 I will now call our meeting for Wednesday, January 24th, to order. Welcome to the PBUSD board meeting. We have translation if you need in Spanish. If you need that support, please see Eurena Lopez. Bienvenidos a la reunión de la cuenta directiva de PBUSD. Sponemos de tradición en español si necesita ese apoyo consulte de Eurena López. Okay, if someone would like to speak to an item on the agenda, please have your speaker card completed prior to that agenda item being brought up. And please hand that to Eva Renteria. And each speaker will have two minutes to an item. I also see that we have a lot of new faces here tonight. So I just want to take a moment to establish some ground rules. There may be differences of opinion, sometimes strong differences. Please give those speaking the same respect that you would like to receive when you are speaking. This will allow everyone to be heard and the board to conduct its necessary business. So I will now move to item 3.2, the Pledge of Allegiance. And I will ask Vice President Soto to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance to the pride of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you, Trustee Soto. Now we will now move to item 3.3, our Superintendent Comments and Superintendent Murray Sheckman. We'll start with our few comments. Thank you, President Acosta, and I appreciate the presence of everybody in this room tonight. This is democracy in the best form. I have two brief announcements. One is related to phishing, P-H-I-S-H-I-N-G. Not the standard kind of phishing that people get sucked into with email opening up the wrong email. A small number of teachers yesterday received a text from me saying, these go out and buy some Apple cards, gift cards, because I'm going to organize an event at your school and we're going to celebrate. So I spoke to Mr. Weiser who gives me the good info that people are using our website to get the info. So they get my name, because the superintendent's name is going to be on every website. And if teachers for whatever reason are putting their own phone number on, that phone number has then been used to get the text. So four or five teachers wrote me. They were smart enough to know that I wasn't asking for Apple gift cards. But one of them did wonder and thought, hey, is there a celebration at my school later? She was kidding. So just I've written all of them back and said, please, if your phone number's there, take it down, use Google phone to communicate with parents. And my second announcement is I'm following on Dr. Ferris Abaz's lead. We have a number of resolutions over the course of the year and we're going to honor counselors as one of our resolutions tonight. But one group that isn't being recognized in the county office of Ed was the superintendent recognized is the people who run for office and serve. And sometimes they get beat up, sometimes they don't, sometimes they're treated with love. But they ran for office, they're representing the best that we have at the local level in democracy. And I want to thank our board and I really appreciate it that you ran for office. You're sitting here almost every other week, we fill the room. Sometimes it's a little tough, but thanks for your service. Really appreciate it. Thank you, thank you. A little round of applause for our board and my final comment. I'm not looking for a pay raise, I'm just an interim. So I didn't need to butter them up. I really want to honor democracy and that's what this is about. Thank you. Thank you, Superintendent Shekman. And moving on to item 3.4, governing board comments, reports on standing committees. This is the opportunity for each board member to take a few minutes. And we will start at the end with our student trustee. Thank you President Acosta. Good evening everyone. I just wanted to say it's really exciting and good to, I'm really excited to start this new year. I hope everyone had a very restful winter break and I hope all the students and the years strong. Thank you. And we'll just move down the line, trustee Polano-Scow. Thank you President Acosta, welcome Happy New Year everybody and to everybody watching. I want to start by thanking our IT team who helped me get back into my email today very swiftly. I called the general hotline, boom, got a phone call, so thank you. Mr. Wise and your team for being so excellent. I'm getting a lot of questions about the superintendent, who then, how that's going, what a surprise. We have a special board meeting next week to talk, look at applicants as my understanding and maybe fine tune our process. It is my opinion that this is a huge decision that's going to affect our district. And I think it would behoove us to have some finalists meet with some of our key staff members. I'm just going to say that publicly, you all know it, the world watching, that is my opinion and I hope we can accommodate that to make sure we get this decision right. I'm also excited about Superintendent Schechtman leading us in a declining enrollment slash looking at the budget. Can we make positive changes in order to ensure that we pay our staff competitive and living wages? That has been a priority for me and I think it has been delivered by this board in the past year. But we need to keep doing that. So thank you Superintendent Schechtman for your leadership and to our board. That's it. Thank you. Great. Thank you. So I attended our Paaro Valley Education Foundation and Santa Cruz Arts Council meetings for our Paaro Valley Education Foundation. I just want to let folks know that we'll be holding a fundraising dinner event at Heliskos on April 18th at five o'clock. Great food, great auction items and it's a chance to support scholarships, grants and initiatives like our CTE tiny homes projects. For Arts Council there will be a number of family arts nights for the month of March. So keep an eye out for the exact dates and locations. They are great events, great family events. Thank you for coming tonight and happy New Year to everybody. I attended the D-Lock meeting last night which was always well attended by parent representatives from each of our schools in our district and it's frankly the best meeting the district runs. It's such a beautiful meeting. There's always children there and dinner and people are most important stakeholders giving feedback to the district and it's just nice to see the governance in the room. So thank you to those of you who were there and I hope we have a good board meeting tonight. Thank you. Good evening everybody. Welcome to 2024. I just wanted to quickly say thank you for everybody's here tonight. Thank you to our board. We have some challenges coming ahead in 2024. But I'm proud and honored to be here to sit here to represent the city of Watsonville and I would just like to say thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening everyone. Thank you again for being here to keep things going quickly. I just want to say happy New Year and I hope we have a great second semester. Thank you everybody. Thank you for being here. It's my first meeting in this seat as VP of the board. I'm honored to serve in that position. Excuse me. So just a couple reminders or a reminder the CCS wrestling championships will be taking place this weekend at Watsonville High so come out and support. I will be there myself assisting with whatever I can and just an update. I know I've mentioned ELCS offering some scholarships through our local lodge there and as of now we have eight applicants so thank you for reaching out and applying. Everybody have a good night and a happy New Year. Thank you. And I'll say welcome again. I'm glad to see everyone here. Happy New Year to everyone. In spite of having some vacation time off we've had a lot going on. In the district we've had our Intergovernmental Relations Committee meeting with our fellow folks over at the city of Watsonville. In December where we discussed many important things and not limited and including also issues and concerns around flooding, which is a very important matter which is going on with rain to consider. And trustee Soto and I, both our areas were the most heavily impacted last year. So having that collaborative relationship and being on the forefront of things and being prepared and ready is really important. We also had a gender setting committee which we had determined tonight we needed to start a little bit late. And we're sorry we were still late at a closed session but we had a very packed closed session meeting. And thank you again Superintendent Sheckman for your comments and recognition of myself and our colleagues on the board and very appreciative of that. Also really quickly I just also wanted to note that this weekend my husband and I had the pleasure of attending the Santa Cruz Symphony right here in Watsonville at our very own mellow center. Where it was just an absolute pleasure and an outstanding performance and including our own trustee Bolano Scow was up there performing as well. But it was very enjoyable experience to attend and to have it at our mellow center and to hear a lot of positive feedback about the acoustics in that building and what we're doing and looking forward to continuing that conversations of what we're doing there. And I got the pleasure to interact also with one of our very own Watsonville high school students who was in attendance. And it was his very first time attending the symphony and he was an absolute awe and amazement. So looking forward to continuing those conversations with those folks. So moving on to item 3.5. Do we have any high school student board representatives here this evening? To present or any that are videoing in? No, not tonight. Okay, so we will move on from that. And the next item is 4.1, the approval of the agenda. Can I have a motion to approve the agenda? I move to approve. Second. I have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries 7-0. Next we will move on to item 5.1, approval of the December 6, 2023 board meeting minutes. Can I have a motion? Move to approve. Second. I have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, it passes 7-0. Approval of the December 13, 2023 organizational board meeting minutes. Can I have a motion to approve? I move to approve. Second. I have a first and a second. I will call for a vote. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries 7-0. Moving on to 6.1, public comment. So again, this is an opportunity for members of the public to address issues that are not on our agenda for this evening. Please know that through the Brown Act, the board is prohibited from engaging in discussion for non-agendized items, but please do know that we are listening. Do we have any public comments for 6.1? Yes, we do. We have 17 speakers tonight. We'll call you in groups of three. Step up to the podium and use your two minute session. The first three speakers is Mink Brooker, please correct if I mispronounce your name. Gabriel Baraza and Maximiliano Baraza. Thank you all, everyone who's here. I'm grateful to be here again and I want to first say thank you to all of you all who supported Pajaro Valley High School for our first annual Ruby Bridges Back to School last November. It was an unbelievable success and I'm very grateful for all of you who supported us. I have here with me today our president of our Black Student Union at Pajaro Valley High School. Again, I have Mr. Sean Miles who comes from the Santa Cruz County Office of Education to support our Black Student Union meetings and I think everyone knows who Ms. Martha Vega is, a wonderful colleague who has come here to support. I just wanted to share with everyone that a week from tonight, the Martin Luther King Convocation will be held at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium. I've been blessed to be a part of that when I used to teach at Seaside High. And I have to tell you all, when they see high school students there, they call their names out. That's not the only reason that I'd like to go. I'm very happy that we have been offered the invitation to go. We're trying to get some buses and vans because we have a lot of students and a lot of teachers who'd like to attend. But I wanted to announce it tonight. For anyone else, it starts at six o'clock, it's free. The program begins at 6.30 and the speaker will be none other than Chef Bryant Terry. This is the 40th annual Martin Luther King Convocation and Santa Cruz has been doing this for quite some time. Two of Martin Luther King's children were speakers and many of the speakers have been men and women who have actually walked with Dr. King. So, I was happy to be able to come here and share this as my two minutes up yet. I just want Zaynay, our president, to say something. Just say hi. Just say hi. Good afternoon or good evening, everybody. I'm so glad you guys couldn't hear our issues. Okay, that's time's up. Thank you all, everybody. You say? You're good. I want to say good evening, Board of Trustees. My name is Maximiano Barras-Arnandes and I am a student at Pajaro Valley High School. I was displeased to hear about the failure to renew Dr. King Tiango-Cubales contract. I'm sure you know how important it is for teachers to receive the correct training so that they can do their jobs as efficiently and effectively as possible. As a matter of fact, I am very pleased with the curriculum I am receiving from my Ethnic and Literature Studies teacher, Ms. Phantom, at PV. It saddens me that teachers won't be able to get the training necessary to give the students the tools they need to succeed in society. Sure, it's possible to go with a different consulting firm as President Acosta wants to do, but can you guarantee we will receive the same level of expertise that Dr. King Tiango-Cubales brings? Let me illustrate the most slightly outcome of your decision with an analogy. Imagine you want to build a house. You contract builders to start building the house. And once they have a foundation set up to actually start building the house, you fire your contractors and contract new builders to complete the work that has been done. Building the house wonky and unstable as the new contractors you hired have a new way of doing things. I don't want the Ethnic and Literature Studies classes to become a wonky and unstable mess, because of your decision to not renew the contract of a renowned expert. Instead, you should base your decision on the words of everyone who has worked directly with Dr. King Tiango-Cubales, who have attested to her professionalism and dedication to Ethnic and Literature Studies. This is why I am here tonight, to implore that you reinstate her contract and not halt the wonderful progress we have made in our district as a result of her support and expertise. Thank you. Good evening, my name is Gabriel Baraza. I'm here to urge the members of the board to place the renewal of the contract with community responsive education back on the agenda and reconsider their actions of September 2023. I am the father of two PVUSD students, one who is currently taking Ethnic and Literature Studies and