homework, they have to prep their lessons for tomorrow because we give 110%. And thanks to our community who have also come out strong for teachers' behalf for their students' behalf because teachers and students are equal in that sense. Mr. Beecher, we had words last time and so I'll have some more words with you. It is not the fault of our teachers for low math scores and a program like Biketech, which inspires students to be creative, to use their, you know, different areas of their brain, that is math teaching out of the context of just looking at formulas. So I have, English is my second language and I'm an audio visual learner and I learned how to sew from my grandmother and I was really, really good at patterning. I was pretty lousy at math when I was in elementary school, but I could actually cut a pattern. And so those things didn't link until I went to college and studied design and it took that long for me to understand, you know, like that, just the concrete part that I had in math and then I was able to really apply it and I taught math. And I was also a scrappy punk kid when I was, and I wasn't always the best student, but here I am, the president of PVFT. So, you know, gotta fight for our rights. So our teachers are fully capable. We teach with our hands tied because we have many things that we have to meet. And I'm really hoping that our board is hearing and not just letting it, you know, go from end of one year or not the other, but like really taking it in that CTE bike tech is valuable for our community of learners. And then yesterday I was in Dave Petino's construction class. It's a CTE class he spoke earlier. And I met this wonderfully, like just super happy young woman. That wasn't even her class. She was in there and she was working on a physics project and she was collaborating. The construction students were helping her build a base for her project. So that is what some of these courses do for our students and they're valuable. So as one of the negotiating team members, it's been pretty frustrating to hold out any patience. And as a math teacher, I also look at patterns. And so the pattern for our district when negotiating with PBFT has been to, let's see if we can just tire the teachers out. Let's see if we could tire them out. Come spring, they'll start falling, you know, off they won't be as noisy because, you know, they'll get tired and they'll just want to settle. It's not gonna work. We're here for our students. And we're also wanting to actually bargain in good faith. We have asked, we have several proposals for salary. So what you've been hearing a lot of is that 1% contingent, that applies to the K-12 salary schedule. We also have the ECE department that isn't funded on ADA and we have an adult ed department. We have proposals for them and we have not received a response to those since we delivered the original proposal.  So poorly that the lowest hourly rate didn't meet the legal requirement as of January 1st of 2020. So the district had to add, you guys probably had to approve that 5% bump just for that sell. Just to meet the $13 an hour hourly rate. But you know what our ECE teachers did get? More work. They got a list of extra duties that they need to do that are maintenance, landscaping and custodial. So you're now asking them to take out the trash, check to make sure that all of the play structures are in good working order, which they're gonna do anyways, but now that it's now a written down task for them, they have a long checklist. So another way is that the district has not respected our contract is by not coming to negotiate the impact of programs. So we, for instance, delivered to the district last spring of this last school year, a demand of bargain on the impact of the inclusion program. I'm gonna finish this because you need to hear it. And they have not bargained with us at all. They implemented the program. We had sites that had issues and we have yet to bargain over that. That is a complete disregard to our collective bargaining language. And another way that today they disregarded that was having a straw pool at a high school site to go to a seven period day. So a straw pool, that's not in our CBA. We have specific language for a process when it comes to considering changing a schedule at a site. And we have one public speaker for 7.1, Bill Beecher. Good evening again. I wanna talk about the negotiation. PVFT is following a very proven method used in Los Angeles, Stockton, Denver, Chicago, which asks for higher pay, smaller classrooms. But because I love math, I can see this approach leads to a strike. Why? There's fewer teachers graduating from the colleges. That means over time with an increasing number of students, you aren't gonna have enough teachers to have smaller classrooms. So that should be a dead issue and should be off the agenda. Also in the first interim that you saw in December, the district's gonna cut 6% of the teachers. Then secondly, in regards to pay, it's always nice they talk about pay, but total compensation, the teachers in this district are compensated at 88% of the budget. Almost all of it. That's better than 94% of all the teachers in this state. The problem isn't necessarily pay, but it's in the health benefits which grow at 7% a year and is eating up the budget. And eventually there'll be no money for the teachers because health benefits have killed it. Now for me, what are the issues that should be talked about is why do we have 10% turnover of teachers each year and the largest part of that are young teachers? Now there's root causes behind that and if you study that, maybe that helps in being able to negotiate a better contract. And as I said earlier, how can we pay the math teachers more so we can bring in good math teachers to improve our academic performance in the high schools? Then lastly, as a response, if the teachers are not the problem in math scores, do we blame the students? I don't think so. Thank you. Next up, 7.2 CACA. Any representatives from CACA? Seeing none, 7.3 PVAM, Pajora Valley Association of Managers. 