Happy Aloha Friday, and welcome to a brand new episode of Perspectives on Global Justice Think Tech Hawaii. This is your host Beatriz Cantelmo. Today we will examine the First Amendment of the United States and the importance of the Free Press, not just in our country, but across the globe. Without Free Press, governments cannot have checks and balances. The press becomes a propaganda mouthpiece for whomeva is in power and the state and the federal levels. Censorship on just persecution and execution of journalists, human rights defenders, writers, bloggers, and other peaceful critics, and those who dare to have dissenting viewpoints contrary to the views of a government in power will become the new normal. Think, for example, the news that we have just heard from Saudi Arabian Kingdom's special press a few hours ago today about journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder inside the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul, which was described as an incident. Finally, no more denials from the Saudi Arabian Kingdom about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside the Saudi Arabian Consulate in Istanbul. Now, if we can only just keep it real and not continue to make lies about the reasons why Jamal Khashoggi was murdered, their country press release account of what happened is not just unbelievable, but insulting. Jamal Khashoggi was killed because he got into a fist fight with an unditified Syrian nationals inside the consulate. Seriously? One 60-year-old man decides to take on 18 other guys in a fist fight. Yeah, that happens all the time, right? Oh, and the Saudi Arabian government deeply regrets this incident, two of their top mothers, I mean, employees, the Royal Court Adviser Saud Al-Katani and Deputy Intelligence Chief Ahmed Assidi. And there's more. Saudi King Salman pledged to restructure the Kingdom's intelligence services after Khashoggi's killing under the supervision of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and they press the Turkish government for doing their investigative work. Really? Meanwhile, the White House acknowledged in a statement the Saudi announcement on the investigation of Khashoggi's death, quote, we are deeply saddened to hear confirmation of Mr. Khashoggi's death, and we offer our deepest condolences to his family, fiancee and friends. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement. Right. I think that his family, fiancee, and the world would be happier if the US Congress imposed stone sanctions on Saudi Arabia, since our rogue president will not compromise his probable business connects in Saudi Arabia. Anyway, on that note, we're lucky to have Kerry Vacho, a local criminal defense attorney and journalist with us. And Kerry is a former correspondent with the Oregon Journal, Tiger Times, Hillsboro, and Anchorage Daily newspaper in Alaska. Well, I cannot think of a better person to have this chit chat with today. Welcome aboard again. Well, thank you, Bia. I'm glad to be here. So where to begin? Let's talk about, I think as a journalist, before you became a criminal defense attorney, you worked as a journalist, and let's talk about the First Amendment in the United States and what that meant and means to you as a professional and to so many journalists around the country and around the globe? Well, I think to a lot of journalists and persons in our country, the First Amendment is just, it's almost sacred to us because it was the First Amendment done by the founding fathers and it was adopted in 1791. It was an interesting time period because freedom of the press has been an issue before in our history. In fact, when John Adams was president, the Federalists had enacted laws that it would make it a crime to criticize Congress for the president. Thomas Jefferson, who was vice president at that time, was very upset about that as well. And as a result of pushing back against central control and authoritarian tenancy to have a centralized government, the 10 Bill of Rights were passed by Congress and adopted in our country. And freedom of the press, freedom of the speech, freedom of religion are all incorporated and freedom to gather and protest and petition to government were adopted by our country in 1791. It's been tested, but there's been a number of great decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court including, I'm thinking of our sports figures that are protesting and raising consciousness to what's happening in our country by standing and not crossing or kneeling down when the national anthem is done. And back in 1989, we had the flag burning cases that happened and went up to U.S. Supreme Court case and former Justice William Brennan had one of the great quotes about the First Amendment. And that, if I might just read that to you briefly, it says, if there's a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable. I mean, I find that quite interesting because I think the First Amendment sometimes gets misconstrued, especially by hate groups. Yep. So we have the outright groups that says we have the First Amendment right to protest. But I don't think not to the account expense of sharing hatred and targeting certain groups. You have a First Amendment right to express yourself, to write, to petition the government. You don't have the First Amendment right to incite or to cause violence or to have child pornography or things of that nature is not protected. But certainly, the right to express yourself no matter what your opinion is. And there's a history in the constitutional law that more expression, whether it's, you agree with it or not, or whether it's true or not or fake news, is not to be suppressed. But the idea being in the expression of many ideas, the truth will prevail. And so there's a number of times that, whether in World War I, we had the Sedition Acts, which had to be visited by the courts and pushed back. But there's a number of cases through the years that have protected the rights of minority groups or people who want to express an opinion that is not in the majority of you, which is really relevant today when we have Trump, our president, you know, attacking journalists at rallies. And matter of fact, yesterday at a rally, I think in Montana, he was praising the representative there for having body-slammed a reporter for merely asking a question. I mean, this is really scary times that we're living in for free expression and stuff. And we need to push back on that. And that representative, that's a crime. That was an assault that he had to plead guilty to. But we have a president that is, you know, fixated on being, you know, more authoritarian. And that's why I think Jamal Khashoggi's case, which you were talking about in the entry, is very, you know, actually horrific. But he also was a major proponent of, you know, free expression. In fact, the Washington Post, one of the great newspapers in our country whose motto is now, you know, democracy dies in darkness, just published his last editorial opinion piece in which he talks what the Arab world needs most is free expression. And one of the quotes in here is which Jamal wrote is where he's talking about almost all the Arabic nations are not free to have free expression. And he's saying, as a result of not being able to have free expression, Arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche. And while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change, particularly when we have a crown prince that is a murdering journalist. Yeah. And they'll take a responsibility for it. Exactly. Because until yesterday, there has been adamant denials that this has happened inside the Saudi Arabian consulate. And I think it's shocking that our own government, which ought to be, you know, promoting the value of life, is instead, you know, worried about money from the Arabic world and is, you know, pushing the lives of journalists in free expression under the rug. Well, and that really, I think, is going to be the testament for democracy in 2018 and beyond. Is $420 billion worth of negotiations with Saudi Arabia justifiable, you know, in terms of looking the other way and buying into this bogus excuses that we were fed by the Saudi Arabian press today about the account of what happened with journalist Jamal Khashoggi. You know, it's just beyond me because we're dealing with this problem right here in the United States right now where people who are trying to bring news, real news and have dissent feelings and thoughts about current government are, you know, shamed, disrespected, put down, bullied by our, you know, president and nothing happens. And we already have the trend across the global with authoritarian governments on what they do with people of the press or who are free thinkers, you know, who dare to share their dissents publicly or exchange ideas with other constituents. And so, it's going to be interesting. I think what Jamal also was talking about is in his own original country, there's hundreds of people have just disappeared. I mean, they've been locked up, they've been imprisoned, they've been killed, and they may not have had the stature of Jamal who was an American, lived in Virginia and had a residency here, but we're trying to struggle and get out information in their own country. In fact, this opinion piece is really good because he talks about there had been hope at one time that with the use of the Internet that, you know, individuals in places like Saudi Arabia that are autocratic regimes would be able to express themselves, but as he points out in his article, these autocratic regimes have cracked down and are suppressed the ability for, you know, citizens or residents of Saudi Arabia or other countries to even access or be able to get out information. In fact, I'm recently was hearing about what's going on in Brazil, you know, where we have apparently, Bonsario, I think, is running for president on a dictatorship, autocrat, faces what's going to happen to what's left of democracy in Brazil, what's going to happen to the journalists, what's going to happen to the Amazon force or even to get news about that if someone like that comes to power on who's publicly advocating overthrowing the Brazilian Congress, overthrowing the democracy. And the government as it is structured right now I don't know. But, you know, what we do know that we've lived under a military dictatorship for 21 years actually was born into that dictatorship. And I remember one of my earliest memories of childhood with the ones of how you are coached by your parents about censorship, where walls, for example, a classic in my house is like wall has ears. So you have to watch out what you say, where you say and whom you say it to. Well, particularly in this era of technology where you could bug homes. You know, the news were censored. There were people from the military government that actually read the program scripts prior to being aired, same with newspapers. So the news were really controlled. And those who had any dissent feelings and thoughts about the government will pay the visit by the military government. That's pretty scary. And they will just come over and pick up these individuals and torture them. The level of torture was just unbelievable. Like right now, you have a lot of survivors or children of survivors who actually witnessed their parents being tortured, speaking about the horrors of that type of regime, to remind people nowadays that is that really the best for Brazil's democracy in country to have this kind of authoritarian and, you know, barbaric regime is just like going backwards, not forward. And so it really is painful to see that and to see that from 85 to 2018, those who survived that regime either got complacent about it or having selective amnesia, but the youth, those who were not at a place to remember, you know, what really happened because they were not even born or very young, they don't understand how bad it was. Right.  