 You're tuned into the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm Autumn Lab-A-Reno and today is Tuesday, July 21st and we're here live at noon on Tuesdays most weeks. We are sharing local news and resources focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. My guest today is Joe Denenzio, who is the president of the Davis Joint Unified School District Board of Education, among many other roles and we'll hear from him in just a minute. This is a quick update and I actually had to update these statistics on the fly because they went up so much since yesterday's report. Yolo County remains on the state's monitoring list where we've been since July 8th for two reasons, a continued surge in coronavirus cases and a decrease in available ICU beds. In the last three weeks, the county has reported 641 cases of COVID-19, along with 34 hospitalizations and 10 deaths. Woodland continues to report the most cases in hospitalization in the county, accounting for nearly half of total cases as well as total hospitalizations since the pandemic began. Winters has had just under 60 cases and West Sacramento just over 300 and there's about another 100 in the unincorporated areas of the county. This is holding strong at about 115 cases and four hospitalizations since March, according to the county's COVID-19 dashboards. We are going to move right into my interview with Joe. He was kind enough to do this from his family vacation so we pre-recorded the interview yesterday. It may sound a little bit different than my live voice here in the studio and here we go. My guest today is arguably one of the busiest men in a town full of busy people. Joe Denizio is a senior executive with three decades of creative, technical, and business leadership creating new ventures and building successful organizations. He has extensive experience as a management consulting practice leader, a Fortune 100 senior operating executive, an entrepreneur, and an educator. He's the executive director of the UC Davis Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and also serves as an assistant adjunct professor at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. Additionally, and I had to fact check with this him because he is doing both of these, he is board chair for the Davis Chamber of Commerce until the end of the year and he recently became the president of the Davis Joint Unified Board of Trustees. Welcome to you, Joe. Thank you so much, I'm glad to be here. Yes, I know you're on your family vacation right now so I really appreciate you making time for this interview. You and I first met, I think it was back when you ran for the Davis School Board in 2018 and we are now mostly through July 2020 and it's pretty inconceivable how much has changed in those two years. When I interviewed Senator Bill Dodd a few months back he said he thought the hardest job in the next five years would be that of school board member and that's because of the difficult decisions to be made and the more even more difficult fiscal fallout from the pandemic. How about we start with your thoughts on what you've signed up for here. You didn't expect this, nobody could have, right? Sure, glad you start with the easy questions on them. Yeah, I think Senator Dodd is right and you know I ran as did many of my colleagues with this notion that there's nothing more important for the current generation than to ensure the excellent education of the next generation and that means everyone, all children from all walks of life. And I think historically our country, our state and even our community have struggled with providing adequate resources and focus to do that. And so I think if you tap on just about any school board member in the state of California or all around the country that's going to be their primary motivation and it's a huge challenge. We want more things than we can afford often and I think we sometimes forget the incredible importance of education to provide students the opportunity to identify their path forward, how they can have a valuable role in society and you know, trust me for an end of this and I joke about this at the board, but I'm not joking about it and find a way to happiness, right? We want, you know, help people find a path to happiness to feel fulfilled and you know to have a purpose in life and it is a huge challenge and we were benefited, you know, in the last several years from a relatively strong economy and a full ultimate funding of Proposition 98, but I would argue that even that was an adequate funding for what we need to do for our students in California. So Senator Dodd has it absolutely right. Although I would argue his job isn't exactly easy either. Not a cake walk either, right? All right, let's walk through the past few months with regard to the school district. First, you know, we had the pandemic, everything started in March, everything shut down and then we had the launch of distance learning within GDUSD in mid-April and everyone, you know, my read of that was everyone was just kind of focused on getting the kids through the end of the year, getting the teachers through the end of the year, kind of seat of the pants. What would you say the biggest lesson from the early months of the pandemic was relative to our schools? Well, that's a good question. I think, you know, and this can be very personal if you talk to different trustees, you might get a different answer and talk to the superintendent, certainly, or the teachers or families. So I'll give you my perspective as both a, you know, a trustee and as a parent of, you know, two children in the school district, you