7.4 Communication Workers of America. Next up, item 8.1, Approve Authorization to Superintendent and CBO to Negotiate Prop 39 Facilities Request Preliminary Offer. Looks like report by... Good evening, Board President, Members of the Board. This item follows the process for the Prop 39 Charter Appeal in which for Navigator Charter School. The process allows the Charter to submit a Facilities Appeal and it's agreed upon by statute by response by February 1st. We met with Navigator Charter and we agreed to an extension of that timeline to this Friday, February 14th, which allows the district to counter the preliminary offer. Once that is submitted to Navigator Charter School, then they counter and review and have to submit by March 1st. And then is to be finalized by April 1st. If the offer is accepted, the parties must execute a Facility Use Agreement by May 1st. Facilities would then need to be furnished and equipped and made available to this Charter School at least 10 days before the start of this coming academic year. For this request, we are requesting authorization for the superintendent and CBO to give authorization to negotiate the Proposition 39 Facilities Request and preliminary offer. We have several public speakers, so I'll call you in groups of three. Kevin Sved, Norma Morales, and Linda Munoz. Good evening, President Dodge, board member, superintendent Rodriguez. I'm Kevin Sved, CEO of Navigator Schools, which operates Watsonville Prep School. We are very grateful for the facilities you provide, Navigator students who reside in PVSD boundaries. I wanna share a perspective on the documents included with this agenda item. First, the Pajaronian article of December 20th, which stated, Watsonville Charter School will be moving into the Gotchox Building, neglected to mention that we hadn't yet received approval from the city. So while that is our hope, it's way too early to know whether that vision can actually be realized. This is why we have been exploring the possibility of how we might be able to expand within the current fence line where we're located on the EA Hall site. And in the packet, you're provided a feasibility study that shows how that could be possible. Lastly, you have our 2020-2021 request for Prop 39 facilities. You may remember that the main thrust of Prop Position 39, which was approved by the voters back in November 2000, was to reduce the threshold required to pass California School District Bonds from two thirds to a 55% vote, making it easier for school districts to meet facility needs. Main proponents to reduce this voting threshold were teachers and school districts. In order to grow the coalition needed to defeat anti-text groups, a deal was struck to bring charter supporters into the coalition. The deal required districts to provide charter schools equitable facilities as part of the ballot initiative. And if it were not for that coalition, it would not have passed by the close 53% of the voters. Thank you for considering Watsonville Prep's Prop 39 request, a request made possible by a broad coalition of public school supporters to benefit all public school students. Thank you very much. Good evening, board members. I am Linda Munoz, my parent and a small group instructor at Watsonville Prep School. And I'm here tonight to thank you for the willingness to work with us as we plan for our next year at EA Hall. Our students are proud of their school. And as a parent, I am proud to be part of the school community. My daughter loves coming to school every day, especially because before she was being bullied and had a hard time making friends. Now in Watsonville Prep, she has many friends and I always see her smiling. I really want to thank you for helping us create a school environment that makes her feel that way. I know we have work to do, but I hope together we can find a solution that works for all of us. Thank you once again. Has Norma Morales left? The next three are Kirsten Carr, Sandra Flores, and Rosa Saavedra. Okay. Good evening. I'm Kirsten Carr. I'm the director of engagement and partnerships at Navigator Schools. And I wanted to thank you for throwing a birthday party for me tonight. I love spending my 51st birthday with all y'all. So thank you. While we know there's still much work to do to create the collaborative partnership with all of you, we wanted to just take a moment to thank you for the efforts to date. First, 15 to 17% of our students qualify for special education services. And the Student Services Department has been incredibly helpful working with our director of student services to ensure that we are providing top quality services for all students, making sure we get the records and everything on time. Additionally, as we've worked to provide, to work to both identify and provide services for the 10% of our students identified under the McKinney-Vento program, we have been reaching out to both district and county resources. So thank you for that as well. And while these are just two of the partnerships where a district relationship is important, they highlight the work we can do for all students when we work as a village. Finally, while the work we do inside the classrooms is the main ingredient for the growth our students are showing in this inaugural year, such as the majority of our students surpassing their projected map growth in both English and math, we know the overall culture of the school environment is key to maintaining this progress. We want to thank you for this as well as for the fact our students are thriving on our WPS campus and we are fortunate to share that with EA Hall and we hope we can continue to find a solution which works for all of us. And just before I walk away, I'm gonna take one more second of birthday privilege. We just, several of us in this room just returned from the California Distinguished Schools program