And I'm fearful that's what's going to happen in Brazil. And it's shocking what happened to Jamali. I mean, he was dismembered.  I mean, that's because that's a silence. Let's take a quick break and get right back on this. All right. Sounds good. I'm Jay Fiedel, ThinkTech. ThinkTech loves energy. I'm the host of Mina Marco and me, which is Mina Morita, former chair of the PUC, former legislator, and Energy Dynamics, a consulting organization in energy. Marco Mangostorf is the CEO of Provision Solar in Hilo. Every two weeks, we talk about energy, everything about energy. Come around and watch us. We're on at noon on Mondays, every two weeks on ThinkTech. Aloha. Hello, I'm Yukari Kunisue. I'm your host of New Japanese Language Show on ThinkTech Hawaii called Konnichiwa, Hawaii, broadcasting live every other Monday at 2 p.m. Please join us, where we discuss important and useful information for the Japanese language community in Hawaii. The show will be all in Japanese. Hope you can join us every other Monday at 2 p.m. Aloha. Welcome back to Perspectives on Global Justice, ThinkTech Hawaii program. This is your host, Beatrice Kintama, and I'm here with Kari Vachu. And we're talking about freedom of the press and the importance of defending it, as our life depends on it, which it does, as we are clearly seeing countries where that is not respected and protected, what is happening to their society, to the people, and to those who really choose this field. You were just talking about what would it mean for someone to work under these challenges and circumstances? Well, I can see a lot of reporters.  I mean, if you have a family and children and everything, it's the one heck of a tool to suppress any kind of free expression of anything. I mean, look what happened in 2011 when there was some hope that they'll call the Arabic spring, that there'd be free press, and then the Egyptian military junta came to power and just suppressed it. There's hardly any news coming out of there from the free press, and it's not like they can go to another Arabic country either because it's all authoritarian. And I think before the show, you were mentioning that in Africa, there's been some issues going. Yes, actually, today, I got an urgent alert from Amnesty International mentioning that local journalists and civil society activists started receiving death threats, and their family also being threatened since October 10th. And that was because of the monitoring post-stations in publishing live municipal election results in South Africa, specifically in Akala Porto and Nampoula cities.  Can you imagine covering some election or a bill process that didn't go right and receiving a death threat? We're trying to record an investigative press on corruption within our elected officials. There was a famous case, actually, I stumbled on it earlier. I hadn't heard of it. It was back in 1735. They prosecuted in our country before the First Amendment was even adopted. This publisher, who was critical of politicians, they ended up throwing them in jail in the Vedicostic lawsuit. And that was one of the early cases that eventually led to our own First Amendment.  And in fact, I just saw on the today that they're prosecuting a couple of leakers of information from, I forget which part in the State Department, what are the departments to stop information from getting out? I think all of us as citizens ought to be really concerned about this. We're lucky we're in the United States so far, but so far, you know, and we're lucky we have an independent judiciary so far, and we're lucky that we have a constitution, which many of these countries really don't have. And we're lucky that after the Civil War, you know, we adopted the 14th Amendment, which among other things applied the federal law to the states. So the states have to respect the First Amendment. As a result of that, those decisions being made, but we are very lucky. And that's why I brought up the Brazil one, because Brazilian politics that's happening, because that's really scary, because a country can lose its freedoms. And really quickly. And really quickly if they're not careful and and. Yeah. Even think about North Korea. I know for a fact that there, people even know what Facebook is, WhatsApp, Twitter, they don't have access to that. If you have access to the Internet, it is very limited and the government monitors it. All of the news on TV and radio stations revere, you know, their leader and their government, and there's 70 years of ring there. So people don't know any different.  They're thrown in prison. I can't imagine living in a world where, you know, it's like that. You live in fear. Like I am totally re-triggered and upset, you know, with what has happened in Jamal's case, because this is happening all over the world, you know, for so many decades now. And I think part of what happened to him, the audacity of a government to say, we're going to ambush a Saudi national and an American, prominent US resident inside a Saudi consulate and kill him back. Usually been take a ground and not take responsibility for it. And threats even to have consequences to countries who will, you know, take a position, you know, against what's happening or demanded for more transparent investigation. But I don't think that this would happen in 2018, have the United States not treated Saudi Arabia as allies and back them up the way we do now. And so I do hope that more people catch up with history and with what's going on and have more discussions. And if they're too confused or unaware about what it's at stake that, you know, they seek other sources, you know, to be able to get. And we've always, our country's always been a leader of defending, you know, rights and free expression. And this is a classic example, not to pander to, you know, murder, but to and create our own propaganda to try and cover it up. But rather, we, you know, I would like us to see and join the UN and condemning this barbaric atrocity, you know, and stand up for, you know, our country's always tried to do what's right. You know, we failed at times, but we try to do what's right and be a moral beacon for the world. But it's like we've given that up right now. But our country does have a constitution and the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment really does mean something, but it has to have the support of everybody, you know. Do you ever wonder why we don't have protests or more people out there, you know, in front of the Congress demanding for accountability and for a stronger position of our government? Well, we've had in the past. I mean, I can during the Vietnam War. But like now, 2018, why do you think that, you know, we have this kind of apathy?  But why is it that we're not together, gathered and say, this has got to stop? Well, maybe for a lot of us, it hasn't come home personally like it did for Jamal, and his family or his, you know, his wife he wanted to marry. Or maybe I don't know the answer to that. I know that we had a lot of strings up with the United States court proceedings with Kavanaugh. But I don't know if that's going to last or not. Well, are we that divorced from the illusion that this is so far remote or removed from what could happen to us in our own society, in our own lives in this country that we just pretend that it's never going to happen? I don't think most, I think this whole thing with Jamal is going to have to take some time to get digested into our consciousness as a nation. And I think that whether you're Republican, Democrat, independent, green, these are common issues to be able to express ourselves that are vital no matter what your political persuasion is. And we've always been a country that under the courts have promoted tolerance for different viewpoints. And I think if it, I think if more people, not just journalists, but more people come to see that this is under attack by our own current administration that hopefully there will be pushback, there will be more people that will join together in arms because it's a civil rights issue as well. What's a human rights issue? One of the arguments that I heard a lot at the beginning of this investigation with Jamal Khashoggi was, well, he was not an American citizen. That doesn't matter. Who cares? Exactly. He was a human being. He was a human being. It wouldn't matter if he was not even a resident of our country. It doesn't matter. He's a human being and that's where our values should be in my opinion. Exactly. And so I think that part of doing our work here, ThinkTech, for example, or being able to even write a commentary, you know, in any news article that we can read across the country is important so that people can practice as civic engagement. They can exchange more information and hold governments accountable. But it's not just a government that I'm frustrated with right now. It's really about a call, I think, for every citizen to be able to take their responsibility. I mean, it is a privilege to be able to vote, to be able to speak out your mind freely and without fear of... Without fear of censorship. Being able to write. Exactly. Or without fear of being killed in a fist fight and dismembered right after that, you know, with a bone saw. That's why I'm as pleased like, you know, I mean, there really are advocates and it's not, you know, including the Washington Post, for example, they translated Jamal's opinion pieces into Arabic languages so that people back then try to get it out on the Internet.  Well, I can't believe 30 minutes went by so quickly. But thank you so much for being here and sharing your perspectives with us and sharing history with us. You know, those who don't know their history are bound to repeat the same mistakes. I used to have a history professor that said that. And so, you know, I hope you can come back and I hope that you can continue to use your skills as a, you know, journalists, as a trained journalist to continue to engage people in our community in anywhere you have a chance so that we can have, you know, a freer and respectful and dignified society for all of us. Exactly. Well, thank you so much. Thank you. Well, this concludes our episode of Perspectives on Global Justice. Thank you so much, Arvires, for watching us. And until next time, we hope.