know, as you may recall, it happened very fast. We went from, you know, is this really a huge issue to we have to close the schools in a relatively short period of time. You know, March 13th when we did close them, we closed them for a month through spring break, you know, with the, I guess you can use the word hope that things would improve. You know, and obviously that, you know, didn't happen and we ended up having to, you know, to keep the physical schools closed for the rest of the year. And I think your characterization is right. I think that, you know, all school districts work hard to figure out what do we do in the remaining time that we have in the school year to fulfill our educational mission, obviously maintain health and safety and do it in a way that, you know, maximizes the resources we have access to. But I think it's a reasonable statement to say that was, you know, was managing the best you could in a very, very difficult situation. As we look toward the fall on the superintendent's constant contact message and, you know, what we expect to hear this coming Thursday is around feedback we've gotten from the community through three surveys through Davis is great. We get no shortage of emails and we appreciate it. We get a lot of feedback, good suggestions, good ideas. And I'm not, I mean, it's great. I, we read them all and I appreciate them all. And I think we've got a pretty good sense. I wouldn't say that, you know, people are unanimous in their views on things, nor would you expect them to be. But, you know, it's clear that we need increased live instruction. We need more social and emotional support. We need to think very carefully about our students that are furthest from opportunity or have special needs and how do we serve them? How do we do a better job of student engagement? How we manage grading systems? I know that created some challenge for folks and how that happened. How we manage attendance, right? I mean, virtual attendance and things that you don't really think about in a physical school. And then, you know, how we leverage technology to ensure that everybody has equitable access to all the resources that we're providing. And I think we did a pretty good job of doing that in the months, you know, after we had to close the schools, but we can do better, right? And the school district, starting with the superintendent has committed to doing that. Yeah, and that commitment is a great place to start. And as you said, there are equity issues for students who have IEPs, for example, or those who have learning challenges or those who have access to technology challenges. And so I can only guess that that is going to be an ongoing body of work to address all of that. Absolutely. And equity has, we have to start with equity, right? We want to focus on health and safety. There's no question about that. We have to focus on academic achievement, but we have to deliver equity. We have to deliver equitable opportunities for all of our students. And just because it's hard doesn't give us a pass. And I do think that special education and, you know, parents with special education students have provided a lot of input and feedback to us, you know, students that have challenges with access to technology who are English learners. I mean, these are all populations that we need to focus on to make sure that what we're delivering is meeting their needs. And so the plan we'll see on Thursday, I expect we'll begin to address that. But your point, or at least the one that I inferred from it is this is hard, right? And so we have to continue to think about what's the best thing we can do right now? How do we listen and how do we get better, right? I mean, I think that we teach our kids to embrace a growth mindset. You know, one of my personal heroes is, you know, Professor Carl Dreck from Stanford. And, you know, and we embrace that for our kids, right? You say, you know, it isn't that you don't know how to do it, it's that you haven't learned how to do it yet. And so that's what we have to say. We may not have perfected it, so we have to keep getting better. We can't be satisfied with where we are. We also can't get, you know, the flummoxed by things that are challenging. I just, I promised you not to filibust, but just one quick stir from, you know, my youth. I had my grandfather, my dad's side, was, you know, was an immigrant and he came here and, you know, he made a life for himself and his family and he talked about, you know, when I was, the thing, the reason I bring it up is I just realized the age I am today is the age that I first remember my grandfather. And, you know, his exhortation to me as I was growing up as I was a student was, you know, you do your best every day and everything you can do, right? And before you go to bed at night, you'll look at what worked, what didn't work, and you get up the next morning to say, how am I going to do even better today, right? And I think that we have to have that attitude. We can't be satisfied with, well, we met the minimum requirement and we got it done. We have to keep thinking about how we can continue to get better. Yeah, you don't strike me as a meet the minimum requirement kind of guy. So, all right. With all the caffeine, Artemis, all the caffeine. Yeah, to our listeners, Joe did let me know he has a big thermos of coffee, so he's good to go for this interview. All right, so we talked a little bit about, you know, the chaos that marked March and April and I do want to talk about Thursday's upcoming meeting. We'll get to that. But then we had May, when then school board president Cindy Pickett