where GPS was honored. But what made that special is our Gilroy Unified School District Superintendent went with us because that is the type of partnership we are still hoping to have and we have with our other districts and it's something we are continuing to work on with you. So thank you. Rosa, did Rosa leave us all? Good evening everyone. My name is Rosa Saavedra and I'm here today for two reasons. One is to thank the district as well as the EA Hall School for kindly allow us the Watsonville Prep School to open its doors in the EA Hall campus. I am a parent of a second grade student in the Watsonville Prep and I'm very happy to hear my daughter say how much she loves the school. And of course, I know it couldn't be possible without your generosity of the district and the EA Hall. So thank you so much for that. The second reason I'm here today is to ask for the opportunity for the Watsonville Prep School to continue in the EA Hall campus for another year. Thank you so much. Please take our petition in consideration and thank you. In advance. Any discussion from the board? And then can I have a motion? I'll move to approve to authorize the district to bargain for the Prop 39. A second. Okay. Now that I have a second, I will call for a vote. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion passes. Next up, item 8.2, approve memorandum of understanding between PVUSD and CUSMB to provide service learning opportunities. Report will be presented by Dr. Chun-Kin Lee. Thank you, President Dodge. Board trustees, Dr. Rodriguez, I will defer the explanation of this memorandum of understanding with CSUMB to Allison Nizawa, our Director of Certificated Personnel. Sorry, candle in some business back there. Good evening, President Dodge, Board of Trustees, Dr. Rodriguez. The MOU that's in front of you is from CSUMB and it's to extend or continue to have service learning for nurses that are coming out of CSUMB. So I know you've seen a lot of MOUs and a lot of different ones that kind of come up throughout the years when they are expiring. And so this is one, I know it's in the middle of the school year, but it just so happens that's when the time for it to be renewed. It's for five years and like I said, we have them for student teaching and all the different ones you've seen, but this one actually is specific for service learning like nurses, psychologists and such. Any public speakers to this item? Any discussion from the board? Can I have a, oh, sorry, any question? Yes, so is this for our high school students or adult education? Adult, it's for students of CSUMB, yeah. Okay, making sure. Yes. And so the students will be supported through this program by CSUMB. Yeah, they're in the program for CSUMB, so similar. I'm gonna use it like myself as an example, like in my undergrad program for physical education, I actually went out into it. Part of my program was to go out into elementary schools and practice teaching, writing lesson plans and doing that kind of stuff. So this is similar, they are students in the teaching program or the nursing program for our school at CSUMB. Okay, just wanna make sure they're having full support from the school as well as the district. Thank you. Trustee D'Serpa. Allison, so will they be mentored or precepted by nurses on our campuses? Yeah, so similar to when we have student teachers in any of our K-12, we work with the site admin or whatnot to see if there's cooperating teachers that wanna take them on and kind of mentor them and as they're doing their service learning. So it's a similar process, as I understand it. How many teachers, how many nurses do we have now on? In the district? Yeah. We have 10 positions. We have 10, okay, and how many students will we be taking potentially? I don't have the number, this is more just the MOU to put in place. I think we might be getting one or two. I didn't really ask for the numbers of who were in the program. All right, thanks, I think it's a great idea. Any discussion? Okay, now can I have a motion? Move approval. Second. Second. I'll now call vote, all in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion passes. President, Trustee George, I'm gonna abstain on this vote, thank you. Okay. 601, right? Five, five, one, one. Yeah, okay, I'm sorry. Thank you very much. Next up, item 8.3 for Vice Class Description, Director of Fiscal Services. Thank you, President Dodge. Board Trustees, Dr. Rodriguez, I'm going to defer the explanation of this class description to Pam Shanks, Director of Classified Personnel. Good evening. The item you have before you this evening is due to an upcoming vacancy of our current Director of Finance position. When we have a position vacant, we take the opportunity to review the current class description in order to make any necessary revisions to better reflect the current and future needs of the department. To align with the current job market, a change in job title was requested, along with some minor clarifications in the job duties to more accurately reflect the work that will be expected of this position. The job class will remain on the same pay range on the classified management salary schedule, and also the Personnel Commission approved the recommended changes at their January 30th meeting. So this evening, I'm requesting for the Board to approve the revised Director of Fiscal Services class description. I do not see any public speaking cards. Is there anybody here that wanted to speak to this agenda item? Okay. Any discussion from the Board? All right, can I have a motion? I'll make a motion to approve. Can I get a second? Second. I will now call for a vote. All in favor? Aye. Five, zero, one. Okay, so. Item 8.4, 2019, 2020, Monterey County Office of Education Early Learning Program. This will partly be presented by Casey. Casey Clapper. And I'm going to defer this one to Director of Special Services, Heather Gorman. Sorry about that. That's a good thing. I heard you were sick. I know, sorry. It came. So good evening, President Dodge, Board of Directors, Dr. Rodriguez. This MOU with the Monterey County Office of Education Early Learning Program and Special Services is to support preschool students who have IEPs or who may be in need of assessments for special education. Our team at Duncan Holbert consults with and supports MCOE while they also support our staff and they refer students to us at Duncan Holbert. This has been an ongoing MOU for the last three years, as long as I've been here and I think it's been going on longer than that. And I would recommend that we continue this collaboration with MCOE and agree to the MOU. Thank you. Any public speakers to this item? Any discussion from the board? Okay, seeing none, can I have a motion? Make a motion to approve on second. All right, I'll now call for roll. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes. Next up, item 9.1, 2019-2020 Youth Treats Survey Results. Report will be presented by Dr. Michelle Rodriguez. Yes, thank you very much. So starting now two years ago, we began using the Youth Truth Survey. So as everyone knows, we do have the Healthy Kids Survey. The challenge with the Healthy Kids Survey is that it's only three of our grades and it's not yearly, as well as it doesn't have the parent component nor the teacher component that we use. And so because of that, we went ahead and started the Youth Truth Survey. I'm really proud of the change, specifically in the area of parents and guardians. Students remain fairly the same, so we have every student third grade through 12th grade does the survey. This year, we went up from 926. So last year, we had a really sad number of 926, the majority coming from the North Zone. What we knew was that having it only electronically was a huge issue. And so we really pushed Youth Truth Survey and we were the first district to ever do their paper pencil version to try to facilitate it at staff, at the site level.  And so we were able to raise it from 926 to 3458. And what that allowed, the reason why that was so important is because most sites last year did not even have 15 parents that did the survey. So they couldn't even have a result or report from their parents. And now almost every single, if I think every single except for possibly one because it's so small was able to get those 15 parents. And then staff numbers stayed about the same. What you'll see is you'll see the topics. So there's several topics and those are the ones that are colored across that are consistent across student, family, and staff. What we did, and I don't expect you to be able to read that, don't worry, I have it in other slides. But we did this one pager for everybody to be able to see it and here they are. So what we did and what I've been saying really since I got here is definitely what we put our minds to, we can improve and do well at. And so what we did is we selected five different areas that were the lowest according to national norms. And so these are the ones that you see. And so what we did is we established action steps along with each one of these. So in terms of the elementary schools and the families, communication and feedback was the lowest category last year. What you'll see is that there was a significant increase especially in the I received information about what my child should learn and be able to do. I will say that Trustee Orozco had asked us to send out the map scores and the corresponding what that meant. We did that district wide. We also started student-led conferences. So all that I think really helped to boast that number. And then also parents felt that there was a slight increase of parents feeling that they're receiving regular feedback on their child's progress. And so we're proud of that work. At the secondary level with the families, they rated culture as the lowest. And so you'll see, especially in the area of my school run smoothly, there actually was a 17 point increase. So that's a pretty large increase. And then my school's policies are administered fairly and consistently, there was a 10 point growth. And so we have already, we will be doing this again next year and so we'll be able to see are we continually making progress on that. In terms of staff, elementary and middle school staff, it was looking at meaningful professional development. And so when you look at it, you see an increase at the middle school level by 18 points. High school did go down. However, if you go down from there, what is interesting is that although they said it was not meaningful, they increased by seven points of saying that it was closely connected to their school's priority. So I thought that that was an interesting dichotomy there. And then elementary school staff had a large increase of saying that their professional development was linked to their school priorities. They had over a 30 point growth, which is a large growth and something that we want to look at. So then we looked at students. So this is students and students feeling that they're part of the school community and belonging. The positive part, so towards the right hand side is where we want to grow. And so the yellow piece on the right hand side is the strongly agree. So we were glad that that increased. So we had 3% more students that said that they strongly agree that they fell part of the school. The green went down by one, probably one of those percent went off to the other side because the blue, which is fairly neutral, they don't have really feelings one or the other, where we need to continue to focus on is the 6% that's at the very end of the spectrum and even the 11%, right? But really the 6% that feel that they are not connected in any way. I do want to say, looking at an additional survey that was given, we do know county-wide that our LGBTQ students are about a 30% tile difference in almost all of the factors. So between me considering suicide to me feeling connected, there's a large discrepancy throughout the entire