one who will hopefully be taking the class next year. I was not able to attend the meeting in September, but I have gone back and viewed the discussion after the hearing that the contract was not renewed. I have spent considerable time looking at both our local situation and the larger issue around diversity and education. The push not to renew the contract is part of a larger attack on Ethnic Studies and other empowerment curricula by right wing groups who have mimicked the language of oppressed groups to try to restrain any curriculum that challenges existing power structures. It disappoints me to no end that some of the members of this board whom I respected have allowed themselves to be fooled. I know that there are people on the board who have come with the agenda to halt progress under the guise of think of the children. I am disheartened that others have accepted right wing talking points and advanced baseless accusations. I know that Trustee Soto, though he had misgivings about some of the accusations made, was able to look beyond the politics, understand the benefits of the framework, and move to renew the contract. I thank him for his courage. Trustee Holmes also seemed willing to view the situation through the lens of effective education and Trustee Bolano-Skow had some promising questions and feedback, but unfortunately did not take any effective action. Some members of this board have halted two years of progress in our high schools over unsubstantiated politically motivated attacks. Again, I hope that members of the board can show some courage and leadership and put the contract back on the agenda. Thank you. I'm sorry. That's our timing system. Can you please call the next three? The next three speakers please is Zahir Sabah, Bobby Peltz, and Takashi Mizuno. Members of the board, Superintendent Shekman, and members of CAPIT. As a member of the countywide student organization youth for environmental action as a PVUSD student, I wish to address a matter of significant importance. The need for our school district to declare an official environmental emergency. This is not just a plea for action, but a call for our educational leaders to align with the urgent realities of our times. We have witnessed the escalating impact of climate change from devastating wildfires to floods, and it is imperative that we respond proactively. In this context, I urge the board to officially declare this emergency, signifying our collective commitment to sustainable practices. In your search for new superintendent, please find a leader who is not only aware of these challenges, but is also a dedicated advocate for environmental sustainability. Someone who would integrate green practices into our schools, operations, student learning, and one who sets an example for students and staff alike. An immediate step we can take towards this goal is implementing a district-wide composting program. Such an initiative would serve as a practical demonstration of waste reduction and environmental stewardship, reducing landfill contributions and enriching our school's gardens. As students, we are not only learners, but future stewards of our planet. Incorporating sustainability into our education is essential, preparing us to face the environmental challenges ahead. By declaring an environmental emergency, prioritizing sustainability and leadership, and adopting practices like composting, our district can lead by example, inspiring both current and future generations. In the name of those that have trod this earth and lost their homes and lives, we draw the line in the dust and say environmental action now, environmental sustainability tomorrow, and environmental justice forever. Thank you. Good evening. Bobby Powell is watching from behind. I'm here to once again speak on the CRE contract. This is now the seventh time that I'm speaking on this issue, as I've spoken at every single board meeting since the CRE contract was not renewed. When I first spoke on this issue or months ago, I invited you all to visit my classroom and to come talk to me about the program. To see the work that we do and be assured that your fears of anti-semitism are unwarranted. But the only two people that have taken me up on that offer have been Mr. Shetman and Trustee Dodge. And while I'm so grateful to both of them for taking the time and showing their support, Mr. Shetman doesn't get to vote. And Trustee Dodge is only one of seven. So since you haven't come to talk to me, I've come to talk to you every single meeting, two minutes at a time, seven times in a row. That alone should tell you how important this issue is to me. I'm immensely proud of the hard work that we've done and the program that we've built. Professionally, it's the best thing I've ever done. I love Ethnic Studies. And so I've done everything I can think of to get you to bring the CRE program back and to apologize to Allison to show that you support what we're doing. I've invited you into my classroom. I've vouched for Allison as a person. I've joined the Ethnic Studies team in submitting a letter. I've pointed out the facts and the evidence that refute the claims of anti-Semitism. I've joined 1,600 other people signing a petition and have asked community members to come out and speak their expertise. What else would you have me do? But I'll tell you what I won't do. I won't give up. And so for the seventh time, please bring the CRE contract back, approve it, apologize to Allison. And I'll see you in three weeks. Thank you. Good evening. I'm wearing two necklaces tonight. One is Orone and the other one is Chumash. PBUSD committed this separation of an Indian cemetery when Lakeview Middle School was constructed in early 1990s. When they were informed about the existence of the Indian cemetery, the board told an Indian leader who put his efforts to preserve the burial site to pay $300,000 to redesign and construct the school if he wanted to do it. How could anyone pay such an amount of money? Moreover, PBUSD asked him to give a blessing. He refused to do it. This story tells us how the PBUSD board at that time was insensitive and disrespectful to the Indians. I share this story with you tonight because what the board has done against Professor Allison, CRE, and us since last summer is similar to our eyes. We urge the board to correct the mistake in the proper manner. Thank you. All right. Our next three speakers are Bernard Gomez, Chris Webb, Karina Moreno. All right. You know, greetings. Good evening, everybody. Doorway in. Doorway out. My name is Bernard Gomez, born and raised here in Watsonville. You know, the importance of learning about your identity, right? Learning about your culture. You know, for a long time, you know, I just, I was regulated just to a Mexican, you know, to Hispanic, you know, labeled Latino, right? But no, I began to learn about my indigenous identity, right? I'm Cahuilteco, I'm a paternal side, and I'm Cascan, from Zacatecas, I'm a maternal side, right? And I say all that because learning about myself too, I've also began to, you know, accept, you know, the trespasses that I've committed, right, against my community, and the trespasses my community has made upon me, right? I've also been on the side of being denied due process, right? And that's what I've seen happen on September 23rd. I want to say with the, denying the contract of Dr. Allison, right? Again, this board was, did a, voted not from factual research conversation, but just from an emotional standpoint, right? And to me, I think that's not democratic, you know? That's not part of what we do, you know? We have these conversations, so I implore you, ask that you bring back that agenda, right? Bring back that item, have discourse, because the students, that's what they're asking for, the parents, that's what they're asking for, you know? And thank you for your time. Good evening. Congratulations to Trustee Zacosto and Soto and your new positions. And I wanted to express my appreciation for something Trustee Scow said at a recent board meeting. It was about the issue of non-attendance and how we should really address that and take that on. And I 100% agree. I've been waiting for leadership to do this. And there's a couple ideas I have related to that. One is related to something our Assistant Super Secondary said last semester as well, talking about assessment reforms. And I would specifically reform how we do the edgy nudity assessments and just make it so that it's proctored in person. I think that would help to make sure that students, yeah, you really are responsible for truly learning and you've got to do it here in person. You've got to actually attend. I would also like to say I appreciated district leadership talking about SEL. I feel like if we embrace that, that is also like a strong foundation with which to bring students to school. So with that in mind, I wanted to make sure the data that the Renaissance Student Leadership Group collected of the student body and of the staff, you saw that, site council just saw that, and that can help you to see what's going to actually get kids excited about coming to school. So the things that they had, there was a survey, it was 54 respondents, and we had 38 students, 13 teachers, or could have been, 13 certificated, three classified. The top priority was about mirrors and doors in the restroom, and there was a second highest. So the top priority was that second highest auto shop, and again the restrooms. The third highest was connection to Soquel Creek Water, which I understand is in the works. And then the restrooms came up again. Students need to feel safe. If you don't feel safe, like if you're probably not going to learn, and if students are always not using the restroom during breaks, they'll do it in class, which is not conducive to learning. Thank you. Hi, buenas noches. My name is Karina Moreno, and I am here supporting the students, the parents, and the teachers, trying to bring back the CRE contract, and at least taking up the teachers up on their offer of getting their perspective on it. What is it that they're actually teaching? Because I also was able to watch the September 13th meeting, and it was hearsay, and it was fear mongering, and it was a lot of emotion. But I'll tell you too, growing up here in Watsonville, going through all of PVUSD my entire life, I liked it, I loved it. But I didn't learn about myself, or my history, or my culture through school. It wasn't until I was in my 20s, and I can't tell you how empowering it is as a Chicana, Mexicana, Indigenous woman to actually know who I am, and actually know who I represent, who my people are, and who I'm bringing into all of the work that I do. And I'll also tell you I have such an honor to be able to do that with a lot of the youth here in Watsonville, and to remind them who they are, and let me tell you how empowering it is for them to actually be able to look people in the eye and bring their ancestors into the forefront. And to think, like I want to have children here, I want to grow my family here in Watsonville, and hopefully send them into PVUSD. But I would hope that they would, they would not have to hide themselves, they would actually get to bring themselves to the forefront, and that if you guys think of them, and think of the children now, and the ones in the future who are growing up here, and giving them that opportunity, and at least looking into what it is that the teachers are trying to bring forward before dismissing it. Thank you. All right, our next three speakers, Nat Lowe, Elias Gonzalez, and Eli Davies. Hi, good evening, Board of Trustees, Superintendent Scheckman. My name is Nat Lowe from Aptos. It's now been three and a half months since the Board decided to throw away a successful investment in the district's ethnic studies program, based on a still unsubstantiated claim of anti-Semitism. And that decision seemed less to do with the actual content of the curriculum, and more to do with the Board's fear of voting for something perceived as controversial. And I want to say that many of the issues that are the most important are always going to be controversial, and the Board's job is to do what is best for the students. And I've seen this Board do that before. Last year, you boldly and unanimously voted to declare October as LGBTQ History Month here, which is a controversial decision in the current political climate of increasing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric. But you took this stand because it was what is best for our students. Because in your resolution, you recognize the importance of having LGBTQ History celebrated in classrooms because that makes students feel seen and valued. And as a queer and trans person who did not feel seen when I was growing up, I very much applaud and appreciate that. And I ask you to have that same courage in centering our students' best interests when it comes to ethnic studies. Two years ago, the Board made the bold move to work with Community Responsive Education, which is called that because it helps the teachers to center the histories, the culture, and the experience of students' own communities in their ethnic studies curricula. And you made this investment because, again, you recognize the importance of having students see themselves and their communities reflected in their lessons. It helps students feel seen and valued and empowered. And all the evidence has shown that this has been a fruitful investment. Students are thriving, teachers are supported in developing their lessons, and there's been meaningful partnerships with Watsonville in the heart. And so to throw that all away because of a controversy that's still not backed by any evidence even three months later, it's really harmful to our students. And I urge you again to act in boldness rather than in fear for our students' best interests. Please put the contract back under agenda and hope to renew it. Thank you. When I started this, my name is Elias Gonzalez, currently residing District 5. I come to you today as a former PVUSD student, what's up, Mr. Sheckman, who also is a father of two former PVUSD students. I'm also a concerned community member who has worked in local nonprofits for over 20 years with communities that have been systemic with systemic inequalities. It's always tough to come up in these spaces because there's so much to say and always so little time to say it, right? But to be honest, I never truly feel hurt in these spaces, right? A lot of times I feel like these spaces are spaces that quiet the community. With that being said, today I'm here to request that the CRE contract be added to the agenda for renewal. I'm also here to demand that the history of Black, Indigenous, and people of color not just be included and tolerated but celebrated as stated by a certain board trustee in September. As a father and community member, it is important that the curriculum represents the community it serves. Currently, about 80% of our students at PVUSD are of Latino descent, so it's a point that we provide a history that has been