screen. Yeah all right good evening everyone so welcome to our PVSD board meeting we have translation available in Spanish so if you need that support please see Euronio Lopez and so tenemos traducción en español si necesita de este servicio por favor pase con Euronio Lopez and if someone would like to speak to an item on the agenda you must complete a speaker card and hand it to Eva Renteria prior to the agenda item each speaker will have two minutes and I just want to note that trustee Flores communicated that she'll be absent this evening and trustee Soto will be joining us via Zoom so I will ask trustee to lead us in the pledge thank you so we'll move on to our interim superintendent comments Murray Shekman our interim superintendent will make a thank you President Holm welcome everybody welcome to democracy in action I love Popper Valley Unified School Districts I have a few thoughts I want to make sure the world knows and I know we're on TV our superintendent search is starting we actually have activities coming up at Watsonville High on November 7th these are opportunities for groups to participate in forums and give input to leadership and associates the group that we've hired to help us find the next superintendent and this will all be published Alicia gets it out in the community quite a bit so at Watsonville High on November 7th at 6 30 at Aptos most likely Aptos High although it says to be determined November 8th at 5 30 we're gonna do a virtual one on Wednesday November 8th at 6 p.m. and then Pajaro Valley High will be on Thursday at November 9th at 6 p.m. I also want to announce our wonderful trustee student rep Ruby is not here tonight she apparently is in the process and I believe she was selected for a quest bridge scholarship and quest bridge is like Millennium it's basically she gets paid she gets tuition paid for up to $200,000 most colleges participate with this she's a super trustee she's a super young lady a senior at PV and yeah thank you sir our Giants fans know when to clap so congratulations Ruby maybe you're watching this I'll be in her classroom doing a little lesson on Robert's rules of order and leadership and speaking of leadership it's a sad moment for me and a sad moment for anybody who's had the privilege of working with Clint Rucker Clint is our CBO and this to the my the best of my knowledge is his last board meeting as our Chief Business Officer so I wanted to present the colors that his eyes and the C.D. All right so we'll move on to our Governing Board comments this is our opportunity for each board member to make a few comments and we'll start with trustee to Serpa thank you I'm sorry I missed the last meeting at a death in my family and I did attend school board association meeting last night and president there was a legislative analyst from CSBA and so he gave us a legislative update I don't think any of the trustees here made it to the road show that CSBA did they came to town recently but we thank them for doing that and I appreciate everyone being here thank you just a couple quick comments I just wanted to congratulate our staff for a successful teacher parent-teacher conference at EA Hall the previous Saturday is great turnout I know a lot of people here worked on that so thank you for everybody for making that successful I want to thank our music teachers for bringing their kids to the state of the district I wasn't able to be there but I know that Miss McPaul and that McQuitty and Mr. Alanis at PV high are doing a fantastic job building a strong music culture at those schools so thank you and I heard that was a successful event as well so thank you very much vice president Augusta yes thank you so the only committee meeting I had that I was able to attend was a gender setting committee unfortunately with the intergovernmental relations committee it's I don't really know what's going on with that we certainly need to get that hopefully buttoned down that's we've had meetings scheduled and then canceled and then rescheduled and so hopefully we could get that back on track to be at their regularly scheduled times I was not able to attend that one unfortunately but I did want to ask again Superintendent Schekman on those dates could you just repeat that you said the November 7th at Aptos at what time and November 8th virtual at what time at Watsonville high at 6 30 p.m. we don't know the room numbers yet Aptos November 8th at 5 30 p.m. virtual Wednesday November 8th 6 p.m. and then PV high school Thursday November 9th at 6 p.m. thank you thank you all right and I would like to start my comments with acknowledging with gratitude the donation by the Valencia home and school club for the purchase of an AED so as a health care professional you know automatic external defibrillators are really important for early rescues when people have a cardiac event so I also attended agenda setting committee and the SELPA CAC the community advisory committee and great presentation from Maria Feria Feria sorry my mind was having a moment I'm pronouncing that correctly the new principal at Duncan Holbert about our speech and OT services and I particularly appreciated the work on finding a balance between supporting our special needs students and you know supporting their independence I also want to express my personal appreciation for our outgoing CBO you have held the role with dignity integrity and kindness and that's a trifecta of intense professionalism under trying circumstances and it's been an honor and a joy to work with you so thank you all right so we'll move on to item 3.5 our high school student board yes we have one trustee remotely oh thank you thank you for the reminder trustee Soto did you have any comments difficult but he's there we can come back in the meantime we'll move on to item 3.5 our high school student board representatives and we'll start with Aptos high school and I'm the new activities director at Aptos high school which is a weekly video podcast created by students in some select staff that discusses events going on around campus all the news that students making waves weekly announcements which is a weekly video podcast created by students in some select staff that discusses events going on around campus all the news that students need to know to be successful fun activities and ways to get involved with our school. Hi I'm Gamble-Kellemeyer and I'm Olivia Lobato and I'm Tajry and this is Making Waves Weekly Announcements. Today September 21st is right in the middle of high school voter education. Civic engagement is important to ensure students learn how to become active and engaged participants in our democracy. If you are 16 or 17 years old you are eligible to pre-register to vote. Visit the link down below to pre-register to vote. Your voice is important and you have the power to help steer the direction of our government. Lastly Hong Kong Dance is on Saturday September 30th from 7 to 10 p.m. This will be a semi-formal dance and ASD students will be transforming the warm and dim into it enchanting garden. And now for Marinette of Shoutouts. Ms. Natari is shouting out three students this week. First she would like to shout out Raphael Huerta Rodriguez for always having a positive attitude. He recently helped a new student feel at home. I can count on Raphael every day. Fall upon us and it's feeling pretty cozy around here. We have a few Marinette's what's your favorite fall drink for us? Let's see what they said. Who am I here with today? Charlotte. And Charlotte, what's your favorite fall drink? I try Lafayne. Charlotte? Who am I here with today? Charlie. And Charlie, what is your favorite fall drink? Do you try Lafayne? Delicious. In case you missed it here are some of the winners from our homecoming week. The homecoming parade winners are the seniors for the corner nations costumes, pirate ship golf cart and decorations. The homecoming skit winner goes to the juniors. They add incredible outfits, music, a powerful message with a story to tell. The homecoming senior crown royalty winners are crew tourists in Layla Martinez. And here's some footage of our memorable week with more to come in the future. It's nine o'clock and it goes in the final about 12 30. The first 25 people to arrive get free donuts so come on down and support your Mariners. That's it Mariners. Thanks for watching. See you next week. Make sure to subscribe. This is Renaissance High School student leadership fall quarter second update. These are our students of the month, Axelie Hernandez and Cesar Figuera. These are academics, field trips to Calabasas elementary, collaboration, life lab, built raised planter beds. And we also got 50 new students for quarter two. This is our garden update. We have fences for the deers. This is our extended learning opportunity program. We have pizza and paint every Wednesday of the 23rd and 24th. Crossfit Watsonville every Tuesday and Thursday. Enjoyable for the teachers and the students to get along. We also have volleyball. Our junk furniture was removed from room 15 and we got to put the cars in the garage. Thank you to our maintenance and operations. This was our spirit week. These are our graduates. I can I can say from first hand knowledge that that garden is looking great. Awesome. Alright do we have a virtual Academy here? Then we will go ahead and go on to item 4.1 and can I have a motion to approve the agenda? I make a motion to approve the agenda. Second. First and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none. Then I will the motion carries 5-0-2. Item 5.1 approval of the October 11th 2023 board meeting minutes. Can I have a motion? A second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries 5-0-2. You don't have any public hearings so we'll move on to item 7.1. So this is our opportunity for members of the public to address items on our agenda or items that are not on our agenda for the evening. So just please know that the Brown Act prohibits the board from engaging in discussion about items that are brought up under this item that we are listening. So do we have any public comments? Yes we do and I will call you up by 3 and if you could come up in that order and if I mispronounce your name please do feel free to correct me and each speaker will have two minutes. Anna Brinkman, Elizabeth Maya and Kathleen Gutierrez. Good evening Board of Trustees. We are the HR analysts, specialists and technicians of human resources. As you may recall on October 11th you received a presentation regarding the district office lobby update. We would like to express our concern about an additional new task that has been given to us by our assistant superintendent Allison Nizawa and our directors Pam Shanks and Brian Saxton. We were summoned to a quick staff meeting on October 12th where we were told that we would be the backup for Peggy Raymond, the district receptionist in the main lobby and to cover her breaks and lunches. Allison also stated that Peggy will become part of the HR department. She has not technically moved to HR nor does the district receptionist report to HR the position reports to purchasing. HR administrators are working with purchasing to create a new job description for some of Peggy's duties in purchasing. Why not have Peggy stay in the position in purchasing and create a new job description for the district receptionist for the lobby specific for that desk. The new position in purchasing can be designated backup to the lobby. For background history Ida Alvarez HR technician retired on September 1st 2022. We were told that her job would be eliminated. Once the lobby was complete the HR front front door would be locked and anyone from the public would filter through the lobby. We continued our temporary front desk duties in HR until August 8th 2023 when the lobby was completed. We have taken on additional tasks with the elimination of the HR technician. This has impacted our own desk duties. We cannot continue to do our work accurately if we are constantly being pulled to do additional tasks which fall outside the HR department. We have no problem helping. We ask that the responsibility be shared equally amongst all departments. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Elizabeth and I'm an HR analyst for the PEC HR department and I'm here to share that today we received an update from our assistant superintendent Alison Isawa that she had met with administrators here at the district office to discuss coverage when our district receptionist is out on vacation or sick leave. Yet the HR staff is still covering breaks and lunches. As my colleague shared we have no problem helping with coverage but we ask that a different solution is thought of for this problem as you know this is pulling us from our daily tasks. Thank you. Good evening board trustees and in term superintendent Shekman. I'm Dr. Kathleen Gutierrez and I'm assistant professor in history at the University of California Santa Cruz. Tonight I'm joined by Malaya Simon Reynolds a doctoral candidate at UCSC and we're representing Watsonville is in the heart a community-driven research initiative of faculty students and over 40 community members dedicated to preserving Filipino American history in the Pajaro Valley. We've come to express our concerns regarding what we see as the insufficient deliberation of PVSD's contract with community response of education last September. In 2021 Watsonville is in the heart started working with teachers and students in PVSD to craft high school level lesson plans, digital tools and field trips on local Filipino American history that align with ethnic studies requirements. We identified PVSD as an incredible partner district because of the very histories which we are preserving and now disseminating which come from the district's very own graduates. These graduates have shared meaningful narratives we see as critical to current students effective grasp of local ethnic studies. Our approach is inspired by the pedagogical tenets of community responsive education which CRE is an expert in. In the last several weeks we've been disturbed to learn of the haste unsubstantiated manner with which the board voted to deny CRE's contract renewal. As researchers and advocates for excellent education we engage in multiple levels of review just to create lesson and plans for your classrooms. The review process is rigorous time intensive and deeply research based and I would expect the same level of commitment on the part of the district's leadership. Until members of the community assure us that CRE's contract and its full approach and materials are thoroughly reviewed Watsonville is in the heart must suspend its work with the district. To date we have dedicated sixty thousand eight hundred and seventy nine dollars in direct and personnel costs with pending additional funds in the sum of four thousand five hundred eighty we earmarked four PVSD. To uphold our own research integrity and that of the district with which we partner we hope you provide evidence of a sustained detail reviewed of the contract. Thank you. Our next three, Martha Flores, Mike Floor and Bobby Pells. Thank you. Martha Flores. I'm a member of the community. I also work at E. Hall and I have family members in all the schools in the school district. Family reunions that's where I find out what's going on in the schools. But a month ago we had a family reunion and I'm talking to my young relatives and I'm asking them how school is going and the kids who are in ELL classes newcomers tell me all the teachers learning Spanish faster than we are learning English and I'm listening. Yeah but our classes got reduced but now we get other classes coming in and now we have one or two more classes in our English classes so we're just sitting there not really learning and I'm concerned about this and I hope the board members can address it because I purposely went to the parent conference because it was a workshop that was going to address ELL classes and I asked the question and other parents actually asked for before me. They asked how do you monitor that our children are learning English? How do you monitor the teachers? And the question was never answered. I was directed to other people. I searched for those people and I wasn't given an answer. I hope the board then will answer that question. Please. How do you monitor that our kids are in the appropriate classes and not being cluttered in with other classes and they're not learning English because they're having to, the teachers have to watch more than one class. Thank you very much and I hope you enjoy the invitation for Mikasa Stukasa that EA Hall is participating again this year. Thank you. Good evening board and board of trustees and President Holm and interim superintendent Shekman. My name is Mike Floor. I'm here to talk about the supplemental pay rate decrease for non PVFT employees. Me and my comrade here have been working in the district for almost 20 years. We put in full time weeks. We've done every other position there is and we're LPAC testers. He's been LPAC testing for 22 years and we've been making a hourly rate for the last three years. That's I'm not going to get into specific number, but with the new adjusted supplemental rate for non PVFT teachers, that means a $2 and like 63 cent cut and pay for both of us. I brought this up the last two meetings ago and I don't think that's right. Nobody would like a pay reduction. I'm not asking to be brought up to the rate that the PVFT teachers and retired teachers are making. Just don't reduce our pay. Keep it what it's been. That's my point. That's the reason I'm here tonight. And I think he would agree with me. Can he talk during this? Yeah, definitely just me. It's okay. He's here to support. We feel the same way. We're just asking that you keep our rate the same. Don't reduce it.  Thank you. I'm good evening board. My name is Bobby Pelz and I'm a teacher at Watsonville High School. I teach ethnic studies and I want to speak again on the the CRE contract. I've already spoken on this topic a few times, but I'm not going to let this go. I think that an injustice has been done here. I understand your fears of anti Semitism and I support your efforts to stamp out oppression wherever you find it. That's an essential tentative ethnic studies. But sometimes in our desire to do the right thing, we go too far. I believe in this case, you overstepped. I think you have not only deprived our ethnic studies program of the support that it needs to continue being the great program that it is, but you have also slandered the good name of someone who didn't deserve it. That's not right. In the same way that you don't want our district to be associated with anti Semitism. I don't want our district to be associated with the fame and good people. CRE is a great program. It has done and it will do a lot of good for our ethnic studies program. Alison Timtiago Cabales is one of the good ones. And she's exactly the kind of person that we would want to support our district and our program. So let's right this wrong. Let's put the contract back on the agenda. Let's vote to approve and let's issue a formal apology or Alison Timtiago Cabales. Thank you. Our next three speakers are Sarah Webb, Sue Rodriguez and Christine Hong. Good evening board and interim superintendent checkmen. My name is Sarah Webb. I'm an ethnic studies teacher at Watsonville High School. I really count on community responsive education for coaching and leadership. I worked individually with Alison Timtiago Cabales the last couple years to develop a framework specifically for my course. I find it really useful and really good for the students. And I also would like to ask for you to renew the contract with CRE and get them back on board because I really count on them. Also, I find that Alison is a very honorable and really very highly qualified person. And I feel very lucky like she's like a superstar that like I'm so lucky to get to learn from her. So I also would humbly suggest that maybe some people could apologize to her. Thanks very much. Good evening board members, trustees and interim superintendent, Mr. Shekman. My name is Sue Rodriguez and I proudly work at Watsonville High School. I've been with the district for 10 years. I'm speaking on behalf of all classified staff at Watsonville High. I know negotiations have started regarding pay increases for next year. I've heard that you're offering a 5% raise and simply that is not enough. I want to bring attention to some of the data I have found. In 2018-2019, we got a 1% raise. In 2020, a 1%. In 2021, excuse me, 18-19 to 3%. 19-21, 20-21 a 1%. 21-22, a 4.5. And last year was a 10%. We are the lowest paid district under surrounding areas. Some other data found, which I have a copy for you, to afford renting a two bedroom apartment in Santa Cruz and Watsonville era, you have to make $63.33. None of us are making that. Costs of living costs have risen tremendously, especially food and gas costs. I want to point out that Watsonville High is the largest enrollment compared to other two high schools. In a recent survey, we were voted number one in customer service. We also were the first high school to reach 99% in the income verification. We feel the district overlooks Watsonville High School. We feel that we're not appreciated, acknowledged for the hard work we do. We deal with students and parents daily and by the recent survey shows how extremely well we are doing. Many of us don't own their own homes, so we have to rent. Many want to buy, but cannot. They're struggling to keep food on their table and pay essential bills. I urge you to consider at least a 10% raise because not only do we deserve it, but it'll make up for the early years when we got a measly 1%. We have a great leadership in our interim principal, Joe Gregorio. I support him 100%. Along with vice principals, Mr. Weiss, Ms. Lenore, Ms. Legaretta and Ms. Samuels. Thank you. Hello, my name is Christine Hong. I spoke here a couple of weeks ago. I am a professor in critical race and ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz. I served as the inaugural chair of that department and I just want to reinforce what the nature of ethnic studies is. Ethnic studies is socially transformative. In its first emergence in the Bay Area, it represented a democratizing strike against the system of public education to better serve communities of color and indigenous communities that had not been well served by the traditional curriculum. And right now it's very concerning to me and to so many other people that you are not serving the students of your district. I think that as policy makers, people who make decision about educational policy, you should model the very skills that you hope to equip your students with. And that includes critical thinking. And it's a very basic skill that when you present an argument, if you present an allegation, it must be backed by evidence. There was no evidence that was furnished in the unsubstantiated allegations that were made against CRE and its founder a month ago. And I want to say that we here in California like to proclaim our difference from Florida in terms of our orientation to our students. This has been a majority minority state since 2000. But what happened here a month ago was profoundly undemocratic. You did not consult with your teachers. You didn't go into the classroom. You didn't make any effort to substantiate the claims that you made. So I really think this is a time to rethink the decision you made. I hope that you'll put it back on the agenda. Our next three speakers are Chris Webb, Andy Salazar and Angelina Hernandez. Good evening. I wanted to share some reflections on the report last meeting about test scores. And with the first thing is just something that I've noticed at the site level at the district level. And that's sometimes some people have a tendency to I feel overestimate the impact of COVID on students. And then I feel like that puts us at risk of lowering standards and then in turn creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. I feel like we, you know, this might be a situation where we ought to survey the students, which is something teachers at the site level have done. And that's partly where this is coming from. Because I know what I've heard at the site level from students. It encourages the district to consider doing the same kind of survey. Also hearing the report, I am hopeful actually because there's a couple things that stood out to me. I'm hoping we'll have a renewed emphasis on fact and data. Because I feel like the data for the last couple of years, post-distance learning, there's been some data that would suggest that some of the changes that we've made haven't served the students. So I think we should really make sure we're looking at the data and then be courageous enough to make course corrections. Also one of the things that was said was about maximizing school classroom time, which I think is a great thing. And thinking about that now just today, I lost power in my room again where the whole school lost it. But like that's the kind of thing where like I've never, I asked the students, have you ever been to school that's lost power this much? It was a beautiful sunny day. We keep losing power. If we want to maximize instructional time, like we got to get the basics. Also we should consider, we should consider going back to variable credits just because the culture that's created when you go to grades is not the best. And also I think of like the 60% threshold. If I came and showed up for 60% of the days, is that really going to meet the expectations of my job? At Renaissance, we prepare for college and career historically. Thank you. So Andy Salazar is a Renaissance student who shared with me his comment. You did allow this, like two meetings about his is very short. No, because we can't do that. I'm sorry. Okay, I will let this, this is a matter of privilege because not everyone has a privilege to be here. He's working right now. He's working right down the street. I understand, but because we need, we really need to not allow that any further. Alright. Our next public speaker is Angelina Hernandez and then Sean Henry. Good evening, board. My name is Angie Hernandez, student body president from Renaissance. I'm here to talk about variable credits versus grades. Currently, we change to grades which is more difficult for kids to succeed. Variable credits has helped kids in many ways such as them receiving credits for each assignment and coming. Now that we have grades, it affects students that don't come daily and also takes away their reason to go to a continuation school. We wish to return back to variable credits. Hello, my