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[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] good afternoon everyone uh welcome to the greeting schools and climate resilience C committee i'm Dr rossio
Rivas and I'm honored to welcome you all today as we gather to discuss um critical work being done to green our schools address the growing climate threat we are already facing and ensure that our schools are safe and that
they're also involved in um greening and climate resiliency and um healthy spaces for them to learn and grow as we all know our communities are not just dealing with the impacts of climate change they're actively responding to it
this includes rebuilding in the aftermath of the fire wildfires continuing to create green spaces in our schools and neighborhoods and cleaning our campuses so they are not only more resilient but also supportive of student
well-being the work we are doing today will help us shape a healthier and more sustainable future for our students our schools and our communities as we approach Earth Month this April it's a perfect time to reflect on our collective responsibility to the
environment and renew our commitment of building a sustainable future for generations to come earth Month also offers an opportunity to highlight and deepen our efforts to protect our planet and ensure that our communities remain resilient in the face of climate
challenges ahead i'm proud to have the opportunity to hear from a diverse group of group of experts and advocates who are leading the way in these efforts we have a full agenda ahead um so I'll keep all my remarks brief but before we begin I want to thank you all for continued
dedication to the health and future of our schools and communities um and before we move on to uh labor partners I would love for our committee members and our board members to just briefly introduce yourselves and uh the
organization you're affiliated with just so we know uh who's here all present if you want to uh start Lauren for us good afternoon thank you Dr rivas i'm Lauren Aim i'm the climate director at the LA Alliance for a New Economy and we work on environmental racial and um
economic justice in the LA area thank you so much good afternoon my name is Michaela Randolph i'm the associate director of regional programs with Green Schoolyards America and we work on transforming asphalt covered school yards into um
climate sustainable ecosystems scott Smearlson board member board district 3 in the San Frernando Valley and also this year president of LA USD school board good afternoon everyone christos Cressilio chief eco sustainability
officer for our LA Unified School District i'm Alex O'Brien i'm the def deputy CF christina Tes is not joining us today good afternoon this is Eric Dominguez with the Office of General Counsel thank you
and did you want to introduce us no okay so and we also have our um third board member who is part of this committee Miss Charlet Handy Newell and she's on her way she's just running a little bit late but you'll you'll see her come in um and I'll have her introduce herself
so now I would love to start um with our labor partners if there are any labor partners who would like to make any comments before we begin our presentations yes Mr nico Gardner greetings schools and climate resilience committee my name is Nico Gardner and
I'm a political organizer with United Teachers Los Angeles of course we represent the 39,000 educators of LA USD uh it's a pleasure to be here with you all today uh I'm here to discuss the urgent issue of air quality after the catastrophic 2025 January wildfires in
Los Angeles of course in the context of a larger air quality crisis that we've been facing here in LA it's no secret no surprise that the wildfires were a systemwide crisis you know not only were there thousands of students families and educators displaced not only were three
campuses severely impacted but students and educators experienced unhealthy uh to dangerous air quality conditions districtwide from the harbor to the valley even short-term exposure to smoke and ash can cause respiratory irritation burning eyes and uh nausea and can
inflame chronic heart and respiratory conditions such as asthma and heart disease this is especially true in children that are even more vulnerable to negative environmental conditions the impacts of this toxic hazard event outlast the immediate emergency
condition smoke ash and other toxic chemicals can stay in ventilation systems unless properly cleaned continuing to put the health of our school communities at risk through the presentation and discussion today we are hoping for clarity on what the district is doing to address these serious air
quality concerns in schools across the district not just in the immediate areas of the fire we especially urge the school board and the district to move forward on the wildfire response recommendations you will be hearing later from our brothers and sisters at Smart 105 to remediate and ver remediate
verify and maintain HVAC systems but of course there's a wider context to consider and which is the general poor air quality in which students educators and families teach learn and live according to the state of the air report Los Angeles has one of the worst air
pollution problems in the country this is actually a a recognition we've received for multiple years in a row and this is even more true in communities that were purposefully redlined to be near toxic pollution centers like oil wells toxic scrapyards other oil infrastructure so on and so forth now of
course LUSD can't control air quality regionwide but there are steps we can take to protect students educators and community upgrading HVAC systems advancing our commitment to renewable energy and energy efficiency greening campuses and building water resilient
landscapes will all help with uh deliver cleaner air even before the wildfires roughly and according to district presentations about 50,000 HVAC units needed to be replaced and 475 schools still need greening updates to meet district goals we hope that out of the
discussion today uh we'll lead we'll come you know out of the discussion we will uh land on a collaborative approach and a proactive plan to ensure clean air for all of our students for all educators for all LUSD staff and for all of our communities now I'd be remiss if I didn't place this conversation uh in
kind of the world in which we live as the Trump administration and the White House target schools dismantle the Department of Education lead with an agenda of austerity and privatization it is our obligation to invest in schools and climate justice and every single dollar and every single investment we
make to that regard counters the dangerous agenda championed by Trump and Musk thank you so very much thank you thank you very much for your words and um reminding us all what's at stake and what's important so thank you
very much um so as we have Mr christo Rilio come Christilios come up to the podium i want to give us a quick rundown of what we are uh expecting today in our presentations and who our speakers are so our first speaker today is Mr christos Crusilio the chief eco
stability officer who will give us an important updates on the process of eco sustainability office his presentation will give us a clear picture of the initiatives and progress being made as we work toward a greener and more sustainable future for our schools
following Mr christos we will hear from a panel of experts in the field of wildlife remediation and climate policy uh we have Mr fernando Choa political director of Smart Local 105 jeremy Zidik um Zidik sorry um special projects
coordinator of the Western State Councils of SMART and Chris Ruck Chris Rock codes and standards representative from the same council uh they will discuss maintaining clean and a clean maintaining clean air meeting climate goals and student achievement wildfire
remediation recommendations and their insights will be are invaluable as we look at the intersection of climate policy wildlife recovery and the impact of student achievement afterwards we'll hear from some incredible young talented people who are here some of them are
here in the audience now a group of students from Griffith Steam Magnet Middle School including Esminalda Marquez Garcia an eighth grader student at Victoria Chavez a seventh grader Haley Eredia sixth grader Naelli Santos Dora and Mariah Leo a ninth grader from
Garfield High School as well as Antoneta Garcia a parent at Griffith Steam Magnet stephanie Mononttoya MSW intern and Christine Mariano a psychiatric social worker will be sharing their impactful work in cultivating growth the impact of
mindful gardeners this student led initiative highlights the transformative role that gardens can play not only our environment but in development and well-being of students so with that said um our first speaker today Mr christos Christilio he will provide us an
important update on the eco sustainability officer office chris Mr christos your the floor is yours thank you thank you for the opportunity to present madame chair board president committee members and listeners good afternoon i will start by saying imagine our
district generating its own uh clean energy harnessing the power of the sun to create better planet for future generations as we undergo this transformation in environmental stewardship and innovation the question is not if we can make this a reality but
how soon we can make this happen in this presentation that I'll be sharing with you today I'll be updating you on our LD solar energy efforts and outline how a comprehensive sustainability plan will guide us towards a brighter cleaner
future while fostering a climate c culture of environmental stewardship our mission remains to be the most sustainable school district in the nation and we following up on our goals our goals is this to transition our
school district to clean electricity by 2030 and clean energy by 2040 the same time we're continuing by greening our schools by establishing a minimum of 30% green spaces on all of our schools and within our climate literacy we're continuing on developing
comprehensive climate uh literacy uh content so we can be able to actually come back to you and present to you in more detail how this will help support to develop climate leadership throughout our schools but first let's just focus on
our solar PV program just um just to start by sharing that our school district uses approximately about 345 megawatt of power so with that said we're looking at how much power we will need to transition to meet our 2030
goal uh as being able to have clean electricity and our 2040 goal of clean energy in all sectors what you're seeing um up there on the presentation on uh the current years 2024 and 25 uh as we pass is we're showing how much megawatt
of power we're generating right now which it's approximately 19 megawatt now let me make a point that a megawatt is is equal to 1,00 kilowatt um of capacity and let's just make make sure make sure I share with everyone to understand that
we talk about two different things we talk about capacity and production capacity is what what a system has in terms of being able to produce production is actually the amount of production over a certain time of a period and we typically refer to uh
kilowatt hours or megawatt hours so um under our current uh program we have 19 uh megawatts of p of power and we've uh done this program over a decade ago back in 2019 uh 2009 and 10 to 2015 we're
able to develop approximately the 19 megawatts over 63 school sites we have approximately 68 installations which includes some carports now this provides um a lot of energy pro production if you can see the years 14 through 24 provides
over two 240 um million kilowatt hours and it gives us a a cost avoidance on our general fund of approximately 47.8 billion the last decade and that those installations included carport systems shade structures and rooftop structures
you can see one of the one of the installations at our San Petro High School at the Oink campus now something else I wanted to share here as we uh our goal of trying to achieve 2030 that means that we have to
continue with additional power and I'll talk about the current program of uh 15 megawatts that was just recently approved by our board of education and then we need to continue of adding more um solar infrastructure to be able to support our 2030 goal we need
approximately about another 100 megawatt um um we need a total of 100 megawatt power to be able to achieve the 2030 goal and um as is pointing to the one of the bar charts to to the middle to the center you can see how that is broken
down in terms of us achieving our 2030 goal and then our 2040 goal is the one that shows a ladder blue line of uh transitioning our fossil fuels to um uh electricity which will require another 10 108 megawatt to be able to do
that that's our 2040 goal so in all as we transition we need to continue transitioning um our school district we're adding more solar um power within our facilities now going back to the most
recent approval of our solar program we were able to approve the uh the 15 megawatt on 21 solar 21 uh school sites and this will enable us to give us um uh enough electricity to support the the u
the transition of of those sites it's actually providing enough uh renewable energy to uh to most of the school sites but we still need to be able to acquire electricity from uh DWPNSC to help support uh this this uh clean
electricity to our school sites the um the way that we looked at this is uh we tried to initially pilot this program to better understand the different requirements between between DWP andCE both of our utility territories to better understand what those
requirements are are and to also made it as a goal to look at sites that we had new roof installations to make sure that whatever we're installing it was aligning with uh this installation so we don't have to replace any of those systems while we install the solar panel
channels um at the same time we try to provide and we'll be providing opportunities to our students um as we've uh made it part of the requirements to be able to have our vendors provide um STEM education to those campuses so our our students will
be able to benefit out of this program itself this uh map shows a location of the sites and how they were selected of how we tried to distribute them uh between all the different areas and uh the the capital needed to be able to move this
forward it was approximately about $122 million and um and this will include the design construction and management of those installations the um the uh the design builders will be able to provide those and being able to complete this
program in the next two to three years and um also in addition to that we have a a general fund budget of approximately $10 million to provide operations and maintenance and a performance guarantee what that means is that they will make sure that whatever they share with us that these systems will perform they
have to make sure that uh the system systems perform to that otherwise they have to be able to provide uh or give us a check to the school district for anything that is not um they're not performing or providing so this would
give us uh an energy production over 25 years of $178 million with a net cost avoidance of $45.7 million over that time that's for the the net cost avoidance it's over the general over the
u the capital u budget that we use but when you look at the general fund the actual cost avo 168 million now this does not include the the investment tax credits we'll be able to realize approximately about $28 million of tax credits if
those are available when we finish the projects in two in the next two to three years the scope of work for these projects do include uh rooftop carport and shade structures which is great to be able to see that at least we'll be able to get some shade on our schools out of these projects and uh we'll also
be installing um level two EV charging stations at 13 sites and uh as shared earlier we've uh we're making sure that all these installations of those solar panels will go on uh on new installations of uh new
roofing installations so at least we make sure that we get this warranty of the roofs as well while we do the work um on this slide here what you're seeing it is the actual uh different projects and what we're sharing here is the the location of the projects and the