county. And I'm not saying that that's only in the 6%, but that is a subgroup that we do need to help support. I'm gonna be doing a round table in a couple of weeks with a group of students to kind of dive into that a little bit more, but we still do have 17% of our students that we need to focus on. This, of course, is anonymous, so we don't know who those 17% of the students are, but we do need to help focus on that. This is something that I thought was interesting. And something that I do think that we need to figure out. So academic rigor or expectation, so what was interesting was that families had a 6% increase of saying, yeah, you're asking our students to do, you are expecting more of our children. Staff two had a 5% increase, both, which are fairly large, but when you asked students, they said, no, you're actually asking less of us. The questions, which I know are hard to read, but they're down there, but the basic questions are things like, doesn't my teacher require me to keep working even when it's hard? Do I have to work hard to get an A in the class? Those are the type of questions, so they're not asking questions like, what is, does your classroom have rigor? I think that that's important because what our students are telling us is, I can actually do more than you're expecting of me, by quite a bit. 65%, that means you have 45% of your students are saying that you can ask more, so do it. And so that is something that we will continue to work on, each principle, and this is how this was developed right here. So all of these charts that you see, this is a new feature of Youth Truth, so all of these charts actually came through Youth Truth, and they have now a way of doing this graphic, so Alicia Jimenez took that program and generated this for us, and all the sites were able to do the exact thing, same thing with their actual results. So each principle, we had a training with the principles again, and then each principle was asked to go over that data, their individual data with their school sites, their school site council, and their parents. And so we look forward to continuing to hear the voice of our parents and staff and students and making PVUSD a better place to be. So thank you. Do we have any public speakers? Any questions or comments from the board? I have some. Trustee Abosco. Thank you. So I noticed there was a dip in the rating for professional development for teachers at the high school level, and I'm wondering if there's been some conversation about what happened there. So it was a dip of .02, so it's fairly limited. I'll say of all the professional development that we're doing, that's probably where we're doing the least professional development right now, because we're going up the system, so we've done a lot of professional development at elementary level. This year, with the low performing block grant, we started doing a lot of professional development with that. I think this was done in October, right? So it was fairly early in the year. I think now, and you'll hear about it in a minute, so I have tried to get done, but you'll hear that we're doing a lot of work now with science, and so I think you'll hear the work that we're doing with science, and of course, the work that we're doing with CT, which we spoke about at the last board meeting. I'm not too worried about it just because it's a slight dip. I would say those numbers are not good, but I think it's also indicative of where our focus has been. So our focus has been at the elementary level, trying to get our students achieving at a higher level, and now we've passed up to the middle school level. I wouldn't say we've necessarily done as much at the high school level as we will eventually, but we just have to get there. And the other question I have, it's, well, maybe a comment for the higher expectations later into lower expectations on students. At least the conversations I've had, with some parents and some students, even my nieces and nephews are a part of the district, is what they say is, I feel like we're reviewing. I feel like we've spent a significant amount of time at the beginning of every year reviewing something that I've already learned. And so it has to do a lot with that, you know? And maybe for students who I'm gonna quote, I'm feeling bored, they're in classroom time, maybe for those students, there should be an option of some sort of, I can't, for the life of me, say this word. The differentiation. Thank you, yes. An option that's accessible to parents to advocate for their students. So maybe having that be more accessible and available would be a good way to maybe bring those students who maybe are, can give more, performing better. And then, what else did I have here? And the last thing I think is just nice to see others, we've seen a huge improvement in the sense of belonging from students, I think that's amazing. And I think it has a lot to do with the work that we're doing but also, you know, staff to who are our schools from the janitor to the office manager to the teacher in the classroom. Thank you. Justin, Shaq. I just wanted to ask, do you think that if we have done this survey a little bit later that some of these results might have changed, such as the student engagement portion, speaking to Maria's point of that students beginning of the year do tend to go review because of the summer break and summer decline, there's students that need that review to get up to par. So do you think if we'd had done the survey later, we might have gotten some different results? Well, it's definitely possible. So we did the survey, although it says October, it actually was later last year. The reason why we did it when we did it this year is because we tried to take advantage of the back to school nights. So we were trying to figure out a way of when we have a lot of parents captive, like how do we do that? So we had a six-week window, but we have heard that. We're not necessarily averse to changing the