announced her departure for a job at DePaul University in Chicago. And that is the reason that you have stepped up ahead of the plan schedule into the president's seat. And did you want to say something? Okay. No, I'm sorry. That's okay. And so, you know, you stepped into Phil, Phil some shoes there and it also set up a vacancy and on July 2nd, the school board appointed Joy Kleinberg to fill the rest of the term, which expires in December, 2022. I can't even think that far ahead. So what were some of your reasons for supporting trustee Kleinberg's appointment? Well, let me take a step back if I could first on him and just make sure that we're clear on how that process went, because I think it's important. Sure. You know, President Pickett was an amazing trustee. She's an incredible job as president. You know, I would argue we were a very high functioning board. And of course, it's fantastic to get this great opportunity into Paul, but obviously that's a huge challenge for a board to fill someone, you know, like, you know, to replace trustee Pickett. It was a huge challenge. And you may know at the beginning of June and I think it was our June 4th meeting, we had a debate about how to do that, right? And it was a pretty vigorous debate, you know, because on the one hand, you want to keep, you know, you want to keep a full board. We knew we were going to have challenging decisions ahead, not just about COVID-19, but maybe we'll take a couple of minutes at some point in this and talk about the looming budget crisis, right? Because we've deferred that, but if we haven't eliminated it, I would argue we've made it worse from a budgetary standpoint. And so, you know, looking at that, one argument is you need somebody, you need a full team of five. And the other is, you know, this is more than two years of a term and, you know, this is an elected position and it should go, you know, to election. So we went back and forth on that and I, you know, anybody who's interested should go take a look at that, you know, the video from that conversation because I thought it was a good example of our board grappling with the challenging thing in public. We made the decision to go the appointment route and then you may know, we don't have to go into all the details, but ultimately open application process. We had 15 applicants, you know, very clear and transparent, you know, what it would take. Each submitted a questionnaire, an application with answering questions. Went through a first round on June 25th. We were all 15, had the opportunity to present sort of a three minute synopsis of why they wanted to be on the board. We had a vote that reduced that to six, one subsequently, you know, dropped out. And as you mentioned on July 2nd, we had five, you know, great candidates in front of us who were, you know, were vying for the, for the vacancy. And I think in that process, one of the critical elements on them was we made the decision that we wanted to have community feedback on what sort of questions they wanted answered that were important to the community. And so we solicited them. We got a whole bunch. President Pickett before she left the board worked with me and we reduced those down to the five questions that those who watched that proceedings saw. And then subsequently, after our first round of voting, it was down to two candidates. There were three additional questions posed by the trustees. So it was a vigorous and thoughtful process and it ended up where it ended up. And I think that, you know, I feel comfortable that we, you know, not only followed the letter of the law but the spirit of the law. And now, you know, we're in a place where there are some citizens that are unhappy either with the process or the outcome. And it is their right to, you know, to seek a petition to move it from an appointment to a special election. And that's how our process works. And if, you know, you know, if that's what enough people want to have happened then that's what should happen. And that's how government's supposed to work. You know, we live by the rule of the law. So, you know, my view is obviously, you know, it's now with the superintendent, Yolo County superintendent education and if the petition is verified, then, you know, that they will work with the Yolo County elections to figure out what that process is like. But that's how it's supposed to work. And so I think that the big lesson for me taking away from this is, you know, is honestly, our government works when we play by the rules and we do the right thing. It ultimately works. And, you know, citizens that are, you know, unhappy with a particular outcome have a method to, you know, to avail themselves to redress that. So, that's sort of my feedback on that Autumn. And that, you know, may be adding to what's already going to be, arguably a kind of a complicated election this fall as both the city and the school district move to district elections. And that's a whole other conversation. But it's going to be a good call. I will say just, yeah, I'll say just two things about that briefly for those listening because both the city and the school district will be offering a tool online so you can figure out which area you're in and they're not the same, the city boundaries and the school district boundaries aren't geographically the same. And so you'll be able to figure out is there a trustee running in my area because both area two and area five from the school district, you know, have elections, you know, in addition to this potential special election. So it's important for citizens in those areas to know there'll be candidates running in their areas. And in addition, it's, you know, we as citizens are going to need to pay attention to maybe non-traditional means, right? It's unlikely you're going to be able to do campaigning in farmer's market. I don't know, you can do door to door, right? So we're going to have to be listening in different ways to hear from candidates so that we can make an informed decision. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, we'll, Davis Media Access will step up and help with local election stuff as always so you can count on us for that. Let's- That was my plug. Thank you for taking it. Yeah. Let's zoom ahead and look at the fall. Last Friday, July 17th, Superintendent John Bows presented a staff develop plan to open the new 2020-21 school year with distance learning rather than standard classroom instruction. And since then the developments have been because Yolo County is on the watch list, we couldn't really open anyway. So the Board of Education reviewed the plan last week but didn't take action. Will the Board vote to approve this Thursday special meeting, which by the way is scheduled for 11.30 a.m.? Yes, it is at 11.30 a.m. and it will be on the normal channel 17, you know, available on of course, djuust.tv. So to be clear, you know, what we heard this past week was a recommendation, right? It wasn't a detailed plan. It was a recommendation or framework or for how we're going to open, right? And I think this conversation is going to go in phases. And so what we expect to hear on Thursday, and you know, I urge the community, if they can, to please participate. If you can't be part of it, then, you know, obviously we archive the video and please watch it. Is we're going to talk about how we address health and safety and academic programming, you know, parent choice, how we manage budget issues, you know, what special considerations we're looking to take to address, you know, families that have students, you know, that have greatest need. And so there are a lot of moving parts. And so what we've seen so far is a framework, not a plan and what we get on Thursday, I would expect will be, you know, will be the plan, will be a more details, but it's still going to take time to emerge. I think you know this item, but there have been seven action teams, more than 200 staff members, teachers, administrators, paraeducators working over the summer to address, you know, how we open. In addition to being tremendous parent involvement, not just in these advisories, you know, but also through communication, through the email address, which everybody can use, fall 2020 at djwisd.net. We read every single one of those. And of course you can always email the board at b as in boy, boe at djwisd.net. And so I think this is, you know, we're living in, my two least favorite words have become, we're living in a fluid situation, right? That's the reality, you know? And in unprecedented times, you know, I talked to a colleague back east who's a historian about K-12 education. And I said, how, in genealogy, has there ever been a situation like this where schools across the country were closed, you know, for any kind of period of time? And of course, regionally, there might be a national, national disaster or something that closes a region for a short period of time, but we are literally living in unprecedented times when it comes to public education. And I think sometimes you forget about that. No one's dealt with this before, even if you go back to the pandemic and the teens, it was a different situation. And so there are a lot of lessons we can learn from other countries who went through, unfortunately, World War II. And, you know, there's things we can learn from all different places. But the reality is we've never lived through something like this before. So to expect that in a few short months, we're gonna come up with the answer to every question is overly ambitious. What we do is, you know, back to my argument, we do the best we can right now. And tomorrow, we do even better. And we listen and we learn and we continue to evolve. And we have the aspiration, and last thing I'll say, I know I promised I had to pull a buster, but I'm passionate about this. So last thing I'll say is, of course we have to deliver health and safety. We have to focus on equity, we have to focus on academic achievement. But we also have to be somewhat aspirational, right? I mean, we as a society don't just exist, right? We wanna always get better. We always wanna serve people better. We wanna give more people better opportunities. So we have to keep some spark of aspiration in what we do. We have to. All right, I like that. We're down to our last couple of minutes. I told you this would go quickly. And I wanted to just kind of work in this last thing about the Davis Chamber of Commerce Board, switching. Sure, of course. So during the pandemic, you've been running a support and information page on Facebook. It's called the Davis Chamber of Local Business and Community Support COVID-19 Response. I don't know if it's you, but I see a lot of posts from you on it. And I wanna thank you for that. It's been very helpful during the course of doing this radio show. So the chamber has done a couple of surveys during this time. What were some of the key takeaways and what are the business communities hopes and fears right now? So that's a great question. And a very complicated question. Right. I will simplify it. Yeah, I will simplify it and not do it justice. So we're just gonna agree this is not gonna achieve, you know, Nirvana. I'd say two things, that, you know, the challenge and the