This past summer, USS Patriot began a maintenance period to upkeep the ship. This was also a chance for the crew to hone their skills in a controlled environment in case of a fire. Well, part of entering an availability like the Patriot is right now, we have to do what's called integrated fire drill, utilizing base services. The crew worked alongside various entities from around base, including environmental services and the fire department. These drills ensure that Patriot has sailors that are always prepared. It is very particular that we continue to do it because if we don't, we'll get out of the habit of it and we won't know what we're doing in the end if we don't continue to practice. Although this ship is out of the water, it doesn't stop Patriot sailors from being mission ready. Petty Officer Gabriel Cotigo, Fleet Activities, Sosabu, Japan.


When reading photographic text, I typically follow three lines of inquiry. The first question, of course, is what is it? For there is not one photography, but there are many photographers. It is important, I think, to have students acknowledge or to understand the great variety of different formats, techniques, approaches. So it's very important to look very closely at what it is. In this case, it being a full plate daguerreotype from 1853. A second question would be, how has the photographer figured his or her subject? Indeed, what is the relationship between the photographer and the subject? What decisions has the photographer made in creating this image? And a third series of questions that I would ask of a picture like this would be, how is this photograph being used? What is the context in which this image is being seen? Photographs are not made in a vacuum. There are reasons for taking pictures like this. And I think that it's important as... And this is what makes me excited as a historian to try to unearth what this picture is about, why it was created, how it was used, how this subject that was depicted here was understood. If we go inside the picture itself, you'll notice how a group of these tourists have been lined up on the very brink of the American Falls. One of the things that strikes me as particularly curious is the fact that all of these characters have their backs to us. They're not facing the camera, as we might typically do if we were standing at a tourist landmark today. One all of a sudden asks, are these people even aware that they're being photographed? Has the photographer somehow surreptitiously taken their photograph? And as a historian, I don't have the answer for that question. But what I do know, of course, is that there is a long visual tradition of posing figures in front of sublime landscapes that goes back to 18th century English landscape aesthetics. One of the things, of course, is the great number of these pictures that are absolutely identical to one another, except for the very fact that there are different configurations of characters here at the brink of the falls. Obviously, you begin to understand that this particular image is not unique. It's part of a well-constructed formula that the photographer has set out.


d they're well researched and they're designed to teach children simple memorable positive and actionable concepts surrounding food and their overall well-being yeah thank you in our cooking classes 70 to 80 percent of students liked or loved the recipes they tried with us and 50 to 60 percent of our students try a new fruit or vegetable in each class when we're not directly cooking with the kids we are hosting next generation science in the garden classes in which we plant grow and eat our own fruits and veggies we know that students who plant and harvest their own fruits and veggies are definitely more likely to eat them so every time students visit any of our gardens we are sure to celebrate our bounty with taste tests including one bite lessons and our current favorite one bite lesson is a dinosaur kale mint chew which was invented by a kindergartner and it consists of two pieces of kale sandwiching a piece of garden grown mint we know that children who receive 10 hours of this hands-on education this garden enhanced nutrition education eat up to three times as many fruits or vegetables as there appears without this same access to these opportunities so we at life lab and steep partnership with pbsd are working hard to ensure that every pbsd elementary student has access to our garden and cooking programs and we believe that every child should have access to those life skills to grow cook and celebrate food to nourish ourselves in our community and this year thanks to pbsd we'll be able to expand from our seven current partner schools to 10 schools in august and every year we'll grow by three schools until we reach all elementary so thank you very much i'll pass it to crystal with cal fresh thank you so much thank you that's a hard one to follow but thank you ashling and alejandro hi everyone i'm chriso caballero i work with county public health in the cal fresh healthy living program and we've been partnering directly with the district for the past about three years and we provide nutrition education currently in three schools and we did that strategically where life lab currently wasn't and we might reassess we do physical activity training in classes with students as well as four teachers we do smarter lunchroom movement technical assistance and training with linda and her staff and we also provide assessment support and facilitation support for the wellness committee and so today i'll be talking i'll be sharing some high-level results from the triennial assessment which we help support this past school year and again i'll be moving really quickly so we're getting to the data now and again this is all available and i'm happy to come back if further information is requested so we did the three we worked as a team and i again want to acknowledge cat from alliance for healthier generation who couldn't make it today we worked in partnership with linda and the wellness committee to to do the assessment this past year and we took three main steps we looked at comparing the current policy to a model policy um we assessed the extent to which every school complies with the wellness policy and we also assessed progress on any predetermined goals for the wellness policy implementation so this is just a brief summary of the results from the wellness policy comparison again i'll go quickly you can refer back as needed so the policy stood out pretty well in its mention of parent outreach meal standards which i'm sure as you can see clearly shines and there's also strong language on policies and celebrations in terms of healthy celebrations there's some room for improvement as you can see i'll let you read these yourself um at another time but i will say one of the biggest recommendations from the committee is that the policy can be strengthened in regards to language around requirements so for example the policy says that food should not be provided as a reward for good behavior or academic performance and we recommend that the policy says food will not be provided as a reward and that's just one example there's instances like that across the policy and we recommend a deeper look into that and a change to stronger language when we looked at the goals um progress attaining goals we came across some complications for one there hasn't been yet an action plan established to actually implement the wellness policy there's a lot of great wellness activities happening but the wellness policy itself is is a little bit underrepresented and needs to be dusted off uh and i'll get to that a little bit later uh we also didn't see a broad enough representation within the wellness committee to provide expertise on the different parts of the policy so we couldn't get that far in that part of the assessment when we looked at all of the schools so here is the the colorful data summary of how well each school is complying with different questions in the assessment so as kat says yellow is good and pink is bad um i won't get into detail what all these questions are but there kat is looking into that more deeply so moving on to the recommendations so um our first goal or the first so the committee and linda and myself and kat we work together to develop some recommendations and here they are so the first is in the slide i showed previously there are some questions here again you can't see what they are because of the coding that are actually required by the usda final rule that some schools show that they're not compliant in so we're looking into that a little bit more closely kat's been following up with those principles directly because it could be that they didn't understand the question or didn't have the right data to be able to answer so that's step number one is to make sure that we understand and address those compliant issues as an urgent priority the second recommendation is that the wellness committee and leadership across the district update the wellness policy to utilize that stronger language and the recommendations that were set forth by the committee the third goal is for each school to reignite their goal of creating a site wellness team so a few years ago when alliance for healthier generation came to the district that was one of the goals there's been a lot of great progress and as we know covid paused a lot and so we recommend that we look at that again and that is really to help the final goal that we have is for the district wellness committee and leadership to develop a three-year district-wide implementation plan for the wellness policy so that we can actually create some achievable measurable goals and also record the progress that we're making towards the wellness policy that we might not even be connecting right so I will leave it for that again happy to provide more information at a later time and I'll pass it back to Linda thank you thank you crystal so basically when looking at the various sections of the wellness policy I listed kind of