Daily Tech News show is made possible by its listeners, thanks to all of you, including John and Becky Johnston, Chris Benito and Steve Aderola. Coming up on DTNS, you can now buy a decent Android phone that doesn't allow Google surveillance, plus why they're killing the TweetDeck app and do text message apps need to be more like AOL Insta Messenger? This is the Daily Tech News for Wednesday, June 1st, 2022, who let it be June? In Los Angeles, I'm Tom Merrick. And from Studio Redwood, I'm Sarah Lane. In Salt Lake City, I'm Scott Johnson. And filling in for Roger Chang, I'm technical producer Amos. Thank you, Amos. And I was talking to Roger today. We have proof of life. He's doing good, and he'll be back tomorrow. But thank you, Amos, for filling in. Thank you for increasing the suspicion. I don't know what you've heard, but he's just fine. Let's start with a few tech things you should know. Got a couple of new supply chain notes starting with Panasonic, which makes car sensors, also consoles, batteries, and other automobile parts, told investors it believes global car production will recover in its fiscal year. This fiscal year. And Nakaya Asia's sources say that Apple is moving some of its iPad production from China to Vietnam. Back on May 12th, the episode of Daily Tech News show went into the Texas law, HB20. That's the one that makes it against the law to ban, demonetize, or otherwise restrict social media content based on the viewpoint of the user or another person. Go listen to that episode, May 12, 2022. We've got a link in the show notes. If you want to understand all of the parameters around that law, but we have a development here, at the time we talked about it on May 12, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had overruled a district court and allowed the bill to go into effect. So technically the bill was enforceable, although nobody brought any lawsuits because of it. NetChoice and the Computer and Communication Industry Association appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court as what's called an emergency request. That puts it on the very fantasy-sounding shadow docket, where it was reviewed by Justice Alito, who referred it to the full court. He didn't have to, but he did. The court ruled five to four to vacate the circuit court ruling, meaning the law will not go into effect until the initial lawsuit in the lower courts is conducted. So now the actual case about the constitutionality of that law, which will likely make its way along with a similar law passed in Florida back to the Supreme Court, starts its long journey at the lowest court. So we're basically starting over from scratch, but the law is not in effect as of now. TikTok confirmed it began testing a distraction-free scrolling experience called ClearMode. If you use TikTok at all, you know that distraction is rampant. So this will remove things like captions, buttons, and other on-screen items while you're viewing video content to strip it out. Keep it a little bit more simple. Google continues its march towards consolidating message apps. If you've ever wondered why Google had a video conferencing service called Meet and also a video calling app called Duo, wonder no more, they're merging. The Duo app will soon be renamed Google Meet and the Google Meet app will be renamed Meet Original and then eventually deprecated. Garmin announced two new four runner smartwatches. The 255 starts at $350. It offers a new racing widget, multi-band GPS, heart rate variation status during sleep, and the ability to switch tracked sports with a single button. The 955 is Garmin's top-end model with an always-on screen and 15 days of battery life. 15 days. Pretty good. An optional solar model can get up to 20 days on a charge as well. It offers a new training readiness metric, can store up to 2,000 songs from streaming services, and includes the features found on the 255 as well. I kind of like that solar watch idea. That's cool. And then right before we started recording this show, CNBC reported that Cheryl Sandberg is stepping down as COO of Metta but will remain on the company's board of directors. Metta's chief growth officer, Javier Olavina, will take over as COO this autumn. All right, let's talk about that Android phone that I mentioned at the top of the show. Yeah, this one's a little different. So Mirena makes EOS. If you're not familiar, it's a phone operating system. It's based on Android, but it doesn't use Google service for its apps. Mirena's 1x2 is the company's first smartphone that's running EOS. Mid-range piece of hardware has a 6.53 inch, 1080 by 2242 screen, 128 gigs of storage, micro SD slot along with a 4200 milliamp battery and an 8-core MediaTek processor. LTE phone, dual SIM slots, also has a 48 megapixel main sensor on the rear camera, 25 megapixels on the front selfie camera. So yeah, there are flagship phones that have better specs than this, but not bad. However, let's go back to the software and the no Google services part of it, Tom. I mean, that's unusual, right? Yeah, Mirena's Gail DeVall, who you may recognize as the founder of Mandrake Linux and one of the co-founders of Mandrieva, started working on EOS in 2017. By the way, EOS has forward slashes or in front and on either side of the E. Slash E slash OS. Yeah, they're not pronounced though, so we're just going to say EOS. EOS is a forked version of the Android 10 version of lineage OS, which itself is a fork of cyanogen mod. And lineage OS currently is available with Android 12, but EOS has not caught up. EOS is still based on Android 10, which is the source of some concern for some people. Anyway, it uses an open source project called Micro G to replace Google's own libraries with clones that do not have hooks into Google services. That means it can provide Google Play maps, geolocation and messaging services without sending telemetry to Google. It also replaces Android's DNS and network time protocol with versions that don't use Google servers. Okay, so how is it handling these apps? And is that is that unique and interesting? Yeah, it has its own messaging app, its own browser, its own search engine. It's powered by Mozilla Location Service and OpenStreetMap for your location and mapping needs, has its own email calendar file storage system and contacts apps. Also has apps for notes, tasks, music and voice recording. I think the music is just locally stored DRM-free MP3s. It does not yet have a virtual assistant, but they are developing one called Olivia. That's in the works. It uses its own Marina Cloud for cloud storage. That allows you to have cloud email calendar contacts and online drive. And there's a productivity suite in the cloud that is powered by OnlyOffice, which is an open source project. Marina Cloud gives you a gig of storage for free. You just create an account and 20 gigs is pretty cheap, 20 euros a year. The app store is where it gets really interesting. Marina's app lounge uses the Google Play services to get apps. So you're getting the apps that are in the Google Play store, but it can add its own descriptions like privacy ratings, for instance. You can either log in with your Google account or browse anonymously, but either way apps come from Google Play and use Google Pay if you want to buy something, if you have to pay for the app or do in-app purchases. Marina says its system anonymizes your data even if you're logged in unless the app requires payment. The app lounge also includes open source apps from Eftroid and some progressive web apps as well. Those are things not found in the Google Play store. And the phone offers something called advanced privacy that will block trackers from the apps you install and use VPN to mask your location. Well, if you're curious, Marina won cost $369, launches in June, so this month, in Canada, Switzerland, the UK, and also the US. Yeah, Marina isn't the first to try this. The road to independence from Google while using Android is littered with previously mentioned cyanogen mod, Ubuntu, Mozilla, Huawei, HarmonyOS. They didn't want to do it, but they were sort of forced to do it. None of these has been terribly successful yet. It's interesting. First of all, go with Olive, not Olivia. There's too many syllables in that. That's my advice to them before they do the voice assistant. Oh, for their assistant. Yeah. It's a little bit with an E, right? Yeah, just got to be two syllables only. That's the rule. Not really. But anyway, I can't help but think, Tom, when we talked about the story on TMS and now we're talking about it again, it sounds like this kind of a literal side loading of the Google Play Store. And that sounds crazy to me, but is that concept even close to what they're doing? Sort of. And I don't think they're going to get in trouble for this. G-Hacks has not gotten in trouble for the cloning of the services. And they're using G-Hacks to call the Google Play service, which means technically they're just using Google Play with a different front end, which I'm not 100% certain you're allowed to do. But I can see why that might be okay if they're like, because what Google Play says is you have to use our services. They don't say you have to use the app usually. So I imagine that what they're doing, because they use Google, they use a Google Play service, even though it's G-Hacks version of it, and they preserve the payment system, which is one of the biggest things Google is concerned with, that it's not technically side loading. It's more of like a very fancy front end that does some privacy protection to kind of prevent tracking. And they still get their chunk. I mean, it's not like Google is suddenly not getting their door to close. They don't get their data, which is valuable, but they get the money. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And that's the bigger question. If this phone sells like wild, wild cakes, wild cakes, that's not a thing. Hot cakes, what I meant to say. No, I like wild cakes. Wild cakes are tastier. That's spicy. Let's say this thing does like two, three million in sales units or something. I don't know. It just feels like Google might pipe up and go, eh, you know, we kind of that information is valuable to us at that level, at that volume of telemetry data that we now don't have. I don't get the sense that anyone's worried about this because G-Hacks has been around for a while. And so I think it's tolerated quite well. I suppose if Marina got really popular, we'd find out. I'm sorry, not G-Hacks, Micro G. I suppose we'd find out for sure, but I also don't think it's going to get popular enough to make it a problem. It could, but I don't think it will. I mean, like I said, I don't get the sense that anybody's worried about that part of it. People are more worried about uptake. They're more worried about, is this going to be just too fiddly for people? The fact that it's kind of doing it means you're not getting the full privacy protection because Google is in your phone a little bit, and you can use the Micro G to log into Google services. So you're not perfectly privacy protected, but also that lets you have the apps. But it's sort of this middle ground of not the best of either world, but certainly better than one or the other if you want to strike a middle ground. But it's a mushy middle. I don't know. Well, something that some folks, anyway, consider to be bad news. Maybe that's you, maybe not. Twitter announced that TweetDeck for its Mac clients will be removed beginning July 1st, meaning it's not going to work anymore. Twitter says we want to put our resources elsewhere. In fact, the company specifically said we want to make TweetDeck better, so we're removing something that people like. TweetDeck on the web is going to remain available, so TweetDeck has not died. It's TweetDeck for Mac specifically. If you are a TweetDeck for Mac user, you'll notice that starting today, Twitter has started placing a blue banner at the top of your client warning you it will only be available for one more month. It's June 1st, you have till July 1st, everybody. Depending on how you use Twitter, you might say, well, it's fine. I have other options, right? I mean, I can still access Twitter. We still have a web TweetDeck we can use right, which is true. Allow me to read a few Tweeted responses though from TweetDeck for Mac users that suggest otherwise. Hayes Brown wrote, this is a bad idea and I hope that the number of power users who will be mad convinces them of this. Alex on Twitter wrote, Twitter, what the flying bleep are you doing? The bleep is mine. He was a little bit more forward with what he tweeted. Corey Foy wrote, terrible decision. I don't understand why companies want to push people to web only interfaces. Jonathan W. Thomas wrote, hey, Twitter, how dare you? I don't want to use TweetDeck on the web. I want a dedicated app on my computer. I do not need another bloody tab open in my browser. Clearly there are some TweetDeck users that are somewhat up in arms over this decision, but it's not really much of a surprise. Twitter hasn't used development resources towards TweetDeck for Mac for some time. It's been rumored to be going away for some time. People are mad, but they shouldn't really be surprised. But not everybody cares about native apps. I do. I use TweetBot as not only a mobile app, but I pay for the native Mac app. I really prefer it over web Twitter for a variety of reasons, but I kind of wanted to go around the horn and see, how do y'all feel about this? Up in arms? First of all, when people make native apps out of things, you hear the opposite from other people. Why are you closing it up in an app? The web is good for this. That's why progressive web apps exist. Blah, blah, blah. And my guess is that Twitter might finally pay some attention to TweetDeck and give it some development and maybe make a progressive web app out of it, which would give you a Mac app back that isn't controlled by the Mac store. I don't know. Usually when you take something away from anyone, you're going to hear people complain. And on the internet, when you see three people complain about something, it feels like an overwhelming number. But my guess is they wouldn't be doing this if there was an overwhelming number of people. The number of people using the Mac app is small. There is a legitimate alternative in a browser. Just pull that tab off for a while and treat it as if it's its own app, and it will look and feel exactly like the TweetDeck app that you had before. I know it's annoying when someone changes something on you that you love, but yeah, I don't think this is a horrible thing that they're doing. That is a really, really good point you made. There is virtually no difference between the interfaces and the functionality. In fact, some of the functionality you can get out of TweetDeck on the web is enhanced by third-party plugins for your browser that give it more functionality than it already has natively. None of that available on the desktop version. So I don't quite understand why people are up in arms about that. Also, just a little bit of history there here. That version of TweetDeck, the Mac version, existed and was a thing before the acquisition of TweetDeck by Twitter.  We'll have that app. And those guys who they bought it from really seemed to like Mac as a place to put their thing. Maybe we'll get a Windows version now. And when that never happened, I just felt like the clock was ticking on how soon we would not have this web thing anymore because it does feel like you're doing redundant work. Like why have a development resources thrown at an app that you're kind of doing the exact same functionality with an open tab on your browser? And I understand people liking native apps. I get it. And I think in a lot of cases, you 100% do want a native app. I'll never not want, at least now, a full version of, say, Photoshop on my desktop rather than some web-based version of a photo editor. It's never going to be the same. Or it's not going to be the same in the foreseeable future. Those things make sense to me. But something where you're opening up a message and replying and sending and whatever, I just don't think it's that big of a deal. And my guess is, if you might say, like, well, why don't they just leave the app, the native app there until they're ready to revamp that web app? And my guess is there are changes they want to make to the back end that would change the functionality of the native app. And they don't want to spend the time maintaining the native app and the web app at the same time. So it will speed up the process and bring you features to TweetDeck faster if they don't have to maintain the native app. Sure. Yeah. As a native app, I'm a native app fan. At any point, if there is a native app, I mean, as long as it's functional, I would prefer that to open in another tab.   It's like, okay, well, let's see what company can use the open API to make something that is TweetDeck, either, you know, comparable or a lot better. And by the way, there are some options right now. If you're curious, we will have a link in our show notes to the 9 to 5 Mac article that had some just kind of like, here's some solutions for now. But we're going to see more innovation in this space. And so, I don't know, it's, yeah, think positive, everybody. Yeah. Also, it's okay. If you thought there were slowing product or slowing development on the desktop app, boy, you should see TweetDeck for the web. They haven't done hardly anything to it. There's a beta version. And some people have access to it. And you can turn it on or off or whatever. So maybe that's some progress, you know, Tom informed me earlier that Twitter is getting better about making that API more open to third parties. Or at least they said they're going to say, yeah, they've been slowly killing that for so many years. I was, I was worried we were done, but it sounds like maybe there's hope. So I hope the future of Twitter is more third party, bigger, open, easier to use API, less reliance on their own services and apps. That's what I want. That's the future. Well, if you want to call me an open app apologist, an open standards web using tab loving guy, you could do that if you want to, anywhere you want to. We have social networks. We, you know, just just be nice. DTS show is our Twitter account, DTS show on Twitter and DTS picks with an X DTS picks on Instagram. You can follow those there. Wired's Lauren Good has an article up called it's time to bring back the aim away message. The live chats of the past are now in our pockets and inescapable. We need better boundaries. She's writing this in observation of AOL instant messenger or aims 25th anniversary this month. Good recalls the away message that used to let people know you weren't at your keyboard, often with a message like a song lyric or movie quote, kind of a little personality badge. But we don't have that now, do we Scott? No, we don't. Instead, we have do not disturb. This is basically a mode which shuts out everything. Then there's focus mode, which lets you work without an interruption and mute notifications. So there's some minutia going on there now. Some apps like Apple's high messages, for example, will let you see that notifications have been silenced. But as Google points out, it's often seen as an invite to message instead or sorry, since the person won't be disturbed. Yeah. The psychology around SMS has changed over the years. Lauren points this out too. Back in Ames Hay Day, instant messaging was real time and text messages were for looking at later. Lauren Good calls it synchronous and asynchronous, right? However, whether it's SMS, WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, what have you, text messages have become real time. Email is now for later. So what do you think, Sarah? Would an actual away message on your WhatsApp help people?  