actual system of uh of uh the solar system that we're installing you can see that the the actual systems um vary and you can see the project budget per side and the estimated uh avoidance in terms of uh the 25 years how much we'll be
avoiding and the general fund cost avoidance over the 25 years also you're seeing a construction start and construction end uh with a plan of completing those installations by late 27 uh with all of them the project
budget you can see the accumulated cost cost of $122 million and the avoidance in terms of the the net cost avoidance of 45 million and the general fun cost avoidance of $168 million um what's great about this is that we'll be able
to to see the EV charging stations to allow the school sites as well so we've uh we're planning approximately 89 electric ve electric vehicle charging stations level two charging stations on our school sites this shows you a sample um
installation in one of our projects this is at Markham Middle School we can see the actual um size of the system it's approximately 76 kilowatt and uh this will offset approximately 90% of the
electricity at that school site and you can see some of the actual cost in terms of what the avoidance are um and those this does include roof um installations mostly and some of the car ports that we have at the lower bottom left and also
EV charging stations on the bottom left as well by the by the uh parking areas so putting this together now in terms of the impacts that we will be able to see out of this program we'll be able to uh
generate the 15 megawatts um over the uh uh we'll be able to install the 15 megawatts and we'll be able to see approximately 23 million kilowatt hours um of reduction per year that is it's going to give us a 25-y year total avoided energy consumption of 556
million kilowatt hours and a 25-y year total avoid avoid avoided greenhouse gas emissions of 280,000 metric tons of CO2s and just put things in perspective that annual is is like removing approximately about
2,700 person personal vehicles from the road and enough energy to power 2100 homes and diverting approximately about 4,100 tons of waste from landfills and you can see the amount of greenhouse gas emissions sequestered um in terms of uh
putting in size this will be the size of uh three Griffith parks um just to give you a perspective on that so it's uh the impacts are great in terms of uh this program and we're excited that we have this program and we can move this program forward i'm going to move into and talk
a little bit about the the eco sustainability uh plan itself and the uh the eco sustainability office were charged to be able to work with all the divisions departments to able to elevate and
accelerate uh sustainability what that means is that through different uh innovations to come up with uh comprehensive plans and solutions that at least each division and department has a plan of how we can be able to steer the school district to be able to
achieve um the the goals that was set forth by uh our board of education so we are tracking those and uh it's going to create a greater effort to work with uh some of the other departments we're already working with facilities with
transportation instruction uh we started working with food services and health and safety and uh we'll be looking at those plans uh individually but at the same time we've uh we're going through a process to hire a consultant to help us
develop the LUSD eco sustainability plan we've um received proposals and we're anticipating to bring it to the board for approval um next month actually May 2025 we'll be able to present this and get this approved um the um the process
to be able to that we're going to go through this plan is to it is to develop a comprehensive plan and we start with our engagement uh through the spring fall of this year while we're doing the assessment at the same time and then we're going to continue with the plan development um so we can be able to have
this completed by the spring of 2026 so it's approximately um a 12 month 12 to 14 months period to be able to complete the plan but as we go through this process we'll be able to engage pretty much all the different divisions and departments and we'll be able to have a
comprehensive plan for the entire school district so some of the scope of work that we develop that will be developing along this way it is to go start with the assessment this is the time that we're collecting a lot of the data and reviewing a lot of the data that uh we
have available we're going to establish baselines through uh the different departments to better understand um their concerns and some of the issues that they have we identify some of the climate risks we're going to look at infrastructure needs for all the
different sustainability sectors and then we're going to engage all the stakeholders through the process the idea is to engage everyone and I'll show how we're going to do that in terms of engaging everyone through the process to develop the work plan and then uh we'll have different workshops to make sure that all LD divisions are engaged
through the process and then we're going to continue with the development of the comprehensive um LUD sustainability plan with the with having a a holistic plan that is integrated with actionable solutions for all uh sustainability
sectors and then we'll have measures of how we're going to be able to measure against a progress to be able to meet the goals and targets that we're setting forward so th those road maps um they will become a high priority for our office to make sure that we able to achieve this as we define them through
the process now the one thing that we're making sure is that this um um eco sustainability plan is aligned with our five pillars here and we're ensuring that at least these pillars under our strategic plan uh they're followed and that's why you
could see under the academic excellence some of the curriculum integration the climate literacy um under our joy and wellness some of the healthy food initiatives outdoor education and greeting um and then engagement and collaboration operational effectiveness and so so forth and investing and staff
some of the different areas identified that will be able to make sure that the plan itself it incorporates so uh there's a lot of information and data here that we're trying to make sure that this becomes a part of our ego sustainability plan so we're going to do this by
identifying uh working group representatives and uh we identifying our different sectors different different sectors includes climate air quality energy water solid waste transportation food and nutrition procurement education engagement construction operations and maintenance
and as you can see we've identified the stakeholders that they will be able to collaborate with us and the and our consultant to be able to define um the scope of work and set up the goals and objectives for the plan and then as we
do that we've uh we're going to uh define and identify the high priority uh throughout this sector so uh for example when you when you look at climate gas emissions climate adaptation and climate resiliency it will be become categories that we'll be able to identify and we're
going to rank those and we're going to identify priorities and we're going to do the same for all these different type of sectors that I'm showing here on the on this slide so um that's an exciting we're very excited about the actual eco sustainability plan because it's going
to set up the framework of how we're going to be able to move forward and how we're going to be able to achieve the goals and objectives that we're going to collectively um set forward so that's a that's quite exciting for us and in hopes that uh in May once we bring the
uh this forward the the board considers and approves that so we can be able to start our a comprehensive plan the uh now I'm going to give you a quick update on the climate literacy that is something that really um I'm very thankful for um the team that were able
to assemble to work together and uh the the the goal of this climate literacy was to convene and organize all other related working groups called for the by previous initiatives and resolutions and to focus on school greening gardening
outdoor education and clean energy to deliver recommendations that increased climate literacy and climate justice throughout the school district and we did this by collaborating with our division of instruction and also with uh with UTLA
and it was a great collaboration so here I'm going to be sharing a lot of these updates at least what we are within the plan and what's coming forward here um part of the climate leadership we have one of one of our uh schools that's participating in the Heroes for Zero and
they were able to um to be one of uh the winners that won $5,000 and they took their money and the uh put it towards uh visiting one of uh one of the sites the Underwood Farms to be able to get and learn more about um agriculture and
climate literacy so we're excited to see how this program support our schools as we move forward and um the uh the climate literacy started over a year ago and we've uh we've uh took the lead in terms of the eco sustainability office
working sides by side by side by side with the division of instruction and UTLA to be able to identify what the resolution called for so our first meeting was to define identify everything what we needed to uh proceed
with and then we've uh started meeting to meetings uh to be able to understand what we as a school district have to date and then um uh through that collaboration to identify what needed to be done and actually the the the final
recommendations were received by everyone we have them together and now we're finalizing them with a plan to come and present to uh this committee in the next few months so we'll be excited to share what that is you can find a lot of the information about uh the work
that we do under the lust.org backtf and uh uh the meetings and everything else that we had all the comments that we received they're all listed over there so we wanted to make sure that everything is aware and transpar we have that transparency in terms of the work that we have been
conducting so far so the actual report itself uh with this collaboration is going to be able to address a lot of different areas but four ma four areas mainly is focused on curriculum outdoor education workforce development and infrastructure and some
of the items that you're seeing up there in terms of the uh division of instruction the climate literacy champions the climate literacy schooly group the social emotional learning career technical education which fall under the curriculum um a lot of the
these things will be expanded in the actual report that we'll be presenting to you and uh the plan is um for myself with the actual task force to come here and present to all of you so you can hear from them as well their experiences and we were able to uh put together so
we're looking forward to that meeting to be sharing the the recommendations of the committee i wanted to feature uh one of the items that we discussed the past few meetings and I wanted to this is actually related to our climate literacy and it is the aeroponic tower gardens
that we had in uh were able to install at eight of our participating schools um that was a a very exciting um pilot program that we released with um trying to learn more about what our students are learning how they're interested
about the this initiative and uh we're really saw our students embracing this in Asia they've been learning a lot about how to grow vegetables how they're they're able to get seeds and from those seedlings to be able to grow fruits and vegetables and have curriculum uh based
program uh that supports these actual tower gardens and uh it's really important to see how it was emra embraced by all of our students and how uh as we move forward and we've uh assessed this program how we'll be able to then transition and have more schools
participate because it's really helping them out understand a lot about um the food that they eat uh they're more health conscious about what they grow and then um how they're able to at least enjoy some of the fruits and vegetables that they're able to grow out of this uh
program now this program um it has a a it's a three-year program and comes with training and technical support and uh also provides a lifetime curriculum the actual cost of these uh towers they're approximately about 2,000 a piece but
the the impact it's great as uh this program is also supported by the LA Department of Water and Power they're actually helping us supporting uh paying for the cost for these um tower gardens that we're piloting on our schools and as we learn more then we'll be able to
deploy it to other schools as well now we're excited about next month and while we at Eco Sustainability we do celebrate um Earth every day we're going to be celebrating not just for the the
April 21st we're going to be celebrating Earth for the whole month of April and we're going to be releasing a lot of different activities through that month and as we making this available on our website and other locations everyone can be able to join the campaign there's uh the Earth month
uh campaign on this flyer here that shows how they can join and the actual arts festival that is set on a specific date and uh throughout that there will be a lot of lessons learned a lot of opportunities for everyone to participate and learn a lot more about
uh about our planet and and how they can be great stewards of uh of of our planet so there's going to be a lot of information here that we'll be sharing with everyone and u we're excited about the kicking this off uh next week so
it's going to be a great a great u opportunity we also um will be featuring one of our graduates that finished one of our high schools um as one of the uh presenters and speakers sharing a a presentation that uh will be developed
specifically for our students to ensure that uh it's aligned with our climate literacy goal that we set up so this is an exciting month coming up for us so I'm looking forward to everyone participating and being a part of this movement that we're setting up to our schools
this last slide I've um I just share uh a few um slides here to highlight some of the work that has been done the past few months and what's exciting for me when I see all this up here it's actually uh some of the uh the upper
photographs it's one of our um tours that we've done with uh CRA and that was an inspection that they've done on three of our schools and they've done that inspection specifically to make sure that everything that was developed by our one of our green partners by LABT or
the Hollywood beautifification team um that was done and is satisfactory to them this is at Barendo Middle School and you can see the top picture on the left showing the outcome of that project and that grant that we received through our greening partners so very proud to see the work um you can see some of the
photographs through our empower program uh with some of the students participating at one of our schools and then some of the uh you can see the vertigo gardens and and some of the other educational programs such as the heroes for zero that has been embraced by our schools that we're going to be
celebrating again uh in uh in May with uh the uh the winners of the of that contest so that's there's a lot of exciting work that is going on throughout really celebrating the work of our students and we're looking forward to continuing and collaborating
with our partners so we can be able to achieve more through the efforts that we have so with that um I'd like to open up with for any questions thank you thank you uh Christos um your office definitely um has a lot of areas that
you know encompass what this your sustainability is not solar power and climate literacy and just you know um everything that it entails so it's a very important office so I want to thank you for all the work that you're
spearheading this is a an office that's one of a kind it hasn't you know it's it's unprecedented for the district to have one so now I'm very very happy that you're um just heading this work it's really important work and you're doing a lot because you know um this this work