ignored and misrepresented for far too long. In California, we continue to glamorize emissions and gold rush periods and fail to include the loss of life, enslavement, starvation, illness, and violence inflicted upon California Native Americans during those times. These historical emissions from the curriculum are misleading and can create harmful consequences for Black, Indigenous, and people of color. In closing, I just want to sit here and first of all thank you to the young people that came up and spoke eloquently, the community, and those folks coming up. But I think for me, it's a point that we send image to the community that we care. People show up, people take time out of their day, step away from their families to come and share their thoughts. The community is here asking you all, right? Back in the 90s, I think it was, right? I was given a little lesson, all right? Not many people cared about me. Many people threw me away, but Mr. Shecklin actually showed me he cared in the 90s. And I still remember that till this day. So it's important that we do that for the students that we talk about and that we actually do all everything that we state up here. So thank you for your time. I appreciate you. Good evening, board. My name is Eli. I use they them pronouns. I'm an ethnic studies major at CSUMB and I live in Aptos. My nephew attends Aptos High. I am here again to urge you to take action to put the CRE contract renewal on the agenda and vote to renew the contract. I know that this board values a quality qualified edge of ethnic studies education because the board chose to work with CRE to create a specialized ethnic studies program for Pajaro Valley. This board chose to work with CRE to root the ethnic studies education in the history of this region and its people. I hope this board will recognize that with CRE, they have created a beloved and comprehensive ethnic studies education for Pajaro Valley students. This board has the opportunity to fully integrate this special program into their education and empower students. The analytical tools that are taught in ethnic studies are incredibly important for young people learning to navigate an increasingly complex world. This is the time to encourage structures of liberation. This is the time for bravery. I urge the board to put the CRE contract renewal on the agenda and vote to renew. Thank you. All right. Our next three speakers, Pam Sexton, Itzel Barasa and Dr. Lourdes Barasa. I always have to plug down. I'm Pam Sexton. I'm a teacher. I'm here as a community member and I'm here to also add to the voices asking you to to put the CRE contract again on the agenda and to renew it. So I got my teaching credential in the late 90s in San Francisco at San Francisco State and I did my student teaching at Mission High School where I taught ethnic studies. One of the first programs. I had an amazing mentor teacher and I learned at that time the history of why ethnic ethnic studies is so incredibly important and that it came out of young people walking out of schools because they were not represented in the schools because their voices, their history was not in the schools. Today, I'm very familiar with the CRE program because for the last year because of that experience and also because as an activist with the surge showing up for racial justice, a county wide, well it's a national organization and we have a county chapter and I've been part of that um joining meetings that UCSC has put on throughout the year about this program. I've spoken to all of not all but all of the ethnic studies teachers who've gone to those meetings which are a lot from PVUSD and I understand that this program is lifting the voices of our students. It's addressing where they're coming from. It is not anti-semitic and the claims of that are a false. Please do this action show that you care about this. My name is Yishun and I am an 8th good art ruling house. I'm here because I was informed that the ethnic studies class that I have been looking forward to is going to be changed by decisions made by this board in ways that might negatively affect students in my year and beyond. This upsets me because it's constantly my grade that keeps getting treated out of everything. First, we didn't get to go to our science camp in 5th grade. Second, we didn't have a science teacher for 7th grade. Third, our close of field trip was almost canceled and then postponed to spring break which means that I can't go home after the four long days of our trip. And now a class that I'm really looking forward to ethnic studies is being changed. I just feel that it's unfair that my year is constantly getting important activities taken away or changed in a way that makes them much less special. Some of these things were not as a result of the policies and politics. COVID-19 took science camp away and we may just not have enough people interested in working at PVUSD to fill positions. This ethnic study situation however is completely political. You are denying me and my classmates a popular enriching course of classes because some of you didn't do your research. Please add this back to the agenda and reconsider your decision. Thank you. Good evening. I am a parent of two students in the district. My son is currently in the ethnic studies class and I recently found out that the board made a terrible decision to not renew the contract with CRE back in September. And I just wondered, did any of you research the issue before you voted on it? How about after? Did you research it after? Did any of you reach out to Dr. Allison to question her about the accusations? It doesn't sound like anybody did this and I'm really shocked that you would vote on something that you don't have any information on. I reached out to her and I found her to be very accessible. I could find no evidence that supported the accusations made against her as a researcher and yet the decision was made not to renew the contract. That was based on the opinions of two conservative activists. As I understand it, the members at the agenda are President Acosta, Vice President Soto and Trustee Dr. Holmes. I am wondering why the issue regarding the non-renewal contract has not been placed on the agenda as the community has clearly shown interest that it wants it back on the agenda and wants it to be supported. Will you listen to us and put the issue back on the agenda or will you continue to ignore us? Many of us are concerned about the disruption this decision has caused, including the money that would be wasted if the district should decide to contract with someone else. Assistant Superintendent Mohadas made that clear, made it clear that if the district went with another contractor then we'd have to reinvent the wheel as new teachers and administrators would not be trained. All that work and money that has already been invested would be wasted as we would have to start over with the new contractor. And President Acosta, you said that you could easily find a bunch of other contractors but the question is do they have the same level of expertise as Dr. Allison? She's a renowned expert in this field which is why so many ethnic study contractors are associated with her. Clearly this is an interest, clearly there is an interest in bringing this issue back so as people who represent us I hope that you listen to us and that you make the right decision to bring it back to the agenda and support it. Thank you. All right our last two speakers, Martha Vega and Marilyn Garrett. Hi, good afternoon. Happy new year, trustee. I'd like to congratulate trustee Acosta and trustee Soto on your new position and thank you for all the work that you all do including our Superintendent Mr. Schekman. I'd like to talk to you guys if you would be willing to consider bringing the CRE contract on the agenda and see things from a different lens that might have not been considered and that's all I have to say. Thank you so much and I'm speaking today as a resident of Watsonville. Thank you. Your most important obligation is to provide a safe and healthy learning and working environment and you're not doing it. You've been informed of the dangers of Wi-Fi and cell towers and you persist. We want education not radiation. Also you talk about research and democracy. Educate before you vaccinate. I've given you these fact sheets, myths and truths about COVID-19. I'll read it again. Contagious virus or 5G microwave technology. COVID-19 and the 5G radiation connection. Many epidemiological observations and biological studies indicate the disease called COVID-19 is actually radiation poisoning caused by exposure to microwaves used in 5G wireless technology. Epidemiology. COVID-19 first appeared in Wuhan, China when they turned on 10,005G base stations. It spread to Spain and Italy as these nations deployed 5G technology. COVID then appeared in other European countries in New York and major American cities and smaller cities in rural areas with 5G now coming from satellites and less industrialized countries around the world exactly following the rollout of 5G in these locations. And the biology, radiations and symptoms, fever, chills, it lists them. I'm going to, and so this, I'm going to give the source westonapriots.org and they also have one on COVID shots what we now know facts. Thank you. Okay, we will now move on to item 7.1 through 7.4. These are our employee organization comments. So now is the time that we hear from all of our employee organizations and each organization will have five minutes. And first under 7.1 will be PBFT, our Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers. Good evening, board. Congrats on the restructuring of the board. Thanks for answering my email, Georgia. Okay. Hello, Marie. I want to start off with some good stuff here because you know how I get. So I'm Nellie Vaqueta Boggs. I'm the president for the Pajaro Valley Federation of Teachers. We represent all of the certificated non-administrators. So that is pretty much everybody other than our brothers and sisters in the CSEA who support us and this district. So I want to start off with just also honoring our counselors. Counselors provide an incredibly, incredibly important service to our students and also the adults in the room. So we are very, very proud to represent the counselors in our district. And the work that they do is important and we don't have enough of them. I also want to mention that the PBFT and I think that the CSEA would feel the same way. We want to be part of this superintendent search. This isn't the first time I've asked or mentioned this. We want to be part of this process. We want to know who the candidates are. We want to be part of a panel discussion. If we're talking about looking for this important person who's going to head our district and hope cross our fingers that they understand labor or respect the people that work in this district, shutting us out completely is just saying you don't really care about that. So we're really hoping that we along with CSEA are invited to discussions with the candidates because they need to know who we are. We are a diverse group of employees in this community and we're very, very proud of this community. So that's what I want to say about that. Okay, now I'm going to get into it. So arbitration. We are taking the district to arbitration. What does that mean? That means that there is a disagreement between us and the PBUSD. The PBUSD Human Resources has decided that they want to disrespect our contract. They want to spit on the whole process due process of our contractual rights. We have had for decades an agreement. We just closed a contract as a matter of fact that you all approved in April and in that contract there was no change in language. It was something that was proposed at the table and we said no. Yet it was still put into place this year. People lost pay. We worked so hard to make some significant wins so that our students because they're the ones that benefit when there are people who are credentialed in their classroom. We made significant gains to get positions filled. Yet the employees are still disrespected. Our contract is disrespected. So at this time when the district talks about having to be careful about where they spend their funds that they receive to educate our community of students. At this time when there are negotiations with CSEA and they're dragging their feet on negotiating a living wage with the CSEA because again the argument of funding they're willing to choose to spend thousands of dollars to go to arbitration as opposed to acknowledge that what they're committing is an unfair labor practice that it is not right. They're in the wrong and we will fight this because we know that this right which is also so in California law education law we get 10 days in our contract. 