the the breakdown of the policy you can see all these topics nutrition physical activity physical education school health and safety family community staff involvement all of that these topics all support the overall health and wellness of our students so I just I really think the idea of a whole child is built like right into this policy and sometimes I think this policy is misunderstood people think of it as it's the it's the it's the packet that tells you you can't have cupcakes you know like you can't have cupcakes for celebrations so I think it is misunderstood but it's really not what it's all about so from the process of the assessment the group the wellness committee meeting throughout this year concluded that you know growing the members will be key in the success of the implementation of the policy and the great thing is that there's been some initial discussions already with cabinet and we already are moving that goal forward so there's already movement there on what it'll look like for next year and making sure that there's always going to be continual progress so I know that I've had a different partner in many different years as working with the committee so I work with someone from healthy start until they retired and then there was a gap and then I worked with a school nurse until they retired and there was a gap and then worked with another school nurse gap and then so so that type of thing we want to make sure it lives on and that there's it's set in place that people will be taking part and kind of making sure that this policy you know is is implemented regardless of who's in that place and regardless of whether someone get you know retired so many of the goals in the policy another good thing is that many of these goals you see are already being worked on in these other areas that we didn't have someone speaking on tonight either lots of work happening there so we feel like a lot of the policy is being done but growing the group will help support the sites make them more aware of the policy on its and its contents so that was the recommendation so thank you for your time and attention to this presentation and the results and listening to the highlights thank you thank you and thank you to all the stakeholders who came and presented tonight are there any speakers to this item no speakers okay any comments from the board i guess i'll just like to comment that i'm very happy to hear that there's going to be an action plan moving forward and part of that action plan is really making the larger community including parents aware of as a district as a wellness committee the type of work that you're really doing at the school site especially in regards to promoting healthier options for students when it comes to school lunches and then just the educational opportunities at least when it comes to the nutrition and school lunches that's where we get i think at least for me the most concerns from parents that we're not doing enough um but yet we are um so i think there's that disconnect so i think uh really having an action plan moving forward um is going to help uh with that um and uh i can personally see how my child has benefited from you know the programs within the school site he didn't like broccoli before and now he does um and is because of um i guess the interaction and the education that goes along with that the hands-on activities um so it's um it's just great to see some of the work that's being done so thank you to everyone involved in making that happen no one down this end thank you for all your hard work i know i was able to spend some of your meetings and it was a lot of work that you guys have been doing so thank you very much actually i do have one question okay by me okay um so you mentioned that this is um k-12 but we do have preschools some wondering uh if the plan moving forward is to get them involved we also i mean as the school meals program we also feed uh the state preschools full day half day migrant and seasonal head start we also feed all of those right but as far as like the educational pieces a different program sure yeah and and i call ours nutrition promotion because technically so we operate under cafeteria fund which is a completely different fund and we're not uh you know we're the funding that we get which is you know four dollars a school lunch um like that's really paying for labor and food ingredients and the supplies all of that so we're there's some things that we can't pay for and it gets tricky with nutrition education so some of what we're doing is supporting interest in the school meals and nutrition promotion um but that's where i reach out for help and try to support anyone that wants to do nutrition education the part that we don't have as part of cafeteria and school meals um because we need that partnership and so i really am happy um to partner with agencies and people that want to support that um but yeah nutrition education is um yeah a whole another piece thank you thanks linda great report really beautiful things that you're doing in your department and um you know one of the first times i ever came up to this podium was probably 12 years ago when i complained about the school lunches that were um generally just horrible and like every single meal was a fast food item like pizza chicken nuggets hamburgers fries i mean every single meal um and none of it all of it was packaged in plastic and all none of it was organic so we put the very first um salad bar on a campus and parents paid for that ourselves um the martins actually paid for that provided it um we weren't allowed to use any of the produce in the school garden because the district told us that the kids might get some kind of e-coli from using our own organic produce that we were growing in our life lab garden so we've come a long way is i guess what i'm trying to say so i'm very pleased by the changes that were made under your leadership so thank you so much um just a quick question or comment the wellness policy includes more than nutrition so what i heard tonight was a nice overview of like nutrition services and life lab and public health initiatives but i didn't hear anything about physical activity or mental health wellness which i think also needs to be included in this wellness policy it used to be i don't i don't see it here today i mean it's in the policy it is in there okay yeah it's part of what was assessed by um the school sites the self-assessment that we showed some of the data for um and i think that's what we were saying was part of the challenge as we move forward with the committee the goal will be to expand who's involved and that way those sections of the wellness policy can have someone speaking to the to their expertise um because i you know obviously as the the food and nutrition services department we can provide you know our section and do as much as we can to to gather the information but um i want to make sure that the experts in their field can represent those areas and that was part of as we're learning to do the assessment for the very first time and learning what that looked like um learning how much time it took to oversee the committee and the data that need to be collected um it will be a better process if there are people involved in their sections to be able to provide that information that's great i know some schools have release time where they have pe teachers that that's the specialty that they've chosen on their campuses i know at valencia we chose science so we have science release teachers um but every single one of the teachers should be doing pe like i don't know how that's really implemented it would be great to have a more comprehensive report on on the wellness that's happening on the campuses but you did a great job and thank you okay thanks next up there are action items we'll start with 10.1 approval of a board appointed personnel commissioner and this report will be by pam shanks thank you good evening me again so um this is the action item where i ask the board to appoint mr kco brine as the board appointed personnel commissioner to finish out the unexpired term we have no speakers no speakers okay any um comments or discussion from the board i'll move to approve i'll second okay um wholeheartedly endorse this appointment he's wonderful and he'll bring a lot of expertise in this area to our district we're lucky to have him back so um all those in favor hi hi anyone opposed motion carries 502 thank you next up is item 10.2 our measure l audit good evening president to serpa board of trustees and dr adrigas um as you may remember a few board meetings ago we did bring our financial audit which due to covid was delayed a bit so now we are bringing the measure l audit which we do as part of um our measure l bond to ensure that it is audited and reviewed by an external auditor um they did do a review of our measure l and i am pleased to say that they found zero findings and found that everything was being done properly and accounted for correctly into its own funds separately and everything was um following um the intent of measure l so we have presented this on may 19th to the coc we let them know they had zero concerns and we're pleased to see a clean review so i asked the board to approve this independent audit of our measure l funds thank you do we have any speakers none okay any questions or comments from the board we'll move to approve we'll second i do have a question so i see on the total liabilities and fund balance so there's still a fund balance of 27 million is that right sorry that is correct as of the end of 21 22 or 2021 since this is the audit from prior year this isn't current year audit so we have spent quite a bit of that 27 million you'll remember we've been bringing forward the minty white project renaissance is doing its paving and its painting uh this summer we also have um some of that money was expended on um the project at ea hall so a lot of that actually has been expended of that 27 million and we do have an updated list of remaining projects