in in um really fighting um the climate change um there's so many areas that need to be sort of addressed and the most important part is that we're you know educating our students that the students are also part of this change
and this movement so I'm glad that all of that is being incorporated so thank you so much i really appreciate it um so now and then so I want to say that our board member our committee board member uh Miss Sheret Bill Hindi is here now so I wanted to just if you wanted to say hello because we had everyone say hello
if you want before we go on to questions want to say thank you for being here and pardon my tardy LA traffic that's all I say um but just appreciate being here this committee means a lot I mean to our community and obviously what you've
mentioned already so appreciate the opportunity to be here and be able to serve in this way thank you thank you so much so I will open up the floor for any questions that you anyone may have for Mr christos want to start thank you Christos for your presentation
really appreciate it i also echo um board member Rivas comments that you're doing a lot there's a lot of coordination of no understatement of the responsibility that your office is undertaking i have a question around um one I want to make sure I understand what you mean by cost avoidance in the
presentation and if you can explain that then I have one more question absolutely and thank you again thank you for the opportunity and Dr ias my back to your initial statements and both of your statements really it's great to be working in sustainability because we have a lot of people that are passionate about the work that we do and that makes
it a lot a lot easier for all of us so thank you for that in terms of the cost avoidance um so the way that we look at we look at it is that we pay X amount of monies towards our utilities a utilities are covered under the general fund so uh let's say if
we're paying for electricity 130 million a year this solar production will be able to produce so much electricity that we can offset that cost that we paying right now towards the utility company that is the cost avoidance that I'm referring to
some people they can refer to as savings but we look at as a cost avoidance that would have to pay to the utility company okay perfect that's what I thought but I just wanted to be clear and I think the public probably would be uh helpful in that so then I have this question and this is not something that you're going
to be able to answer but I really want you to ponder it um maybe with other colleagues throughout the district is if we have cost avoidance or cost savings in some way if there is an opportunity to explore the establishment of a green revolving fund which would be an
opportunity to think about how we can look at funding other sustainability initiatives within the district by you know reallocating or like putting those cost savings into an account so that we can call on them at another time thank you Maui i appreciate these yes thank
you yeah thank you so much uh really appreciate the presentation and the comments made uh I had also a few questions i wanted to make sure I understood too your beautifully colored bar chart um that you presented on the
for 2028 and 2030 if the 30 um megawws in 2028 and the 36 megawws uh shown for 2030 if those projects are already identified or if those are like the projected capacity that would be needed
to meet the district goal thank you Makum yeah that's a projected capacity we haven't earmarked funding for that yet so but we identified the sites we have uh we continue to project and see what the need of the schools are but to be able to meet the 2030 clean
electricity we need to have those next wave of projects of 30 megawatt did you say you have identified the sites or have not yet we have identified some of the sites as we're going through the process because um initially when we identify sites we identify the ones based on certain uh um priorities that
we set up but it's also uh one of those things that we keep looking at the sites and we keep uh seeing what the priorities are in terms of the sites meaning like you know roof replacement or uh how much energy they're using so that's a that's a keeps regenerating
itself as we move forward thank you so much that's really helpful and then I have kind of a two-part question um also related to funding which are what some of the around how much the bond will be able to support or what other kind of funding opportunities there might be for
some of these projects and then I know I think you had mentioned when you were talking about the solar projects in a previous presentation that they um there was an exploration of whether they could be bigger or whether they could involve battery storage but that the incentive structures from the utilities right now
are are not conducive to that making sense for the district's finances so I wondered if there were ways that those programs could be structured differently that would make it easier for the district to to have like backup storage or things like that backup energy yeah so uh back to the actual funding so
measure US identified about 175 million for solar generation so we've expending about 122 now out of this so there's going to be uh remaining approximately about 53 million to continue the program so we can be able to do x amount of projects out of that and then we have to
discuss internally and see what other funding sources we can be able to continue the program with um in terms of the battery storage we've uh we've looked at that actually this was a part of the initial propos solicitation that we've done for the two uh different companies that we've awarding contracts
right now and we did the valuation um and we realized that the amount of u the cost that we're paying for those batteries it was more than the actual production and the risk that we're taking and even the vendors agree with us and that's why we remove that from uh
from our program for now okay thank you sure again thank you um for the presentation and kind of to Michaela's question about the cost avoidance or savings it's stated here in 25 years how do we look
at that annually yeah so when we um when we did the solicitation we asked these companies to give us a projection in terms of u the first year all the way to 25 years so they they're actually coming back and letting us know what the system
can produce between now to the 25th year and that is based on the actual system size for example what they look at they look at the actual um system so if they're putting in one megawatt system for example they know that that megawatt system will be able to produce x amount
of electricity within a year and then we take that um uh amount of electricity and then they they look at the actual also degragation of the system because the systems they cannot produce the same year one and year 25 there's a half a percent degragation so do the
projections based on that degree over those 25 years they're actually they're providing us with the operations and maintenance and performance guarantee to make sure that whatever they're sharing with us in terms of production that's what they're going to produce let's let's say if year
one they're saying that the system is going to produce 2 megawatt hours of electricity and it only produce 1.8 we' be able to look at that and they and then that year that um solar company will be able to give the district a check for whatever it did not produce so
that's why we're making we're obligating them to make sure that whatever they're telling us and whatever we agree with that production will stay for the 25 years now we choose the 25 years because that is the average average life of uh those type of systems but in reality
those systems can last a lot longer we've uh those systems we have installations right now that they nearing their 15 20 years and they will continue to generate um and at that point it's up to the school district if we want to continue having them obviously to generate until we decide to
replace the roofing systems um then they will they'll be up on our uh roofs or carports to continue generate so the actual cost avoidance or savings will be even more but we're using the 25 years as a factor to give a a kind of a a
perspective based on on the actual lifespan of those systems when you say the lifespan like you said they've been 25 years is there any maintenance cost to us for the upkeep of those i mean the actual operations and
maintenance is part of their contract and that's how they're giving us the performance guarantee so they have to make sure that those systems are maintained well to be able to produce and we check our production um quarterly with them and yearly to make sure that whatever we've uh signed off in terms of
our contract then it produces based on that uh energy that they share with us so then we'll see annual savings as well too i know this is what 25 years but I'm probably not going to be here 25 years with y'all yeah but um uh in an annual
because we look at our budget within three years so is are we able to see that within those three years what we saved or avoidance whichever term absolutely once we install the system from day one we install the system we're going to start seeing cost avoidance and we'll be sharing those projections um
actually the plan is to share those and and see those projections live as well so as we move forward we'll be able to generate reports and and share a lot of the information to see what is what is the cost avoidance of those systems on our roofs we look at the existing systems and we have the same way and uh
it's a cost avoidance but again you have to look at how the investment is made if the invest in investment is made out of capital um the cost avoidance is on a general fund so we're tracking what that is got it and then I had a question about the aeroponic towers that are
partnered with LD uh department of water and power how do schools um initiate a application or uh want to be a part of that program and then how long is the process yeah so those actually is what
we call a pilot program so we just wanted to test them so it was a discussion uh that we have with the department of water and power that was something wanted to see we have an actual agreement with DWP and they offer the funding to help us so we can do this so it had to be with LWP territory that
was one of the things that we had to comply with so so then we've solicited uh requests uh from uh schools to see who was interested or who had a a program related to the tower gardens or you know being able to grow vegetables and we provided it to those schools the
plan is once uh you know as we're seeing the program moving forward is to engage and identify funding to do more um my hopes is that DWP will be able to support us to do more otherwise we have to identify other source of funding to see we're going to be able to uh continue the program and and be able to
scale the program to our schools now are they matching funds or the the amount that you mentioned is that just from their end or what is from our end yeah actually we're not we're not putting any matching funds to this it's all DWP funds under the LUSD DWPOU that we
executed five years ago and I'm in the midst of executing another agreement now for another five years working with the department of water and power and they're supporting one of the areas they're supporting us is pilot technologies and we be adding also a greening component to that as well with
the intent of being able to have more related programs as we move forward last question you talked about climate literacy curriculum now exactly is that K through 12 and then who is actually administering that curriculum so we're
working with the division of instruction and the division of instruction instruction um identified a person that works with us Mr jerry Sang and we're working with him directly and reports to Dr bias and the idea there is that we've um anything that we do collaborate
through the process and and we identify what uh the existing climate programs that we have or curriculara that we have with a plan of us making recommendations to that to be able to uh increase uh the
climate programs that we have available some of them will be available under schooly a lot of them will be uh through different programs that we have through facilities it could be through our office so we're trying to make sure that everything that we do that relates to climate can be also benefit our students
in our schools got it thank you Christos any any solar companies not able to meet their um goals um we have a few of them in the past yeah and actually there was an audit that happened and we went through it and
we make sure that we've uh we've talked to the solar companies and they're paying whatever they did not perform so they do pay um if once we identify what that is and there's a process that we follow to ensure that we go through that audit and uh is working well yeah the
key is we're monitoring and that's important thank you we're monitoring that thank you thank you thank you any additional questions um well I I do have one i know that um and hearing your presentation the construction won't start till the fourth
quarter of this year right for most of them so that'll and then I see like the end for some of them will be at the fourth quarter of 27 so it'll take about two years to install all of these solar panels in the 21 sites that's correct and the reason for that is because those
are design build contracts so they have to go through design and actually we're executing contracts right now with them uh on individual schools working with our procurement office and as we execute the contracts they start the design process and and then we'll uh they'll proceed with the actual construction
after they still have to go and get DSA approval that's why there's a gap in terms of design DSA and then construction and we're starting those um those projects to make sure that at least they will be able to complete by 27
and then once it's installed for instance Franklin High School um the construction site will be the fourth quarter in 25 and end in the third quarter of 26 so once they're installed that's when we'll begin to see the cost savings exactly within a year so the
first ones okay each school will be able to start performing as we finish and commission the system and then we start tracking its performance to make sure that it's per the agreement that we have with the with the vendors great i was just at Franklin High School today and I was able to visit one of their
classrooms which it was environmental science and the students were actually doing projects on um different energy saving um systems and one of the groups was solar panels and I went up to the students and I was talking to about them i said did you know that Franklin's
going to have their first solar panels they're like really here in Highland Park i was like yes so they were very excited and uh first they were surprised i was like "No we're going to have solar panels they're be installed uh soon so they'll be here at Alen Park." And I'm like "Oh that's cool." And I was letting
them know that there are careers um and days has some programs and photovoltaic um curriculum and and apprenticeship you know uh positions so you know they were excited and they were all learning about it and I think it was in 11th grade um
so anyway so I just want to so that our students are right there you know right where the district is and and they were excited to know that it their school was going to have a sort of panel so I thought that they thought it was really cool so just want to let you know about that thank you for excited yeah okay
well thank you so much Christos um actually one last question you mentioned that uh for the solar panels the vendors will be providing the STEM curriculum or education i noticed that you have there's middle schools and elementary schools so obviously the the curriculum
will be you know um based on the different levels right elementary high school yeah we we we'll be developing the curriculum with the division of instruction and the vendors we started discussions with them as we started the outreach to talk to the schools because we initially contacted the schools when