name is Sean Henry. I'm a school psychologist at Watsonville High School, but I'm currently on a sabbatical. We'll just call it that right now. I wanted to commend all of our student trustees, the Watsonville High School one, getting that prestigious scholarship. I love the Aptos High School spirit and having the three just involved and I want to commend the Renaissance trustee for hanging in there with with digital glitches which happened in life. So as I told my interns last year, I always have paper backup, but I know that kind of kills trees. So Gen Z doesn't... Anyway, not always for that, always for the paper, but I just wanted to first address, okay well that's off. The last time I was up here, I kind of surprised people and I just was going to give an update. I wanted to thank the district for our excellent health care benefits and the fortuitous of our union and our members to maintain quality health care as a standard, not just for our teachers but for our community. We have a rare bit of health care and we should continue to fight for that. I know that there's priorities with money and everything like that, but yesterday I had the greatest cancer news. I have stage 4 cancer, but it was actually my wife. We had a five-year checkup and she's cured and so I want to thank everybody. Thank you to all our speakers. We'll move on to our employee organizations, so now is the time that we hear from our employee organizations. Each will have five minutes, so we'll start with PVFT. Good evening board. Excuse, I don't feel too great today. Hello, I'm Nellie Vaquera-Bogg's president of the PVFT. I want to start off with an appreciation to our school psychologists who work very diligently and hard to serve the community of students in our district and collaborate with the staff in our district. So thank you very much for the work that you do. We have been working with the dis... Oh, and I also want to say thank you Claudia Monjaras for inviting Radica and myself to a meeting to talk about just elementary education. Thank you Lisa for being present at that meeting and we are incredibly hopeful. I had to kind of pinch myself afterwards. I'm like, okay, well I don't want to hold my breath because I'm afraid of that. So why? Because we are still working through some major wrinkles. I'm again still just I'm exhausted, I'm actually fatigued at this point of the advocacy that I'm the same story that we bring to you every year. We are grateful that we've been invited. Our executive board has made an appointment to meet with the organization that is helping you search for the superintendent and we're going to have that opportunity to speak to what we would like for our future superintendent. Some qualities for that person to have and one of these things is to truly communicate with us and not be snarky about it. Be professional about it. One of the items that one of the events that happened in this district last week last week was state of the state of the district. It's kind of an interesting thing that came in with Dr. Rodriguez and it happened this year and it may seem like why do you care that you weren't notified. None of the unions, none of labor was invited and that's really it's just an extension of an acknowledgement of you are an important part of this district and together we make this district. This is what makes us unified not just the students in the community that attend our schools. I checked in with our CSEA and we weren't invited. The response I got to that was incredibly insulting. It was insolent as a matter of fact and that doesn't bode well. There's something on this agenda tonight that typically is what has happened is the labor units we have been notified in advance of any time that there is a new safe return to in-person update because it's a required piece to maintain ESSER funds and we have always been given a timely draft. Hey CSEA and PBFT here's a draft. What do you think give us here's where we've made some changes some updates look it over if there's anything that you might need to if you catch anything and I have caught something in the past let me know before I present it to the board. So again we have been shut out. You hear now teachers coming forward of the things that are happening across our district these are things that impact our students. When you're not truly communicating with labor you are also ignoring your students. You're ignoring your labor by abusing their soul for just for being employed in this district because you're employed and you work in the district office you should sit at that at that desk in the front because you're employed in this district and you're a teacher in this district you should take on the extra classes that you know because we yeah we we are short on subs and but then I'm only going to pay you the lower substitute rate that's in contract or another disservice to especially to our families with students with special needs we're going to double up on the work that the teacher who was writing legally contracting documents to serve our students by impacting their caseload because we're going to try to get past your contract language. Thank you. This might seem trivial but this is significant. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have anyone from CSEA here this evening? Do we have anyone from Pavan? Good evening President Hohm Board of Trustees, Interim Superintendent Shekman. I'm Jen Littleton Bruno and on behalf of Pavan I'm thrilled to share with you that tomorrow is National Lights On After School Day. We in PVUSD are celebrating 25 years of after-school programming. Lights On After School is the national celebration of after-school programming across our country. My understanding is 25 years ago our department started with two staff in twenty thousand dollars. As of today we are at over 500 staff in over 42 million dollars. The impact of expanded learning in PVUSD, yearly we are serving 5,500 students TK through 12th grade. We offer 30 after-school sites. We offer 90, 90, 90 additional days of nine hours of programming in weekend and intersessions in summer school. That equals 730 additional hours of enrichment in learning time for our students. We offer breakfast club, after-school program, midday TK, summer school, summer camps, intersession camps, paro, passport and credit recovery. And how are we going to celebrate this? We're not going to celebrate it apparently. Can you switch it for me? Okay we are celebrating. We are doing color runs across our district over the next four day over the next two weeks. Can you switch it one more time? Is it working? Oh it worked now. Okay so color runs will occur at 24 different school sites across four different days. Here is just a couple that are happening over the next two days and I would like to invite all of you and all of our community and our teachers and our principals to come celebrate the work that these 500 staff are doing in keeping over 5,000 students safe in critical hours of the after-school time period. A color run is really really fun.  So these are just a couple of the different opportunities. If these don't work for your schedule I'm happy to give you other opportunities. We have them over the next two weeks. And to do a full celebration we are there something called lighting up a monument. This is a national thing. And so what are we lighting up? On Saturday we have registered 2,300 participants to come light up Gilroy Gardens with us and we are so excited. ELSA's demo will be doing performances for our students. They will have free parking. There will be a buffet for our families. They get games and our families get to go as a community and celebrate at no cost. And so we're super excited and we still have a couple spaces if there's anyone who wants to come celebrate with our families. So we are thrilled to celebrate Lights On really big this year and our partners at Gilroy Gardens are really excited. This is one of the largest partnerships that they've had. So thank you for your time tonight and I hope that I'll get to see you guys at our future events. Thank you. Do we have anyone from CWA? Good evening again Board of Trustees, Mike Floor and David Romo. I'm just here to thank you for the tentative agreement for the rate increase for substitutes. There's still work to be done but we're grateful that we made some progress in the right direction. So thank you very much. At the next meeting Louis Rocha is going to be attending. He has some things he wants to talk to you about. That's the night that you're going to ratify, hopefully, the new agreement and we look forward to the two re-openers that we have coming the next couple of years. So we can still make progress in the direction that we're already going. So this is just a appreciation comment to you. Just a progress update. We're putting together a local chapter. Louis was making work with the lodge that he used to have meetings in when he was the full-time president and he will explain more in a couple weeks. So now he might have something to add. Yeah, I'm just going to add some stuff here. I would like to excuse my presentation. I just got back from Salinas. I took my son to ABA therapy. He was used at every Wednesday so I have a busy day on Wednesday is my busy day and so I just finished unpacking my Costco stuff and I'm here. The last time I was here was 21 years ago when I talked I was the founder of Scast, which was the South County Associated Substitute Teachers. A group of colleagues came to me and asked me if I would be the leader and I said yeah, I would definitely want to lead you guys in and getting representation. And so we affiliated with CWA. I went after we went through to Oakland and we did all the PERB stuff. We got ratified. We were accepted by the state of California and we decided to, how would you say it, invite the communication workers of America to represent us. And I'd like to actually acknowledge the lack of communication throughout the years. I decided to have a family, raise kids, buy a house, make money, lose money, do all the normal stuff that people do in life. And I'm really appreciative of the steps that we've made. Obviously we've seen that the teachers have made, you know, a massive, you know, expansive process. They're just growing and they're getting more and more strength. And so we're just following their lead. We really want to be a presence again. And we really want for you guys to really, truly care according to your 2001 model. And the power of words are very powerful.  You have to keep on reliving those models every year.  I will acknowledge the fact that we weren't in good communication. But we really want you to care about substitute teachers. We are essential. We go into situations every day where we're being judged. Parents are judging us. They're asking us, they can, are they judging us? Are our kids okay with you? We come in as strangers and we have to prove ourselves every day when we come to school. It's not a joke.  How would I say this? When I go to school, when the kids see me, they're generally thankful to see me. I was in an environment one time where I got a standing ovation. That's the greatest. When everybody, you walk into a lonely school, everybody says, hey Mr. Romo, how are you doing? They come in, they love me. Why? Because I love them. And that's a difference.  And I, I expect greatness from those kids. I don't expect anything less than greatness from them. And I know that they'll be great, but these are our products right here. These are the products, these are the kids right here. These are the kids once in the future, the kids that were in this school education system. We need to make these guys great too. So I'd like to thank everybody for, for acknowledging the substitutes, for giving us a pay raise. We're, we're still not satisfied, just like you wouldn't be satisfied. Now we have that thing that to go with, that whole thing about the testing thing that has to be acknowledged. But anyways, thank you for your time and go home and love your loved ones. Thank you. All right. So we will move on to our action items and start with item 9.1, our Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Refunding Application with Proposed Expansion for 2024-25. The report will be presented by Angelica Renteria, our Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Director. Good evening, President Holm, Board of Trustees, Superintendent-Checkeman. My name is Angelica Renteria, Director of the Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Program, and with me. Good evening, Tony Jordan with the Stanislaus County Office of Education, Executive Director, Cabinet Member of the Child and Family Services Division there. As we move into the new funding cycle, I'm happy to give you a brief program overview as part of the Refunding Application for 2024-25. The annual application is due to the Office of Head Start December 1, and we are here tonight to review the application components and to share some of the program data, challenges, priorities, and opportunities. In your packets, you can see most of the components of the Refunding Application and that include budgets, program service plan, training and technical assistance plan, community assessment, and eligibility procedure. This is our planning calendar. If you remember, I presented this planning calendar at the board training back in March. It is an important instrument to guide our processes and make sure we don't miss important deadlines for funding. If you look at the calendar, we are now between the September and November activities. The only component missing from today's packet is the program goals and objectives. As we usually leave goals and objectives to the end of the cycle, to ensure necessary adjustments or modifications are made before submission once all the program data has been collected, analyzed and discussed. The goals and objectives are scheduled to be presented to the policy committee at the November 2nd meeting. And if approved, it will be added to the November 8th board meeting agenda under consent. A little bit of information about the program. PVUSD is a subrecipient to Stanislaus County Office of Education. We are federally funded. We joined the program in 1988. Our current contract is for 640 children. Two of them 286 seasonal, 354 migrant. We provide two program options, centers and family childcare homes. Offered services to families for 12 hours a day from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday in two different seasons. 