10 of those days can be personal necessity. So the district's in the wrong. I really hope that you trustees have a discussion about where money's going and how it's being spent and the type of reputation that we're trying to work with the district to heal from to get rid of. This is a great place to work. We need great administrators. This is why we want to be part of that panel. So you know we're proud of our bargaining rights and we're proud to partner with the district. We're bringing 40,000 books to this community February 24th market calendars. The PVFT is bringing 40,000 books to this community. We're proud to work with Mr. Sheckman. He was willing to offer up a site. We're going to distribute and we're also thank you to Mr. Sheckman as well for having worked with me to help in sending two of our CTE teachers to one of our American Federation of Teachers conferences on career and technical education. So thank you for that as well. Thanks. Thank you. 7.2, CSEA, California School Employees Association. Do we have anyone here from CSEA? Okay, moving on. 7.3, Pabam, Fajaro Valley Association of Managers. Ready? Good afternoon President Acosta, Superintendent Sheckman, cabinet, members of the board. My name is Luis Medina. I'm the director of migrant education. First of all I want to thank you for the opportunity to give a short presentation about migrant education. And I'll start with the afterschool program. For our migrant afterschool program we offer classes in most of our school sites in collaboration with the Espana Learning Program. Most of our curriculum is used in using hands-on activities. We integrate math and science in most of our classes. We're trying to expand our program but we're having a difficult time finding qualified personnel that are willing to work after school. For those students that can't stay after school we do offer virtual academy. We offer about 100 students actually stay after, actually they connect that virtually for our classes and these ones are for K-8. We do have bilingual classes, the bilingual teachers and during this time actually parents have an opportunity to actually connect with the staff and ask questions regardless of the topic. Moving on, those are some of the pictures of the classes that we offer some of the students. Also this year we're planning, actually we plan for field trips for the entire school year. We recruit 200 students, fifth through eighth grade. The four sites that we actually decided on are the sites, the makers fair in San Francisco, the young museum in San Francisco, the San Francisco exploratory and San Jose Tech Museum. We already took a couple of field trips and you can see a couple of pictures that we have. Students had a great time and they're very grateful about the opportunity to be able to take these field trips. Moving on, since I have a lot of information, the first vision debate, we're hoping to have a student representation from all six middle schools. We currently have eight staff members working at the different sites preparing students for the competition. For middle school we hope to have a Spanish and English debate team and be represented in Spanish and English speech for every single grade level. For high school to have a debate team for both Spanish and English and the same team for Spanish and all four grade levels for speech. In the past last Monday we actually took 25 students to Salinas to be trained in how to do the speech and this coming Friday we're going to take an additional 25 students to be trained on the debate. The original competition will be on March 9th. It's going to be in Salinas and we're hoping to take 50 students. The state competition will be on May 3rd through the 5th in Monterey and we're going to be taking, the goal is 34 students. I do want to say special thanks to Lisa for the cooperation and support of our program and to Jim Bruno because their program is paying for most of the competition, the cost of the competition. Moving on, so that's the debate team. Last year we actually were able to bring about 15 trophies to PVUSD. We actually did a great job with that and moving on for the RPK program. We opened a site in one of our sites and we actually had 60 students participating but because of the the teacher actually left the program we're looking for one so right now we're on hold on the site the RPK program. We also offer a, those are some of the pictures, the a home-based program. We schedule meetings with our families. The staff provides the materials and the training to the parents and the parents do most of the work and the teaching to the students and if any parent has a question we always have somebody available that can answer their questions at any time during the day. Sorry. For secondary education we have three excellent staff members at the high school level. They do provide academic guidance, transcript analysis, parent meetings such as financial aid and aid through your requirements, credit recovery for and we use cyber high and genuity. We have the Immigrant Student Association Club. We do have the field trips to colleges and universities and we do provide the services to through the account program most of the estate colleges and here we have some pictures of some of the actors that high school students do field trips and moving on to Peronet and I'm going fast. We do have a parent meeting every month. The first two to the month is from 79th. We do have some topics. Parents do select the topics and some of the topics that already cover are school safety, drug use prevention at the school level, nutrition, mental health and math nights. There's also something new that is happening this year. Sorry, I have a couple more minutes. It's a monthly meeting. It happens on the first Thursday of the month. It's from 11 to 12 and the presentation is online if anybody wants to see it. Thank you for your time, please. Thanks. I timed it before. Sorry, but thank you. We will have that shared with us so we could see the rest of the presentation. Moving to 7.4 CWA, communication workers of America. These are the representatives of our substitute teachers. Is anyone here from CWA? Okay. Seeing none, I do have a special request that came into the board. It was brought to the board's attention. Can I see this right quick? I know the agenda was already approved, but it's been brought to our attention that for item 9.2, which is a report and discussion item that our representative that's here has young children here with her this evening. So I would like to ask the board if we could amend this, our approval of the agenda to move 9.2 to now before we start with our action items. Can I have a motion? I'd like to make a motion to approve that. Second. The change. Okay. I have so just so we all understand it's a motion to amend the agenda, approval of the agenda to move 9.2 to before the action items. I have a first and a second. I'll call for a vote. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. That carries a 7-0. So let me jump my note. Sorry. So we will now jump to 9.2. This is a report and discussion item for PVUSD Food and Nutrition Services Local Partnerships featuring Esperanza Community Farms. This report will be presented by Gene Atkin, the Director of Food and Nutrition Services Alma Leonora Sanchez and Mayra Gomez Contreras of Esperanza Community Farms. Thank you and welcome. Thank you very much. This is exciting to be moved up a bit. Good evening, Board of Trustees. Well, thanks, Marie. Good evening, Board of Trustees and Interim Superintendent Murray Sheckman. So happy to be here tonight talking about kind of an exciting topic. Thanks to Adam Scow for suggesting the topic. So for the next few minutes, we're going to be talking about the local partnerships Food and Nutrition Services has with the community. And we're going to, in particular, feature Esperanza Farms. We have a very unique partnership with them and they're going to talk a little bit more about that, but it's pretty exciting. Okay. So let me get my clicker, multitasking here. Just as an introduction, we do have a partnership with a lot of local companies, particularly farmers. And we have a lot of incentive within this past year, especially to partner with local businesses, local farms, particularly in addition to that, companies that have products that are unprocessed or minimally processed. Getting a lot of push for that. Some of the particular funding that we have received this year is a little over $6,000 again for local purchases of unprocessed or minimally processed food. We're really, really hoping that that funding continues, but at this point we don't know. So crossing our fingers that we can maintain these partnerships. In addition to that, I think it's important for you to realize that every year we get entitlement dollars, USDA commodity dollars. We typically get about $800,000 a year, and that number is based on the number of meals that we serve the prior year, and that's how we get funding. And we spend the lion's share of that on produce. And as of last fall, we are seeing a lot more organic offerings through USDA commodities, which is really, really nice. Also important to know that we do partner with a lot of nonprofit organizations. They write a lot of grants and get funding to help promote the idea of more sustainability purchasing from more conscientious vendors in businesses. These are just some of the, some of the partnerships we have. Okay, so just going to briefly talk about some of the benefits of working with local farmers. Obviously it's great to keep the money local. It's, it creates a great sense of pride for the community. It's also ultra fresh. A lot of times when we get our products from harvest, for harvest of the month, those items were picked that day or the day before versus weeks or months prior. And obviously seasonality becomes more real to students through harvest of the month, through life lab, through field trips, through our salad bars. They really learn hopefully more seasonality. Some of the challenges obviously cost. As you all know, organic costs a lot more than conventional, and we're no exception. And then basically supply and demand and also infrastructure and deliveries are a challenge. A lot of times the smaller farmers aren't able to deliver to all of our sites. So it, it just, it creates more work and takes up more space at our central warehouse. And then also consistency and appreciation. Quality isn't always consistent and you can't, you can't control nature. So we may contract to get strawberries in March, but they might not be ready until, you know, June. Or we may, anyway, you get it. Okay. Quick map. The blue dot is this building, the district office. And then all the other little green dots are, this is just kind of like a hyper local map. We actually go all the way up north of San Francisco and farther south and all over California. But this is just kind of a little snapshot of the local businesses that we work with, mostly farms. Okay, let's get into the companies. We work with Watsonville Coast Produce. They're a, they're a pretty large distributor, kind of one of the bigger ones in California. And other than DoD and our commodities, we purchase a lot of produce from Coast Produce. One of the biggest advantages of working with Coast is they deliver to every single site, sometimes twice a week. And that's, that's a real advantage to our program. Then we have JSM Organics, Javier Zamora. The farm is located very close to Hall District Elementary. We get wonderful, wonderful strawberries from him every year. If you've never had a chance to try them, just stop by any one of our schools in the month of May and give them a try. And Javier is wonderful. He's always agreeing to come and do tastings with us. Anytime we have an event, he's there. He's willing to promote organic farming and farming. He has a real passion for it. And then we have LDNY Organics. This is a new partner as of this fall. This is Guillermo Lizarro's farm. We actually met him through Esperanza. He helps at Esperanza a lot. And we were able to partner with him and we'll be partnering with him next year. We've already agreed to partner with him for his cherry tomatoes and snap peas. Then we have Hikari Farms. Janet Nagamine. She is the current owner of the farm. She's also a local physician. So it's really fun. You can see she has her doctor's coat on. So when she does tastings, it's really fun to see the kids' expression when you tell them, she's a farmer and a doctor. And they're just like, wow. So that's really exciting. And then that picture in the lower left corner is her with her lead operations manager, his daughter and his granddaughter, all at Calabasas where Janet went to elementary school. So that's really good. And if you've never tasted her cucumbers, they are so good. She actually has a contract with Chez Panisse up in Berkeley with Alice Waters and sells her cucumbers to them, too. But we get them here in August and September. Then we have Murakami Farms. They're also right off Buena Vista in Watsonville, in Watsonville, sorry. And they have great kiwis. If you ever have a chance to taste them, they sell them at the farmer's market. Lakeside Organics. This is the largest family-owned organic vegetable grower and shipper in the U.S. And we get the pleasure of working with them. There's a beautiful field of leaks right across the street over here. And they grow all over the area. So that's really nice. And we're featuring their cabbage this month. A couple more, and then we get to us, Bronze Farms. Then we have the fruit guys. This is kind of a unique partnership because we partner with them for our FFVP program, which is our fresh fruit and vegetable program. That's through a yearly grant that we apply for. And we serve at 12 elementaries every day at recess. We get all kinds of fun and unique fruits and vegetables from them. Some really funky things like Ramutan and dragon fruit, along with a lot of regular stuff that we grow here in America. But it's a nice opportunity for the kids to learn about fruits and vegetables. And then we come to Esperanza Farms. This is a really unique partnership because not only do we buy produce from them for our schools, but they have really been a trailblazer in bringing farm to cafeteria, especially to PV High. And I'm going to let them talk about what they've done and how they did it. But it is a really, really unique program and I think it's a great example for other districts. Thank you, Jeannie. Hello, board. My name is Alma. I'm the farm to cafeteria project manager for Esperanza Community Farms. I'm here with Mireya. Thank you so much for moving this up on the agenda. My nine-year-old and five-year-old really appreciate it. And I will in the morning. Yeah, so I'm going to talk a little bit about Esperanza Community Farms, what we've done with the district and PV High specifically. We started the Farm to Cafeteria project in 2021 with student visits to the farm. We started serving salads at PV High Campus in summer 2022. And so from since 2022, we've developed different ways for students to get involved with a community farm, a local organic community farm like ours. Some ways for students to get involved are teachers are bringing students out to the farm in field trips. We've had students visit the farm from all over California, which is super awesome. And students from this school district also visiting the farm. This gives them an opportunity to learn about local, organic, and regenerative community farming, how we're doing it, and also how other local farmers of color are also doing it in the Pajaro and Salinas Valley. We also have in-depth conversations with them on the farm about what an equitable food chain is, how that looks like in Watsonville, how it's attainable in Watsonville, and what their roles as students and as community members can look like in this equitable food chain, and then how they can create an equitable food chain at their schools or in their community. They also have the opportunity to harvest and take home vegetables, which is a super amazing thing to see, like a bunch of students with their backpacks on, like walking through the fields and like with a giant calabaza, like just walking around, which is super awesome. Another way for students to get involved is through our internship. At the moment we have one Farm to Cafeteria Youth Leaders internship. It runs from May through July. This internship actively engages students in leadership opportunities to learn and implement an equitable food chain. We work with students to obtain their food handler certificate. They get to harvest and learn how to prep and serve salads during summer school to high school students. They can develop different types of student engagement activities and how to engage their peers in the community farm and what the salad is, how it's unique and special to Watsonville and to this community. There are also opportunities within this internship for students to present what they have learned about community farming through presenting to city council members or school board members and being a part of that conversation to make policy changes towards getting more healthy, organic and local produce on their campuses. We also have salads being served during the regular school