we started the RFQ process so they're they're knowing that we'll be able to have this uh solar project on their schools but now we're going to do another outreach to share with them about the design and construction phase and the plan is to engage them in both design and construction so we want them
to be able to understand how what the process is for the for a project and also some of the companies will be able to provide what we call solar kits so that could be like a um areas outside there could be a covered area where they will have an actual solar um kit that
they could be able to see how it can produce energy to light up something or how we can harvest the energy of the sun and transition it to do something different so um and there's a lot of ideas for that that we're discussing so we're excited for that yeah hands-on
projects are are always um benefit students love when they're doing actual projects so that's that's going to be great well thank you so much Christos i appreciate your update and look forward to your next update when we see you in May thank you for the opportunity to present thank you thank you thank you so
much uh so with that we are going to move to our next presentation uh we'll hear from um the presentation on maintaining clean air uh meeting climate goals and student achievement wildfire remediation
recommendations we have our presenters here if you want to step forward to the podium um we have Mr jeremy uh Zidik uh special projects coordinator for the Western States Council of Smart and Chris Ruck codes and and standards
representative from the same from the same council so thank you for being here your insights on the intersection of climate policy and wild wildlife wildfire recovery and impact on student achievement will be invaluable and I also want to mention that we have Mr
fernando Ooa the smart local 105 who will start us off on this presentation and so yeah please go ahead awesome thank you board member Rivas uh like she mentioned my name is Fernando Choya i serve as political director for Smart Local 105 represent 7,000 members uh
here in the LA area uh as the HVAC union um kind of the why this is all being brought up is I I I live near the Eden fire and as I was kind of keeping up with some of the news reports I was seeing some of the news reports saying that there was no guidance coming from the state on what a
school district should be doing after a natural disaster on how to reopen it was kind of it was a free-for-all and so I got to talking with my colleagues here Jeremy Zidike and Chris Roo um who are really the the national experts on indoor air quality these were the folks
that the federal government called on on how to respond to COVID in 2020 um and how you know what recommendations we could should we put together for school districts uh for the county uh for the city and so we're we're we're starting that work now and we hope to to to
continue that conversation with the district as well as the board either through board action or through uh working with district staff uh to implement uh said recommendation so I'll pass it on over to my colleagues now thank you good afternoon uh thank you for the opportunity uh to speak chair and
members uh my name is Christopher Roo i am the codes and standards representative for local 104 and also the codes and chair of the code standards and legislative committee of the western states council uh I have the fortune opportunity of my own career of starting off as a first grade teacher and then ending up being the person that
was working on the roofs uh serving many of these schools so I come to you with a very specific uh perspective and I appreciate the opportunity so when we talk about sheet metal workers uh which is smart a air rail and transportation uh we have over 230,000 technicians
throughout US and Canada and we are the HVAC union uh so what we do is really our whole lives are dedicated towards HVAC the standards the codes development and we really wish to be a partner and uh share our expertise and the sliver of
what you do that we can really help in and what's different about uh the Western States Council which is kind of a conglomerate of local unions through California Arizona Hawaii and Nevada is that we're really looking to share resources and when I say these resources
it's not only of course for the membership but sheet metal workers also have a very important belief in that we're supposed to be uh helping our communities helping improve our communities for all working families and so when you look at the building life cycle what's a little bit different
about us is that most trades come in at one point they put in the bricks and they move away uh sheet metal workers because we're talking about HVAC units are involved all the way throughout the entire life cycle of the building and that life cycle also includes uh events uh that happen such as the pandemic or
wildfires and how to respond to those so that's where we'd like to come to you with our help and we appreciate the opportunity all right thank you all for uh for having me my name is Jeremy Zidike i'm with the Western States Council special projects coordinator um I also was a technician in the field for
many years um what got me kind of thinking about this a little bit was recently we saw a report about the firefighters that that were battling the wildfires in LA and they've had elevated levels of mercury and lead in their blood and why why was that well it's not a real big surprise when you start to
think about what is been burned right and there you know you see this this report here from the Eaton fire that there was 110 times the level of lead briefly in that area from that fire and that really kind of got me thinking about you know we we talk about soot and
ash and all these things but the particulate matter that's there what's it made out of right and where did it go and in this case it's very likely because of the way the buildings operate they they have all these holes in them right and they're drawing in air and
they're they're circulating it around that it's it's potentially been sucked into the building into the duck work um some of the pictures that you probably saw uh that were flying through uh earlier on is just you know dust and debris and things that get trapped in duck work duck work is not uh just a big
tube like a straw it's got all kinds of parts and pieces to it so things get trapped in it now if that plume of of of lead laden stuff had kind of got sucked in and it's going to get to the filters and the filters are you know they're really good i'm really glad to hear that
the district has moved to MUV 13 in most cases um as you can see they will trap particulate matter of 2.5 at about a rate of about 85% not not 100% but pretty close right getting good um if if it's working properly if it's not being bypassed so one of our recommendations
here is to make sure that that by that filter is working properly traditionally a MV 8 is what you see in in a HVAC unit so you're going to see about even though it says 50 it's actually 20% capture rate on that so you potentially have a lot of stuff in the duck work that that
needs to be you know cleaned properly so that it is uh you know not just getting into the spaces and being absorbed by the students or the staff you know as the units come on and off right and what are we talking about with PM2.5 they're very very very tiny little pieces of of
of matter right in this case it's it's it might be lead it could be mercury it could be all kinds of things and that's the kind of stuff that that gets deep deep into your lungs and can get in to your bloodstream and it can cause you know some pretty significant problems now we don't really know what happens with elevated levels of lead in a short
term but we definitely have a lot of studies that show what happens over time so that's why we're suggesting that you you know more than suggesting you know strongly suggesting that you have these things cleaned properly with hepailtering and with folks that are skilled and trained that know what they're doing to get this stuff cleaned
up so one of the things with PM2.5 is as he mentioned it goes deep into the lungs and bypasses a lot of your natural protections which is why we talk about PM2.5 and how to get it out uh one of my big concerns uh as an educator and also as now someone who's really concerned
about what happens in these systems is asthma uh asthma is a huge problem for children in this country one out of every 13 children suffer from asthma and this has a big problem with absenteeism so you're looking at about 13.8 million
days of I'm sorry 13 million days of missed school in the US because of asthma and we'll talk a little bit later about how that actually affects things with the budget but the big part is is that we know that indoor air quality which includes PM2.5 and outdoor air
quality is affect does affect asthma in a very negative way but we also have good news that when it comes to the indoor air quality we do have ways to deal with it and the facilities team here which I should mention as we're going through this uh the LA facilities team is known across the country i mean
so this is not you know this is a very good team that you have uh what we're offering is some help to assist with that uh but the by already replacing inefficient filters with MUV 13 you're moving towards that of getting that indoor air quality better for those
students and as was mentioned there was a speaker earlier that talked about this and this is something that even the ashray epidemic task force that I was part of the engineering society that kind of looked into the pandemic at the time and some of those members didn't realize at first and and I really pushed
this along with Mr zdikeke was that students and children actually breathe and process a lot more air than adults it's not like you just it's all the same and so children that are 12 and under are actually processing about two times the amount of air that adults are
breathing so in that case when you're looking at PM2.5 that's twice the effect that the child gets and when you this really compounds when you look at we all know this through from the pandemic we talked about most Americans spend about 90% of their time indoors uh we don't like to
think about that but we kind of do and as a child uh you're spending your second tier home for indoors is the classroom uh you're looking at over a thousand days I'm sorry a thousand hours per school year but really that's a second home almost it's a second indoor
environment and that's the importance for protecting it so a lot of times we get asked why can't we just use portable air filters right we can't just put those in the rooms and and call it good well Ashray I'm I'm just to preface I'm not an engineer chris is not an engineer uh we
we are the eyes and ears for the engineers in the field right so we we highly respect the work that they do um Ashray is a great organization we're both members but what they suggest or or what they tell you is that centralized systems are really the way to go they're much more efficient they're designed
properly they're sized properly if you look at a room like we're in right now um you can't see it but your return grills right where the air is getting sucked back to the unit they're they're down here your supplies are up there it's designed to kind of curtain you with air and go you know do its stuff
gather what it can go into the return go back to the filter and do its thing that's it's designed that way um when you when you start to fiddle with that a little bit you run into problems now portable air cleaners have issues they're they're they can be noisy they can be if they're not sized properly you
can have multiples of them in a room they uh they're going to consume quite a bit of energy um in classrooms they're going to get turned off right you're going to turn them down you're going to turn them off they're not going to be as efficient they're not going to be doing their job um there has to be maintenance that's done with them all of these things are very very
important but getting back to the air flow there's the potential for crosscontamination now that's that's something that's been looked at recently with CO and other things but when you had that airirstream that's designed to do its thing if you suddenly add a portable air filter into the airream
like like we have over here it it's potentially pushing that air away from the the return so it's not actually drawing it in where it needs to so it has to be designed properly and and work in concert ashray will tell you that if you're going to use portable air cleaners that should be a supplement to
that right but the big thing that gets missed a lot is that portable air filters have hepailters generally speaking they don't generally have carbon carbon filters like you see or charcoal filters like you see up in the picture so they're not going to reduce the amount of gaseous compounds right they're only going to take care of
particulate matter they're not going to get rid of carbon dioxide carbon monoxide the smell of wildfire none of that's going to get trapped generally speaking and to be clear here when we're talking about uh you know HVAC units one of the big things that we learned from
the pandemic and applies to everything uh that we're talking about here is is the HVAC unit functioning the way it was supposed to uh is it meaning design intent whether it be for energy uh or whether it be for indoor air quality is it actually working that way and right
before the pandemic UC Davis put out a report that stated that with in California that with schools within three years that had had new HVAC units brand new so we all thought perfectly good only 15% of them met the bare minimum adequate ventilation rate now
you could imagine how for technicians like Jeremy and I that compounded in our minds when we went into the pandemic because that became even more important and so not only do you need to think about how the unit is it operating normally but how does it operating during event same thing with wildfires
uh before the pandemic we had a lot of information coming out about wildfires and that the schools didn't necessarily have a proper mode to go into when it was wildfires and you had places like Sonoma County where they were losing 40 days a year of school and you have
increased absenteeism because of this type of thing so the idea here of what we're trying to bring to you is that one we want to make sure these units work the way they do for daily operation as the facilities team does on a daily basis but then potentially look at okay well what are how should it operate
during an event and then what would happen after an event ideally we want to have this all planned out ahead of time so here would be our proposal to you which would be that and and a lot of this you're already doing and we would just offer assistance in helping to move
forwards on this more which would be one step one would be to remediate any initial problems so if you had any of the builtup contamination in the duck work the filters that got fouled sensors that got fouled uh any of that the units
cleaning them out that stuff should be done to get these things back to at least a safe standard of where they are the next step would be to do a ventilation verification assessment and this is going through and physically verifying and we'll give a couple examples in the next few slides that
these systems do function as designed for the current use and the current occupancy because as we know occupancy and use changes in classrooms quite often and then from that you now have a baseline where you can make adjustments to a lot of these units you do not need
to replace all of the units uh you can make repairs to the units now there are going to be some upgrades and replacements but this allows you to triage all the units throughout the district or at least the ones that you're going after and saying "Here's our plan for these units moving forwards." And then a big one is that
before the pandemic we didn't really have a lot of modes to go into when there was an event that just wasn't something we had came up with ashray has since came up with a lot of these modes and the reason we bring them up is because it's not that the district needs to reinvent the wheel here uh you have