115 days made through October and 115 days August to February. For those of you wondering what the difference is between the two groups, migrant and seasonal. I just want to give you a brief definition. A migrant family changed residence by moving from one geographical area to another for the purpose of engaging in agriculture. A seasonal family is engaged in agriculture, but is not required to change residence looking for work. This line shows the language of the families we serve. And the most common migration patterns out of the 640 children, 52% are from Mexican in indigenous families. As you can see between 2006 and 2023, there has been an increase in the indigenous population arriving to Watsonville. 49%. In 1988, our families migrated from Michoacan. In 2023, our families migrate from Oaxaca or between Oxford, Santa Maria and Watsonville. This light represents the ages of the children we serve. Raised in language as identified by the families themselves. And languages are broken down by language for additional detail. So the language families identified is 54% speak Spanish, 46% speak a Mexican indigenous language. Out of the 46%, 56% speak Mistecco Alto, 25% speak Mistecco Bajo, no, the opposite. 17% Zapoteco and 2% Purepecha from Michoacan. This year, in 2023, 52% of our children are from indigenous background. So in 1988, when we joined Sanislaus County Office of Education, our families worked in apples, canneries, strawberries, and we created the regular season or the main season made to October. And we selected May to October to cover the core of the main agricultural season in Watsonville. To increase enrollment opportunities for low income families, the definition of agriculture expanded beginning in 2017, allowing programs to serve families in other months of the year. In our case, at PVUSD, following the local industries, we created a winter program to serve the needs of those families working in agriculture during the fall and winter months. So now with the definition of agriculture, opportunities have opened for more families in the community. And Tony Jordan has been an advocate for the expanded definition of migrant and agriculture. So would you like to add something to this conversation? Absolutely. Just a few points, as the county office of education and Stanislaus, you might wonder what I'm doing here. California, as you know, is a very vast, diverse, and large territory. In 1969, when the migrant seasonal head start program came to life, California was split into five regions. Unlike some states across our great country, we're clumped together and served by one grantee here in California. The migrant seasonal head start program was divvied up amongst five grantees, Stanislaus County Office of Education, being one of those. And we serve the central part of California with eight different counties. So I'm here to provide any background information, respond to any questions the board might have and show our support of this consolidation, not the first consolidation that Pajaro has been through for this specific program. If you've been around a while or know the area, you may recall the name, growth and opportunity, geo kids or go kids. That was another consolidation effort that took place some decades back. We're proud of our partnership with Pajaro Valley Unified School District. We are a national center of excellence. We are an award winning grant for migrant seasonal head start. And you may or may not know this, but we are proud because every time folks from across the country want to come and see a model family childcare home service delivery utilizing head start funds. They come here to Watsonville and the surrounding Pajaro Valley area to see that in action. So we've continued to advocate for more seasonal slots. That's something that's come directly from your community assessment, as well as the other counties where we provide this grant and we've been able to expand the definition of agricultural work over the years. We've done two of those revised performance standards with the feds. And so again, thank you for your partnership and we completely support this consolidation that Santa Cruz County Office of Ed brought to us and we helped bring to you here tonight for your consideration. And since not everything is perfect, we have our challenges as every other program does. For the past five years, we have experienced declining enrollment, as you know, 26% in our district. We are also experiencing staffing teacher shortages, competition of family childcare homes with other agencies as the governor allocated more state funding into early childhood education programs. Other programs are also contracting with family childcare homes slots in the community. Also the limitation of family childcare home licenses for infants. And that leaves many, many babies in the waiting list for the duration of the season. Including the eligibility status of families that also plays a role as our migrant slots are limited. And we end up having more seasonal families applying for services every year. High cost of living in the area does not allow for families anymore to live and return as housing might not be available when they come back. And increased personal cost, not only with salaries, but with health insurance and retirement. Priorities for 2024, 2025. We continue collaborating with Gabriel College and other educational institutions. We continue supporting the grantee in advocating for the conversion of migrant slots to seasonal. We continue supporting school readiness and social emotional competence of children. And we are in the process of hiring a bilingual parent education specialist to support families who speak a Mexican indigenous language. Seeing the large number of families that we have in the program. And what are the opportunities that we currently have? Along with challenges, we also have the opportunities. In 2022, eligibility requirements were modified to include not only the low income families as based on the federal poverty guidelines, but those families, excuse me, but those families receiving some type of public assistance, such as social security and food stamps. With this opportunity, eligibility increased greatly for our local families. Recently, Head Start aligned eligibility for children under three for all Head Start programs. Allowing families to remain eligible for three years instead of two. And the benefit is that we don't have to requalify families every year. In addition, the freedom renovation project is going to provide additional infant slots to our families. Another opportunity is the console consolidation of the local migrant Head Start programs at Santa Cruz County Office of Education will no longer operate its Migrants is on Head Start program effective March 2024. Two wonderful programs providing high quality services to the same community in one under PVUSD umbrella. They currently serve 145 children. So this is our current grant. We are funded to serve 640 children, 354 migrant, 286 seasonal basic funds for children under 3 years. This is close to $10 million. Proposed grant details when expansion is approved tonight to serve 785 children, 640 plus 145, 434 migrant and 351 seasonal. With an increase of almost $2 million to PVUSD. Questions. Thank you. We have one. Sean Henry. Thank you for the presentation. I actually was a school psychologist in Ripon so just right there we did more San Joaquin but a little bit there was Salida with some of the families. So you know the it's always about money and what it costs and different things like that but being the psychologist I think I have the district record of 30 years with preschool to work with the migrant head start, seasonal head start program, the home based basically it's you know the children under 3 they're under IFSP so family service plan so it is really a second home for these children to work with to say daycare is not even appropriate. They give the love and the teaching and everything and so I think as a psychologist and as an educator and as a researcher I would really be interested to see how many of the home based programs were open during the COVID times because there might have been a little bit less restriction on migrant seasonal head start and if we could take that group and compare it to a control group that did not have it I think you would find the efficacy to show the value of this program and that $1.9 million again would be a fraction of the cost but everything that they talked about I am just always impressed by migrant seasonal head start and unfortunately our state is like the nation is moving away from with things changing supporting migrant education and it would be good to see something increase in power. I am at Watsville High School and I remember we used to have like four or five migrant teachers and we are really happy with the teacher we still have. I think we have one and the international counselor but I highly recommend this. Thank you. Any discussion from the board? Thank you. Thank you for coming all the way from Stanislaus. I think this might be the first time in 14 years I have seen somebody who has come from Stanislaus County of Education. Maybe you have come to take a look at our programs but I don't think you have ever come in front of the board so I want to appreciate you for doing that. We are very, very proud of this program. It is unbelievable. It is award winning. You guys do such a great job so thank you for all the work you have done in the community. I know there are some, I have asked this in the past and I know there were some family day care homes that were administered by a different district but they are in the Watsonville area and I was wondering did we ever get those back under our umbrella or outside? So those are the family childcare homes that are currently contracted with Stanislaus County of Education and they have been invited to contract with us now. Thank you. Thank you. Just a basic question just for my learning. So it says to serve 145 children transferring from Stanislaus County Office of Education. What does a facility like? Are they coming from one facility to another facility? How does that work? Typically I guess there are two pieces to that. There is the contractual piece where we would not renew the contract with Stanislaus County Office of Education and in the 2425 program year with Pajaro Valley Unified School District we would issue a new contract with all the new figures that were on the administrative side. On the programmatic side Pajaro staff under Angelica would be reaching out to the family childcare home providers that were not already contracted with Pajaro because I do know there were some that were shared but they would reach out to them to invite them to contract with Pajaro Valley Unified School District now that Stanislaus County Office of Education would no longer be operating the program on a day to day basis and then just a reminder the funding cycle for this federal to local grant is March through February so we submit everything by December 1st to Washington D.C. and that gives them 90 days to respond to us to our grant application. Yes hi Angelica I will echo what Kim says this is a wonderful program that you're the head of and we're very appreciative and happy to have you and have you be the head of the program and all the good things that you and your people and your staff are doing in there so we're at the 640 but I get adding 145 and is that even a side when just looking at the 640 number my first thing that comes to my mind and I did hear you say the words that is what we're funded to serve again federally funded is there but I can see there is got to be so much more need than 640 even 785 students in Santa Cruz County right and we straddle because of the district geographically do we with your program we straddle into the Monterey County side the North Monterey County side where our district resides right within those boundaries that's a huge area so I just there's got to be much more than less than 800 children that could benefit from this program and need it so what can be done to look at that component of it every time there has been expansion