Sarah If I were away on AIM, I could still get a message sent to me. I think that it was much clearer to the sender. She's not going to respond. She's away. Wherever she is, she's not going to talk to me right this second. I mean, maybe I could be lying about that, but assuming that when we're away, we're actually away, there's so many of these little helpful notifications, even if it's a notification to somebody else that I've turned off my notifications, that's supposed to help us understand, okay, where are you right now in the conversation that we're having? Are you there? Are you present? Are you busy? Did you, I used to have read receipts on iMessage, and so many of my friends were just so horrified, like, Sarah, my God, why would you give anyone that information? Who am I hiding from? It seemed fine to me, but I eventually turned that off kind of peer pressure-wise, but I felt like that was a good tool to be like, I've read it. I'm not responding. So you know that I've read it, so I'm obviously busy. Yeah, but people think that's rude. If they can see you, if they can see you read it and you don't respond, they're like, that's so rude. Are you mad at me? Why, yeah, why isn't she getting back to me? Yeah. Like, and I feel like the away message could be good for that, or even like a stoplight thing, whereas it's like green, send all the messages you want. Yellow might be slow to respond. Red, I'm not going to read this right now, just so you know, like, oh, okay, if I see the red, I may not want to send it. Just like right now when notifications are snoozed, I think twice, although it does tend to end up with me sending them anyway. I've sent many a note to Scott when his notifications first came. Yeah, and I'll answer them even though it still says I'm away. Yeah, and then I feel bad. I'm like, oh, never feel bad. No. I kind of have, I actually at least write into what I wanted to say. I'm glad you brought that up. I think there's a whole other layer to this that we haven't discussed yet, and I would love to hear what people say about this at home, listeners and whatnot. But I think we are hitting a saturation point where all of us are crazy busy and all of us kind of dread, already really dread phone calls and avoid those. And I think we're starting to get to the place where we're getting just overwhelmed with texts. I know that I leave my do not disturb on all the time during the day because I just need to focus. I have some exceptions. My wife can get through a couple other people, my family can get through. But for the most part, I just sort of do that. So I want to pull just real quick from gamer culture and what people do on steam as one example and other consoles do the same thing. Those devices let you appear offline and a lot of people use that and it has the effect of saying, oh, well, they haven't been on in a while. That's one effect. Number two is, well, they're not going to see this because they're not on. And so you just get less messages. Now, if you're just trying to avoid people or you've got a fandom, let's say in a bunch of people are trying to contact you, that may make more sense, but I do think there's a desire by people right now to kind of make it so nobody can get ahold of them. And I don't know if that's good, that's bad or what it says about us or where we're going or where we've been. But I really think some of this is don't bug me. And I don't know how we get around that without and still make this usable and functional for those who are not trying not to be, you know, hard to get. It goes both ways too.  I'm simply busy chill. But then I've definitely sent somebody a message before where it's like, you see the little like avatar has read this person has was active 32 minutes ago. And I'm like, I sent that two days ago. Like, what are you doing? The worst is when you get the three dots and then they don't send a message. Yeah.  But yeah, there's so many nuances in this. And I think it's, it's easy for people to be like, well, I know too much about where you are right now, what you're probably doing, you know, and what your phone settings are, why aren't you getting back to me? Yeah. Yeah, I honestly, I think what Lauren's column is emblematic of and the general frustration people have around, around the nuance of this is this is still, even though SMS is decades old, a new tool, we, we, we got used to phones, but remember phones came around in the late 1800s. So we had a long time to get used to like, when the phone rang, you'd go and answer it. And you might, and Lauren mentioned this in her article too, you know, is this a good time to talk? Like there was a, there was a protocol around when to call, don't call after 9pm, you know, don't call during dinner, that, that kind of stuff. But, but we haven't developed that. And this, this is us developing that around text messages. Yeah, I agree. I do think it's going to get better. And I think it probably get better faster than we think, but there's been a bit of a get away from the simplicity of what SAA needs to do. And now I feel like maybe we're just pulling back a little, maybe just need to simplify. So yeah, I'm all for it. Well, let us know what you think should happen with away messages for SMS and otherwise in our feedback at dailytechnewshow.com address, speaking of which, let's see what's in the old mailbag right now, Sarah. Oh boy, I have more opportunities to speak some French. Andrew wrote in, Andrew from Montreal, who said yesterday, well, he didn't say this, but, but we did this yesterday. We told you about how France's Academy Francaise is banning English terms for the English words like streaming or cloud gaming. This is in official government documents. That's not like for the general populace or anything, but Andrew said, ah, ah, this is a hot button issue here in La Belle Provence. That's Montreal. The government body, la office, qui a, qui a, de la langue français is always on our cases about using French words and terms in business. Andrew points to a newly passed bill, bill 96 as an example of that. He says, sometimes it works, but sometimes English terms just stick, especially in verbal communications. The bonjour, hi greeting used by clerks and stores drives the regime insane. That's so funny. Cause the first time I ever went to Montreal, I thought they were saying bonjour, hi, because they were saying bonjour and then quickly realizing we were Americans, and then switching to hi, but apparently it's just, uh, you just, uh, you know, covering all bets, just kind of situation, which is funny. I love that. Hi, hi. Maybe we'll start DTS that way from now on. Maybe tomorrow. Why not? You know, it's June. Why not? It's good as, as we all know, uh, the Frenchest of months. Yeah. Of all the months. Frenchest by far. Uh, Scott, you know, I don't know how French you are, but we sure like having you on the show. So thank you for being with us today. Let folks know what's been up in your world. Well, my wife is French Cajun. So maybe that helps. Hey, look at that. Yeah. That just mostly means I eat really well, but, uh, as far as I'm concerned, there's tons going on, but the one thing I wanted to mention was, and I've talked about on the show before, I've got a 12 some year old, more than that now, 13 year old show called film sack where we cover old movies, sometimes newer movies, but old movies usually, and, uh, have a great round table discussion about the impact of those films in the 80s, 90s, 70s, 60s, whenever we, you know, whatever we pick and do. And, um, I'm excited because we hit a bit of a milestone. We decided to finally start crowdfunding that thing. So if you haven't heard film sack before, go give it a listen, check out film sack.com or wherever you get your podcasts. If you like film entertainment and you want to hear for, uh, hosts who are really close friends that have been doing this for a long time, now's your time to hop in. That's film sack.com. And for everything else you can find me at frog, or excuse me, frog pants.com and Scott Johnson on Twitter. We also want to thank a brand new boss, brand new boss, names Kevin. Kevin just started backing us on Patreon. Thank you, Kevin. Keeping the street going, Kevin. There's also a longer version of the show called Good Day Internet. A lot of fun. It's available at patreon.com slash D T N S. We roll right into it when we're done here. But just a reminder, we do the show live. If you can join us live, we'd love to have you. Monday through Friday, 4 p.m. Eastern, 200 UTC. Find out more at dailytechnewshow.com slash live. We are back doing it all again tomorrow with Justin Marver young joining us. Talk to you then. This show is part of the Frog Pants Network. Get more at frogpants.com.