ash rate guideline 42 which is saying that go beyond how you can go beyond just the bare minimum adequate ventilation to have a healthy indoor environment for the classrooms guideline 44 is specifically on how to mitigate smoke wildfire smoke so how to have a
mode of operation that you could go into and then uh standard 241 is how to mitigate infectious aerosols infectious aerosols you know not necessarily pandemic think of the flu or a cold season so what would what could you do at a school when you have a significant amount of people that are calling in
sick and then ongoing maintenance now as I mentioned before the facilities team here is known for their maintenance work that they do what I would recommend potentially looking at would be Ashray 62.1 which is where we get our ventilation drains from has table 8.1 in
it and that's a table that for technicians like myself and Jeremy those are specific recommendations for maintenance that help you maintain the indoor air quality and the ventilation rates so they're not everything for maintenance they would just be something to check against your current maintenance protocols and say "Hey are
we doing these very important things that help make sure the indoor air quality maintains?" I don't think I've hit the right button one time uh so Chris Chris mentioned um outdoor air rates u the ventilation rates in 621 um you know my my mom was a teacher in Arizona for a
long time she used to let's say discuss how the classroom would change often with the number of occupants u Chris has told me the same thing it's it's they're living buildings when I was a technician it was not uncommon that I' I'd go into a boardroom and I'd balance
it and get it set up for a boardroom with the occupants that it was supposed to i turn around go do the next room and they've already turned that into something else right it's no longer a boardroom but what does that mean that means that the ventilation rates that it was designed for have changed but we need to recognize that and so here's an
example of of of what that can look like um the two bottom ones are the ones to look at that's that's California's ventilation rates um they they tell you to measure it a couple of different ways and pick the highest one so when you're looking at at at a classroom with 15 people initially you might say "Okay we're going to we're going to set it to
342 CFM cubic feet per minute of air flow." But as you increase that number of people you're you're changing that requirement and it needs to be changed the units themselves don't just recognize that and do it it has to be done physically by a skilled trained and certified person to make sure that it's
done properly so in this case you go to 25 people now you've increased to 375 CFM you go to 35 now it's 480 CFM so you need to make sure that these things are being checked and and adjusted regularly so that's the unit
itself you look downstream where it's it's actually dispersing that air flow you need to make sure that that has been measured and is is flowing properly as well we discussed a little bit about how this room's set up where it's kind of blowing down if one side was blowing too heavy and one side wasn't blowing enough that would be a disruption in that air
flow you wouldn't get the benefit of that of that air flow pattern that distribution would be off you might have differences in temperatures all of that needs to be checked and made sure that it's right um some of the pictures that you saw those filters get clo or those diffusers get clogged the registers get clogged that it changes things dampers
get moved it needs to be checked now in a in a past life I was a I was a submariner we used to pressurize our our our boat just a little bit to make sure that we weren't sucking in water right because that that's obviously a problem as a in a submarine but your building is
very much the same way so with air flow comes pressure and what you your building is doing is is typically you design a building to have just a slight positive pressure just like that submarine just to kind of keep stuff from coming into the building right but if those pressures are off because that
air flow is off um then you start to have problems you start bringing in moisture not such a problem in LA but can be in other areas you bring in moisture you bring in you know debris you bring in dirt wildfire anything right even even as much as just a a diesel uh exhaust from a bus right you
didn't used to smell it but now you do why is that maybe your pressures are off so these things need to be checked on a fairly regular basis to make sure that they're not you know a miss one of the big things that we want to bring to you is that I think something all of us can agree on uh is the what
we'd really like to do is have a healthy building and a healthy building for our children our staff our teachers our community a place for them to be and a healthy building involves a lot of things now as the HVAC unit we of course are very specialized in the top ones
there with ventilation as I talked about ventilation is one of the key factors for indoor air quality if you have adequate ventilation that takes away 80% of your indoor air quality problems right off the bat and then air quality itself with filtration as we talked about and Jeremy talked about making
sure you don't have bypass around the filters and that you have the right filters and they're installed correctly thermal health which is off obviously become a very big issue for many of us uh and making sure because it's more than just HVAC units are not just about keeping you cool or warm or comfortable
it's about keeping you safe and healthy in this environment this built environment so as we talk about co- benefits uh and this is what I'll go into a little bit next is that just like when Christos was bringing up you know there's a cost to doing the solar panels however there's also a cost to not doing
the solar panels and so that's what we're going to be going through with a couple of these next things is that there are some real benefits and the reason we want to bring this up is so that way you as decision makers if you were asked by your stakeholders or community or the people you represent why are you doing this we want to make
sure you have the tools to say well this is why we're putting money into this because in the long run this is going to pay off in these different ways thanks buddy so first of all we need to address energy right uh I don't have to tell you you just told me what the bill is right
you're paying these things these buildings are going to use a lot of energy right traditionally commercial buildings and schools they use a lot of energy and as you can see a typical K through 12 school in the Pacific region is going to use about 52% of its overall energy on HVAC so making sure that
they're working properly is really going to be key if you're going to if you're going to you know do all these great things with with greening and solar how are you going to meet your target for energy if you're just wasting energy right so one of the things the pictures that you see is you know you have these systems that are that are just running
so hard it's like it's like driving with your foot and your and your uh foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time you're trying so hard to get air flow through something that it can't do it so you're wasting energy right so going through this process and making sure that it's it's from the start is is
where it needs to be and going downstream and working it out um you know some the study that we had shown you that cleaning duck work um can reduce your energy load by 40 to 60% that that's real numbers right that's a lot of energy but it can also increase your air flow so that sounds good it
sounds bad right because now you're using more energy but if you're if you were using that if you're increased your air flow that much because you were trying so hard to pass it through before you can potentially slow that fan down and now see some again see some real energy savings so you can get both of
these benefits by by working together on that and there are some real results uh that he's getting to now we showed some figures here with LA L USD i to be very clear I would challenge you to find any school district in the country that
doesn't have some issues with their HVAC units you just have a lot of HVAC units california alone we're looking at 10,500 schools that is a lot of units um but there are things that we can do towards this and when you look at something like a ventilation
verification assessment a physical assessment of these units and making sure it works making sure the air is actually getting all the way down there that that new efficient unit isn't just wasting energy efficiently and leaking it it's actually getting to the right place where it needs to go at that point you can look at to reducing your energy
bills with the HVAC up to 30% now as you get to a more comprehensive adjustment this is where you start getting some of the things like Mr zike mentioned with cleaning out your duck work which now could have a dual benefit because you're cleaning it out anyways because the wildfire but then you're also getting your energy benefit from it and at that
point you could be looking up to 50% so these are big energy savings the big thing with this is that these units that we have now and that are on many of your schools are highly sophisticated and they can basically you can have your cake and eat it too meaning you can get your energy savings you can get your
indoor air quality savings and you can get all the other benefits that we're going to talk about if they're operating the way they're intended to absenteeism in schools that's a huge problem right um but in having good quality indoor air has has sh been shown
to decrease the amount of absenteeism so you can see that 35% of short-term sick leave has been attributed to poor ventilation now we talked about ventilation rates it that that is a national study at the top there increasing your outside air by 2 CFM can
reduce your absenteeism by 1.6% but in California specifically if you increase to the state minimum you can start to see 3.4% decrease in absenteeism and that's that's real that's real numbers and so when we say those are
real numbers because 3.4% you think well 3.4% absenteeism is that much now of course that's what some of us would think if you didn't realize the amount of money that comes in for seats that are actually filled this was a study by Mandel in in 2016 so give it that that you were going to see some changes in
numbers here but the general idea still holds which is that if you were to take the average CFM in a classroom and let's say it was at half the bare minimum rate right half of what you're supposed to have at 8.5 CFM per person and you moved it up to 15 CFM which would kind of be
closer to the bare minimum you would see at just in that that 3.4% which is already kind of a conservative number of the absenteeism dropping you would see a $33 million increase in school district revenue now of course as all of you know decisions that schools do and what
happens at school affects the community as well so when you know when you have absenteeism you also now have a sick parent or two that now can't go to work or one of their jobs or a teacher that's now off or a substitute teacher that needs to be hired or that type of thing and so that's another 80 million so
right there you have a very large amount that saved just by reducing your absenteeism and the immediate question comes is well yeah but that's going to increase our energy if we were to do that the energy cost this was 2016 but both numbers would move up was $6
million to do that across the state so you're not talking about a huge amount when you're talking about these highly efficient units that are being ran the properly and scheduled properly all of these things are important right absenteeism economics
asthma they're all really important but it seems like what most people really care about is student performance and having good quality indoor air can increase student performance by 15% that is that is significant um it can also de
have an effect on the power of attention to the same level as a student skipping breakfast so you can you know we spend a lot of time and a lot of money and it's well spent to make sure kids are prepared and ready to go to learn let's let's double that effect by giving them good quality air so that they're having
that same effect with power with the level of attention um and climate change we know it's real there i don't have to tell you it's getting hotter and hotter every year um one degree hotter year is is going to reduce that level that that
that that learning by 1% one degree that's without air conditioning or air conditioning that doesn't work well and hot days disproportionately affect minority students to a to the tune of 5% so we can we can close that gap in a lot
of ways by doing something that we really should be doing and need to do and you know technically is legally the limit right making sure that you have the legal amount of fresh air as we close up and go to questions I just wanted to kind of go over our recommendation real quick which would be
that we're hoping to be a partner to you hoping to bring our expertise to you to hit our other mandate which is to improve our local communities uh first to remediate the systems which I believe you're already starting on but we could also help with the triage of that of which ones you should be doing then also
doing the ventilation verification assessment getting that baseline are the units working the way they're supposed to taking advantage of documents that have been heavily debated over by Ashray and taking advantage of them and bringing them into the school district and saying "Hey here's some modes of
operation that we could go into." And then lastly making sure that we're adding some components to our maintenance plan that ensure that our indoor air quality our energy efficiency our indoor our overall quality of the system maintains throughout the life of it
the end Well thank you um so much for your presentation um and for it was great how you kind of you know tag team one another and that was really great presentation there and how you
maneuvered that but I think I found it interesting um the intersection with you know the HVAC and the filters and the clean air with student achievement and that research and I'm glad you provided that um the u the article on on on that
as well um so now um I think the intersection like as I mentioned of clean air climate goals and achievement is so critical and your recommendations on wildfire remediation are undoubtedly will undoubtedly guide us to move and moving forward so I appreciate you
bringing your expertise here so before I move forward to our next presentation I wanted to open up to questions we'll start Mr and then Alix as a big supporter of the trades for our students do you offer any paid
apprenticeships for our kids in LA USD who would like to pursue this career a lifelong career yeah yes so our uh our which we've we've hosted Dr rivas before and we'd love to host uh board member new and and Reynolds as well we've got a
training center over in uh city of industries not too far from here here in LA County uh we've got about 750 apprentices uh currently um uh uh being served there um and so we we've got like you know we we attend career fairs every
probably every month or two uh with through different schools um and um we've done even done summer camps so we've invited specific schools out to our training center or uh different shops that we have so we're the way our our trade works is we both in uh
fabricate all the systems so like all the duck work our our members are making that in a shop and then from there our members are also installing it and then if it breaks we also service it and repair it right so in those shops if there's one nearby a school and we and they've got the space and and the the
capacity to host uh 20 30 students for a summer camp we do that as well and we give them free boots so three $300 to $400 is the value of the boots some tools and some clothes sometimes we we'll get a a Milwaukee or some different brands that come out with their trucks and and give them some some