on our website at the measure l website okay thank you very much we have a first and a second all those in favor hi hi motion carries 502 thank you thank you and congratulations on a very clean audit item 10.3 approve uh program services and facilities agreement between pv usd and pahora valley prevention and student assistance good evening president president the serpa board of trustees and dr radriguez i am happy to be here um with pvpsa looking for approval on our annual agreement a pahora valley prevention and student assistance proposes services and supports available for students in all schools for the upcoming year modifications to service models have been made to accommodate the needs of students in the current year pvpsa observed increased need for services as well as pv usd um likely associated with the impacts of the pandemic and related factors uh pvpsa um and pv usd are proud to work together and have services at the wellness center at school sites and at agency facilities located throughout the community i would like to invite erica patia shadows shadows appear to also read part of this and i'm sure you all happy to see her here i'm happy to see her here well first of all good evening president the serpa um members of the board i know you're all looking at me like i know where you're going erica um but i'm here still wearing my pvpsa hat very proudly and and i'll address you know any question you have uh with regard to my transition in a bit but i do want to speak um a little bit about um the uh proposed services that are before you and and really highlight um some of the things that we um uh was just mentioned about what we found to be true this year um the crisis the crisis calls into our agencies um we i used to say we used to get 50 to 20 a week that's like average daily calls now um and the crisis vary and sometimes it's social emotional counselors that identify they need additional support to de-escalate a situation or to create a safety plan or whatnot sometimes it's an administrator calling so we're requesting an additional crisis therapist for the year we recognize that we're still kind of in that um getting back to a regulated state and we're hopeful that after next year we can ease our way back into some of the basic services that we we've been operating with in addition to that um we are proposing a dedicated case manager for Watsonville high school there's been a lot that our team has done this year to respond to the needs of Watsonville high and in speaking to um incoming um student services director um Ivan um he recommended that that we increase the the stable support at that school just given the the demands in this past year and then lastly um we established during the pandemic the what we call the any payer therapeutic program as you know PVPSA offers services to those with Medi-Cal that's how we leverage the resources but during the pandemic we were hearing that a lot of students and they were coming to us can you please take care of us because we don't have access to a therapist through our blue shield or whatever private insurance they had so we we established a team of two uh to be of support in addition to what the school it was able to do with the mental health clinicians that you have brought on board that program is completely impacted we've had to turn away kids uh because the situation in our region is still saturated there's a bigger demand for services not enough supply and the school's done a marvelous job in trying to um bring in additional supports in house and I'm glad that you have because I think that the list would be much much longer if it weren't but there still is that imbalance but that's a regional problem that's not necessarily pertinent to PVUSD alone it's it's happening everywhere as you probably have read so um we're also I just want to highlight that this particular year we have been really pouring our support to the Bajaro Las Lomas community there has been a lot that our team has done and we've leveraged a lot of grant funding to be able to support the community out there and I'm very proud to say that all of our funders who supported us for the families at Eloni Hall and Bajaro Middle School um have committed an additional couple years of funding to support the families out there um and and that's an area that our team is very dedicated to ensuring continual support so with that I'm happy to answer any questions um related to this or otherwise uh but uh thank you so much and it's um I will use my little bit of my time to thank you all for putting the children of this community at the heart of everything you do I know you have a thankless job um as a as a public servant but I really really do want to appreciate you for putting children at the at the center of everything and Dr. Rodriguez I've seen the district transform uh my during my eight years here and it's beautiful to see fresh fruits and vegetables it's beautiful to see the focus on mental health and um I congratulate you for the great work you you continue to do thank you are there any speakers to this item we're sorry Erica for the late oh that's okay I have service okay you've got a long drive home sorry about that I have no speakers to the sign okay any comments um from the board or questions Jen Holm so I know in the past there have been comments about why you know have a partnership with PVPSA and and don't you know hire or and utilize in house personnel um I also know that we've had shifts in the last few months and maybe it's years at this point um can you just explain a little bit about the benefits to our students of our current setup well we could probably both so you know PVPSA is not our only partner it's our biggest partner and one of the biggest benefits would be the the clinicians that they have at the schools the access to crisis counselors immediately the relationships that the staff have with the clinicians I can speak to um the one of the newest um ways that we are trying to be more efficient with our services and a more transparent with for everyone to know the pathway of our services is this year we started using now pow and PVPSA is one of the partners that has agreed to also use this this closed loop referral system to help us know one of the biggest issues is people make a referral and they say what happened to it so as we're we're in this partnership stepping into using now pow as well so again we're we're not duplicating efforts and people know when a student has been served or if they haven't been served we can quickly communicate and get them service I'll just add um trustee home that um you know it's interesting to as I reflect on the eight years eight years ago really when you think about the social emotional staff that the district had that you really didn't have much it was PVPSA um no we had nothing you had nothing we had only academic yeah and then over the years what has happened is you've recognized that you know you need to serve the whole child and you've integrated additional staffing um some of who can do mental health and some who are more like your case managerial or linkers or uh referral support right um and what has happened over the years and I think this is important to highlight is that PVPSA used to do a lot of that administrative stuff that you have your social emotional councils and other staff doing we now can focus on just doing the service component because of the referrals coming in by a wider network of people that are are doing more of the what I call pre-screening right and the assessment so that when they come to us they come to us already needing the service we used to be that we would get the student we would do an assessment and it wasn't fitting for the service because there was nobody really doing that on your end so what that has done is that really streamline the way we are providing the service and ensuring that the child when they come to us they're able to get the service so over the years you've probably heard oh you don't qualify you don't you don't meet the criteria we're seeing less and less of that as a result I think the biggest benefit is knowing from a district's perspective is knowing that there is an agency that is dedicated to providing care to the student community and the other piece is that over the years the staff have developed awareness of the importance of balancing academic needs of a student and the therapeutic needs of a student so it's intentionally factored when we are asking a student to pull out for example they will never pull out a student out of the same class consecutively because the therapists know it's important for them to go to math it's important for them to go to English it's important for them to get their education so those are the nuances of our partnership that I think are unique and specialized and I'm hopeful that as the years progress we continue to perfect the things that I know always need improvement but we're committed to PVUSD so thank you so Erica specifically I think maybe I'm wrong but if you could just speak to the matching funds and how you support that oh yeah yeah yeah thank you the the quantification of the dollars yes so um I mentioned that we are a we're considered a county mental health partner both for Monterey County and Santa Cruz County what does that mean that the counties have authorized PVPSA to bill Medi-Cal for mental health delivery what does that mean the the the contracts stipulate specific services that are unique but over two and a half million dollars is leveraged from state and federal funding which is what makes Medi-Cal um so that we can provide the therapeutic care right that that is not even a part of this so this is not even a part of the real mental health services that we provide we leverage we leverage a lot of money to provide that support so from a cost factor perspective right the millions of dollars we're using for services is money that the district doesn't necessarily have to go and fund and and and produce right we're bringing it to the table via the state and