timeline. I think each timeline has a challenge. So if you do it in December, you have a pretty large group that are starting to go off. And so I think we, what we did this last year is we just did a huge window, but we tried to do it during back to school night. It's kind of one of those where each way it has its benefits and challenges of doing different, but we have heard that. And we haven't established the timeline for next year yet. I just don't wanna lose the participation because most of the parents did the paper and pencil during back to school night this year. That's when we got most of them. No, I think it's important to keep the paper and pencil option available because that did improve that. And as far as belonging, parent support, yes, I like that there's growth, but I think in order to continue growth in that area, we have to make sure that there are classes that students feel supported in and feel they have a belonging in and that are engaging to them. And that brings to the point where you had a lot of people talking about bike tech. And I think that's something that needs to be re-looked at when students have that strong of feeling about something, they're trying to tell us something. So I think we need to heed some voices here and find out at our high schools if students' interests are being met. And I know we've got some new things coming and that they're gonna be excited about with the new CTE pathways coming forward. But I think it's important that we also keep some kind of hands-on trades in the schools. That's it, thank you. Can I piggyback on that really quick, if I may? Because she brought up a good point. I know that we're pushing to have our CTA pathways online at each high school. But maybe if it's not a class per se that we can offer to sustain this program, maybe it could be something after school or a club during lunchtime where they're able to, we're able to keep that collaboration by maybe not in the classroom setting if that's really not an option at this point. Middle ground, thank you. Okay. I actually have a comment kind of piggybacking on that, Mariette, a thought about that. I understand that the desire to want to align the CTEs across all of our contemporary high schools. But there are also some individual differences that deserve to be recognized at certain areas. I mean, we know and we can't deny that there are definitely different demographics between Aptos High and Watsonville High and PB High. So maybe that, because bike tech, it is fulfilling some need at PB High and if it's not necessarily something for Aptos High or Watsonville High, it doesn't mean that it doesn't have its place at PB High. As a regularly structured class, I don't, based on the response we got tonight, I do not think that these stakeholders would be satisfied with us putting it to simply maybe a lunch program or an after school program. So just some thought for that going forward that there could be some alignment and some things can also be different. So we have to be careful because this is an agenda item, but I do want to clarify one thing. We actually are not aligning that and having the exact same course at all three high schools. So we're doing the opposite. So we're doing signature programs. The key is that each program has to result in an actual CTE pathway because that is what now high schools are being evaluated on. So if it's a singleton course, a one course course that does not lead to an industry, that's what we're looking at. We're actually not, we're not doing the, everybody has to have the same thing. It's actually the opposite. We're doing signature programs that are different at the high schools so that we can provide transportation, which we have started to provide at the beginning of this semester. So we can agendize it, but we, I just wanted to clarify that point so that people didn't think that that's what we were doing because we're doing the opposite of that. I'd like to put in a request and I think shocker was, trustee shocker was leaning this way that we asked the agenda setting committee to get that on a future agenda, a soon upcoming agenda so we could get more clarification for the community and all of our stakeholders on that. Thank you. Another five minute discussion, but well said, trustee Acosta. Agenda item 9.2, update on PVUSD science instruction. Report will be presented by Lisa McGean, assistant superintendent curriculum and instruction. Good evening, board president, board trustees and Dr. Rodriguez. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to do an update on the happenings of the science instruction within PVUSD. I'm gonna start off with just showing a little bit of data. If you look, the data shows the CAF scores for science, math and ELA. This is for fifth grade. We've put a lot of our efforts and our focus on the reading at the lower grade levels and that is reflected within the scores. So with the tests, our students do best on the ELA and then science and then math. This year with math, we are focusing with the map accelerator and then you'll hear about the science endeavors. For eighth grade, if you look, it's a very similar trend where we do our students do the best in English language arts and then science and then math. And then with that, I'm gonna hand it over to our coordinator of science, Michael Russo, who is gonna go through and give you an update on what's happening within our district. Hi, good evening, board president Bodge, board of trustees, Dr. Rodriguez. I appreciate this opportunity to share a little bit about some of the science initiatives in the district that are addressing some of the test score data that you saw. I'm gonna break my short 10-minute talk up into three different sections, just talking about the grade bands and what we're doing, the initiatives in elementary, middle, and then high school. Start off here with elementary science and what's happening. Start off just by talking about curriculum and what