some good some goodies um and then from there uh they'll get that opportunity to then at 17 and a half so even before they graduate from high school they can start to apply for apprentichip well I I I think it's a great idea and if you would be kind enough to send any flyers or information I'll make sure that all
my high schools get it you know our high schools are excellent with their college guidance but they're not so excellent with their career guidance they used to be it used to be 50/50 yeah it was career and college guidance and now it's kind of more college than anything else and
kids I say kids students love the trades i'm just telling you they love the trades and it's a it's a wonderful worthwhile activity yeah we appreciate that yeah you know can you name me any other any other career path you can leave with a debt-free education and then making six figures right our
members coming coming out of the apprentichip are making $90 an hour they still get four uh two years of community college for free i mean anything you want to do so it's great our our our folks even do the apprentichip earn college credits while they're doing it so if they decide to go to the college route they have credits so they can
transfer over to a community college yeah yes i I highly recommend um going on the tour i went on the tour and I learned tremendously so I was very very impressed by just all the work so I learned a lot about HVAR and HVAC units and I got to see some students and look
at some of the tools and it was very um worthwhile for me so I appreciate that tour uh yes Alex you Oh did you want to one more thing the best the best understanding of what a clogged duct looks like there are some
people who never in their whole life have ever cleaned their drier duct if you ever have the nerve to get one of those brushes which I've done and put it through the tubing you will be amazed at how many balls of lint come out and you
said "God I didn't have a fire in my house i'm so lucky." So there's a good example of a clogged duct yeah we've got one of the last slide which we weren't able to put up it's got a few few pictures there at the end the la that last slide so we love for you to see some of the uh and it's from a it's from a recent project that we did at a
private school i can't say due to certain projects are confidential whenever you do work at schools uh so but it's from a private school on the west side is what I'll say so if we can show up that last slide kind of shows you what the work that our members did before and after there you go that last slide thank you
yeah you can definitely see the difference before and after great yeah i don't think so supposed to there's several examples that that show it getting worse and worse and they're there you you couldn't pass light through it it's pretty gross alex
thank you your timing was terrific and by the way I'm an aszmatic i was coughing at the beginning of this and I'm the mother of three asthmatics children who two of whom were on medications so many medications every
day so I appreciate the um emphasis on health and our children um but why did I say it's good timing so we have spent the last uh six months working with our subcontractors and our consultants and
all of the various people inside the district including my eco sustainability partner team um working through our mechanical and electrical specifications standards they're all being updated um I think
they're going to be issued by just around the 1 of May probably early May and we're also doing the EMS systems so we're working hard to update everything to all the new ashray and all the new code requirements also we've increased
uh the temperature requirements um we've increased the uh the the metrics on how to design for humidity because it's changed here so I really appreciate it uh perfect timing and I received your
materials Monday night and I read them and I distributed to the to um maintenance and ops leadership and also I sent it off to the group that's working on the mechanical and electrical specs and I'm going to ask them to give
me uh feedback next week so we will look at what we're doing and how to improve really appreciate that and and we'd be happy to assist in any way that we could if you'd like us to to review something from a technician's perspective we're happy to do it well since you
volunteered I'll probably email you no I we that's what we're doing even with the EMS systems um we invited our business partners our vendors our sub our consultants and our subcontractors to help us because we know we have to
improve the you know the regulatory environment is changing as well as the climates so excellent the one one thing that I will suggest to you and it's it's sort of inside baseball um the 62.1 that we referred to that table 8.1 um that is
going through an addendum right now at Ashtray and it's about to be released uh it's a complete update to that it's what was what is there now in the 2022 version is pretty outdated um we've worked really hard Chris and I and a whole bunch of folks at Ashray to kind of update that to make it look like more
like what the world looks like now and and be something useful for folks like yourself to use so I I would when that addendum comes out I would recommend that you you take a look at that i'll get someone on the watch for that or I'll contact you thank you very much and we'll definitely love to get the
feedback that you get from your team and be able to connect with you all to see how we can you know um either address it or discuss it or how we can address it so yeah crystal do you have Yeah thank you double down on the timing because um well first I will suggest you know make sure you've uh go through our
procurement services and register your company because we have several programs that are running right now we have the couch share program as you probably familiar with the cost shape program we have a program that we're trying to um replace filters calibrate our systems at
142 schools so we're in the process it's the timing just happened uh you know we're just working with uh the recent fires that we have so we're excited for that program and we're learning a lot so it's nice to see different companies that uh they can help participate and support us and going back to efficiency
I mean obviously um just looking at energy efficiency mechanical systems that you said is 50% i calculate more closer to 70% in terms of the efficiency and in terms of the energy use usage so um it would be great to to be able to do
that and help our systems so thank you and Christos I did want did want to say thank you for your work there and and to be clear too with the percentages that's for the whole Pacific coast so LA as you could imagine uh and by the way I was born and raised in Tustin California so I'm proud of here um so uh you know it
has a little bit different things in some areas of the coast uh that don't necessarily have to cool as much uh but going back to your early one with Calshape and AB841 we were uh so to be clear we're not an individual company we're a sheet metal workers union that helps then you know we we train the
technicians as the board member had mentioned um but we also had worked on AB841 which was what developed in Calshape with that language so a lot of the test sheets the method of procedures so when we're talking about ventilation verification we're talking about that exact same thing that Calshape's doing
uh so we're on much the same page uh we've also learned a lot from Calshape and how to do that things and that's where we wanted to kind of work with you guys to think okay well how could we also alter some of that to really work for this and Calshape wasn't necessarily designed to come up with different modes of operation but you could definitely
use the reports you get from Calshape to develop those different modes of operation so basically you're already heading in the right direction and we appreciate it what I will say because we've seen because our our members are the ones performing the cowshaped work so um so our sub the the subcontractors that
perform that work our members work for those subcontractors um I will say yeah we we appreciate the work and you guys applying for those ABA41 funds um but I will say that there's there's more to be done right there's there's some bold action we can be taken uh through the board or through
the through the district staff right um so uh we'd love to partner with you guys all on making sure not just those um I think it was a couple dozen schools that are getting that the cow shape work done but that all the schools maybe near the wildfires and where the soot and ash and
and debris traveled right um that all those schools are being checked right that's kind of where we're at today thank you yeah thank you so much and I really appreciate this discussion um and I really appreciate Dr rivas and her team and their leadership for also connecting
a lot of dots i think I recall from some of our we've we've had in this um committee really strong presentations also about the work that OHS is doing around the superiltration of schools that are in high pollution zones you know this ongoing environmental justice
crisis that we have in the city the um and in the region we have had really moving comments from the families near Hillside where they're dealing with this potential new source of additional pollution and so um and then obviously Christos's presentation earlier about um
the renewable energy and energy efficiency uh greenhouse gas reduction goals of the district and then with this combin it's just a really beautiful synergy so just really appreciate the leadership of your office and your team and facilitating kind of layering all these really complex things together um
and I appreciate that partly as a parent because I know at my kids school on the day of the fires I dropped him off and one of two other kids in the class um but it did smell like a campfire in his classroom and so I wasn't surprised when like an hour later the teacher was like
"Actually you need to come get him." Um because it was not a good working condition for her it was not a good learning condition it was a great um uh example of what a three student like a low class ratio can achieve even in just an hour but the um I do really
appreciate the I or I guess just to underscore the importance and urgency of this because I know it was a really big concern for a lot of the parents at my kids school of um how to safely return and how to feel uh even with the continuous concern about the air quality after the fires for weeks until it
rained um and the I know I was really concerned about the as well the staff who were doing the cleanup at the campus and what they might have been exposed to and so and what the con educators and staff and students might continue to be exposed to with the especially now with some of what you've shared about what
might be lurking in the ducts and so just really appreciate um this discussion i'd love to hear I know there I I heard there was um uh an announcement from the superintendent about some some funding that might be
able to be going to HVAC i didn't know if that was from existing bond priorities or if that was new effort that was going to be able to connect or how that might be connected to the recommendations you're making today so just yeah that was one question yeah my understanding yeah there's 50,000 units i think uh the UTLA folks the labor
partners in their report it's 50,000 units that need need to be upgraded in the district that's pretty costly but of course there'll be a lot of cost avoidance as part of that i love the term by the way i'm going to start using that um but um so the it's measure us is going to tackle a lot of that but it's
not it's just going to make a dent it's there's there's a huge need there and so the hope is um and we'd love to partner with you all um on making sure we we we prioritize and utilize uh Prop 2 funding and Prop 4 funding wisely uh is a very
limited amount of funding right we're talking $9 billion for measure US um and another 700 million estimated through through Prop 2 um but there's $81 billion in needs uh at LA USD so um when
we're talking about something like HVAC which isn't the sexiest thing in the world I get it um but when you kind talk about something like this where you can check off several boxes right you can check off health and safety uh student achievement and meeting climate goals uh how many other things how many other
policy proposals can you think of that does that right um so hopefully uh we can we can utilize some of those those statewide bond funds uh wisely to carry out some of that work thank you for that question we have 8.6 billion right now
in design and construction a lot of that is in mechanical of course replacement and then the other is new buildings with all new mechanical and then there's the 9 billion
i I just wanted to to um highlight something that you were talking about you know and this is this is really what we've what we're doing here is just kind of taking a step back and looking at at what what happened and learning from it right um and the point that we're trying to make is that there it's difficult to
plan for these events right when you when you don't know that they're ever going to happen but it has happened and and it's likely to happen again so what we're really looking for is sort of protecting for the future and and just just having you know that comfort level that if if there is another event that
we need to prepare for what is the plan who's going to do it what are we going to do what what actions are we going to take and how are we going to posture these systems and then when it's over hopefully nothing happened nothing bad happened and we can all walk away but those systems need to get put back where they were and that that often doesn't
happen uh we're technicians we see this stuff all the time the best intentions were made they closed something and they were going to go back and do that tomorrow because tomorrow is going to be fixed and we can we can open it up they never open it 20 years later that thing has been closed and now it's welded shut and we can't do anything about it so
having that that insight to know that we had something happen we're going to make adjustments we're going to throw the the code book out the window for a little while that's okay don't don't let anybody hear me say that though but we need to come back to it and say "Okay we got to put this back to where it was." And this is really what this is is about
is recognizing that that that we need to have a plan of action going forward and and I think we can we can do good from that yeah thanks for that absolutely i think just from the pandemic and then the wildfires and we know and extreme heat emergencies that we're having we know this is going to continue to be an issue and it's exciting to how the
district is thinking about a lot of these things together and hopefully in the eco sustainability plan too as well as the expenditure of the funds and the state funds and so I just um really appreciate this uh conversation it's really important and thank you for your work not really a question it's more of a
comment i know you all did a wonderful job in your presentation i really appreciate you elevating like key things even just like how this room is ventilated i was like "Oh you guys know your work and you also spoke to key um key issues that are important to the district right such as absenteeism." So
I really appreciate that for the committee though I would um just really ask us to like caution and be considerate about the finding a balance between like some nature-based solutions as we kind of you know make sure we're being
resilient in addition to like the Hback so I would hate to see like all our funding to go to HVAC when we could you know actually have some more nature-based solutions that can also help to u manage some of the things that we're facing in the region and for our students because outside time in
particular you know during these like extreme like heat events and things like that is really actually important for our students and for staff and faculty who might be stuck in the classroom all day so I just don't want us to like be like "Oh we just only focus on the inside and the interior of the buildings