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I'm Petar, I am a postdoctoral fellow at the MESS University in Auckland and I did my PhD with the New Zealand Attitude and Value Study and I'm still working on the team. My current research is largely concerned with changes in personality in adulthood. Specifically we're interested in how people develop or if they change in terms of who or what they are or what they think of themselves as being like. Personality as such. The really cool thing about the NZFES in terms of methods is that it is a longitudinal study with a heterogeneous sample that is we're following a large group of diverse people over time which allows us to do more than previous research has been able to. That is we're actually able to follow change in things such as personality or anything else for that matter. So the research we're looking at at the moment is longitudinal in that nature in that we are able to model developmental change in a large sample of people across the adult lifespan. One of the most important questions in personality research at the moment is if and how personality changes. Now when we talk about personality we're talking about a framework of traits. Traits being stable patterns of thinking, feeling and behaving in people. Essentially personality talks about what people are like. When we talk about changes in personality and specifically when we talk about developmental change in personality we are actually asking do people change in what they are like as they grow older. So do they become more or less sociable, more or less conscientious as they go say from 20 through to 40 or 50 through to 60, things like that. Now this is a very important question for a number of reasons. Practically it quite simply tells us about whether and how people change as they grow older. So do they change in a systematic or a predictable manner. Secondly though it is very important for the very nature of a personality construct. Just to keep it simple there are two options here in terms of what we can expect. So we can expect on the one hand that personality is a static thing. So it may be as a lot of people believe largely determined by genetics and early life experiences which means that most of your development or change would happen in younger age, adolescence, things like that and then it would be rather unchanged in adults. On the other hand personality may be quite a dynamic thing and by that I mean it may be actually a process of continual change that is it might change with us, that is it change with our lives, social roles and identities we are involved in. So we have the two kind of questions in terms of what personality is like and how it develops and that's part of the reasons we actually went into this research. Some of our findings in this sense were quite interesting. So let's take the personality trait of conscientiousness. Conscientiousness relates to orderliness, how much people like and maintain order, how in past-oriented they are, how industrious they are. Now we found a very specific and quite interesting trend in this trait. That is conscientiousness tends to increase as people age through younger adulthood. So from about 20 onwards through to about age of 40-45, conscientiousness decreases and a bit of a curve. 45 onwards it stays stable. Now what might be the cause of this particular trend? So think about younger adulthood. It is a time when people are finishing schools, leaving schools and engaging in social roles which demand conscientiousness. So achievement in a new job, success in a career, even in New Zealand being able to work to buying a home and starting a family, all of it requires conscientiousness which is why we see that steady increase in conscientiousness. From about middle age onwards though, those demands are not as high anymore which is why conscientiousness remains stable. In agreeableness, in empathic concern, we see a very similar decrease through 20s and 30s. So as people go through 20s and 30s, empathic concern decreases and then from about late 30s onwards it remains stable. Now these two trends, these two patterns are quite telling, right? In this younger age, 20s and 30s, when things are happening, you have to be kind of on the ball, you have to achieve in your careers, your jobs make your way there, people become firstly less sociable, so less concerned with having larger group of friends going out, being the life of the party and also less concerned with others. On the flip side, they become more conscientious. So it's quite a cool pattern that actually tells us that personality changes in a way that is systematic and that is related to the changes in our lives, the social roles we undertake and the identities of ourselves. Because of the structure and the nature of the New Zealand Attitude and Value Study we were able to observe these patterns of change across six years of assessments. This is quite a cool thing in personality research because while there is about a hundred years of research into the development of personality and differences in personality across age, there is very, very little in the way of models being able to look at this sort of change as people age. And NZAVS, because of the sample structure, because of the people who respond every year, we are able to do this. Now, of course, six years is a sizeable amount of time but it's not long enough to look at change in some of these fundamental things such as personality. The more interesting question would be, ten years down the road, what patterns do we see there?


or some people that's football and sports. So I'm also wondering similarly about these kind of CTE hands-on classes, wouldn't it be great to bring them back to our middle schools? To get, because we're getting kids excited about something there to go to high school and keeping up their ADA and all those wonderful things that we had at EA Hall when Superintendent Sheppin was principal there. So just, is there any discussion about bringing more of these classes to our middle schools? I would say that middle school electives may or may not be CTE, but they may look, resemble that, and some of our schools do have some classes like that, that are not CTE specific, but that are electives where programming class or something like an invention-based class, we have an invention-based programming class at Hall District right now. So definitely it's CTE or CTE-like is something that is happening. Thank you, I just got my last comment and point and thinking about the newer generation, many of whom are not going to college because they don't think it's financially worth it or of the economy right now, but many of us people have multiple gifts and I think we've been taught you can only do one career and that's all you're gonna do. Some of us have multiple jobs, multiple gifts and that's when some of our students and my peers, we talk about that, being able to do a variety of things is while challenging from the way this country treats benefits is actually very rewarding and liberating. So I just think we might wanna bring that into our thinking about career path, well this person's just gonna do one thing their whole life and that is the old school way of thinking, but that is changing rapidly. And many of us and one of the best things about our country is that many of us are self-employed and are finding ways to do multiple things. So I just hope that we can bring that into our thinking. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee Blanow-Skow. Anyone else? Trustee Dusserba? Your mic. I put up a slide that had, maybe you could go through a moment. It was about the government identifying like sustained, high paid. Oh, this one. The one before this one. That one? Yeah. This is local labor market and different. And after this maybe. So it's probably that one. No, it's not that one, that's all the grants. Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that we had, before Dr. Rodriguez came to the district, we had some pathways that didn't really lead to high paying jobs. Right. So you mentioned that California has earmarked 14 or something, or maybe 16. Some high paying pathways that will culminate in a high paying job. Well, California has a structure with 15 industry sectors, and there are jobs within each of those sectors from the low paying all the way up to high paying. So we just happen to have a program where we have 14 of those sectors are represented in our program. 14 of the 15. That's what I want to focus on. Yeah, that's very cool. Yeah, it's a lot of breadth. That's a change actually from past practice. We are actually focusing on pathways that do lead to high paying jobs. Yeah, our grants require us to. It's great. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Trustee DeServer. Vice President Soto. Yeah, once again, speaking from my construction background, this is good to see, especially for the industry because I was at a time when the bottom kind of fell out and I had to switch gears and now the bottom's back on and things are looking good. And if you look around our area, just in general, I mean, look at what's going on with Highway 1. I mean, that's construction work what they recently did on Freedom Boulevard with the water system that's being put in from Hulahann out to Paro River. So there's a lot of major infrastructure going on. So that's just an indication that development's gonna follow. Those are the precursors to developing an area. You need those infrastructure pieces for homes and shopping centers and things to function. So I think there's a wave coming and the trades are gonna be in demand. So that's good to see that kids are getting involved with this and we need that labor force. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Vice President Soto. Could you go back, I think also for the, you had a slide with the community partners. This one or the one like that? Yeah, I like that. Okay. And that is a lot. And so I commend you and your team, that's good work. I mean, because none of us in this community we're not in a silo, we're not an island into ourselves, right? And I'm also seeing some of the ones, right, for a lot of my students right feed into Watsonville High School and the engineering and technology and the airspace grabbed also my attention and I'm seeing the Watsonville Municipal Airport up there and Superintendent Shekin and I just recently listened to a very wonderful presentation by the director of the Watsonville Airport, Rayvon Williams. So I'm just really glad to see the collaboration you're doing, right, with the whole community as a whole. Yeah, and I don't know if Rayvon mentioned or not, but for the last two years we've had upwards of five or 600 of our fourth graders spend a day at the airport and we just booked the next five schools to go this spring to spend a day at the airport. He did speak to that. Yeah. And then the program for the youth of the certain ages, right? So thank you for that. And for the great presentation, and thanks. Yeah, it was a great presentation. Thank you so much. Yeah, thank you very much. It was the CTE board meeting. President Acosta, I have one more comment. Julie. Sure. I've spent some time with the trades in Castorville at their training center, and are we partnered with them in any shape, form, or fashion? We have conversations with them. They are typically 18 and older, but we make sure that our students in the programs that are related to the trades know about those opportunities. It seems like there's a lot of opportunity there for partnering with them, if we could. Yeah, and for example, the California Homebuilding Foundation is like a legit partner. We have a contractual, non-monetary relationship, but they provide all of our construction students with the OSHA certification. They pay for it for our kids to earn that certification every year. We would get a grant to do that, but they're providing it, and we're looking at those kinds of relationships with other organizations too. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Trustee Siffin. Thank you again, Julie. Moving on to item 10.3, Adult Education Annual Report. This report will be presented by a director of Watsonville Aptos Santa Cruz Adult Education, Dr. Nancy Bielicic. Welcome. Well, President Acosta, Vice President Soto. Trustees, Interim Superintendent Sheckman, cabinet. We are grateful to be here tonight to present all about our school. And we started with the first slide, which is our leadership team, and the assistant director, Eric Sevedra, I don't know that you've had an opportunity to meet him. Where are you? Right here. Right here. And I wanted him to be part of this presentation to at least be here so you would see who he is. Now, our department chairs are really important in our school. We meet with them at least once a month. We talk to them probably once a week to find out what the needs are in the school. And the office manager, she is incredible. We couldn't do things without her. And then we have a community advisory council president. That's Susan Brucci. And Susan was going to come tonight, but she couldn't quite make it. That's all right. She'll be here next week at our community advisory meeting that we're having. So if we go on to our theme this year, we had a school theme. And Maria Elena de la Garza came and did a presentation for us. She's the director of CAB. She did a presentation on August 10th. And we kind of talked about the butterfly effect and how your life matters. You know, sometimes when the staff is there, they think about the students all the time, but what about their worth and what about them and how they make a difference every day. And that living a life of permanent purpose, everything matters. And deciding to do something different will make a difference. So it kind of put people in a great mood because they started to feel how everything they did mattered and that we're all one of a kind and that we have the power to change the world. And in our world, we can make changes for our students and all kinds of things like that. It's really, really a powerful tool as a teacher with your students. So our agenda, I kind of went over, this is what we're gonna talk about, the background history, the governance. This is just an overview. And so let's go on to the background. So 1928. I wasn't quite born then, but that's when they started the school as an evening high school and that's what it was. And basically for immigrants, Croatians were here, the Portuguese, the Italian, Japanese, Chinese, Filipinos, Latinx, Hispanic. We've had probably more nationalities in any community and they've evolved over the years. Well, in 1998, the adult school was feeling really great because we made a final payment on Radcliffe School and that was our adult school. But then in 1999, the district came and said, hey, we need the elementary school back. So we'll give you $800,000 and we're taking the school and they did and we went to the Porter Building. And then we plan to purchase the downtown center which is the Watsonville Downtown Center. It was an old red store, Langondorf Red Store. Then Siba came and when Siba got here and they said, you know what, you need to give up your school because we need a place to put them. So they put them in the Watsonville Downtown Center and we shared part of Cabrillo's facilities for a couple of years.  We need to go back. So we got back and then in 2015, Santa Cruz decided they wanted to merge with us because they wanted to keep an adult school and so we have the adult school in the county really. So they merged with us and we have a new name. We were Watsonville Aptos and we added a name Santa Cruz and thus we have Watsonville Aptos, Santa Cruz Adult Education, our long wasque name. And the three major sites are right here at the district office on the other end, Green Valley Center. The Santa Cruz Center is on La Fonda and then the Watsonville Downtown Center is the old Langondorf building. We've had numerous additional sites throughout. Sometimes we'll go to New Brighton. We might go to Live Oak. We might go to a school in our community Starlight or a Loni. We go to different various sites. Sometimes we go out to like Lakeside Organic may say we want you to come and offer English classes to our students. So then we'll go there, you know, wherever the demand is, we try to meet it. And then COVID hit and what was gonna happen to the adult school with COVID? Well, our teachers really did a fantastic job because they had to pivot to online instruction. You have to remember that adult schools, students don't have to come. We have to make it inviting and enticing for them. But in 2021, we went back to in-person, but we still have a couple of online classes because we found that there is a need. People, some people wanna learn online through online. So we have some of those too. And then last year, we gotta catch up. There we go. Last year we have 95 years of adult education and so in December, we started talking about that and we're hoping that to have a school-wide celebration, hopefully in April of this year celebrating 95 years. So it was kind of exciting that we've been going that long. And the governance piece. What do you know about governance? Well, we have a thing called a consortium. And Dr. Ferrisabaugh is the chair and he works for the Santa Cruz County. He's the superintendent, the COE. And Matt Weinstein, Dr. Wetstein. He is the vice chair. Michelle was on this panel, but now I am. Chris Monroe from Santa Cruz City. Andy Stone and Linda Bernabe. So those are the people that are involved in the governance of the consortium that distributes funds, although we are directly funded, which is a good thing. But then we also have another piece of governance. We have you, the Power of Alley Unified School District Board. And you're very important to us. But we also have Santa Cruz City Schools. Chris Monroe is a member of the consortium and sometimes these people come to join our community advisory council. They wanna know what's going on at their piece of the pie. What's happening with La Fonda. Even though they're not involved because they have contributed no funds, they still are very much interested in what is happening at the school. So we end up talking to both boards. I work with both maintenance staffs. There's a lot because it's different. They're not part of us. You can ask our maintenance people, something happens and the custodian needs to clean and it's like, well, who's gonna drive to Santa Cruz? And we say, well, Santa Cruz, how about you? You wanna help us out? Well, no, you're supposed to take care of it. These are your employees. So there's just a lot of things that are challenges and you never know what's gonna happen, but it's fun. You know, it's a challenge, but it's fun. Then we get into our funding. We have what's called CAPE. That's the California Adult Education Program. That's state funding. Then we have WIOA. That's the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, Title II, federal based on payment points, pre and post tests. So when a student comes to our school, they are given a pre-test, all of them. It's called a COSIS test. And what we do, then we figure out what class to put them in, what level of ESL do they need, what level, so we place them. Then we have a post test because that's how our funding is given. So we have to find out, did they make progress? How much progress? We could not do this without our classified staff. We were talking about it today with the teachers because the teachers used to have to come in and we have a new student and they test them. But they have all these students over here where they had to teach. So how do they test and teach at the same time? It's a challenge. So our classified staff now, it's part of the registration process. When they come in, sign up, they know what to do. They get them ready to get them tested. So