are they using the adoptions and you can see that their adoption is dated. As a result, we are using mystery science, which is NGSS aligned as a supplemental transitional materials for those elementary science teachers. And we also have FOSCITS, which allow teachers to utilize hands-on activities with their students. We are up for an adoption for elementary science in two years and the timing of that is scheduled so that it doesn't interfere with the ELA adoption that's happening in approximately 50% of the schools this year. It's called Benchmark and next year it's gonna be in the rest of the elementary schools. So we didn't want it to overlap with that and so that's why we have a 21-22 adoption timeline for elementary science. We are delivering some professional development for the science release teachers. There's nine of them across the district and I meet with them monthly for a two-hour period and our focus is on promoting student discussion which supports English language learners as well as all students and really is necessary in order for students to be successful with the science and engineering practices that the new NGSS curriculum talks about. The other thing is seven out of our nine science release teachers at the elementary have taken part in a county office of Education three-day PD on scientific and environmental literacy and we were just informed that they're gonna have an opportunity to deepen their learning this June if they choose to take advantage of that and we will promote that for them. Continuing with elementary science so I wanna say that us beyond the classroom or including the classroom and beyond is this experiential learning which is so important for students through science fairs, invention conventions and science nights. I've had the opportunity to be invited to all of these and try to attend those that don't conflict with my schedule and it's been a real pleasure to go out and meet the community, the teachers, the students, the families, the school side administrators all at the same time. So you can see some numbers up there. I'll talk a little bit about science fairs in a minute as well. We are also really fortunate to have a lot of environmental partners that are working in the elementary schools. Those are probably not all of them but a lot of them. One of the things that we are, one of the goals that we have is to kind of put together a database of exactly which partners are working at which sites just to ensure equitable access so that all sites are being served so that all students at all grade levels are being served. So that's one of our goals this year is to gather that information and look at it from that equity lens. All right, some of our big wins and this first one, I really didn't have anything to do with that so I'm not here claiming like that's a big win for me personally but for the district, this is the Culinary Garden and Teaching Kitchen and I can't pronounce the name of the foundation.  Lagasi? Yeah, Emeril Lagasi Foundation and that's at Starlight and that's a five year funded project that's gonna connect the community garden at the school with a teaching kitchen and really connect our agricultural community in Watsonville with the school and home. So that's powerful. We also, when I met with the science release teachers, one of the first things they said is that they're struggling to come up with funding to buy science materials to do labs and so through the district, we acquired $750 funding per science teacher this year to make sure they have the hardware and the materials so they can do hands-on labs with their students. Next steps, I talked about the partnership database. One of the things that we also have a new county Office of Education Science coordinator, Jen McRae and I've been working closely with her. I know she's interested in looking at science fairs and participation in it and specifically for students at PVUSD and she's gonna put together a committee to kind of take a look at it and see how we can increase participation and support of students through community partners. So I'm looking forward to doing that and also working with our science leads at each site and bringing them together and learn from each other about what's working, what are some challenges they're facing and how we can address those. So those are just some of our next steps in science at the elementary level. I'm moving on to middle school. I was last here before you on January 22nd to recommend the teacher's recommendation for Amplify. By the way, all the teachers I've run into since that meeting, yes, it was approved by the board. Yes, we're moving forward, getting our PD together in materials and you can't believe how excited they are unanimously across the board about having Amplify to use in the fall with their students. I just wanted to share, I didn't have time on the 22nd. I'm probably running out of time now, but I'll talk faster. I didn't have time to share in the 22nd a little bit more about Amplify and how it serves the needs of our students, specifically our English learners. So they have what they call a do talk, read, write, visualize approach to integrating literacy into science, which is powerful and aligns right with NGSS and they have found substantial gains. You'll see this, by the way, the Amplify, do, read, write, talk approach is in green and then whatever else the status quo approaches in blue and you could see the gains for English language learners. So all students really excel with that program and especially our EL students. I did mention on January 22nd that I did interview students while we were doing the pilot and I didn't have time to share, but here are some of those student responses about what they liked about Amplify and this might be the most exciting slide of the night. It is for me personally and maybe you have a favorite comment up there that from students, I know which one mine is, but I'll just say as you're reading them that we talk about this using phenomena or mystery science with the younger kids, they talk about mystery, right? Answering a question about science and then using that to engage students. It's more than that because it engages them and it keeps them as you see their comments indicate. It tricks me into learning because I don't wanna give up finding out the answer. So when we're asking them to think critically, when they're asking them to problem solve, when we're asking them to have some perseverance, they're not given up because of that hook, that gap, that phenomena that it's used to teach that inquiry based approach and those comments really reflect the power of Amplify's and GS's, oh my gosh. Okay, is that my two minute warning or is that my time up?  