opportunities for us to apply for additional funding from the federal office we invite every one of our contractors to submit an application alongside us to competitively go after those additional dollars and slots to serve local community so as those opportunities become available we'll make that invitation again the other piece that we do annually is we really assess each of our service area so we have programs in Contra Costa County San Joaquin, San Luis Merced, Madera and then coming over towards the coast Santa Clara is within our service region we currently have no active programs in those in that county we also have Santa Cruz and Northern Monterey so anytime there's shifting or if we're seeing some trends where we might need to move slots from one area to another again we have that open dialogue and conversation with all the contractors to see how we might be able to move slots around so we either apply for new funding or shift around existing funding so we could try to increase how many of our youth that we're servicing so currently our grant is for 2600 children across all those eight counties that I mentioned wow okay thank you absolutely is Trustee Soto still with us? no he's not is just to make sure I'm understanding and again I just want to echo what my colleagues have said so I knew very little about this program when I first became a trustee five years ago and as I learned more I just continued to become more and more impressed so thank you first of all for the work that you're doing and from what I'm understanding what I heard and what I read in preparation for this it sounds like there's no increase in the funds that PVSD is using through this expansion that it's all the 1.9 million that Angelica has shared in the second to last slide I believe that that's an increase in funding that's coming to Pajaro but from Santa Cruz but it's not there's no additional expense right no additional expense to the district not the expansion of kids correct correct I have a migraine so it is making speaking challenging we ensure that each of our contractors submits a balanced budget to us so that's part of that process great thank you that's my question can I just say one more thing is the 1.9 million I know that will kind of come into the district to service this group of kids but that also gets infused back into the community and I think that's one of the things that I would like to say is that there is an increase for the providers or is it exactly the same as what they were getting there is an increase right so that's more money for us citizens in Pajaro Valley wonderful I was at a party one time one day and I found out that there were these slots here in Watsonville that were being concerned and bugging people about how can we get them back so this is really great news this is an action item tonight I'd like to make a motion to approve all second first to the second would you like to make a quick comment okay so first to the second all those in favor aye any opposed motion carries 403 and you wanted to make a quick comment and quickly compliments there's a report that Ms. Renteria included a community assessment it's 54 pages it's superb reading great history of ag great history of the demographics and the changes in this community and as the new guy coming back was really a delight to read and then Ferris Seba texted me right before this meeting and indicated that the services are going to be better is handing us the kids and Dr. Seba who's from our community knows the services will be better thank you so much and thanks for making the trip appreciate it thank you all right item 9.2 resolution acknowledging November 6th through 10th is national school psychology week and the report will be presented by Heather Gorman our self a director of special services good evening president Holm interim superintendent checkman board of trustees community members I'm Heather Gorman special services self a director so if you can take a look at the resolution thank you I'm not going to read through the full resolution but please do take a minute to read through it so during the week of November 6th through 10th 2023 schools throughout the United States will be celebrating national school psychology week the following resolution speaks to the work that the school psychologist does for PV USD I present this resolution this evening to highlight their work and dedication this year's national theme is let's grow together this theme was inspired by the importance of both personnel personal and shared strengths in our growth as individuals and school communities in every season of life this is a time to recognize and show appreciation for school psychologists who support students learning and mental and behavioral health promote positive and inclusive school climates serve on school safety and crisis teams and collaborate with families teachers and administrators to improve student outcomes one way to draw attention to the importance of school psychologists services and children's mental health is to have a resolution commending the work of the Pajaro Valley Unified School District school psychologist we strive to empower school psychologists by advancing practices to improve learning, behavior and mental health for all children and youth so I request that you pass this resolution to recognize, celebrate the work of the school psychologist thank you do we have any public speaker we do one, Sean Henry hello again, thank you very much for acknowledging our profession we are truly first and foremost your first responders of mental health we have a lot of mental health support in our school district but in terms of district employees you could basically say some people say we're the ninjas of the thing I say that we are a swiss army knife that's underutilized and I actually spoke with we had three interns last year unfortunately not a single one stayed the two that I oversaw are doing really well they described both working at one elementary school with about 500 or less students they do really less than the interns they do 35 anticipating 35 assessments and less than 50 because they are looked at as mental health professionals but also not just special education, not gatekeepers we truly have all these different skills I've done a discussion about that before if you want to use one or two skills and staff us for that that's all we can do but you can talk to Morgan Hill Unified School District that is staffing at a higher rate and Monterey unfortunately I don't have my other colleagues here because they're probably working on a report right now maybe they're watching this but it did my heart a wonder one of the two interns was at a board meeting last night to advocate for raises so anyways I'm passing some things on so thank you very much thank you any discussion from the board well I would just like to say Mr. Henry I know you're here so in some ways you're kind of our proxy for all of our school but I want to thank you for taking the time to come to board meetings and taking the time to educate the board about the role of the school psychologist and I really and other school psychologists it's just the way the advocacy is an invitation to people being their best selves and I think about if we show that level to people that we disagree with or have frustrations with then I can only imagine how that is for students that our school psychologists work with and what a gift that is and I know that our students benefit greatly from that so thank you I'd like to say thank you for bringing this forward we appreciate our school psychologists very very much in this district they not only provide support to children and families but also to our staff when we have to deal with really hard stuff so I know that a lot of your work is in testing and psychometric stuff but there's so much more in your training is typically so much greater than that so anyway thank you and I'd like to make a motion to approve this resolution can I second it and just make a few comments too thank you for this resolution thank you to all of our psychologists who have a really challenging job we live in an area that has a lot of extreme poverty that's persisted for the years and poverty creates trauma and all sorts of challenges that takes a tool on our parents the kids and sometimes it's expressed in negative ways at our school sites and our teachers often have to deal with the school psychologists and so my hats off thank you for serving our school and I think we should do whatever we can to keep our psychologists here I know there's a lot of issues that are being discussed about that and we've got to keep discussing those issues and hearing about those and also knowing that everything is connected when we talk about mental health when we talk about a recent former administrator wrote an op-ed about making school fun having arts music, vocational opportunities having some free creative time for our kids to express themselves this is all connected and so everybody watching to think about that and understand that as we debate and deliberate a variety of topics at the school board, thank you we have a first and a second all those in favor aye any opposed motion carries 403 thank you moving on to item 9.3 recommendation of award of office classroom and custodial supply contract to palace business solutions report will be presented by Richard Ariano our director of purchasing good evening president home board of trustees and interim superintendent thank you here tonight to present the award of the contract for those supplies co-presenting with me tonight I have Gary Trowbridge CEO and owner of palace and Todd Trowbridge regional vice president for palace I'm going to let them jump into their presentation that they prepared and then we are happy to answer any questions about the process or the contract at the end thank you thank you for giving us a few minutes of your time tonight I'll jump right in sorry okay palace has been in Santa Cruz since 1949 three third generation brothers currently own the company and today we're one of the largest independent off supply furniture and school dealers in the state of California so tonight we're bringing before you the pepom contract and this is the best contract for California schools I want to share with just a few brief points you have a lot more information in your packets there pepom is one of the largest nonprofit national purchasing cooperatives in the nation the bid was executed out of Kern county superintendent of schools in the state of California only national contract that specifically focuses on schools and it was a competitive bid not an RFP but it was an RFP which is a request for bid and there's 40,000 deeply discounted items on this bid here's some of the schools right now in the state of California who are currently using this bid we cover northern California and there's another large company in southern California who does the other schools on this list so why pepom and why palace palace has exclusive rights to offer the pepom contract in northern California you're dealing with a local company with local employees local customer service plus all of our deliveries are done on our trucks with our team we serve over 40 school districts on the central coast in silicon valley and we have the best school specific program in the country and we have one of the few school catalogs that was based on what our local schools in this area need and want and that's a picture of it on the right there this is a just a performance level for last year with the school thank you for buying over 1.6 million dollars from us now that's not just office supplies and school supplies that also is Janssen and it's two 1,100 teacher PO's and a lot of furniture also that was all competitive but the key thing here is your purchasing department saved with us 57% you had a very aggressive contract in the marketplace and I want to say again your return rate was 1% the average school that we deal with is about 3 to 5% and what I'm saying is you have a really good purchasing group that helps your schools buy the right items at the right price on contract all the time this is a team that serves you Todd is the VP of sales and is your account manager Joanne Mazzay has been with us over 20 years and she is your customer care person and then Tom prayers works with your Janssen team to teach them about compliance and how to use the Janssen supplies you buy from us we always participate in the August annual school kickoff breakfast giving way over 400 sample bags to teachers and guests we provide free ergonomic chairs upon request by your safety and ergonomist we also locate hard to find items for the district and finally we've partnered with you to purchase to facilitate the annual teacher PPO program this is our accounting department we work very closely with you our job is to make it easy for them to pay us because we have a lot of invoices that go through on a daily basis one of the things I'm proud of is we have a purchasing order tracking for all purchasers so you never go over your PEO limits there's never a problem with any of the schools we input in two days 1100 individual teacher PEOs to support you and giving your teachers the ability to buy every year separately and we also make it easy to pay us and this is our delivery team Ryan's our