opportunity, okay? The challenge is our local businesses, which are a key part of the fabric of our community are suffering big time, some more than others, but most of them are suffering, right? Businesses down 75% of our businesses say that their revenue is either somewhat or significantly curtailed. You know, there, this latest survey showed that over the past month, you know, most people, most business owners think the environment's getting worse, not better. Why is that important? Because if you go back two months, we were kind of optimistic. We got missing, maybe under control. And hopefully it was gonna get better by the summer, right? It hasn't, it's gotten worse. And look, we're all human, right? We've got stamina, we've got energy, we've got motivation, but that's a body blow, right? And then, you know, the last piece of this is, you know, uncertainty. Anybody who's a business owner knows uncertainty is, you know, the biggest enemy, right? If I know there's something coming, I've got to put money away for, you know, having to redo a shop or whatever. But when it's uncertainty, I don't know when this is gonna change. It's really difficult to plan. How many employees do I need to have to put off capital expenditures? So that's a challenging part. I'll tell you what the optimistic part is. Our community has done an amazing job of honoring and patronizing local businesses and making it a priority to do takeout from a restaurant. If you're gonna buy a book, you know, buy from the local bookstore or a magazine or whatever, we've done great, you know, my exhortation, now I'm putting on my, you know, salesman hat for just a moment, I don't mean to keep doing that. These businesses are your neighbors, they're your friends, and they're part of our community. And we want them to be here now and through this. And when we come out at the end of this, I genuinely believe, and you know, you will certainly have grounds to call me an optimist, if not polyamish, we're gonna come out of this stronger as a community. We're gonna have lives through the fire of this and we're gonna be stronger. We're gonna love each other more. We're gonna take care of each other more. We're gonna recognize the special needs and challenges of each other more. And we'll learn more about kindness, compassion, and empathy, which I think are the three things that are most important in how we live our lives. And so all that's gonna come out of this. But I will say it's a tough time right now for, you know, for local businesses. And one plug I do wanna put in for the chamber and make it clear, we decided early on that all of our services are available to everyone. So we've held, I think, eight or nine workshops, you know, with Brian Vaughn from Public County, from labor lawyers, from, you know, folks giving expert advice on how to manage your operation to comply with state and local regulations. We're doing a workshop with Mayor Partida, Monday the 27th. You know, these are open to everyone, right? And they're great conversations you can learn and ask questions. And then, you know, if there's things that we have to follow up on with legal experts, we connect you with them. We've had several with financial experts who talk about, you know, how do you apply for fiscal relief or governmental money? And then of course we are, you know, we're working pretty hand in glove with both our city and our county elected officials to identify ways that we can provide economic benefits and relief to our businesses. We have to keep doing that. It can't be like, okay, time for a pause, right? This is gonna go on for a while. We're not, you know, there's no view. I've heard credible view. I've heard that, you know, the current economic environment is gonna change anytime soon. So we have to keep this up. We can't say, hey, we did it for three months. Yeah, we gotta stay focused. Right. All right. Well, your optimism is a great note on which to end. And we are sadly out of time. I've enjoyed speaking with you. And again, I really appreciate both your service and making the time to, you know, to share some of your insights, even when you're on vacation. So it's a pleasure. We're always glad to do it on him. Thank you for the time. I'd like to get back to your family. Thank you so much. Bye-bye. Cheers. All right, my thanks again to Joe Denizio for taking time out yesterday to record that. I did really enjoy speaking with him and getting some insight into some of the things our school district is dealing with right now. And we have just a minute. I wanted to mention that the state run OptumServe testing site will be moved to Woodland for four weeks from July 28th to August 22nd. If you recall earlier, I said that Woodland continues to have the highest rate of cases infection and hospitalizations in Yolo County. The new site will be in building 400 at the Woodland Community College, which is located at 2,300 East Gibson Road. This is not an antibody testing site. It is to test to see if people have the COVID-19 virus. Two ways to get in touch. 888-634-1123 or by completing an online application at lhi.care slash COVID testing. And it's available for any age. It's available whether you have insurance or not at no cost to you. And it's also the county wants you to know it's available to anyone, regardless of documentation status. And that's an important note. All right, that is a wrap for this week. I'm actually taking some time off next week and we'll re-air one of my recent interviews. I wanna thank you as always for tuning in from the KDRT Studio. I'm Autumn Lab-A-Renault and this has been the COVID-19 Community Report.