that's another part. We're an intro grid. Our team is so interrelated. The teachers, the classified, everybody is really important in this whole process. The Workforce Development Board, Eric sits on that board because that had to be a Board of Supervisors appointment and we wanted to make sure it was our school that was represented in the assistant director position as the one that goes through those meetings now. So we owe a Title I eligible training, the ETPL, that's a whole nother thing. Then we have scholarships in our community. People that really decide to support our school, Bay Federal Credit Union, Home Depot, Moss Mock, Martin Alley's, the Power of Alley Community Health Trust, Serotonous, Watsonville Rotary, and they're always here to help us out. If there's anything we need, they're right here. We call Martin Alley's and say, we're having a celebration, here's some cider. We call McDonald's, we say we're having a celebration, here's some food. I mean, people are really generous and really supportive of the school and the staff. Christmas time, McDonald's brought over some food for the staff, cookies, hamburgers, coupons, always giving us whatever, whenever they decide. Then we have the Sinus Grant. And this is something new, the citizenship instruction and naturalization application services. We applied for a grant, I think this is the third time, only this year, we got it. And it's with the Community Action Board of Santa Cruz County. We had to submit for this federal grant. We were only one of 65 to be awarded the grant nationwide. And the goal is to increase the number of citizenship students by 200 over two years. Will we meet that goal? I don't know, but we're certainly trying. And with CAB, they keep sending us students, so we're keep going with our citizenship classes and trying to build the program. Then we have state support. Well, at the California Department of Adult Education, they're there, Department of Education. We are in the adult education component. We have the California Adult Literacy Professional Development, CalPro, that we work with them. And then I told you about CASIS, the Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System. And then Outreach and Technical Assistant Network, OTAN. There are so many acronyms in adult education. It takes you a year to figure all this out, but it's there. Our organizations, we're involved with ACSA. We're involved with the California Council for Adult Education, CCAE. And we have a chapter locally, the Steinbach chapter, that Monterey, Salinas, Watsonville, we're all involved in that chapter, the Steinbach chapter. Then we have CAIA, that's the California Adult Education Administrators Association. And COAB, that's a Coalition of Adult Basic Education, that's a nationwide one. And then we have our Local Community Advisory Council. And trying to keep all of these things going and hands in all the pots, you can learn something new every day. I'm telling you, there are changes all the time. So our spring classes have begun. We have ESL, we have the places that we're going, and our driver's training, I don't know if I mentioned it later, but I'll mention it right now. We are in a collaborative process with expanded learning, where we are hoping to have all high school students take driver's training at no cost. It'll be through them, through us, because I don't know about you, but when I was in high school, I wanted to know how to drive. And we took the class and everybody got through and everybody went to a driving class. And people knew how to drive. Well now, there is no driving class at the high school. So it's kind of like, well, how come? How do kids drive? When they come and they pay to go through adult aid, parents do it, but some, can they afford it? Well, then you just go out and drive. But this is going to be, I think, a really good collaboration for our district that expanded learning wants to do it. And I've talked to our teachers, and I think we can do it. The one drawback, just so you know, the adult education teachers, getting them credentialed in driving, they don't offer the programs. So we're trying to figure out how we can expand that piece. There are many challenges, but we will figure it out one at a time. So what are our programs? Adults with disabilities. English as a second language, including citizenship, career and technical education. The Learning Center. This is where we take people that can have very low skills, basic skills, but they can study and then progress and they're elementary and middle school. People maybe didn't have an opportunity to go to school, but now they come and they say, I want to go to school. And then they get their adult secondary education, whether it's the high school diploma or whether it's GED.  And I said, your mom? She said, yep, she's going to get her GED. And I said, what about you?   They're just so heartwarming. And then we have our adults in training for school child success, that's our parent education, vibrant program, and then fee support. So let's talk a little bit about adults with disabilities. We work with the Department of Rehabilitation. We offer the work keys curriculum. The assessment so far has mainly just been in truck driving school. And we, I would say this is not, we need to do more in this area. This is the area we need to grow in is with our adults with disabilities. Then we have our career technical education. We continue to expand in this program. We have the certified nursing assistant program, theory and clinical. They work in the convalescent homes. We have the CMA where they do theory and clinical medical assistance. Then we have an administrative medical assistant program, dental assisting program, EKG, certified home health aid, the caregivers, medical terminology, pharmacy technician, a lot of different options for different people. And we have a picture of the various people that were in the programs, the costs of the programs. And a lot of times in the past we've gotten help from the Workforce Development Board with funding for these students. However, right now they're saying they don't have money so we're looking at other options. And then more CTE areas. Well, you know that we opened the cosmetology program. And they have to do a prerequisite is they have to have their high school diploma. That's required by the state of California. So what we say is, hey, get your high school diploma and then get into cosmetology or get into the CNA or whatever your interests are. We try to build it. You have to have a thousand hours in order to take the state board exam. And we have computer and Chromebook skills with Spanish support. We have a pre-apprenticeship program with the building trades. We had that last year. They were very excited at graduation. And we were having it again this year. It's 144 hours to complete the course. We have Microsoft Office, our applications programs, Google applications, QuickBooks, WorkKeys, the National Career Readiness. This is a picture of our cosmetology students. And what, and let's go to the next one too. There they are. There's our lab. If you have been downtown, great. And if you haven't, you might wanna drop by sometime and see the students in action. We had to convert our lobby into a salon. So there we are. And couldn't have done it without maintenance. Maintenance, they've been great. So what about our students? Where have they gone? We're missing a slide. So let me talk first. There's a slide that talks about the cosmetology program. And it's an update of where the students are. So Hayley, this one Hayley, she's licensed. And she works in the field at Santa Cruz Thread Skincare on the west side. And there's Araceli, she's licensed. She works in the field at the color room in Watsonville. Zuli is licensed. She works at the field as an independent hair extensions, lash technician. Amanda, she works in the field at a hair salon in Capitola, Bridget. She works in the field as a receptionist, stylist at Ultra Beauty and Salinas. So what I'm saying is they've gotten jobs and they're really excited. We have a couple that have completed the course and they just haven't finished getting a job yet. But they are out there and they're working. And that's this slide that's kind of missing, but it's there. Okay, then we have our pre-apprenticeship program. Pre-apprenticeship, class of 2023. This is what we did. We're getting ready to start a new program. Go to the next one. We've got to move it. Pre-apprenticeship, here we go. We're getting ready February 21st. So it's coming up next week. It's on the consent agenda if that's providing you support it. And then we have, I think I'll skip some of this because I know we're running out of time. But we have our integrated education and training, the IET program. We have English learners, ESL, I kind of told you where they are. Our levels, all of the different levels that we have, and how those pre and post tests are so important. They get in, take a pre test. We need a post test after 40 hours, and that's the amount of money that we got last year, or this year. So we have some pictures that we showed our English learners, classes are full. People are busy, teachers love it. And I tell you, without the teachers, the school wouldn't go. We have the citizenship, you can see that we offer a couple of classes downtown. Here's the pictures of the citizenship students. We have the learning center where they get their high school diploma. They're working with Apex and Aztec. They get a GED. We're the only GED testing center in the county. So they come here and we do that Wednesday nights. Then we're in collaboration with Cabrillo College. We have a math class on their campus right now, but it's an adult ed class. And then we have our adult string with child success. We have the co-op with Lin Scott, we have Santa Cruz, three schools there. And then fee support, we have a birding class that's outstanding. People love it because we