federal funding program so that is what the the uniqueness of the partnership and it's definitely a return on investment I guess if you want to look at it from a budget perspective as well Erica can you talk about um about when when when you first took your seat as the CEO or executive the amount of money that you've brought in in terms of the grants that you've been able to capture yeah on behalf of the our community sure sure sure let's see I was I was just doing an analysis of that because our team is equally preparing a tentative budget for for our board and we were doing a historical overview of how did we get started I think when I came in the the agency had a budget of 1.7 million we're hitting six and we have a team now of over 60 employees when I started I think we had a team of maybe 19 employees um and what I walked into was this demand and this supply and the pressure that I felt the first year was pvpsa is not serving people but it had to do with the sheer you know small volume of people that we had in our team so I went to work and I knew that I needed to expand our medical programming so I took what was a half a million dollar program and have grown it to be to 1.5 million right this is the money you don't pay for this is the money that I was able to leverage with both Monterey County and Santa Cruz County they're essentially uh the vehicle for resources into the district I think also in addition to that with the guidance of the board and the support of the board we build a beautiful integrated behavioral health facility which proved to be the best thing ever for the pandemic because that facility became the safe haven for so many kids that could not do the telehealth right everybody shifted to telehealth and I also I am very proud of this pvpsa was the only mental health agency in the entire county that kept its doors open during the pandemic county mental health closed its doors and they were only doing telehealth every other agency that's exactly what they did you know rightly so it was scary we we have to factor the safety of families but what was happening was when we were calling our our students they were saying I don't have the equipment at home I live with three or four families I don't have a quiet place where I could do private therapy so we had to take this beautiful building that we opened up a month before the pandemic and we plexiglass the heck out of it right so it's still there right we had to modify and pivot but that facility really generated a lot of um I think goodwill much like your garden and what was discussed earlier that it really did has brought the community to be closer to the district that's exactly what happened with pvpsa and as a result of that we have been able to secure ongoing support from foundations that continue to stand up when they hear pvpsa the california department of public health has become a a core partner of the agency just today I got a call from them they want to give the pvpsa a three-year grant for a lot of money so even though I'm leaving I'm leaving you in a good place you know so I just think that the work itself and the dedication of the team and the focus and the relentless effort to grow the services the community has is acknowledging it funders are acknowledging it and I think the agency is in a great a great situation thank you for that are there any other comments or questions from the board and I think you she tackled the financial piece okay well Erica thank you for for the presentation for all that you did to bring the agency into the spotlight of helping kids that you really created a lot of equity and I know when you took over it was in bad financial shape and so we we really thank you for making it viable again and shining thank you and we're going to really miss you Erica's leaving she's taken a job at second harvest food bank so we're really going to miss her at the helm tonight I'll be abstaining from this vote because I'm on the pvpsa board but I um I support what you do there and thank you and thank your staff please on behalf of the board okay did we get a first yeah I'll give a motion okay motion second set for second second okay all those in favor hi hi I'm on alibstain motion carries four one two thank you so much thank you president um president to serve yes um just point of order I'd like to make a motion to extend the meeting till 1130 okay a second all those in favor hi anyone opposed motion carries five zero two thank you item 10.4 revised class description benefits analysts this is Pamela shanks good evening president to serpa board members and dr. Rodriguez um this item before you tonight is a revised class description of our benefits analyst position when positions become vacant um it's a good time to review the needs of the department to determine if there's any changes that need to be made um based on the work that's being done um it also allows human resources to accurately recruit for positions when they do become vacant um making those changes so this position recently did become vacant and it allowed the manager of payroll and benefits to review the needs of her department um the revised class description is attached um for your review and also a change in the salary moving it from range 55 to 50 which does align with the payroll annals classification which is similar in nature and scope um since the district moved from being self-insured to instead working with sisk there are some duties that were removed as they were no longer being performed by the incumbent so that's the reason for the the change in range um the personnel commission did approve this revised class description and range placement and they're at their may meeting um and the district and csa have also come to agreement through an mo you um on the duties and additionally the salary placement recommended by the personnel commission uh so this evening i asked for approval of the revised class description and the revised classified salary schedule as well okay any speakers no any questions or comments entertain a motion i'll vote to approve one second all those in favor hi hi anyone opposed motion carries 502 thank you thank you item 10.5 pv usd college and career center mo u with cabrera college prepared by miss julie edwards our cte coordinator and christy mclean good evening board president to serpa board trustees and superintendent dr rodriguez i'm julie edwards and i serve in pv usd as a cte coordinator and my colleague christy mclean serves as a coordinator of counseling tonight we'll be co-presenting two items these next two items 10.5 and 10.6 affirm the growing depth and quality of the relationship between pv usd and cabrera college with a clear demonstration of the mutual commitment to our students success in post-secondary education and engagement while in high school working with our valued partners our cabrera partners herlinda brady newly retired dean of cte eddie savante's director of dual enrollment and sally larder dean of academic counseling career and educational support services um uh with them we are moving decisively toward highly connected programming between pv usd and cabrera college so i'll begin with presenting 10.5 and as you see if you could go to the next slide i will read part of the agenda action item however you'll see as i'm reading much of what i'm reading is there on the outcomes so what are the outcomes of this so in an effort to provide a full complement of supportive services to pv usd students in the college and career centers at aptos high pv high and watsonville high schools cabrera college has committed to providing three full-time student support specialists at each school with adjacent counseling department consultation and guidance to inform their work in collaboration with pv usd this service to pv usd students will augment the existing continuum of services in the pv usd college and career centers expertise provided by cabrera college staff will enrich services for pv usd students in promoting college and career awareness preparation application processes and simplifying the dual enrollment processes the resulting coordinated services will support the pv usd's expanded definition of student success with more students succeeding and accomplishing their post-secondary education career and life goals staff recommends the board consider and approve the mo u and there is um i could speak to this a little um these outcomes were co-designed um with cabrera and co-created all of these outcomes as stated in in the agenda item are all to benefit our mutual students are there any speakers we have no speakers to the sign up oh is there another slide i'm sorry i thought your presentation was over oh i have a clicker in conclusion um this slide is here um thanks julie this slide is here sort of to recognize the growth you know under the direction of dr rodriguez and all of the support of the board and the ct coordinator julie and everyone else you know making all of these partnerships all to benefit our kids uh this is sort of a celebratory slide and this mo u um with cabrera is just one more um added benefit for our students okay are there any speakers no speakers to this item any comments from the board jen holm i will be abstaining from voting on this item in the next i think these are fantastic partnerships but i'm a cabrera employee and although my department is not currently directly affected there's conversations about expansion so i feel like there's a conflict of interest but thank you any comments down here or from trustee soto i'm ready to make a motion okay i do have a question of course so there'll be um a support person hired by cabrera in every one of our college and career centers just on the comprehensives so in the past there's been a support person typically i can't remember i thought they were from uc sc with year up or something it's no access but they'll be there still this is an added person so that's my point that person that yeah it was my experience being a mom of a high school student that there really was no help