year. Our season last year ran from August to November, but we are looking to expand that. The students are also engaged in prepping the salads during the school year. It's not part of an internship, but they still get the opportunity to learn about food prep, how to engage students with healthy alternatives. They learn about what it's like to prepare food in a cafeteria, so a lot of students get to learn about what cafeteria staff are doing, where their food is coming from, which is super important. And then we also tried to host at least one on-campus student engagement event per season. In 2023, we hosted the first farm to school rally at Pajaro Valley High School. We invite city council members, school board members, teachers, all students at PV High to celebrate what we've done with farm to cafeteria in that season, celebrate the hard work that goes into organic farming, appreciate organic farmers and the work that cafeteria staff have done, and ultimately just increase student awareness on just food justice and how it's happening at their campus. In 2023, we served twice as many salads as we did in 2022. In total, we served over 2,500 salads at all campuses where salads were served. We increased the salads we served at Pajaro Valley High School, and we also expanded the salads to three additional schools, which include Renaissance High, Diamond Technology Institute, and New School Community Day High School. And we hope to continue to do that this season as well. Some challenges that we've faced are, like I mentioned, student awareness. We want to continue to work towards students knowing about farm to cafeteria, knowing about where their food comes from, and being able to participate in these types of programs that kind of show them about what's happening in their community. Also, even though there's limited space in the PV High kitchen, the cafeteria staff have been super supportive and are excited to see students choosing healthier alternatives and also just a shift in student choices and what they eat. We are excited to offer and expand more with the Farm to Cafeteria program at a pace that allows for it, considering funding and staffing. Do you want to mention something? I just have two quick points. I've been with the organization since 2017 as the co-leader, along with our farmer Guillermo Lázaro, and I started out as a CSA member. My life has been transformed, and I see how students' lives are being transformed. The project costs just over $100,000 to operate. We are not about quantity, we're about quality, and so we really go as deep as we can in terms of demonstrating the interdependence that exists around us, and in a community like this that's so agriculture heavy, there's so much potential for uplifting the pride in multi-generational families and to direct students to the many, many agricultural jobs that exist beyond farm labor. The final thing I'll say is that we are a non-profit, and we're hoping that the non-profit serves as a tool to demonstrate to the school district, not only this one, but others in the region, that this kind of program can become an integrated program within the school system and academic system. So that's kind of the next set of years for us. We want to integrate it into the classroom, have the farm itself be an experiential learning space, and so we'd love to have some funding come from the district. Right now we pull from national foundation money and state money, and the last thing is we have some stickers for you that may I share them with all of you? That's appropriate. This was designed by one of the student interns, and I can't say how proud, in particular I am as a mama. The student-led piece here is pretty incredible. We really have just gotten out of the way of students that have decided what they want in their salad and how often. It's been such a pleasure working with Jeannie and her team, and they really have really welcomed us in. So thank you. Thank you. Do we have any public speakers to this item? No, we do not. Okay, and I will bring it back to the board. Any discussion from the board? Trustee Flores. I just want to say I did attend that rally and it was amazing, and I encouraged all of our campuses to get more involved like this. It was great to see the students choosing these fresh alternatives, not some of the stuff we do tend to see our teenagers eat. They were excited to have these salads, and I heard all about the dressing. I wasn't able to taste it, but I will eventually. But yeah, no, I think it's a great program that we have, and I hope to see it implemented in more of our classrooms. Thank you, Trustee Flores. Trustee Villanova-Skel. Yeah, thank you, Jeannie. I'm out for this great presentation. Super excited. Super exciting. Makes me happy. I've been waiting for this presentation. Thank you to Agenda Setting and Mr. Shekman for making this happen tonight. So many benefits. Healthy food for our kids. We're keeping our money local in the community, supporting local businesses, local nonprofits as you've listed. Really tremendous people invested in our community, employing people. Organic healthy food, less toxic pesticides being sprayed around our schools, which is a problem at some of our schools. Better for the soil, growing healthy assortment of vegetables because our soil, we need variety in our microbiome. And we're also setting an example for a local business internship. We talk about CTE classes. Not everybody's going to be a techie at Google. Talk about producing healthy food for our community, and actually building a sustainable business. So this also, I think we can build on this. This is maybe a CTE opportunity, but there's a lot of interest in having sustainable ag, possibly be a CTE class at PV High. What a great idea. And so I hope we can expand on this, build on this. I know we got a lot of schools and I know, I understand the scale is always an issue. We have to have reliability. How can we, that's a great challenge. And I'm sure it's always something you're thinking about, Jeanette. I appreciate that reality. But I just want to say the more we can build on this, the better. So thank you so much for everybody's work. Thank you, Trustee Blanow-Skow. Trustee, Dr. Holm? I just wanted to say thank you for your work with this, you know, as, you know, with the background, with public health nursing and just looking at, you know, the long-term health outcomes for, you know, our students and our communities. It's, it's so important to have this connection to healthy food as something that's enjoyable and interesting and exciting and, and you're creating that. And, you know, so this is really creating, and for some of the reasons that, you know, my colleague mentioned, but there's just those connections for long-term personal and community health. Thank you for the work that you're doing. Trustee Dusserba? Thank you, Trustee Dr. Holm. So I've been on the board for 14 years and I've been a champion of programs like this. Since I entered my trustee seat, we've started out with Life Lab at many of the schools. So we tried to have farm to garden to cafeteria. And when I first started, we were told we couldn't use the organically grown produce in our own school gardens in the cafeteria because of liability issues. So we've come a long way. And so I want to thank you for the work. This is a beautiful farm and I think all of us up here support you very much. Thanks. Thank you, Trustee Dusserba. Trustee Dodge Jr. I just like to say thank you, Janie, for doing your work. I was a little late, but I was able to get a salad at PV. So the students like it. Hopefully, I think, you know, we could bring something like that more to Watsonville High School, too, as well, because, you know, not everybody likes school lunches. And I know, you know, my daughter in particular, they want a different option. You know, they want something healthy. I really didn't understand a lot about organic fruits and vegetables. I know Trustee Skow that he had to enlighten me on some of those things because it's a process. I had an idea of the pesticides being used around our schools. But, you know, Trustee Skow showed us we don't always need to use pesticides. He showed me that Lakeside Organics does a lot of great work and hopefully we could continue to use them a lot more. You know, I know they provide a lot of vegetables or they have organic options. And also to Lakeside Organic, you know, they employ local residents, but they also put them in positions of leadership. And so I'd like to mention that as well. So I'd just like to say thank you for your presentation. Agriculture is very important in our community. It's not just working in fields, but it's also being in position to lead and take care of these fields. You know, I know water is an important issue, too. And so I just wanted to break that up and say thank you. Thank you, Mireya. I know you're loving Support for our community of Watsonville. And so I just want to say thank you. Thank you, Trustee Dodd, Jr. Vice President Soto. Yeah, I want to thank you guys for your work as well. This is very, it's a good thing. You know, I'm a farm kid myself. I grew up on a ranch in Salinas. We grew vegetables and pork cattle, you know, and I spent a lot of time with my dad out in the field and I learned a lot growing up back then. Back then I didn't appreciate it as much as I do now because now I'm able to apply a lot of the principles that I learned growing up on the farm with my own private garden. And, you know, we have a lot of surplus and we share it with the family and doesn't always come out, you know, as pretty as it does in the store, but it sure tastes really good. But yeah, this is good that, you know, we're teaching the kids some tangible skills because those types of things are going away. And if you learn a trade, if you can wrench on a car, build a house or, you know, plant a flower and let it grow and nurture it, you know, those are skills that people can't take away from you that you've, you know, you learn on yourself and you're able to take it with you wherever you go. So thank you. Thank you, Vice President. So our student, Trustee. Thank you. I just wanted to say that this is amazing work that you all are doing and I would really like to see our district continue supporting work like this, especially being in an area where it's agriculture rich, yet there hasn't historically been much access to nutritious foods and meals. And this is a crucial step in increasing the accessibility for our students in the district. And to continue supporting that, that's very important. Thank you. Thank you, Student Trustee Mahia. So what, and then there was one. So anything I say is just really going to be echoing everything pretty much you've heard from all of my colleagues and our wonderful Student Trustee. And I would just really echo the thank you, thank you to you and Esperanza Farms and I'm glad that my colleagues agreed to support moving this up. Sorry, we didn't notice sooner. But again, thank you. And there's, it's also one of the things I like is it's helping breaking down some barriers and misconceptions with the ag industry, which we are so heavily reliant on in this region and we constantly say, right, the Salinas and Pajaro ag values are literally fading in the world. So it's very important. And thank you for being a part of helping break down some of those misunderstandings and misconceptions and those barriers. And of course, for all your work you're doing. Thank you. And thank you for being here this evening. Thank you. It's a whole team, not just me. All right, let's get re ordered here. So now we will be moving back to our action items. We will be starting with 8.1 resolution number 23-24-21 for the Watsonville Community Hospital bond measure and this report will be presented by our superintendent Sheckman. But we also have Tony Nunez, we also have Tony Nunez who's on the board for the hospital and Joe Gallagher. Joe Gallagher. Oh, I know Joe. Okay. We've had good discussion as a board. You had good discussion as a board. The CFO and Tony presented about six weeks ago and there was really live, not lively, but good questions and answers. And some people have asked me why would the board, why would a public school K-12 TK board support a local hospital? And my answer has always been because the medical services have a direct correlation to our kids' academic success. And so I am here tonight to help our colleagues in the hospital. They've done a magnificent job first of creating the region, identifying the need, raising some money, getting help from the state, but they've discovered some issues with their property and some debt. And this bond is very, very important. And so they're here to answer any questions, but the intent tonight is to ask our governing board to support measure. Thank you. Thank you, Superintendent Sheckman. Do we have any public speakers to this item? No, we do not. Okay. Seeing none, I'll bring it back to the board. Any discussion from the board? Trustee Dr. Holm? I would like to make a motion to support this. It's been a long time coming to make this hospital a public entity and it's a major victory. And I mentioned last time we discussed this, Mr. Sheckman, you spoke about how connected the hospital is to this community and it's like, yeah, I've seen many of our students born in that hospital. It's like, I've been there. Dr. Gallagher, I know you've taken care of many of the families that have come through our schools and the community and it's we're connected. So thank you, Trustee Dr. Holm. And Trustee D'Sirpa, she had her hand up first. Thank you. I'll be supporting this resolution tonight. I thank you for coming and for waiting this long to hear this item. I'm so sorry. Tony, you should have brought your one-year-old. We might have been able to move it up. That's the cheat code I know for the next time. Right, yeah. Anyway, I know you both. I'm a former employee and it is a per diem social worker and I care deeply for the hospital and for the work that's done there and to all the employees who have stuck it out and who are continuing to work there with respect and care for the patient population. Thank you. Thank you for bringing this forward. I can't wait until you buy the hospital grounds back. They should have never been sold. It was a very sad day when that happened. So thanks for bringing this resolution. Trustee D'Sirpa, will that be a second? Because I already have a motion. Yes, thank you. I'll second. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee D'Sirpa. Trustee Bolano-Skow. I'll keep it brief because I second everything. Trustee Holm and Trustee D'Sirpa said you got my public endorsement. My private endorsement. Is there a way that people can get involved? And this is so important because we were losing money as a community, as Trustee D'Sirpa said. This is our public hospital. Thank you for your leadership and bringing this forward. Voter turnout. I'm not projected to be amazing, so if you're out there in the public watching and listening, we need people to vote in this election, in this primary election. I have many friends who are affiliated with the hospital doctors who work for the hospital nurses. We need to get out to vote. We need everybody all ages to be voting yes for this. So if you want to share anything about ways people can get more involved and learn more about this campaign. Yeah, definitely. I appreciate that question and thank you for the opportunity to speak here in front of all of you tonight. So this Saturday, we're actually just starting our door-to-door knocking campaign. And so we'll be gathering at 9.30 a.m. over at Lamansana and downtown Watsonville, 519 Main Street. And at 9.30 we'll be doing some informational workshops with a few of the volunteers that we have there. And then at 10 a.m. sharp we'll be going door-to-door letting the people know throughout the district which very closely mirrors your district as well too, just with a little bit of the northern tip of Aptos cutoff that the March 5th primary election is very important for not only the Pajar Valley Health Care District and Watsonville Community Hospital but for our community and for the healthcare landscape across Santa Cruz County and the Central Coast. You can also find additional information at yesonmeasureend.net. That's yesonmeasureend.net. There you can go, you can fill out an endorsement form, you can make a donation, or you can say, hey, I want some more information and we'd be happy to give back with any other information that you need about this or any questions that you have. So thank you. I thought of another connection other than just the general academic achievement which is the health academies and I have had the opportunity to speak briefly at Watsonville High and PV High. I don't know the status of whether there is one at Aptos but it's been an interesting opportunity to talk to high school juniors and seniors with the idea to encourage people into healthcare careers and sort of fun to be around young people. Thank you, Trustee Blanskow. Any other members of the board? Comments, discussions? Trustee Dodge Jr. Thank you for being here this evening. I obviously support passing this bond, this measure and I would just like to say to the people that I represent, which is directly the city of Watsonville, make sure you go out and support this measure, support the local jobs that our neighbors work at, where our kids could possibly work at, where our kids were born. This is very important. We can't rely on, oh well, it's not that important voting this time around or it'll pass. Watsonville Community Hospital, for some of us, it's all that we have. Not all of us are blessed to have insurance through our jobs or through our spouses and sometimes people wait to the very last second before they go to the hospital and the hospital's in and we can't afford to lose that hospital. I'd just like to implore the people of Watsonville to please support this measure. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee Dodge Jr., anyone else? Okay, see none. I want to thank you both for being here this evening and your understanding and patience to wait. Sorry about that. Yeah, the one-year-old. One-year-old, next time. You would have had it. So we have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries, 7-0. Congratulations. Thank you so much. Thank you, folks. Good night. And now, moving on to item 8.2, our MOU with unions, the incentive plan to attract school bus drivers. This report will be presented by our superintendent, Shachman. Thank you, President. Oh, they can hear me. I'm grateful that Mark is here in case there are any questions, but this is a very simple proposal. This was negotiated with our two unions because the money is from our district and they have that right. So what the MOU is proposing is that if an employee recruits somebody who becomes a bus driver and they stay as a bus driver for two years, that employee will get $1,000. That's what this is about. So it's simply a way to try and incentivize, if that was pronounced correctly, finances to get more bus drivers, which as Mark knows, we need every day. That's it. Thank you, Superintendent Shachman. Do we have any public speakers to this item? No, we do not. Okay. Seeing none, I will bring this back to the board for discussion. Sorry, Trustee Dr. Holm. Support, I move to approve. I second. I have a first and second. Is there any other questions or comments from the board? Trustee Derserpa. Does this include board members? No. I re-recruit a lot of people into the district because we know how awesome the benefits are for people. So that's all. I was just making a joke. Don't joke. Give us a bus driver. So can I ask a question? Somebody asked me, they said they had a DUI 10 years ago, but they've been clean since then. What's the deal? I don't know the law. Mark, would you could you clarify it? Somebody had a DUI, but it was well, we can do some sounds like a maybe. For now, I'm hopeful you'll support the motion to simple motion. We need bus drivers to make some progress, but not enough. I did have a question on the resolution. I'm sorry, it was, could you bring it back up real quick? They're both the same. One is CSEA, one is CSEA. Either one. Can you definitely enlarge it? So if this is only for someone who actually holds all the certifications and licensing to be a school bus driver, it wouldn't be for someone that goes through our training program? No, they walk in the front door without any training. It takes a while to get trained, but if they go through the training and after whatever period of time we say there, that $1,000 goes to the employee. Okay. Allison, would you clarify? Yeah, that's not what it says, right? But can we have that included in there? Oh, please. Allison, I'm sorry. That's not why I'm reading that. Right. So the way I'm reading this, that they must walk through the door with all the licensing to be a school bus driver, which by the way, that's a lot of licensing that they have to go through. But this doesn't seem inclusive of if somebody brought forward a candidate that went through our training program and then became a licensed bus driver. Correct. The incentive is for someone who comes to the district that we can put on the street like right away, not bringing someone in for, into the training program. If that is the wish of the board, I think we could maybe look at a different one so that we could move forward with this one. If we wanted to make a separate one that maybe looks a little bit different with a different structure, because it's obviously a totally different process, right, of making sure they're going through that whole thing. Obviously, we can talk with our labor unions regarding that if you wanted to expand it. But I think, so I don't think you can, you would add it to this and we would have to take it all back. But I'm saying we could always do a separate one if that's what you guys want us to look into or want to give direction to the superintendent to look into. Sure. And I don't want to complicate this, but that was something that caught me. And I think, so I'm, I am fully supportive of this as it is, so it can move forward. But I'd like to, if hopefully the rest of the board maybe would be interested in supporting that, can maybe direct the superintendent and his staff to see if the unions would maybe support that in the future. Yeah, yeah, I was just rereading it real quick. So I think you're suggesting we mirror what we do here, but also just to expand on if you're okay with that, Trustee Acosta, is we did that with the signing bonus, right? We first started with just getting licensed drivers. And then we wanted, we weren't getting it, and then we wanted to expand it. And the latest one was expanded to a different amount for if they came in without that training, and they got a different kind of signing bonus. But no, I mean for our employees. I know. So I'm saying to use that same example of them, we can make something separate. We've gone through a couple of different iterations is my point of trying to do the signing bonus. This is very similar. I know it's a finders fee bonus, if you will. So we could maybe look at a different kind of structure for that type of employee coming in because the requirements coming in are different. Right. Okay. Thank you. This is something that I've read. No, good question. I thought. Thank you. Okay. So we have a first and a second. So unless there's anything further. Oh, sorry. I just wanted to say, you know, I'm definitely in support of this and any other ideas we can think of because the thought of any of our students being left at a bus stop without a bus driver is just unthinkable. So we have, I think, 21 vacancies. So yeah, let's get a lot more creative and figure out ways to get some more bus drivers on our streets. Thank you. Any other comments from any other board members? Thank you, Trustee Flores. Okay. So we have a first and a second. So I'll call for a vote. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? The motion, the vote carries seven zero. And now moving on to item 8.3, Counselor's Week, February 5th through February 9th, 2024. This report will be presented by our Superintendent Shekman as well. Three in a row. Thank you. I'm really grateful. Nellie, I'm not sure if she's still here, but she recognized our counselors, all counselors in her presentation. I spent the last eight years of my career teaching in the Counseling Ed program at San Jose State. I'm delighted to come back and see the work that we're doing here with our counseling staff. And it is time to recognize them. I want to bring real quickly some research that I used to use. The University of Florida researchers have shown that when counselors are in leadership positions in schools, the school culture is more inviting for kids. And that's because counselors have very unique training, very unique skills. And we love our counselors and we appreciate it. We hope they're watching or maybe they're watching a fun movie. That would be more appropriate to celebrate Counselors Week. But thanks, Counselors, for what you do. And thank you, staff, for supporting the work that our counselors do. Really appreciate it. That's it. Any public comments? We have no speakers to this. Okay. We will then, I will bring it back to the board. Any comments or discussion from the board? Just DiBalano-Scow. Thank you for bringing this. We got a lot of great counselors. We have a lot of challenges with discipline in some of our schools right now. So I just want to hope that we can embrace them, listen to them, get some creative ideas for how we can bolster their resources, bolster their efficacy. I know Superintendent Shekman, you got this in your background. This is in your wheelhouse. I know this is something you're paying attention to. So let's do everything we can to empower our counselors, keep them at PVUSD, and address the problems. So thank you. Thank you, Trustee Balao-Scow. Trustee Dodge, Jr.? I would just like to say thank you to all the counselors. Some of us here are products of What's of Ohio School and PVUSD. I'd just also like to thank and recognize my counselor who's still in What's of Ohio, who's now my daughter's counselor. And so that shows the dedication of our counselors that want to be here, who want to stay, and want to help our children. So I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you, Trustee Dodge, Jr., Trustee Dusserba. Thank you. Probably about halfway through our tenure, my tenure here at the district, we had enough money to add extra social-emotional counselors because we knew the need was great on behalf of our children. Our stakeholders told us, like, please help. And so we've recruited a lot of really wonderful counselors into our district, and I want to thank them personally as a mental health professional for the work that they do every day here. And with that, we need a motion, correct? I'd like to make a motion to approve this resolution in support of our school counselors. Thank you, Trustee Dusserba and Trustee Bolano-Skao for the second. And our student, Trustee, would like to speak. Thank you. I just wanted to say I also would like to thank our school counselors who, of course, do work for our students every day. But I would also like to specifically acknowledge, like, support programs in our schools as well, like GearUp and EOP, that are also always available to students with their questions, especially as a first-generation student, their support. And with my school counselors, I mean, their support has been very, very much appreciated. And that's also, like, the reasons a lot of students are on track and are interested in pursuing college and are also exploring alternatives like pathways and other options outside of high school. Thank you. Thank you, Student Trustee Mahan. Anyone else? Okay. We have a first and a second. I'll call for a vote. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No. The vote carries 7-0. Thank you. And thank you, Superintendent Shekman, for your reports. Moving to Item 8.4, Resolution Number 23-24-22, Acknowledging Black History Month, and this report will be presented by our own Assistant Superintendent of Elementary Education, Claudia Mujeres. Thank you. So good evening, Board President Acosta, Trustees, and Mr. Shekman. So my name is Claudia Mujeres, I'm the Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Education, and tonight I'm bringing to you a resolution acknowledging the month of February 2024 as Black History Month. It's important to highlight Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who was born December 19th, 1875, to former enslaved parents. In 1912, he earned his PhD in history from Harvard University, making him the second African-American to graduate with a PhD from Harvard. He went on to become a renowned author and journalist about African-American history. He believed racism could be overcome through education. He was aware of pre-existing celebrations and was asking the public to extend their study of Black history. Because of his efforts to promote African-American history, he became known as the father of Black history. He's also the person who helped start Black History Month. Whereas Pajaro Valley Unified School District recognizes that Black History Month is the opportunity to promote and foster cultural relevance in our schools and enrich the educational experiences of our students to deepen their understanding of the different perspectives of American history. Whereas PBSD recognizes that current research supports the positive effect of ethnic studies courses and other culturally relevant approaches to engage and motivate higher academic performance of all students. Therefore be it resolved that the Pajaro Valley Board of Trustees acknowledges February 2024 as Black History Month and recognizes the significance of Black History Month as an important time to acknowledge and celebrate the contributions of African-Americans in the nation's history. So we'd really like for you to approve this resolution. Thank you. Do we have any public speakers to this item? Excuse me, no speakers. Thank you. And I will bring it back to the board for discussion, comments. Trustee Disciple. Thank you in full support of this resolution. It was really beautiful to see our friends from Pajaro Valley High School here tonight in remembrance of Martin Luther King. And I think we all sort of neglected to say that earlier in our board comments about Martin Luther King Day and the day of service that many of us performed in. So anyway, thank you for bringing this forward and I'd like to make a motion to approve. Thank you, Trustee Disciple and Trustee Dr. Holm. Any other comments? Nope. Okay. Seeing none, I will call for a vote. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Seeing none, the vote is passed. 7-0-0. Thank you. And thank you very much. Thanks for my mic off. Moving on to item 8.5, this is to approve and adopt the PBUISD instructional calendars for the 2024-2025 school year, the 2025-2026 school year, and the 2026-2027 school year. And this report will be presented by Allison Niazawa, our Assistant Superintendent of HR. Yes. Thank you. Thank you, President Acosta, Board of Trustees, Superintendent Shekman. So before you tonight are the final drafts of the school calendars for the next three school years. We presented the first reading at the December 6th meeting. We received no notification to have them amended, so therefore they are before you tonight for approval. So I respectfully request that you approve the next three school year calendars. Thank you. Do we have any public comments? Okay, seeing none, I will bring it back to the board. Sorry. Any comments, discussion from the board? Trustee D'Sirka? Can you highlight the pertinent changes that we would need to know about in this new schedule? The pertinent change, oh sorry. That's okay. I'm going to cut you off. Sorry. The pertinent change is that we are having a full week off for Thanksgiving. Everything else is pretty much status quo. That's the change. Is that for all three years? Yes. Starting with the 2024. Starting with the 2024-25 school year. Yes. Sorry, I have another question. Because I get these questions from other parts of the county where we might have a teacher teaching here by living somewhere else and have kids in other districts. Did we try to align with some of the other districts in terms of the spring breaks and winter breaks and all that? Good question. So spring breaks, yes. We, I checked whatever calendars were available. There was an agreement quite a few years back between all of the superintendents that they would try to align to have the spring break be the first full week of April to address exactly what you're bringing up as well as address the testing schedules so that we had some consistency with our testing schedules for the CASP. And I believe Santa Cruz City Schools was the only one that had a calendar. Everyone else was kind of in the same position that we are where they're having to go and look or do the next three years out. So we, for next school year we are in alignment with the calendar that was available. And then once ours are published then the other districts can also look at ours and they can align. Thank you, Trustee Sir, for any other questions or comments? I know. Yeah, I'm ready to table it. If none, I'll entertain a motion. I'll move to approve. Thank you, Trustee. Second. Okay, we have a first and we have a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Carries 7-0. Moving on to 8.6, School Accountability Report Card. The report will be presented by our Assistant Superintendent of Secondary Education, Ms. Lisa Aguetti. Welcome. Good evening, President Acosta, Board of Trustees and Interim Superintendent, Mr. Scheckman. This evening I bring you the annual School Accountability Report Cards. Every year by February 1st we must update the School Accountability Report Cards, bring them to the Board to ask for approval to have them posted on our websites. And so that is why I am here this evening. And so the purpose of the School Accountability Report Card, also called the SARK, is to inform the community and families about how schools are doing. Essentially it is each individual school's report card. The majority of these SARKs are automatically filled in with data that comes from the state and some of the information is filled in from the school principal. Each section may pertain to a different year. Some of the sections, for example, the first one about the schools, it pertains to this year, 23-24. Some sections are about for school year 21-22, such as the teacher credential information. Some sections are 22-23 and some are for this year. So there are five sections. One about the school, two conditions of learning, which is about the teacher credential information, the school facility conditions and textbooks. Pupil outcomes, which is your academic data, as well as the physical fitness test. Engagement, which is opportunities for parent involvement, dropout graduation rates, as well as suspensions, attendance and expulsions. And the last section is other information. And so those are the five areas in the SARK, which align with the eight state priorities. And with that, I ask for your approval to have the school accountability report cards posted on our district website. Thank you. Do we have any public speakers to this item? No, we do not. Okay, seeing none, I will bring it back to the board for comments, questions, discussion. Yes, Trustee Dr. Holm. I move to approve. All right, I have a motion. A second. And I have a second. Any other questions or comments from the board before I call for a vote? Seeing none, okay. And I will now call for a vote. All those in favor? All right. Any opposed? No. The vote passes 7-0. Thank you. Moving on to item 8.7, approved notice of award for the Pajaro Middle School Flood Restoration Project number 2023062. This report will be presented by our Director of Maintenance, Operations and Facilities, our very own, Fernando Fernandez. Good evening, welcome. Good evening, President Acosta, Interim Superintendent Shekman, Board of Trustees, Cabinet. My name is Fernando Fernandez and I'm here to bring this project forward. This is for the Pajaro Middle School Restoration Project. This is a FEMA-funded project, General and Research Funding Project. So back in December 8th and December 15th, that we advertised for this project. We had a mandatory bid walk on December 19th. 16 contractors were present that day. January 16, we did a bid opening. Four seal bills were presented that day. And as you can see here on the board, the lowest bidder was Avila Construction, but they messed up on their numbers, so they withdraw their bid. So we had to go to move on to the next bidder, which was Ossonio Inc. from Castor Bill, with a price of $4,600,000. So I'm asking the approval to continue with the contract with Ossonio for the Power Restoration Project for $4,600,000. Thank you, Hernando. Do we have any public comments on this? We have no speakers. All right. Seeing none, I will bring it back to the board. Any questions, comments, or discussion from the board? I do. So we have contingency money just in case we come back with some change orders down the road. Ten percent. Ten percent. Yeah. And then the tentative start date. Tentative start date. As soon as we get this approved by the board, we're going to hold a pretty convenient onsite so we can kick off and get the contract just going because we need to finish and open up that site. That's our goal. And all water control systems are already in place in case of any future flooding, because we do have some storms lined up. So that's all been factored in. Correct. Everything, you know, the drains have been cleaned on the site and we did what we can there. So, I mean, other than raising those foundations up and put them on steels or something like that, I don't think we have the money and capable of doing that. We've done all we can there. And the county's already cleaned out all the gutters right in the DIs in the area? Correct. They've been cleaning down on Salinas Road and down in, you know, Pajaro area. So they've been working at it. All right. Well, God bless and good luck and hopefully we don't have any problems. Yeah. And we don't, we don't need another one. Say, second time, third time. I don't know if we could handle that. Vice President Soto, would you like to make a motion to approve this item? Yeah. This is my school, my area. And, you know, it's been on standby for quite a bit and probably something of an inconvenience. Maybe, maybe not for, you know, I want to thank Lakeview for accommodating the students as well and the district as well for making that decision. But it's time to get the kids back and let's get this done. So yeah, make a motion to support. And I'd like to go ahead and just second that if I could, since my trusty area is, as one of my schools, housing Pajaro middle school students. Not that we don't love them, but I agree with Vice President Soto's sentiment. We, I'm sure those Pajaro middle school, middle school students would like to get back to their own school. And so, and not have to be writing a bus to school and being, but. Being able to walk again. Yeah. So thank you everyone for allowing us to do that. And trusty Volano-Scale. Just a quick question. How confident are you on a scale from one to 10, with 10 being the most confident, one being the least confident, that the kids are going to be there in August? 10, very confident. Yeah, we're going to be there. We owe it to the kids and we got to open up that school. I mean, that was one of the schools I attended from K through 8. So I was there, I attended there, and my kid went there. So that's, I live in that area. That's my community too. So I want to get those kids back in school. They deserve it. And, you know, they'll be happy when they come back. And I just also want to say, I drive through there regularly and frequently, multiple times in a week. And the painting is just that we're seeing coming along. It's just amazing. So. Yeah. And it's, it's hard right now, just the weather is not really permitting us to do the, you know, what we want to do. But I know we're going to be getting some good weather. So hopefully we could really improve that, that look pretty soon here. So, it'll come around. Thank you for all the work your team is doing to help them out. I'm sorry. Trustee D'Serpa. Hi. So can you tell us about the field? The field. Because I know we just sort of launched a public service campaign to try to race money for the fields. But can you say more about it? Yeah. The fields like we had it tested to see what, what was in there. And if anything, we're going to go in there, you know, mow the fields, irrigate, fertilize, and seed if we don't come up with the money to, to the turf field. So the fields will be good for the kids to return back if we don't get the money, if we don't raise the money to go with the NASA turf. So if we, if we end up raising enough money to put in some really nice infrastructure there on the fields, what are, what are we dreaming for? Is it soccer fields? Is it baseball, diamond? Like what are we hoping for on those fields? It'll be a track and field. Oh, it'll be a track. And a field. Awesome. Okay. And about how much money will we need to raise? I was just going to ask if you don't mind, I'd like to ask Superintendent Sheckman to speak to this because he had made some comments about this in Intergovernmental Relations Committee and he and I have had a conversation about it. I just want you to know that Herlindo and I and Sergio Andres, his assistant director, have been working very closely. We need a million and a half. We identified 500,000 in the district. We're going to raise the money. We're going to, we're going to, we're going to. We're going to put in a field, Hurley and I have talked about this, and it's not going to be, they're not going to put in a grass field in case we don't raise the money. They're going to put in a grass field because we won't be able to build a synthetic turf field by the time the kids will be there at the school. That's just a fact of life. But we're going to raise the money. So the plan is we test it for, we test the field because it was flooded. We plant grass, kids can play ball, and we will, you know, have a timeline to put in the turf. And I have made a commitment to the people in this community and the people who've asked me about it. My time is limited in the district, but if the money's not there, I'm going to hang around until we raise that money. Pajaro Middle School kids and, you know, their families, they were flooded twice in the last 30 years. And what a delight to put a synthetic turf field as the center of the community of Pajaro, just like the field we have at EA Hall. That's the plan, and we're going to do it. That's great. So I've asked the Aptos Sports Foundation to help, and they're looking for money, and the wharf to wharf should help. I haven't reached out just to them, but we should. They've reached out to me, and they're working on it. That's great. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to let you know that the architects who've done a lot of work for us also donated the design phase for the field. So they're doing that for free. That's fantastic. Really great. We're going to get some, we have a lot of support already. People want to do this. That's great. I'll just reiterate what I've said before. Mr. Scheckman and I spoke at the Monterey County Board of Supervisors. They were slated to give us $2 million for this project and ended up giving us zero. So I've called Glenn Church, who's the supervisor for that area. He should be ashamed of himself, and I encourage all these board members to continue to call him to let him know how we feel about this, because their own staff recommended a $2 million donation, not a donation, but a $2 million, what would you call it? Allocation to our district. And unfortunately, that did not happen. Thank you, Trustee Dussert. But Trustee Dodge, Jr.? I just wanted to follow up with Trustee Dussert. Was there a reason why? Do we know why? What I heard him say is that, well, the Pajaro Valley has a huge budget, and we don't need the money. If I could try and address it, I'll defend them a little. $20 million was provided by the State of California in an emergency fund for Pajaro. That's a drop in the bucket. For the infrastructure that's needed for that community, $20 million was spent overnight. The people in that community had the perception that the district would find the money elsewhere. And so they worked on the supervisors to convince them that the money should go directly to people in the community. And that is what is happening. And I don't know an area that has greater need. So we get up the next day and we say, all right, that's understandable, but we still need to build that field. And we will. Politics plays a role, but when the press asked me, are you disappointed, Mr. Schekman? And I responded, of course I am. But $20 million is a drop in the bucket. It's okay. We'll make it happen. And you're all going to help. Right on Helika? Thank you. Sorry. We already have a first and second, but are there any other discussion and comments from the board before I call for a vote? No? Okay. Then I will call for a vote. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The vote carries 7-0. Thank you, Herlindo. Thank you for enduring all of our questions and comments. Thank you. So now we will move to our last report and discussion item, 9.1, our annual McKinney-Vento report. This report will be presented by our coordinator of student service, says Ben Slider. Welcome, Ben. Good evening, Board President Acosta, Board of Trustees, Superintendent Schekman, and the PVUSD community I'll be presenting the annual McKinney-Vento report by focusing on three data areas, grades, attendance, and discipline. So if we take a look at this slide, just for reference, grade point average, 4 through 1, A through F. What I want to highlight in this particular slide is a couple of things. But first, Q2 means quarter two. Q4 means quarter four. Q2 is like semester one or quarter two. Q4 is semester two or quarter four. And Q1 is quarter ones, just to give you a little bit of reference. But if we take a look at 22, 23, quarter two, McKinney-Vento students in grades six through eight, they had an average grade point average of 2.77. And if we take a look at this year at quarter one, we didn't have quarter two grades just yet because they're not fully inputted and due by the time I created this presentation. That grade level shows a 2.82, which shows growth between quarter two of last year and quarter two of this year. If we take a look at the McKinney-Vento students nine through 12, 2.27 in quarter two of last year. And now in this year, we have 2.41. So we're also seeing some growth there with their overall average grade point averages. And then you can see four comparison all PVOSD students both in six through eight and nine through 12. Next is attendance. So we take a look at the attendance. I want to highlight these two quarters here. So quarter two of last year and quarter two of this year. And across the board, TK fifth, we see that there is an increased percentage of attendance rate 89 to 93. So that's great. That's a significant gain there. Sixth through eighth are McKinney-Vento students showed 88% and this year 91. And then ninth grade 89.77 to 90.83. And just for reference, when we look at all McKinney-Vento metrics together last year 89.35 compared to this year 92.03. So we're seeing an increase in positive attendance rates. And then as you can see for reference comparison to all PVOSD students. This is the same information just in graphical form. And so you can see the difference in heights of the different quarters as well. And we're able to show the quarter two grades or attendance from this year because I was able to run the report at the end of the semester. And then finally I wanted to share where we are with suspensions and expulsions comparing between the three academic years as well. So 21-22 if we take a look at the table down below. When we're looking at McKinney-Vento students each of these percentages or numbers are about a student receiving at least one suspension. So they're not total number of suspensions but the number of students that have received at least one suspension. So 21-22 academic year there are 71 McKinney-Vento students that received at least one suspension or 4.41% of all the McKinney-Vento students received a suspension. And 22-23 was 83 for the whole academic year or 4.77 and as of 12-20 so at the end of last semester when I pulled this data we had 48 or 2.5. And so typically what we see is that there are times that students do have multiple suspensions so we'll keep an eye on that and work towards making sure that we try to keep that number down. So when we take a look at overall students 666 in 2021-22 or 3.22, 3.73 and 22-23 and 2.09. So we do see that the difference is that there's slightly higher rates of suspension rates for McKinney-Vento students compared to all students. And so we'll work on putting in our interventions and our Tier 1 supports to be able to support students around that. For this year at this point McKinney-Vento soon as there haven't been any expulsions yet. And that's a host, a list of all of the supports that our Healthy Start program provides directly to our McKinney-Vento families. And with that, any questions? Do we have any public speakers to this item? We have no speakers. Seeing none, I will bring it back to the board. Any questions, comments or discussion from the board? Trustee Villano-Skow. How many kids and families are we talking about here? So it does shift from year to year, but currently right now we have somewhere around 1,961 students that we serve that have some form of McKinney-Vento status. 9,000? 1,961. That number shifts because sometimes we have students and families that move out of our area. And just for anybody watching, there's a little bit confused. We're talking about people without homes. We're talking about people who have some sort of situation where they're under-sheltered or they're in substandard housing or they don't have a place to live, or they're currently living in a shelter on a hotel or something like that. So there's a list of what qualifies a family to be eligible. How do you define substandard? I don't define substandard. Yes. So there is an empathetic interview that our Healthy Start registration technicians do perform when they contact family. So we might get some word that there's a family that's in need. We will reach out to them. And then based on a list of criteria, they'll ask some questions. They're empathetic in their interview, and then they make that determination whether or not they are eligible for Healthy Start services. So for now, thank you. Yep. Thank you, Trustee Bellanos-Skao. Anyone else? Any other questions? Trustee D'Sarpa? Okay. So they do this empathetic interview. They find out they qualify them for Healthy Start. And then what kind of services are offered to help get them into better housing? Well, we will either connect them with community partners that are able to either provide rent assistance or be able to connect them to housing. Most of that kind of work is going to happen on the ground and either our registration technicians will reach out to these community organizations on their behalf, find that information, and help to connect the two, the family and the community organization together. Or if it's within our means, we'll also be able to reach out and give them that information in terms of what kind of options that are out there. Do the Healthy Start technicians use the referral program that we adopted, which is, I think, the closed loop referral? Yep, the UNITUS referral. Yeah, so are they able to use that and those referrals for housing assistance? Okay. Yeah. Because 1900 is a lot of kids. It is a lot. And those are the ones that are within our synergy program that are in our PVSD programs. We also support their whole family as well, which could also include someone that was just born to maybe three or four, but not in one of our PVSD programs. So that doesn't include those numbers either. When you include those numbers, then it gets past 2000. Yeah, so you add another couple hundred to that. So I would like to figure out a way for us to partner with some of the homeless service programs if we're not already, because all over the county, we're going to be required to build tremendous amounts of affordable housing upcoming. The state is enforcing this, like 5,000 units in the unincorporated area and probably a similar amount in the city of Watsonville. So hopefully we can get families on the waitlist for these units. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Trustee Dusserba. Anyone else? Okay. Well, thank you, Ben, for being here this evening and during the comments and questions. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Ben. All right. Sorry. Moving on to our consent agenda. These consent items are routine items that come before the board for the board's approval. Do we have any public speakers to the consent agenda? We do not. Are there any items on the consent agenda that any board member would wish to defer? Trustee Duc? Just quickly, if we could just elaborate on 10.14. I think you'll have to defer it then. Or Linda. Would you like to approve the agenda with deferring 10.14? I would like to make a motion to support this agenda deferring 10.14. Can I have a second? Second. I have a first and a second. All those in favor? All right. All right. Any opposed? The motion carries 7-0 with 10.14 deferred. And I believe her line does come up to maybe answer your questions. This has been haunting me since 1996 along with Mr. Sheckman and I know Trustee Skow has heard about it too. So this HVAC system, is there going to be heating and auditorium? Does this help alleviate? Because I know some of you have seen emails about it's too hot, it's too cold. Does this help in any way? Addie Hall? Yes. Yeah. The HVAC system in Addie Hall in the main building is going to be replaced. But does that, I'm not sure. Mr. Sheckman, do you know how the auditorium, like, is there a heat? Like, I know it gets too cold. Is this going to, well. So here's, here's a, here, here's a problem at Addie Hall in the auditorium. It's a big space. Yeah. They don't really inform us when they're going to use it. They inform us when they're already in there. And it's going to take a while for that place to heat up. They do have big units up there, two big units serving that auditorium. So if we would know ahead of time, we could schedule it so that it could warm up because that place does take a while. And being in old building, windows are not really energy efficient. So that place really, you know, from being in the 40s, you know, it's going to take a while for that space to heat up. So if we don't like to heat up spaces when they're not being used, just for energy savings. But if we had a schedule, that's why we have a schedule. And I believe now we're, we still have a schedule, but they do have a thermostat on the wall that they could control their own heating systems. So it'll be, but then again, you know, it's not going to heat up right away. So that's that's all I can say on that. All right. Just, you know, thank you for getting this. I know it's an old school, you know, my grandparents went there as well, but we're trying, you know, so we're investing as much as we can. So I just wanted to say, thank you. And that's one of the lucky schools that they do have AC in there and that school. So a lot of our sites don't have air conditioning. Oh, that one does have air conditioning and heating. So they're kind of lucky in that point. That's what we're going back with. So thank you very much. I like to make a motion to support agenda item 10.14. Thank you. Okay. I have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. And that carries 7-0. Thank you, Herlinda, for answering the question. Thank you. And, sorry, moving on to item 13, action report on closed session. Are there any items to report from closed session? Yes, there are. So as of tonight's meeting, January 24th, 2024, from closed session, item 2.1, expulsion referrals. So under closed session agenda item 2.1, the board voted 6-0-1 to approve the recommendation from district administration for a suspended expulsion for the remainder of the 23-24 academic year for student number 2324-008. The board voted 5-1-1 to approve the recommendation from district administration for a suspended expulsion for one calendar year for student number 2324-009er. The board voted 6-0-1 to approve the recommendation from district administration for a suspended expulsion for the remainder of the 23-24 academic year for student number 2324-010. The board voted 6-0-1 to approve the recommendation from district administration for a suspended expulsion for the remainder of the 23-24 academic year for student number 2324-011. The board voted 5-1-1 to approve the recommendation from district administration for a full expulsion for one calendar year for student number 2324-009er. The board voted 6-0-1 to approve the recommendation from district administration for a full expulsion for one calendar year for student number 2324-013. The board voted 6-0-1 to approve the recommendation from district administration for a full expulsion for one calendar year for student number 2324-014. And the board also voted 6-0-1 to approve the recommendation from district administration for a suspended expulsion for one calendar year for student number 2324-015. Motion number one in closed session under item 2.2. So I move to approve the certified personnel report as presented by district administration on January 24, 2024 with a 21 and 10 additional action items. Do I have a second? I'll second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Vote carries 7-0-0. All right, motion number two under closed session item 2.3. I move to approve the classified personnel report as presented by district administration on January 24, 2024 with 42 and eight additional action items. Can I get a second? A second. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Vote carries 7-0. All right, closed session item 2.7, liability claim. The board of trustees voted 6-0-1 to reject a liability claim. Closed session item 2.8, special education settlement. The board of trustees voted 6-0-1 to approve the settlement. And we have one announcement. PVUSD is pleased to announce the selection of Myra Fernandez to the position of coordinator of Child Welfare and Attendance. Ms. Fernandez has been serving students in PVUSD since 2006 as an elementary bilingual education teacher at both Freedom and Oloni schools. She has served as the academic coordinator at Calabasas Elementary and Hall District. Most recently, she has been serving as the principal of Hall District since 2018. Ms. Fernandez holds a bachelor's degree in sociology with a social service emphasis and a minor in Chicano studies from UC Davis. She also earned a master's of arts and teaching and multiple subject teaching credential with a B-clad from Bethany University. Her master's in educational administration and administrative credential were earned at Santa Clara University. And Ms. Fernandez is also a graduate of Watsonville High School and it's always exciting to have a PVUSD grad take on such an important role in the district. So with that, we are excited to welcome Ms. Fernandez to her new role. Congratulations, Myra. Is that all? That is everything. Thank you, Vice President Soto. Moving to item 14.1, the Board's next meeting is a special board meeting next week on January 31st, 2024 to review superintendent applications. And the Board's next regular board meeting is on February 14th, 2024. So cancel those Valentine's Day plans. And with that, I will move to item 15. The meeting is adjourned at 10.23 p.m. Thank you, everyone, for coming this evening. Thank you all.