I'm serious, okay. So I'm from New York, I can talk even quicker. So that's our next steps, publisher trainings, material distribution and then I'm gonna talk in a minute, just less than a minute about our support of that. Let me go to high school. Most of the work we're doing is in high school this year since I've started about five months ago. We are rolling out a three course model in a high school and that means that we are integrating earth and space science into biology, chemistry and physics instead of having separate earth and space science course. We are also starting biology in ninth grade where typically it was a sophomore course that has led to a big influx of sections in biology and next year for chemistry. To support teachers with that, we are doing some course mapping. I'll show you an example of that. I am meeting, I've met at least twice district wide with biology teachers than chemistry teachers and physics teachers to do this mapping. We are adopting, we have an adoption timeline, biology this year, chem next year, physics two years out. In fact, I just met with the biology teachers this year and we just selected our two texts that we have decided to pilot. Next year chemistry is gonna get the big, the balloon whatever you wanna call from ninth grade because of our increase in sections, they're gonna move on to chemistry next year. So we pulled together department chairs, principals, teacher, leaders and we are working throughout the district, human resources, operations and maintenance, educational services and the cabinet to explore how we can support the school sites with chemistry. Thank you, I will finish, I will wrap up. That's just a timeline of the implementation at the high school level, the rollout, the course mapping and the science adoption timeline. This is an example of the biology course map and I think there's a pointer there, it doesn't work on that, okay. We won't, I won't try that pointer. You see we are embedding ELD standards in there and the earth and the ESS is earth and space science standards and that's what I wanted to show you there. So that's the work we're doing with those teams. I'm gonna wrap up right here. Those are some of our next steps. Most of them I talked to already but here's what I want to close with. Here's our vision, what we'd like to accomplish with NGSS being the vehicle to do that. Our mission about how we hope to go about that. We know from the data that Lisa opened with that we're not there yet. I really see my role as having that mission and that vision become a reality and supporting that highly effective, supporting teachers with highly effective instruction across all sites throughout the district on a regular basis. That's a pretty big challenge. The way we hope to do it are through the initiatives I talked about here tonight and we know that also these three elements here that we have to have an aligned system of ongoing support that includes professional development, instructional coaching and most importantly, teacher collaboration because there's only one science coordinator and one science coach so we have to build a capacity of teachers to support each other. Thank you. Thank you very much. Any public speakers to this item? Any questions or comments from the board? Seeing none, oh I'm sorry. Hi. Before this great presentation I do have a couple of questions so we have, how many elementary schools, 15, 16 and we only have nine science fairs. That's why we wanna supersize them. That's the whole reason for it. I mean even though I just have to say science fair for me and my household was the most stressful time of the entire year getting the science projects done and put together. But memorable for your students and that's why we think it is so important. Very stressful for the people. We wanna increase it, yeah. But yes I think it's important that all kids get the opportunity to participate in a science fair so I'd like to see that expanded at all schools. I agree. So my next question is some schools have science teachers in elementary that are dedicated, pull out science teachers. I have always hoped that we could have that at every single elementary school. Where are we on that? Is that an idea that could ever happen? So currently we do still have some sites that have PE teachers instead of science teachers. And so at this point when there is a retirement we encourage them to go after the science teachers instead. And we just haven't really had many retirements in that area at this point. And nothing against PE, it's wonderful. It's important but I just feel bad for kids that don't get the opportunity to have science all the way through elementary. Some kids do and some kids don't depending on where they go to school so it just doesn't feel equitable. So the teachers if they don't have a science if they don't have a science or at least teacher they should be doing science. I think, and most teachers are to be truthful most teachers are doing it. I think the benefit of having the science or at least teacher is that they are a single subject science teacher so they should have a skill set in science that may be a regular general ed teacher when it have. But generally science is one