for a lot of the population that would go in there looking for help so i'm hopeful that having an extra person there will improve access to kids who really want to go to college who need the help doing you know all of the things that they need to do to to finish an application and apply for for you know scholarships and everything yes they would be um working in tandem with those partners in the the college and career center and it sort of would you know all all of the the folks in the college and career centers have the same goal of making sure students have access and knowledge to all of the different college and career opportunities and oftentimes people are at different levels of of where they want to choose to go until having a multitude of people that can help and assist along any of the pathways that they choose whether it's it's private ucs cabrio career and for whichever pathway we will have a built support system in those that's great and i haven't been in any of those college or career centers recently have they been refreshed at all the interiors there is in this not um the most recent one might have been aftos high a little bit yeah so part some of this is also in the um the monies that cabrio has promised for pvusd comes with the support specialists as well as some imprint infrastructure monies to um add some more furniture dividers or things like that great i'm wonderful okay so we have did we have a motion and a second i can't remember no maria made the motion i'll second okay all those in favor i i anyone opposed anyone abstaining okay motion carries um four one two thank you very much okay item 10.6 item 10.6 um i will also share a little bit of information from the agenda item the attached 2022 through 2025 cabrio college and pvusd c cap mo u and c cap means college and career access pathway partnership agreement which is based on legislation is a renewal and expansion of the prior three year mo u with cabrio the c cap agreements like this one enable the community colleges to extend cost free dual enrollment courses to high school students and every semester the potential for a new appendix is provided to reflect additional courses to be offered to pvusd high school students which means that each semester will bring an appendix to this demonstrating growth in this program the financial commitment on the part of pvusd is related to any textbooks required cabrio college funds all the rest the faculty whatever's needed on their on their side and applicable to the course and dual enrollment opportunities that are attached in this mo u um we are connect to cte pathways as well as general education courses that benefit our students in a variety of ways including early college credit attainment acclimation to a college environment while in high school and acceleration of degree attainment post-secondary um on the next slide let's see if i can get that right there we go so in summary these outcomes are the outcomes that are contained within that description and this this agreement was negotiated around an additional three years which cabrio is delighted to extend to us and um it prioritizes courses that we are prioritizing within our district so you can see on the next slide you can see in 2223 we'll be offering elementary american sign language one and two um ballet folk glorico one and two health communications and medical terminology and in the future the next appendix that that we bring to the board will probably reflect something around engineering or engineering technology biotech agriculture related courses and information and communications technologies so those those are the ones we're working on for the not so distant future and the ones at the top are the ones that we have planned and students scheduled into for next year that's great any speakers to this item none okay any questions from the board no okay i'd like to make a motion to approve we'll second all those in favor i i motion carries 502 i'm sorry and the sorry there's one abstention jennifer home so motion carries for one two thank you thank you next up is item 10.7 a contract for assistant superintendent of secondary education miss lisa agiria lewis yeah thank you so much so as i mentioned at a previous board meeting we have reorganized our cabinet to where now we have just four cabinet members myself and four cabinet members um lisa current currently is our assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction the plan is to remove that assistant superintendent and so lisa will be shifting to our assistant superintendent of secondary although many of you know her previously prior to that as our assistant superintendent of elementary she actually has personally um the her background is in secondary and i know she will do a fabulous job supporting um our new reorganized structure and we'll have a strong cabinet team with the four of them and myself and so as we have talked about before cabinet members are the only members who actually cannot work a day past their contract and so lisa's contract is coming up in just three short weeks or maybe it's two two short weeks and she was willing to wait because we needed to do the reorganization and so i appreciate her being patient on that um it is a challenging situation only having two weeks left on one's contract but she's been willing to um wait it out so i asked for your approval of her contract are there any speakers we do have one chris web since since coming to pvst i've always found lisa to be a genuinely caring competent and earnest person i felt supported by her as a teacher i applaud her oversight of the ethnic studies program at pvst and consider my participation therein to be the most valuable and meaningful pd i've had in my seven years with the district and given the present political climate in the country i especially admire her courage and competency of leadership with respect to administering that program she proved to be a team player this year especially with being willing to come back into the classroom and i think she's a good fit for this position and reflecting on the decisions that came from this position this year and the impact they've had at the working conditions for my site i'm hopeful about this appointment i'm hopeful that renaissance can again become a restorative place with effective interventions done before absences mount before suspensions are issued and before graduation prospects are compromised i'm hopeful for leadership wise enough to know better than to cat's aside working institutions developed at the site level by stakeholders um i'm hopeful lisa's appointment will bolster the credibility of district rhetoric and teachers need to be able to trust their administrators especially when new initiatives from admin demand teachers make themselves vulnerable so i'm hopeful um lisa will bolster that sense of trust and in turn improve educational outcomes in the district thank you thank you i'm looking for a motion or i'm sorry are there any comments okay um so i know that uh mizza gary eluas has you know i knew that she had a the background in secondary education and and is qualified for this role um it's still a transition so can you tell me a little bit about how the district will be supporting her and her team during this time sure well i think of almost all of us um although i guess i would say alison made me disagree because she probably has a longer term um district experience i will say that lisa's been with the district for an extensive amount of time so she knows our system well um we will as a team we always come together we're actually going to have our cabinet advance in just a couple of um a couple of weeks and so we'll work together on how we will support each other um as needed we'll provide if we need to um coaching and support i think sometimes we see um executive coaching and coaching as a negative but it actually isn't it's actually a positive for that so if she needs that level of support we'll make sure and and provide it um we have a strong expanded cabinet that we meet with monthly and so we'll continue to pivot and and move forward but um i i have all the faith that um we will actually be able to have a pretty seamless transition but we'll make sure and do any planning and action steps around that during cabinet advance in the next two weeks any other speakers or questions i'll move to approve okay i'll second i think she does a great job thank you for your professionalism and um thank you for sticking with the district you've been here a long time and i know you drive the hill and i know that's been really hard on your family and we appreciate everything that you do here and you're very well liked by principals and administrators and i think teachers alike so thank you lisa i have a first and a second all those in favor i is anybody opposed great motion carries five zero two congratulations okay next up we have our consent agenda um is anything anybody want to pull anything off of it okay looking for a motion to approve a motion to approve okay first and second all those in favor hi hi i would like to just say that we're acknowledging the donation of steve and um i can't read it steve and carmela doubt tough for the their generous donation to the emerald legosti kitchen what was the amount on a $2,500 so thank you thank you very very much um also a donation accepted with gratitude from taylor's office city wow in the amount of $17,056.22 okay thank you to the donors um next up we'll do action on closed session item 14.1 okay all right under closed session item 2.1 i moved to approve the certificator personnel report as presented by the district administration on june 8 2022 with 14 and 17 additional auction items all second all those in favor hi i motion carries 502 okay under item 2.2 i moved to approve the classified personnel report as presented by the district administration on june 8 2022 with five and five additional auction items second all those in favor hi i motion carries 502 okay and then we have a couple announcements announcement number