warehouse manager and Xavier is our delivery driver and we do every site every day we also do same-day deliveries if needed with no charge we hold deliveries on vacations or holidays again all deliveries are made by palace trucks nothing is outsourced all deliveries are done just in time and all returns are picked up and credited next day and that's it thank you do we have any public comments to this item yes we do we have one Chris Webb I just want to say I think this is great that we work with palace and I really appreciate having this resource some years though like I for me in my class I'd actually prefer to spend that 250 or whatever it is on periodicals I know part of the reason that Dr. Rodriguez had said we were with palace instead of like going to other places like Target or something was one yeah it's local but then also you can't get things that you know Target sells alcohol and other stuff that you know you can't have so that was part of why palace but the periodicals you can't you know that's not going to get anybody under the influence you can't eat it I mean you could eat paper but that's not the intent so it'd be nice to have a little flexibility to be able to use some resources for periodicals and some of the cabinet they know what periodicals I'm interested they are respected but it's just an idea for the future thank you any discussion from the board so I was happy to hear about that we still were administering I think the teacher so is that $200 a semester or right is it twice a year so for this year the $250 was established for each staff member right from the beginning of the year to be spent by I think we're at March and I'll just say end of March next year so they were made available mid-September we opened them September 21st I think which was a day ahead of when we opened them last year yeah everybody has their own dedicated purchase order that they can spend with Palace up into March for whatever supplies they need how do they implement that they just show up and here's my PO number everything's online now so I don't want to there are no more Palace brick and mortar doors downtown and Forty-first are no longer yeah so yeah everything is online and shipped directly to school sites boxed and labeled for each individual staff member that orders and you guys are still a local company great that's what I wanted to know so in the past have we done $200 each like fall and spring right I thought it was it's taken a few different forms I think the first year we implemented it it was 125 for the first year we implemented it and then I think it was last school year we did 125 and then we added an additional 125 for the winner and this year we did the whole 250 yep and they can spend it all in one shot they can spend it throughout the year and can you tell me how we publicize that to teachers like do they actually know because I know sometimes it's not that they don't use their allocation I put it out as often as I can leading up to it being released we're right at about the point where we're going to send a reminder I actually did mention in LA I saw it mentioned in our pdf-t the post that I saw that at Starlight Elementary that there's a reminder that it is out there and available but we do follow up I respond to every message that I get when I send that out to all certificated staff to help them with either passwords or getting in touch with the palace team to get their support to get their PO set up but yeah it's a project that I'm really proud of and I've taken a lot of time to track it over the years we're always trying to break the record for what we've done in the year we've always had a 10% spend mark so that leaves there's still a little bit more room to go up I'd love to see it all get spent so yeah we in the purchasing department like to push that and make sure that that's being utilized that's great thank you I just have an elaboration on what you said Richard in response to trustee the surface question of you she said teachers and when you responded in your comment you said staff and when you say that word that's a very encompassing word to me that's teachers that's school psychologists that's classified personnel but to clarify we're talking about just teachers it's a certificated staff we have a list of exclusions that I don't I don't have it right in front of me I don't want to misrepresent that but I'd be happy to get you that's always part of the messaging that we send out for who is eligible it's certificated teachers but no I thought it was counselors too counselors but not every district employee is way when you say staff I'm just wanting to elaborate for clarification for public and does that also is that also encompassing our site admin or just classroom administrators are an exclusion administrators are not included I could name a couple other ones but I'm not going to be able to name all of the exclusions administrators are not included you elaborate on that thank you just can I get a motion for I'll make a motion to approve and thank you for coming tonight I just want to echo the thanks because it's I appreciate the local business it's very important can I get a second I have a first and a second all those in favor any opposed motion carries 4-0-3 thank you thanks Rich all right item 9.4 approved notice of award for the Aptos junior high school HVAC modernization project 2023-009 report will be presented by our director of maintenance operations and facilities good evening president home superintendent checkman please cabinet my name is Rindo Fernandez and I'm the director of maintenance and operations I'm here to ask for the approval for the Aptos junior high modernization HVAC project this is a Nesser funded project back in July 28th in August 4th the district advertised the Aptos junior HVAC modernization project a mandatory bid was held on August 7th five contractors were present that day on August 29th the district received one sealed bid for a premier builders ink this sealed bid came in at a million 125 $171 so I'm here to ask for the approval for to continue with the project for Aptos junior with premier builders the amount of $1,125 $171 do we have any public speakers to this item we have none any discussion from the board thank you just a question is this going to be like a revamp of the air conditioning system at this school is that what's going on here correct we're currently working in the gym area so we're going to be upgrading rooms one two and three and a rooftop unit air conditioning as well as heating and the reason why I'm asking is because I know we're hearing from other schools that are having problems with AC is this just the similar old systems that need to be revamped and or correct yeah this is running on an old boiler system right now since school was built there so we're trying to you know we have some funding available at this site so this is one of the projects we're moving forward with to revamp this I know we can't do everything at one time so this is where this is a good start the rest of the campus has AC there so we're this is one of the areas that don't currently have AC so that's what we're doing thank you sorry if you said this already Orlando this money is coming out of where it's our funded and major L we're using whatever they had left under major L whatever was allocated as a SR funded SR funded part of the money and then they're using the remaining of the major L I'd like to see that on the backup because it's not here where it's coming from it needs to say really clearly if it's measure L which portion and which portion or is a general fund okay helpful and then we've used premier builders in the past correct correct yeah they're out of Gilroy color for you are they a union shop yes okay thank you I'll make a motion to approve I have a first do I have a second alright all those in favor aye any opposed motion carries 403 thank you item 9.5 approved the addition of a special board study session on December 7th 2023 to learn about and discuss possible impacts of declining enrollment that's you Mr. Shekman thank you President Holm as this board is discussed it is been my push to try and bring some expertise here from folks who've gone through the difficulties of a declining enrollment was tough to pick a date December 7th is a date that seemed to work for most of our board it had started at 6 o'clock hopefully end at 9 they would like basically two hours worth of presentation time they'll have administrators from school districts that have gone through declining enrollment and I believe there's one CBO who was in a district that probably should have made some steps to deal with their declining enrollment and did not and so that individual is going to share with us some of the pain after the fact and there's no action that's taken at a study session it's simply we learn we discuss maybe you look at the superintendent or you look at cabinet and have some recommendations for our follow up but it's really just a time to try and listen and ask questions so I'm looking for your support and I'll put that in motion and that would be on December 7th from 6 to 9 do we have any public speakers to decide on? we do we have one, Sean Henry now I know well, yeah it actually was for the previous one Mr. Shekman thank you that actually really helped and added to the knowledge there that we're getting a sampling of voices of how it's felt with somebody is from Monterey Peninsula since they're right next door and they know the it's almost like a flesh eating bacteria once you go into the declining enrollment there's no way to get out of it so since most of that's been addressed there the WD-40 actually in the last bit was it was kind of the working relationship of PVUSD with CSUMB with internship programs I kind of sometimes think of myself as the old cranky old psychologist now and so you know my Swiss Army knife that's a lot of those tools that have been closed for a long time I had to really kind of grease to get them open and so it's really a winning relationship for the district and for the professionals because you get a chance to really see who you're investing in and have them stay this year we have I know we have one intern Justin I think he coaches football at Aptos as well and is an Aptos high school graduate so I'm thinking he wants to definitely stick around possibly maybe be a mariner work there so I just thought I would use a little bit of that time to explain the WD-40 and have a good evening any discussion from the board yes I just wanted to ask my three colleagues right here to maybe get just a little bit of reconsideration to the date I had reached out to superintendent and had encouraged that we try to do this and requested because the few points one the sooner we do it the better number one it gives us an access more time because I think at one point we were actually starting to look at into the next calendar year so but in December we already have two regular board meetings on the 6th and the 13th and and if we add this on Thursday December 7th that will give us three more board meetings and within seven days and the other option that superintendent Sheckman had offered to the board was to do it on Thursday November 9th and in November we only have one board meeting on Wednesday November 8th I think that's much more considerate of the board's calendar and schedule to consider the November 9th option and also that's before getting into the thick of a holiday season I pulled the board more of the board were interested in the December date right I'm understanding that but there's four of us here and so I've made the plea to my three colleagues who are here and stated my reasoning is why so I have they're open to considering that then the only other thing excuse me that I'll add if you choose to do it on November 8th we just need to call the company and make sure they're available on that date and I know and if they're not no if you at the 9th because the 8th is our regular board meeting this would be the special meeting on the 9th and if they're not available on the 9th you would know well in advance for a gender setting committee so on November 8th we can make action to put it on the board's calendar for December if that were to come up that they're not available any other discussion does that make sense can you repeat that one last sentence that you so I was following you if until a point sure so you got the part about December three meetings within seven days we only have one board meeting in November this would put us two board meetings also it would put it before the thick of the holiday season I think it's more consideration of the board's calendar and board schedule what Superintendent Sheckman was saying is he will have to he and his team will have to reach back out to this I forget I'm sorry the name out the top of the school services and see if they're available on the 9th because they probably already tried to slay them to December but if they're not available on the 9th and the board approves to do this on the 9th agenda setting committee will know in advance of setting the agenda for a November 8th meeting and we can then agendize it to the December 7th to be less than ideal for the board's calendar I I just checked my schedule with my scheduler I'm free November 9th however we do have those meetings that are already