have the birds, ceramics, the community band, 77 years, the band. Drivers training, smart drivers art, foreign languages, Croatian, and culture. And we're hoping to add Spanish soon. You want me to quit, Marie? I was just going to say we're over five minutes and we do have public comment on it. So I'll need to ask you to wrap up. Okay. Everybody on task. That's all right. This is just more facts and more things, but you, we're good. And we have this in our backup. Okay, yes, you do. It's all attached to the agenda. Thank you so much, Dr. Vilsich. Thank you. And I know we have public comment. Yes, we do. We have one speaker. Okay. Ready, Kirkman. Go for it. Good evening again, trustees, superintendent. So, PBFT, we are extremely proud to represent our adult educators and counselors. We know that this program is one of the cornerstones of our district. So it's nice to honor all of the people that make it work. I do want to share some about our adult ed staff, as you saw in that presentation. There are ESL classes that are full, full, full, and are even weight listed. There is postings for ESL teachers, and we're just not getting anybody in. So those students are not getting into those classes. We have, the majority of our adult ed educators are part time. That means they work under 18 hours a week, and they have offered to take on those classes if they could split them up so that our students could be served. But they were denied that request because once they hit 18 hours, according to our contract, they get health benefits. And they do not want to pay them to have health benefits. I don't know if you know, but our adult ed staff do not have any prep time in their schedules. That means anything they prepare for their classes to teach that is done on their own personal time. They're paid only the hours weekly that they work. Our adult ed teachers, I think one of them came up. She had students on her caseload that were from 18. I think she said to 83. They serve our entire county. And these teachers, as Nancy mentioned, Miss Felicic-Menton, they actually are the ones who provide all of these services and make this program run. So we should be providing more to them because they are the ones who make it work. Thank you. Thank you, Roddy. And is that all of our public comment? Yes, that is all. Thank you. And now bring it back to the board. Questions, comments, discussion? Trustee Villano, Scow? Yes, thank you for that presentation. Cosmetology, I'm just curious, you know, people want to poo-poo that and sometimes think, oh, that's kind of, that ain't too glamorous. But actually, I know hairstyles don't make good money, but how did that program come to fruition and how's that program going? We had a teacher who wanted to do it and came to us with the idea. Actually, he was a friend of the previous assistant director, Todd Livingstone. We sat down and talked and figured out, could we do this? How would it work? We had to get, we had to have state approval to have the facility. So would they accept our design and our square footage? You had to go through a big thing to get that done. We had picked another site in the district office and it wasn't enough square footage. So we went downtown, and I think it's much better there because it's visible. People sometimes come in and say, can I get my haircut? You know, that kind of thing, it's, and the students are just excited. They need to go see. They're excited, they love it. Instruction is in one part where they do the hours and the book work. And then there's the lobby where they do the actual hair cutting and nails and everything there. I was going to ask the board member to have any privileges in getting a little trim, because I can't cut my hair back here ever since the pandemic. I just can't get behind myself, so can I?  And is there like a cooking or a baking thing going on over there? Is that part of our offering? We used to have a cake decorating class. The lady retired, and we haven't found a replacement yet, but she was great. People loved her, and she mainly did it in Spanish, and people have left that her class.  You need a birthday cake? Okay, I'll take care of it for you, that kind of thing. And some of them went to work in bakeries. Do we have any stoves or ovens or cooking facilities in our facilities? No, we do not. We talked about possibly putting one in room six, but we haven't pursued it. Because of the venting and everything else, but maybe, I don't know, someday. Thank you, no further questions. Thank you, Trustee Blanscoe. Anyone else? Trustee D'Sirpa? Thank you. This is one of the most joyous graduations that I go to, or that a trustee can go to at the end of the year. The graduation was amazing last year, and Marilena De La Garza did such an inspiring speech that I was crying actually at the end of it. She's amazing, so thank you for bringing her in to inspire the families. That was beautiful. It was, it was. She, well, we all are interactive someplace, and we meet each other and talk. And I asked her, I said, hey, how about this? She's good, she's very good. It was great, thank you. So I wanted to talk about one of the slides that you didn't actually get to. But is attendance up, the same, or down this year? Well, if you look at the attendance, it shows 19 something on a slide. But then you have one that shows where we are now is 18 something. So by the end of the year, we should probably be about the same. Okay, and is that from year to year? Is that about on par, or is that high year? Well, I would say since the pandemic, we're still building. But to have close to 2,000 students, it's great. And we can't, if we can find more teachers and hire more teachers, we will have more classes. That's great, thank you, Nancy. And thanks for all your work. We're all in it together. All these years, yeah. Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Trustee Dusserpe, anyone else? Welcome. The trades. Trustee Dr. Holm? I just want to express my thanks. It's the courses that you offer are a great service to the community. And it's like what Trustee Dusserpe said, the graduation was great. And it's like, cosmetology students, they had the best colored hair at the graduation. And their joy in it was so palpable. But it's like, but that visible connection, that sense of pride and look at what I did. It really is heartwarming to see that graduation because it's the cosmetology students, but then it's the pre-apprenticeship and then it's high school diploma. I mean, and they have the families, look what I did.   Yeah, it's great. It's great. Yes, thank you, Trustee Dr. Holman. Thank you, Vice President Soto, also for your gratitude to Dr. Bill Sitch and her work she's doing. So I'll just come in and with the same, you know, and thank you for what you've also, you know, I've said in the past for what you've done to take on with Santa Cruz because you are the largest adult Ed now in the county, right? Right. Probably the largest, one of the largest in the region probably. Yeah. Yeah. And so, and that's a lot of work to take that on county-wide. So appreciative of your willingness to support the county as a whole and not let that go. And thanks for your very thorough presentation and then I will see you next week at advisory. All right. Great. Adult Education Advisory Committee and have a good night. All right. Thank you so much. And you know, we can't do it without the board either. Your support means a lot to us. And when the teachers are talking, it's like, but we have the board, no matter what, we have the board behind us. And that makes a big difference. You are very important in your roles. So don't ever forget that. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Vessels. We will move to Consent Agenda. These Consent items are routine items coming before the board. Are there any public speakers to the Consent Agenda? We have none. Okay. Any items that any board member would wish to defer? See none. Then can I have a motion? I'll make a motion to approve our Consent Agenda. Perfect. I'll second. Perfect. So I have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstaining? Okay. Motion carries 5-0-2. Thank you. And we'll scratch that. Yeah. Move to item 14.1, action on report on closed session. Are there any items to report from closed session? Yes, we have two. So as of tonight's meeting, February 14th, 2024, we have motion number one, which is closed session item 2.3. So I move to approve the certified personnel report as presented by district administration on February 14th with 10 and 16 additional action items. President Acosta, if I could ask for a second. I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Motion carries 5-0-2. And motion number two, in connection with closed session item 2.4. So I move to approve the classified personnel report as presented by district administration on February 14th, 2024, Valentine's Day with 15 and 17 additional action items. President Acosta, if I could ask for a second. I'll second. All those in favor? Just clarification. 2.3, correct? I think I said 2.4 is what the, I have 2.3 and 2.4 on my list here. Oh, yeah. So sorry. So the first one would have actually been 2.2 just for clarification and the second is 2.3. Sorry. That's not your error. As presented. It was it. 2.2, 2.3. My mistake. Sorry. Okay. Brian. Thank you. So first, second, all those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, the motion will carry 5-0-2 announcement about our upcoming board meetings. Our next meetings are a special board meeting on February 17th at 8 a.m. and a special board meeting on February, February 17th at 8 a.m. and a special board meeting on February 18th at 9 a.m. to interview superintendent applicants. Our next regular board meeting is on February 28th, 2024, followed by a special board meeting on February 29th regarding declining enrollment. I will now adjourn this meeting at 11 o'clock p.m. Thank you all for spending your Valentine's Day with us.