one the power of valley unified school district is pleased to announce a selection of uh ricky maldonado as a new academic coordinator at marbista elementary school mr maldonado has been serving the students of pv usd since 2016 as a social emotional counselor and as an assistant principal he obtained his bachelors of arts and human communication from csu monorai bay a pupil personnel services credential from national university and administrative credential from santa clara we're proud to welcome mr maldonado to his new role in pv usd announcement number two the power of valley unified school district is pleased to announce a selection of ben slider slider as the new coordinator of student services mr slider has been working with students since 1999 when he began his teaching career at ea hall middle school he continued teaching at north monorai county high school and then moved into administration at that school as well he returned to pv usd in 2014 as an assistant principal at octles high and was in that role until his move into his new position his extensive experience of working with students will serve him well in this in his new role mr slider holds a bachelor's degree in science from humboldt state a teaching credential from national university and administrative credential also from national university we're proud to welcome him to his new role in pv usd announcement number three the power of valley unified school district is pleased to announce a selection of dosha phillips as a new academic coordinator of calabasas elementary mr phillips has been working with students since 2012 at the secondary level he has been a teacher coach and administrator he joined pv usd as an assistant principal at octles junior high in 2018 and has served in that position since then he's excited to move to an elementary site to expand his learning experience mr phillips holds a bachelor's degree in history from ucsb a teaching credential from national university and a master's and admin credential from cal state northridge we're proud to welcome mr phillips to his new position in pv usd announcement number four the power of valley unified school district is pleased to announce the selection of roizan i'm sorry roshin fahey biebel as a new academic coordinator for rio del mar elementary mrs biebel started her career at the international academic assistant program in senado a mexico after that she joined pv usd in 2005 as an elementary teacher and minty white elementary and worked there until 2014 when she moved to marbista mrs biebel holds a bachelor's of arts degree in history and languages from ucsb as well as a master's in education she obtained her administrative credential from cs umb we're proud to welcome mrs biebel to her new position in pv usd announcement number five the power of valley unified school district is pleased to announce the selection of peggy pew as the executive director of teaching and learning mrs pew has been working with students since 1997 she began her career as a social studies teacher at aptos high and continuous and activities director assistant principal and finally as a principal of aptos high school for the last six years she entered her ba in american studies from ucsb and her master's in education from san josez state she holds a single subject credential in social science and on an and an administrative credential from san josez state we're proud to welcome mrs pew to her new position in pv usd and i think that's all we have for tonight thank you um tristero sco our next uh meeting item 15.1 our next upcoming board meeting will be held on june 22nd here in the boardroom at 7 p.m and this meeting is now adjourned thank you everybody


Every once in a while I find a script that is just so cool. I can't help but share I found one that allows you to listen to low-fi tunes in the background now as It is by itself. It's cool enough and I was gonna share as part of the top five apps of next month but Since I've been using it. I realized that it can be expanded to pretty much listen to anything that streams So that's what I'm gonna be showing you today Let's go ahead and jump in So the first thing I'm going to do is show you the script itself now This is called Rofi beats or Rofi beats whichever way you want to say it and Basically what it does is it gives you an array of things to listen to so if I open up this as it is you'll see Rofi pops up and It gives me several different streams that I can listen to including the most popular ones and you just hit enter and it plays the tunes now Ignore the things at the bottom because those are the things that I added one through six or things that you get out of the box If you just install this app this script and I will link to the script below in the video description You can go through and just hit enter and it'll play in the background There's no like pop-up window or anything It just plays indefinitely until you hit the key binding to stop it and the key binding to stop Is the same when it is to start it so it's really easy It's very very simple the script itself if we go through right here Just sends out a notification that says it's now playing it has an array here of the sources that you can choose and Then it has another array here that allows that tells it where to get the stream from and then it feeds that into Rofi now this as I said this works with MPV so Basically the stock version of this script is bringing Streams from a place called stream Africa net or Xeno FM and it's a couple other ones and Basically anything that's not YouTube. You know what I mean? Most of the streams that it's getting are actually legal streams because most of those streams Will actually allow you to use their music however you want even for commercial reasons So it's not as if you're breaking the law here or anything In terms of copyright infringement if you use this I'm assuming the reason why they don't use YouTube is because they don't want to risk YouTube actually taking those things away Because YouTube likes breaking things all the time when it comes to this kind of stuff So using a different source for the stream means that this script this script will last longer I guess is one way to look at it. So The first six are like I said things that will come to you if you just install the script itself and Like I said in and of itself. It's awesome. You know, it's just a way to listen to lo-fi music However, you want to and it's just plays in the background and as good as you can and it will go on forever because these streams play 24-7 Well, what I found is cool Was if you wanted to you could find any stream out there that you want and put that right into this script But there's no reason why you can't so I've gone through and done that now This is where I'm going to transition to saying from YouTube to YT so if I say YT I don't want this video to get demonetized because I say stream something from YT But that's what I've done the seventh and eighth entries here I've added myself and one of them is a jazz channel that goes through and streams jazz 24-7 and It works with MPV the same way the others work for MPV only it's Taking the video stream of those and then just playing the audio. So I use the no video Flag here and that just means that it plays in the background I did the same thing for some rain sounds so that you can have I can have rain sounds in the background if I want to as well and I you could do this pretty much with anything that works with MPV and It's just really all that simple. It's really really cool. There's not much to the script All you'd have to do to add something to it is Add it into the first array and give it a number and make sure if it's not the last one here That it gets a new line character backslash n that way it stays You know each on a new line. There is a better way of doing this But I just left it the way the author had it And then make sure you just add it the same way down here as an entry like I did here And that's how you'd add pretty much anything in MPV as far as I'm aware will work with pretty much anything that is streaming In a certain codec, so you could get it from pretty much any source as long as it's streaming all the time It doesn't even have to be music It could be like a new radio or something as long as you have access to the stream And it's not like paywall or something you can go through and put the URL in here And it should work with MPV now obviously there may be exceptions on that I'm not aware of But the things that I've tried at least so far specifically ones on YT Work perfectly fine. Now. I did notice that the ones that use the Sources from YT are a little bit slower because they have to go MPV has to go through and kind of pull it away from the video port and just stream the audio But it's not so much slower that you it really mattered. It just takes a few minutes a few extra moments to start streaming so that is Rofi beats and it's really cool. Like I said the link will be in the video description And I like adding things to it I'm gonna add a whole bunch more to it and will allow me to go through and just listen to whatever stream I want to listen to and I won't have to you know go to Whatever website I normally go to in order to listen to it. It just will stream in the background. I really like it I think that you will too if you are interested in it leave a comment below If you have any other Scripts that you would like me to check out you can also leave those in the comments below But remember don't put links in the YouTube comments YouTube will automatically delete those and I won't even ever see them. You can also follow me on Twitter at the Linux cast You can send me Recommendations there as well. You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash linus cast before I go like to take one with thing my current patrons Devon Chris east coast web gen 2 is fun to Patrick L Marcus Meglin Sven Jackson Steve a Mitchell Arts Center Merrick camp J doc and the BSD's rock. Thanks everybody for watching. See you next time