pre-scheduled for the 7th, 8th, and 9th at Watsonville Aptos and PB so if you wanted to make any of those well and I think our focus was on those being community-based meetings there's going to be two of those on the 8th that we won't be able to attend because we already have a regular board meeting on the 8th but do we not have a board meeting on the 15th November? No I kind of wanted to attend the 9th at PB High I'll be honest about the I told you I preferred December and I'm letting Trustee Acosta know that I kind of want to attend that meeting at PB High on November 9th that last part because we have that hearing on the 9th which is for the community that's not right I mean we can of course attend any of those as board members and we're still community members but Could we do it on November 15th? I think that's Clint a direction to ask Clint I think these were the only dates they said they were available to you Yeah they I think November 15th was the first date we really wanted to do and we actually asked them and they were so they have two individuals who are really experts at this one is on the finance side one's on the HR side the HR individual couldn't make it and I've worked with her personally Daniel Connelly she's amazing and we'll probably provide a lot of good information so we didn't want to basically get only one of them we really wanted both I will say that the second scheduled board meeting in December is our organizational meeting and it's usually a fairly short one Are you saying that we have it on the same night as our organizational? No, no, no what I'm just saying is that if we had like three meetings you know in a seven day period it's not like we're having three full board meetings it's we're having one regular board meeting a special study session which we're anticipating about two hours and then the organizational meeting which is usually a couple hours This special study session is slotted for three hours and interesting it is consideration that's three meetings and seven days I get the math. It's still the time to be coming in for three meetings within seven days So I'm just asking for us to consider to doing it to the ninth and if it doesn't work out for the organization then we would still have time to agendize it on the November 8th you do have it on December 7th You know I'll just say too I'm okay with pushing it out to after the new year there's that too I don't know if this is a super urgent thing I mean what do you think Murray? I think it's a very important event I suggested a variety of dates including in January but you two dates based on what you folks told me look at your calendars let's make this work Might I also offer if some thinking creative thinking I mean generally Wednesdays are the way my life has been scheduled kind of no stuff that's going on with PBUSD I don't know if Wednesday November 29th is also possible just don't know I think what Clint was saying was like in coming up like they were available Yeah from my recollection that was actually another date we offered was the 29th because we thought it would work well Thanksgiving and individuals at school services traveling for Thanksgiving and coming back and being on vacation I think the two dates before January that worked for them were the two that Murray originally offered I don't know off top of my head if now the November date works they book up pretty quick which is why they asked for kind of our quick response so we did they did hold the December 7th doesn't mean that the November is not available but I don't believe there were any other dates really available doing like Mondays before board meetings it's kind of the same problem we would run into so I think the two Thursdays we picked were pretty much what they had again unless you're looking at January when they had more time available I just wanted to ask Clint to elaborate on that since trustee the Surfer brought that up and I was one that went back and met with Superintendent Sheckman and said I think sooner is better do you recall what those January dates were off off the top of your head by any chance did you put it in your email or I don't I mean we can Murray and I can definitely reach out I mean one thing I can say in terms of the timing obviously it is extremely important I don't believe unless Jenny believes differently it would severely impact her to have the information in January the board to have it to start making decisions because really January through March she's going to be working on second interim and that's just really a retelling of this year's budget not really focusing on next year so any changes that would potentially be made having those kind of information from the board if there was any adjustments due to declining enrollment really having those in February March or around that time would be plenty of time I think from the finance side and that's only if you're talking literally next year making a change which I don't think you know we're going to have a presentation and then say let's blow everything up for next year we're going to make drastic changes so I think the timing wise earlier is obviously better because the more time we have to plan the better I don't know that it really doesn't work for the board and the board all wants to be there rushing it's always necessary but again as Murray kind of stated we did want to make sure we got it done and it was going so that it didn't become this presentation that kind of kept getting delayed and then as Murray stated we kind of heard some horror stories of I wish we would have known what we know now you know six months ago or a year ago I'm sorry I asked him that so you're seeing January would be viable for Jenny and the team if it were in January if the board were to actually hear from the presentation and want to take action for the immediate next school year depending on what those actions are it's possible it just it all depends on what those actions would be I don't think that one month timeframe is going to completely set her back but again I do agree with Murray that the sooner the better just because we do want the information out there and want the public to have time to kind of understand what what we're facing so I wanted a chance to answer your question and that is I don't have any strong preference you know it's like the seventh works a little better for me but it's like I can make the ninth work but it's it's really what folks want to do I'm also open to January I mean that's a crowded time of year right before the holidays there's a lot of stuff happening I could go either way but we don't have any meetings yet scheduled we don't have our calendar for next year yet do we we don't have any meetings scheduled yet January typically in January we only have one so that might be a better consideration right but typically the district I mean just the district is on break and staff is not necessarily available yeah so do you need a motion on this to table it yeah bring it back yes we do okay I'll make a motion to table this to a later date looking at dates in January for the special board meeting on declining enrollment okay yeah and I just I just wanted to have some feedback on that so I think typically to the point you made about staff I mean our board meeting in January around the end of January around the 24th everybody's back so if they're looking because all the dates they seem to present were Thursday so if they're looking at a Thursday maybe Thursday January 25th would be ideal if I just wanted to give that to Superintendent Shekman of course so we have a first and a second all those in favor any opposed motion carries 403 thank you moving on to item 10.1 our PVSD cybersecurity presentation and that will be presented by Dan Weiser our director of technology yes good evening president home board of trustees and superintendent Shekman my name is Dan Weiser I am the director of technology services for the district and October is cybersecurity aware this month so the timing is perfect for this presentation I'm going to talk in some general terms about cybersecurity and I want to just mention I'm going to go through the various things we're doing to make sure that all of our systems and data and accounts and critical systems and data are secure but I'm not going to go into a lot of specifics because this is being broadcast on the internet and so there are some security aspects that we need to keep in order to keep secure we're not going to broadcast some of the very specific systems that we're using but I'm happy to answer some questions at the end so educational institutions as I know you're all aware have been getting hit across the country really and all over the world with cyber attacks I have some statistics for you just last year in 2022 the cyber hacks attacks, incidents in education increased 44% and they continue to increase and education is one of the targets that they're constantly hitting for a variety of reasons most of which have to do with funding education institutions often keep their devices longer and so sometimes they keep devices in production that no longer are receiving security updates and patches usually that's due to funding concerns and funding constraints also a lot of education institutions aren't necessarily on the cutting edge of security technologies that are being deployed in some cases luckily for us that's not our problem they don't have the technical staff with the technical expertise to make sure that the systems are secure so we have Keenan our insurance partner that we actually have cyber security insurance through Keenan and they have brought in an organization that they're working with their customers to kind of go through a cyber security audit to review all of the different systems we have in place and review best practices so they're called Resolute Guard and actually we just had our first meeting and we have our next meeting scheduled so it's really good timing as well because as we started to work with Resolute Guard on reviewing the various best practices in cyber security they use what's called the Hamilton cyber security best practices and so we went through all of those best practices and in that first meeting it was great to see that we already had them all in place or we were already implementing them and some of them are ongoing they never end, right? Cyber security is one of those things you're never done doing it you're always continuing to do it so because the vulnerabilities are always changing and then the cyber criminals are always coming up with new ways to attack organizations we're constantly learning new ways to protect our data and to protect our systems so one of those for example like I mentioned we're constantly phasing out devices that are no longer secure because they can't run a patched and secure system which means we need funding to replace those end unit devices and then server infrastructure and databases as well so we're constantly making sure that we're phasing out technology that isn't secure and installing technology that is modernly secure, cyber secure so part of the process working with Resolute Guard will eventually work with them to develop our own smart cyber action plan and basically an incident response plan so that we'll have a detailed process prepared in the event knock on for Micah that somehow we actually have to deal with a cyber incident like that so so some of the critical components, one of the main components that we review is kind of the network infrastructure and how we secure that infrastructure so the district we're very fortunate that we've had a next generation firewall in place for many years so that's a system that protects everything on our network from cyber criminals on the internet and it also protects in case a device were to get infected with malicious a virus or some kind of malicious software it actually restricts that device back out to the internet because often times that's how it works so if they infect a device the device will then reach out to let in more malicious content so the firewall works both ways so it's protecting us from inside and from outside the nice thing about the system that we have in place is it's constantly getting updated information so they call it a zero day threat or a zero day vulnerability so these things are happening all the time and the second that this is identified our firewall is updated with that information so that even if it's a brand new new type of cyber attack we're protected from that so we also have one of the very highest rated endpoint protection systems used to call that antivirus software now it does a lot more than just protect devices from viruses it protects from all kinds of different malicious cyber threats including ransomware and phishing and all kinds of stuff so those are that's implemented across all of our windows and our Macintosh clients and then as you know we are a big chrome district so we have chrome devices for our staff many staff members and students and so we continually replace our chromebooks because as they age they eventually get to a point where they're no longer receiving those critical updates so they're not getting security updates so we need to get them off our network make sure they're secure so that we need to make sure that our students and staff have those up to date devices so the