By focusing on attacking the left instead of the Tories, Keir Starmer has royally pissed off Labour members. Now, New Polling suggests the public aren't impressed with the Labour leader, Eva. UGov's latest voting intention poll suggests the Conservatives have a 13-point lead over Labour. The Conservatives are on 45%, which is plus four from last February or late February, and Labour are on 32%, which is down four from that same date. As you can see from the UGov Westminster voting intention tracker, this is the biggest gap that we have seen since last May, of course, before Dominic Cummings' infamous trip to Barnard Castle. Now, this surge in support for the Tories, of course, we can't ignore the fact that the vaccine rollout is going well. It probably has a lot to do with that. At the same time, Keir Starmer has been having lots of personal problems of his own making over the past few weeks, whether that be indecision, a lack of substance, or the general impression of being driven by opportunism. And all of these problems were foreseen by one of my guests tonight, who in December labelled Keir Starmer a wet wipe. It was a story that apparently got under his skin. Moja, do you think this poor polling is not necessarily caused by the article you've written, but do you think that the wider public are like you, recognising that Keir Starmer is a little bit of a wet wipe? I mean, it's quite clear that for people who were paying attention earlier, such as who, unfortunately, it's our jobs to pay attention, that this man was someone who perhaps didn't know what he stood for himself. And I think that's the problem with Keir Starmer. He's someone who has only been a politician since 2015, so he's vastly inexperienced at this job, and it's amazing that he was even elected Labour leader. And I think it's because his background as a lawyer, you know, as a QC, he's a Knight of the Row, gave him this sheen of almost being more prepared for the gig than he was. People didn't really know he came from, he was a new face almost. And he spoke, I wouldn't say a good game, because he didn't do anything to really convince the existing Labour members. But there wasn't, there wasn't so much as, I wouldn't say there was stiff competition. So he spoke again during his campaign to be Labour leader, and immediately set about not doing anything he promised, which never goes well. Another U Gov poll recently, I think on 15th February, found that 41% of people now think that Starmer is doing badly as Labour leader, while 35% think he's doing well. This is the first time that those two lines have crossed. So for the first time now, his ratings are overall negative compared to before it was overall positive. And it's only going to get worse, the more the vaccine rolls out. And his Labour front bench, the problem is a front bench under Starmer shows a lack of vision that is not distinct from the Tories in any way. They'd merely sort of exist to not oppose in a strange way. For example, one million more people are now going to be paying income tax by 2026. And the Labour front batch has supported that in principle, while simultaneously opposing an immediate rise in corporation tax, just doesn't make any sense. Like it just does not make any sense. His approach seems to be there's many beige ideas at the wall and hope that something sticks. And the problem is it's both contradictory. So you don't get any trust there. And it also lies a lack of vision. So no one knows what your bigger aim is. And at this point, there was such an open goal to set out a vision. You know, post pandemic, we could have had this really big ambitious plan from Labour. That was the perfect time. It's like, we want to go into the war metaphors, it's the 1945 classic rebuild a new state. But Labour didn't do that. They just sort of been like now's not the time for policy. But also we have policies, but we're just not saying them. And yeah, just gradually rise corporation tax, don't take the big businesses.  They're like Arsenal at the moment, which is Kirstalmer's team. So yeah, all in all, really poor. I think that he won't be Labour leader by the next election. I think he might not even be Labour leader by the end of the year if the 6th of May goes poorly. Maybe he is taking inspiration from Arsenal. I should say, Labour are drawing upon the 1945 analogy, but they're just doing it in speeches which no one reads because they don't contain anything else that's interesting. So it's all very well, as Kirstalmer is saying. We need like in 1945 to build a future that's completely unlike the past, but then you have to fill that out and you fill that out with the decisions you make and the decisions he's making is to still remain on the fence. I do want to show a clip of him this morning though, because I mean, it seems to me that he's been waiting for the Tories to make mistakes, which he thinks are completely uncontroversial for him to oppose. And it seems to be that this 1% pay rise for healthcare workers is something that he has recognised as something which is a win-win to oppose. It is uncontroversial enough to stand up for a higher pay rise for healthcare workers, even though he won't say exactly how high it should be. In any case, let's take a look at him speaking about this issue to the BBC this morning. Public sector workers should get a pay rise. They shouldn't have their pay frozen. They have been keeping our country going throughout this pandemic because he's absolutely wrong to freeze their pay at this time. At the same time, by the way, that's giving Dominic Cummings a massive pay rise, 40% pay rise. So all public sector workers should get an above inflation pay rise. That's your position. We have repeatedly said that the freeze on public sector pay is wrong. We've challenged the government on it. I challenged them in the budget response on it and we'll continue to challenge them on it. So you want pay rises for everyone? You don't want any tax rises. Is that financially responsible? We have to have a plan for the future to rebuild the foundations of our country. You don't do that by freezing the pay of those on the front line throughout this pandemic, public sector workers, whilst at the same time giving people like Dominic Cummings a pay rise. That is the wrong priorities. But is your position financially responsible?  That is wrong in principle. But, Sakir, obviously, the country has built up a huge amount of debt because of coronavirus. So just if you could address that question, if you're saying pay rises for all public sector workers, no tax rises, is that responsible? What I'm saying is the what we need now is for a recovery as swiftly as possible. And you don't build that recovery by cutting expenditure and by putting up taxes. That is the wrong thing to do. Now those interviews often look a bit awkward because basically both the interviewer and the interviewee is trying to get a 10 second clip for the news bulletins at 12 or 6 or 10. So that's why it can seem very repetitive. It's not necessarily a bad thing that he seems so repetitive in that answer. James, I want to bring you in for the content on this one, for the substance of what Keir Starmer was saying. Because you've been writing persuasively that Labour can't pretend they're fighting the Tories of the 2010 era because this isn't a Tory government which is as interested in austerity as George Osborne was. But at the same time, when it comes to public services, kind of are they and can Keir Starmer legitimately fall back on that sort of safe ground for Labour to just say, look, what we do differently is we treat public sector workers and we fund public services better than the Tories are doing. They can do that and they should do that, but I'll take that as a sort of bare minimum of what you might expect Labour to be doing. This is the minimum thing you're doing and you're basically opposing the government, which is what you do if you're the opposition. And then at no point you land out how this is going to look in the future. What the Tories have realised, and I reckon they've got wind of this at least in public for about September last year, is that coronavirus isn't going away, not any time soon. And the impact of this is therefore very, very long term and it changes what you can do on the economy. Suddenly every question on the economy goes from being like, how do we manage the economy better? Oh, well, let's fine tune this tax or don't do that tax or whatever. The kind of stuff, frankly, that Labour wants to talk about a little bit too much right now, and instead, they're starting to lay out a kind of political reshaping of the economy, because that's what the crisis has opened up. Like any big crisis after 2008, there was this opportunity to reshape the economy politically. And what we got was austerity, it's political reshaping of the economy. So no longer just managerial stuff, you're kind of trying to alter what the economy itself looks like one way or the other, austerity meant shrinking the state over time. So they have this opportunity, the Tories have grasped that. That's why they're doing things like this corporation tax increase, why they're throwing around lots and lots of other pots of money and doing different things all over the place. They got that sense of it. It's building on what they were moving towards anyway, but they've got that sense of it. Labour don't have that. So they have this basic fallback position saying, we should pay more to NHS staff and we should absolutely do that. The crunch will come, by the way, if Labour have to support a strike and I would like to see them do that, but let's see where they go to on this. So that's the minimum of what to do. What they need to be doing is getting to the politics of what does rebuilding out of coronavirus or with this endemic coronavirus that we're going to have actually look like. What are the jobs that people are going to be doing? Why, for instance, they're not talking about building a national care service and overhauling how we do care work in this country? It's massively underpaid. It's been hit polingly in the last year. It's been squeezed for years in funding. They could really go out and lead on this and they're not. It's just this continual on the back foot responding to what the Tories are doing, not trying to shape the kind of arguments we could be having about all of this.