and not thinking about the grounds and some of that work the built environment is a very important place because we spend a lot of time there but that all being said uh we all have kids we all work kids and we all understand the importance for us as adults too to spend time in green space
and be out there so just to be very clear here yeah we we completely support the work that you do think it is very important and think that this is where you could look at some compromises like for instance if you were able to reduce your absenteeism rate well now that might open up some funding for uh you
know green spaces in the schools so we really appreciate this broad look at this because this is how we should be looking at things and and also there are solutions from the outside to help the inside right there's there's a lot of passive things that you can do to to kind of
build shade and other things to to incorporate nature into solving both problems so yeah absolutely they should work together% thank you we have one more question from Mr before we move on well one and a half this is a very interesting topic um how
often should you change your filter in your air conditioning unit if it's not if there's no forest fires or how often should you change a filter do you think well so this is something that's very dependent on the unit and the unit what's around it so for instance I had
buildings that were maybe near certain fields that they were growing certain crops that certain bugs and things like that so what I'm getting at is and as the facilities team knows there's no standard that you can there's standards that they'll put out there oh once every three months or you know once a month really what you need to do is and we can
we can help the team with this we have methods of procedures for what you're doing with those filters and for instance checking the pressure drop of those filters most filters will start well all filters start off at a certain pressure drop and the beauty of MUR 13 is the technologies increased where now
your pressure drop to start off with can even be what it was at MV8 before years ago and so what I'm getting at though is where you usually want to change it according to NAFA which is the National Air Filtration Association is about its midlife and so you can do that by pressure drop so a technician can
determine exactly where it is and then once you have it down for that site or that school you kind of realize unless there's some event that came up outside of normal you kind of know for that school so I I I just caution against saying like a general statementwide it's kind of a sightspecific system and in
your home you pull it out and you say can I see through this filter is that how you do it is that the believe it or not they get less efficient the more buildup they get on i hear you you don't you don't you don't want to do that okay i hear you okay thank you
thank you Mrs melson uh well thank you for coming in your your presentation your expertise and the discussion and the insightful questions and comments that our committee members made and um definitely um gave us a lot of food for thought so thank you so much for being here thank you for your work we really
appreciate all of you yes thank you Fernando Jeremy and Chris for taking the time to share all your um information truly appreciate your contributions so now moving on to our last presentation um we we are going to hear from a group
of speakers young wonderful speakers from Griffith Middle School and also we have um Mariah Leo ninth grader from Garfield uh high school and they're going to discuss cultivating growth and please come forward please come forward yeah this is your cue for to come
forward to the podium um cultivating growth the impact of mindful gardeners so please join me in welcoming Ismealda Victoria Haley Mariah Naelli Miss Antoneta Garcia Miss Stephanie Montayo Mononttoya
Perdon Yano so thank you students thank you for being here and uh yes please take it away we're anxious to hear all about mindful gardeners hello and good afternoon my name is Esmeralda Sophia Marquez Garcia and I am an eighth grader
at Griffith Magnet Middle School this evening we'll be talking about the special projects from our school that promotes green spaces and mental health care the Mindful Gardeners are a group of ambitious and dedicated middle school students from Griffith Steam Magnet
Middle School in search of change and leadership addressing conflict in our school environment and community more specifically we focus on the dilemma of increasing mental health awareness in our community the Mindful Gardener started during the pandemic people were
struggling with their mental health and Griffith students wanted to focus on how they could help people we chose to focus on plants and gardening because it was something many people could relate to and it was the perfect social distancing
activity at the time gardening and having more green spaces improves a person's mental health because it teaches individuals how to heal such as when people are struggling with challenges such as grief gardening also teaches you how to take care of a plant
as well as how to take care of yourself also gardening helps reduce stress anxiety and depression depression it improves a a person's mood and increases physical activity according to New York Times study shows 89% of people reported
an improvement in their mental health our team has become a staple in our school and local community and we have chosen to continue our project on this topic due to the need for people people to take care of their mental health and
to encourage people to create their own green spaces in schools or at homes you have a PowerPoint presentation you want to click as you're going along so just I think it's up there if you want to there you go
hello my name is Victoria Chavez and I'm in the seventh grade at our school we do activities to promote self-care that bring people joy and a bit of peace of mind to students and their parents sometimes we give out plants or seeds they can start at their at their own garden or practice mindfulness at home
we also had held a parent workshop where we spoke about the importance of mental health and the comparison of plant care and self-care we share our slogan water your plants water your mind which means that just like plants need water nutrients love and care so do we we had the parents practice self-care by
painting their own pots and then putting a culet from our school garden into their pots during our school events such as steam night or the magnet fair we had students practice self-care by making their own tote bags and making friendship bracelets our school has hosted heritage fairs such as Latinx Heritage Month and African-American
Heritage Month at these events we have given out information about the meaning of different colors that represent these cultures and we have provided the students with opportunities to create bracelets for self-care we have also participated in the district's proud to be me American Indian and indigenous
celebration where we give up plans to students parents and educators that are present at the conference we the Memphis Gardeners plan on doing more events at our school and we invite the board to come and see our work in action hello my name is Haley hello my name is Haley Radia i am
in sixth grade and part of the Mindful Dorsers i am here to tell you the short and long-term impact of what we hope to achieve with our project a short-term impact is to increase conversations within our school community by facilitating self-care and art
activities related to mental health for students parents and staff our goal is to recruit new mindful gardener members to continue our efforts of increasing mental health awareness and obtain experience in conducting volunteer
service finally a long-term impact will be to increase conversations in our East Los Angeles community about mental health and to help and to help decrease the stigma associated with J help for your mental health we also plan to
continue volunteering at events in our local community to spread to share our message water your plants water your mind hello everyone my name is Mariah Liiso and I am 15 years old i have been a Mindful Gardener since I was in 8th
grade and still participate in activities even after culminating where I now go to James A garfield High School in the East LA area as a freshman the first major accomplishment of this group was the mental health panel held in 2022 where the mindful gardeners spoke about
how the p how the pandemic was affecting kids mental health with important people attending like the first partner of California Jennifer Sevil Newsome and the first district supervisor supervisor Hilda Ciss the members discussed how being isolated indoors caused them to feel
lonely and also incredibly bored without something fulfilling to do so as a solution in such a challenging period the students started to advocate for f for families and kids to come to the school's garden to help to help it thrive with plants in life supporting is
an ecosystem and watching it evolve over time is a very satisfying phenomenon as they made a small area in the Griffith Middle School look like a welcoming space for everyone and was a huge accomplishment for a still developing group another big achievement this group has
achieved is when the Mindful Gardeners hosted the UN the United States Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Martin in 2022 the Mindful Gardeners shared information about how they created a strong community partnerships to obtain funding and resources to support the
group with mindful with gardening supplies t-shirts for new members like the ones you see we're wearing now and supplies to conduct mental health outreach the last topic I'm going to talk about before handing it off to my friend Nayali here is the is the club's third
biggest accomplishment held in 2023 when the students hosted the LUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho where we shared the information that gardening is a learning experience teaching kids and adults valuable lessons the important of this the
importance of this event was to advocate how necessary it is for people in political power to understand mental health and the many ways it is addressed as they can make it a focus for other school districts to listen to their students who may need a safe space and maybe even create their own escape
like we have with our school's garden hello my name is Naelli Santos Toriha i'm a sixth grader at Griffith D Magnet Middle School i would like to share an important accomplishment in our community which is our partnership with the East Los Angeles Farmers Market that is run by the East Mount Community
Center the Mindful Gardener share about mental health and facilitate activities to encourage people to practice self-care through gardening we also do other fun activities to practice self-care we volunteer our time because we believe that gardening can impact people's mental health in a positive way
and we are able to give back to our community the Mindful Gardeners were featured in the Boy Heights Peace newspaper last summer where a couple of former Mindful Gardener members had the opportunity to share about their project about our project and their experience in the program over the years we were
excited to be featured in the local media um good afternoon members of the board my name is Antoneta Garcia and I'm a proud parent of an eighth grader student at Griffith Steam Magnet i'm here today to talk about the importance of gardening school gardening helps
teamwork and social skills such as working together in garden can improve teamwork and communication skills among students and encourage collaboration and social interaction it also supports mental health and well-being such as
spending time outdoor can reduce stress improve mood and foster a sense of accomplishment the mindful gardener supports the development of life skills environmental awareness and greater sense of connection to the world around
them the mindful gardeners have been a powerful force in breaking the stigma surrounding the mental health by providing a non-threatening and accessible way to engage with mental health well-being
currently the Griffith Parent Center has been tending to garden the garden and has helped um and support parents in dealing with their own mental health struggle such as grief anxiety depression thank
you hello everyone my name is Stephanie Mononttoya and I'm a student from C State Long Beach i'm currently a master uh of social work intern at Griffith Mag Middle School i am one of the three interns that Miss Mariano overseas our other two interns are from Cal State
Northridge and Costate Los Angeles every year there is a new set of interns but I want to point out some things that interns have done to support the mindful gardeners for example in the past interns have applied for a variety of grants with the largest amount awarded being
$32,000 interns work behind the scenes alongside Miss Mariano coordinating logistics such as preparing for the annual Mindful Gardeners retreat preparation for the farmers market event coordination and coordinating the UCLA botanical gardens field trip uh as
social workers we support the mindful gardeners with weekly meetings leadership skills training students about civic engagement and the importance of volunteer work in the community as social workers it is our duty to promote cultural competence critical thinking empathy self-care and
part of our ethics it's to advocate and empower individuals the mindful gardeners are representation of just that thank you hello good afternoon my name is Christine Mariano and I am the psychiatric social worker of Griffith Steam Magnet Middle School i wanted the students to have the opportunity to
speak first because this program has been student centered from the very beginning from the name of their group Mindful Gardeners and their slogan water your plants water your mind to the creation of their logo and all the graphic designs they have truly branded themselves and made a name for their
group the plant theme itself came from a student who loved gardening with her dad and the project has bloomed ever since i often share an African proverb with our students if you want to go fast go alone but if you want to go far go together this mindset has been key to our ongoing
success i'm also incredibly grateful for the parents and family members the school staff teachers and administrators and the wider community for always showing up and supporting our Mindful Gardener students thank you so much for your time and for giving our students the opportunity to present their work we
are truly grateful for this platform and lastly I wanted to share a special moment this week I received an envelope from our LA County First District Supervisor Miss Hilda Solis with a token of appreciation for our students participation in the East Los Angeles
Women's Center Resource Fair it is my honor to present certificates to the following students haley Heredia Naelli Santos Storia Victoria Chavez Mariah Liso and accepting on behalf of the entire mindful gardeners is Meralda
Marquez Garcia let me see this one congratulations congratulations that's wonderful yay surprise surprise they weren't expecting it were they expecting no surprise surprise i just received them this week so I found it was a perfect
opportunity to gift it to the students well thank you thank you for using this committee to uh showcase all of their hard work um I just want to say that um you know first of all I love the t-shirts they're so happy and green and I I have one i should have worn it i
didn't think about wearing it i was like when I saw them coming in I was like "Ah I didn't wear my t-shirt." But um it was important to have you all here today because I've seen you at different events you're there and you're passing out wonderful stickers and bookmarkers
and plants and you're it's you're all so inviting like I think it's like a magnet for people that are seeing not only you the students you know just so uh proactive and um very articulate and just very welcoming and sharing all this
information and um I was just really really impressed by you all and I wanted to make sure you're here and you're branching out to high school so you're taking what you're learning here now you're taking it to your high school at the high school level and um you're