other part of that is we have two content filter systems so this is what blocks inappropriate content on the internet for our staff, students and really anyone on our network but it also blocks malicious content they're constantly updating it to make sure that links that link to malicious content out on the internet are being blocked by our content filter and our firewall as well so another critical component for our cyber security and ongoing cyber security efforts is really around securing our accounts so passwords making sure that we're using complex passwords and that we have a password policy that requires changing the password periodically and we've just begun to implement multi-factor authentication we've now done about three schools and about three or four different departments but we're rolling this out district wide because it's actually a requirement of our cyber security insurance company but it's also really a best practice that's being implemented across organizations everywhere really and I know you've all probably experienced it with your own bank accounts and logging into various systems there's different ways that you can do multi-factor authentication it's not always a text message with a code the system that we're using actually is a lot easier in some ways because it'll do push notifications so it'll just pop up and say are you trying to log in and you just say yes you don't have to read a code then enter a code but it allows for that other layer of security that way even if somehow someone got a password from one of our staff members they wouldn't be able to authenticate because they would be receiving that other layer of authentication multi-factor authentication so we're in the process of rolling that out we will have that implemented across the district for all of our critical systems and especially hosted systems like online systems the authentication system has a lot of our critical data in it as well as just logging into Google and other things like that so also we have one of the highest, most secure data backup systems it's actually something I brought to you I think last year so this is a system that backs up all of our servers all of the critical data about our staff and students and all of our systems that run our network and our phone systems and all of that kind of stuff and the event that we were ever hit with some kind of ransomware or our servers got encrypted because of some kind of malicious attack we have backups and those backups are housed locally and they're also housed in the cloud in case something terrible were to happen we have the data actually backed up into the cloud as well and so those backups make it possible that in the event that we had some kind of terrible malicious attack on some of our servers and bring them back really quickly so that system it's specifically designed for cybersecurity they call it air gap meaning that once those backups are stored there's no way to get to them so even if somehow a hacker were to get on to our network or even access our backup servers they wouldn't be able to access those stored backup files which makes it the most secure possible for cybersecurity purposes and then our tech team is continually running disaster recovery processes we're testing those systems making sure we can restore a server in case we go through different drills and processes and just sort of disaster recovery and then vulnerability scans as well just scanning our own systems and our own network to make sure that there isn't something that we're missing so we're constantly looking and working to improve our cybersecurity posture and then the last part of this is really just education for staff and students last week was digital citizenship week across the district with our teachers teaching a whole bunch of internet safety, digital citizenship a whole bunch of lessons around ethical use of internet content social media and all that kind of stuff along with cybersecurity and security events that our staff run for schools we do a whole bunch of parent events and work with the parent ed team to train our community and our parents and how to keep their data secure and so we're constantly working on the education side I often say this is a teaching hospital so we have to make sure we continue to do that work and then we also are posting and always sharing content on our website and linking to good digital citizenship and cybersecurity information we also have the keen and safe schools program which all of our employees go through and take specific courses that are online and cybersecurity is one of those they repeat every single year and it reviews the various types of vulnerabilities and hacks and ways to protect yourself and to protect our systems from cyber concerns alright and oh there we go back one and questions do we have any public speakers who decided we have none any discussion from the board that was a great presentation so I went to the CSBA delegation assembly recently and there are multiple school districts that have been held ransom could that happen here could it happen is it possible I would like to say it can't happen here but the truth is there is no completely 100% secure system today the only way to make sure it's 100% secure is to turn it completely off and so we are always doing everything we can I think in a lot of ways many medium to large size school districts across the country and especially in California have been hit and I think that part of the reason we've never had a cybersecurity incident has been because we've been working really hard on this for a long time to make sure that we're implementing the highest level kind of enterprise level systems to give us the best possible security we can have and we're just very fortunate we've had a lot of great funding to make that possible through e-rate funding and measure L bond funding and CARES Act funding and emergency connectivity funding we've been able to really leverage those dollars and make sure as we're implementing new systems that we're including all the security necessary to secure them so there's tons of phishing problems that happen across different types of businesses so if somebody accidentally clicks on something like I know some of us have gotten email that are not kosher but if somebody here because we have so many employees clicks on that what happens so ideally even if they were to click on it and that's part of that educational side reinforcing that not to click on links not to click on messages that you're receiving that you're not expecting that kind of thing but even if they click on it our devices we have content filters that block access to malicious content on the internet both on our network and even when those devices are off our network in families and in their homes that kind of thing so usually even if someone were to click on one of those malicious links it would be blocked but there's always once in a while what happens to people all the time and I hear about it often that even people you wouldn't expect because sometimes they get really smart about it you think you're entering you think you're on your bank's website and you're entering your login and password and that's part of why that multi-factor authentication really helps with that so as we implement multi-factor authentication even when you click on it when you get used to seeing that second level of authentication when you don't see it or the other side is credentials right so even if they get your credentials they can't log into your system because you have the multi-factor authentication that will block them unless they receive that code so we're implementing systems to reduce the chance of that but the phishing scams will continue and we'll continue to do everything we can to block them and educate people about being safe and protecting ourselves from that and then my final question is in measure L bond how did we provide money what did we call that that special fund the endowment so we set aside a special technology endowment how are we is that expended at this point we still have a little bit of that left and that was to refresh our units it was $500,000 a year and that money specifically was for refreshing devices and we've used that money specifically to do that when necessary so a lot of the fund kind of technology project and coding project stuff we were using the endowment funds to get those projects in front of students and get the resources needed to implement those and then infrastructure as needed so same kind of refreshing if we had infrastructure that needed to be refreshed we could use it for that as well but we also had measure L bond funds that were specific project funds that weren't part of the endowment and one of those examples is backup and storage and it's basically server infrastructure and so that's one that we've used to really increase our security and our cyber security systems as we've implemented new servers and new storage for our data and then there's other ones as well other project funds that we used as well and every time we implemented a new system we would make sure that we were implementing everything that we could to make it as secure as possible so since those funds are mostly expended do we have the budgets here in our general fund to continue this work to protect so we get we continue to get e-rate funds and that's really infrastructure funds but that infrastructure fund at times can help us with cyber security types of infrastructure but it's really update a lot of what the endowment has done for us has been making sure that our staff and students had up to date devices so we could get rid of a device to run a modern operating system that was receiving security patches and make sure that we were able to give that teacher another device that was up to date before so there has been in the past other funds sometimes it was one time funding sometimes it was emergency connectivity funding so we're always looking for other ways to fund that at this point I don't know that there is a plan for an ongoing refresh fund that's something we had in the past some of it is written into the LCAP so we do have some refresh funds in the LCAP but as far as ongoing refreshing all of our cyber security infrastructure it's not necessarily part of that but I'm confident we'll continue to find the funds like we always do and whether that's through e-rate funding or and actually they're expanding e-rate now to start to incorporate more security so they just now started to include firewalls for example that weren't part of e-rate in the past so we're hoping to see that they expand e-rate to include more cyber security systems as well and it looks like that's the direction they're going so thank you you answered my question about the ransomware so I won't repeat that thank you so I know recently there was an incident where like my email address was spoofed to solicit funds for a non-existent campaign and you know I know people like to use their personal emails and I can totally respect people's decisions for doing that so it's not about individuals I'm asking about issues with the district so whatever risk individuals want to take on for themselves totally get that are there any risks to the district or is it just the same as sending emails to well everyone should have their own personal account that they use for their personal purposes and then everyone should have a district account that we manage, monitor and we implement security systems to secure we pay the highest level of Google Workstation Plus and so with that really high level of cost we get a whole bunch of Google services including things that make our email more secure and ways to continue to protect that email system so yes obviously and that multi-factor authentication there's a cost associated with that so we're always implementing systems to secure our systems just like our email addresses and our email accounts so we always encourage people to use their personal email for personal business and then use the district email for all district related business because we're implementing all sorts of systems to make sure that's more secure and then that keeps us from infect other systems or other devices and that kind of thing so alright anything else? thank you uh oh alright so we will move on to our consent agenda so those are routine items brought before the board do we have any public speakers to consent we do not are there any items the board wishes to defer can I have a motion I have a first I have a second all those in favor aye any opposed motion carries 403 going on to our report on closed session are there any items to report from closed session yes um on closed session item number 2.1 I move to approve the certificated personnel report as presented by district administration on October 25th 2023 with 7 and 15 additional action items and I need a second all those in favor aye any opposed motion carries 403 on closed session item 2.2 I move to approve the classified personnel report as presented by district administration on October 25th 2023 with 14 and 7 additional action items and I need a second second all those in favor aye any opposed motion carries 403 alright well that is it any announcements okay and our next meeting is regular board meeting on November 8th and the meeting is adjourned at 921