really highlighting you can come forward please come forward here in the middle because I'm talking all of you um you know mental health as you mentioned is something that um from the pandemic really impacted I mean prior to that you know it was an impact but the
pandemic really um affected a lot of your peers and your families as well and for you all to take this on and to say this is important and we need to address it and this and through and through gardening um and the connection with
that I think is just really really impressive and I want to really commend all of you for doing that and I want to thank you Miss Mariano and also um our parents and our interns because you need the support system and they're providing
that support system and really motivating you and inspiring spiring you to do what you feel that needs to be done so I want to thank you for that and for being here and having the wonderful recognition and you're elevating it to elected officials you're here in in the
boardroom and you've been connecting with uh your board supervisor you know Miss Hilda Solis um and I know you're going to go very far and um I just wanted to make sure that we brought you here today to really recognize and let you know that you're doing amazing work
and please continue to do it we need to hear you are the future you are the voices of your community particularly in East LA i think this is something that of every community is important to have but particularly um in the in your communities as well so thank you for
doing that i just want I have a quick question that I wanted to ask just wanted to to know you personally what has been the impact of being in this club as you're um really you know trying to inspire others to for self-care and
for you know for mental health what has been the impact for you so I don't know if whoever wants to start first I think to hear your personally what has impacted you in being part of this club go for it personally for me what impacted me most is getting out of my
comfort zone as before joining this club I was very introverted and I didn't do things that I would do now is speaking to a board members that is something I never thought I would do but meeting new people and talking to Miss Mariano about expressing myself through gardening and learning a lot of
valuable lessons even now that I use them now in high school it's a lot of like evolving as plants do to become a new person that's better and to make a better future for myself using the things that I learned in this in this program wow that's beautiful thank you
that's great anyone else is Marald or anybody else that wants to share you don't have to we just want to I think it's important for you to hear what and to inspire other other of your peers yeah well I think Mindful Gardeners has
helped me a lot with my social emotional and my anxiety because I have a lot of anxiety in me like I don't know if you were seeing but my hands are kind of shaking um but it um gardening and focusing on my mental health mindful
Gardeners has helped me a lot and now that there's some ways that can help me like gardening and then like counting one to three or to 10 um my anxiety has been better now has improved your your mental health as well yeah it has and I
think on our way here I was so nervous i was telling my mom "Oh no i can't do it i can't do it i'm scared i'm scared." But then I calmed down you did it beautifully i could not tell that you were nervous but I I'm Thank you i'm glad you were able to conquer that and and you know and then it's not it's
something that you have to deal with i mean I get anxiety being up here you know what I mean but you just you you know you mush you move forward and you just do what and that fear turns into bravery and courage so you're having a lot of that well thank you i don't know
if there's anyone else that wants to add go ahead i feel what Mindful Gardeners has helped me with the most is like the same as with my social anxiety and um because I get to talk to people about what our group does so I interact with them and I
feel like that has helped me more talk to different people and um um make more friends so I feel like that's help it's helped me with that a lot that's definitely um it helps in your not only your social emotional but just socially
you know connecting and when you're doing something that you're passionate about I think it sort of you forget about the anxiety and you're connecting to something that you're very passionate about okay well thank you so much on questions from the committees yes Mr schmelson first of all parents come on over here you shouldn't be in the corner
you should be right with us because you're an important part of this let me say two things first of all I used to work at Griffith Middle School it wasn't called Griffith Steve Magnum School griffith Middle School 1992 to
1997 I was there what a beautiful school and a green school in the fact that you still have those purple hakaranda trees growing at Griffith they should be blooming now the hakaranda trees purple trees
yeah well I guess they're not out yet but it's a it's a beautiful beautiful school and I appreciate what you're doing let me tell you a little bit about uh East LA and why it's so important to have greening in East LA okay so
um people may not know this but East LA is notorious for lacking green space it has the lowest green space per capita in the whole Los Angeles County so you
we need your green space okay so um the population of East LA 115,000 residents and when you drive on Cer Chavis and you leave Boil Heights and you're in East LA
there's no more trees the trees stop and that's why it's so important that you keep greening East LA because I I just love Griffith Middle School and I just love East LA what a wonderful wonderful area what wonderful parents and
community in East LA it's just fantastic so you're doing a great job thank you so much well congratulations it's a It's a pleasure be sitting here and just listening to your presentation done an amazing job and I have to say for us
that we've uh focused on sustainability and and trying to implement um the programs just hearing from you embraces exactly what we're doing and and really um I'm so glad that you're learning from this because some
of us um as we grew we had those opportunities and and we've seen it change through time but it's nice to be able to see now um our students students parents our teachers involved together trying to develop more green spaces in
our schools there's not a better uh I will say uh teacher or educator than act the actual nature itself through nature you learn so much you've touched on everything that we need to know here because you touch on all the areas that we should be paying attention and
perhaps mental health as being one of the most important ones but there's so much that you touch on collaboration being able to socially connect and being able to understand more about the nature itself but um something that eventually you'll be learning about biom biomimicry
and how we talk about resiliency and how those plants teach us to become more resilient because nature itself have evolved through time and have taught us so much that we're trying to mimic and implement today so congratulations to the work that you do i'm really excited
to see that um everything that you do and how we can be able to really um take the work and mimic it and take it to all the schools because that's our plan that's our goal that all of our schools have green spaces that students like you learn about uh planning learning about
raising vegetables different type of plants learning about nature and cultivating that because eventually when you reach you know you still have a long time oures too you'll be able to go back and mimic that slogan because the slogan
that you have about um what are your plans what are your mind that's what I do when I go home uh the only place that that relaxes me is when I go out and water my plants and spend time with my plants so it's something that you're going to find that you're going to be embracing it more and it's a beautiful
thing so congratulations and thank you for all that you do i too want to say thank you um I know you guys were courageous to get here and share and you guys did a wonderful job and I just can think back to my own uh
children and I have a 9 and 12year-old now who during the pandemic that was the thing that helped them they created their own garden at home and they were growing things and I have a nine-year-old now who's still cultivating and watering mom can I go water i was like it rained today you're
okay you don't have to go water today uh but it was an opportunity for them to definitely connect to um release anxiety because we were in the house all the time and so it was opportunity to go outside and then we found a community
gardens in our community that we were able to visit during that time so definitely appreciate what you guys have done and definitely a a template for other schools um middle and elementary that can continue to mimic what you guys are doing here to be able to foster that
same uh encouragement for those students um in those areas and definitely appreciate the parents and the PSW for being here because we know that your support to make it continue is definitely appreciated as well thanks yes much love to our social workers
thank you so much for be our PSWs and our interns who are future social workers as well um this is really I love the connection the intersection between you know the garden the earth the soil and plants and mental health and wellness and how we need to reconnect to
that which is what this committee really is all about you know transforming our schools connecting to nature and just you know having that that happiness that comes from that so thank you thank you thank you thank you so much any other comments or questions no okay well
congratulations thank you for being here and being so brave and we give our a hand out to you and I know that coming here you know took away from you know your schoolwork but thank you so much we appreciate you and I know you're willing
to inspire so many so many more other um students scholars thank you so much have a beautiful day congratulations for your certificates too [Applause] so now we are going to move to our last section of this committee which is
public comment so uh please Mr mcclean take it away for public comment okay we have 12 folks signed up for public comment i'll call on the folks who listed themselves as speaking in person first and then we'll transition to folks who listed themselves as speaking remotely uh so let's see the first
person to come on up angela Bai are you here angela B come on up Angela you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin thank you board members thank you uh committee members my name is Angela Bay i'm a research and policy analyst on the
climate campaign at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy um I wanted to thank um ev everybody uh for all the great uh presentations um I loved listening to the uh mindful gardens presentation i wish you can teach me how
to garden um I also wanted to thank our friends at SMART for um their insights uh and a lot of this stuff can be very hard to understand for people who don't have engineering degrees um and I really appreciate the ways that you've connected the technical details with the
lived experience of air quality and indoor comfort um as a climate climate resilience and renewable energy advocate I always feel reassured listening to folks who understand a lot more about uh what we can actually be doing um to make
huge differences on our surrounding environments um not only will HVAC upgrades be able to improve in indoor air quality they will also be able to address other aspects of comfort and health like extreme heat um sadly we know that 2025 will break new
temperature records and we need to prepare now to protect students educators and community members from the harmful effects of extreme heat particularly during the hottest months of summer and early fall similar to the way that children are affected by air
quality in disproportionate ways um children are also more vulnerable to the negative effects of extreme heat because of their relative body size um so hot classrooms impact health and academic academic performance and can even increase likelihood of violence greener
schoolyards shade structures and improved HVAC systems that reduce greenhouse gas emissions all provide relief from extreme heat and address climate change impacts implementing these solutions now will make sure that schools remain healthy and safe places to send our kids and they will be able
to move us closer closer to a zerocarbon city um so I just wanted to reiterate these connections and thank you so much for today's discussion thank you for your time Stephanie Cababo hello thank you for pronouncing my last name like that i appreciate it um good
evening Dr three of us and the rest of the greening committee my name is Stephanie Calvio i am a researcher on the climate campaign at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy focusing specifically on school greening um I'm also a resident in schoolboard district 7 um I'm here today to echo the
importance of clean air and school greening being born and raised in Southern California I am all too familiar with canceled recesses due to poor air quality from wildfires and extreme heat days with little to no shade on my asphalt covered schoolyard
uh we know and anticipate more of these challenges in the upcoming year and it is in the best interest of our most vulnerable communities that we continue these great strides that you all and LUSD has been taking to green all elementary and early education centers
by 30% by the year 2035 as a continued effort to mitigate the negative effects of air pollution and extreme heat that it will have on our kiddos faculty and surrounding community members uh thank you all smart mindful gardeners for the
efforts you are making to elevate the importance of these issues and we look forward to the progression and positive benefits green schools for all will have now and on the future thank you thank you for your time okay Joe Gallardo joe
Gallardo joe G he stepped out oh Joe but we'll get we'll get to him we'll get uh Alex Calderon are you here come on up you have two minutes to speak why don't you begin good evening board members my name is
Alex Calderon and I'm a resident of LA city i just want to implore you guys to please do what you can to help you know improve the air quality in these classrooms i just want you guys to know I'm a I'm a born and raised LA guy two miles away actually i grew up six in Vermont i was right there most of my
life currently live in the San Frernando Valley my son just graduated from Gronal Hills High School my whole family is from this area belmont High School LA High School Chadzsworth High School Cleveland High School Polytenic High School in Sun Valley my whole family I
have a vested interest in this you know your schools carry a lot of uh valuable people to me so I'm very interested in letting you guys know that it would be very important please pass what you can to help the students in their equality appreciate it thank you
thank you for your time uh Mr gallerto as you come back in Mr joe G thank you sir you'll have two minutes to speak why don't you begin good afternoon board members my name is Joe Gallardo i'm a grandparent of a
student in the LSUD i'm here because I worry about my grandson's my grandchild's health every time there's a fire or poor air quality kids spent most of their day in
classrooms yet many of our schools do not have the proper filtration to keep our kids safe we know that wildfires smoke and pollution can cause asthma attacks makes kids sick and lead to miss
school days that's not right lud has the opportunity to fix this by upgrading HVAC systems and making sure the schools have the right filters and filtr
ventilation i urge you to take action our kids deserve clean healthy air thank you very much for your attention thank you for your time sir thank you okay Ruben Richards come on up you'll have
two minutes to speak once you begin and then is there also a Ruben Richards Jr you're junior okay is there a senior here or you just listen okay right on thank you so so junior you're first yeah I'm first hello my name is Ruben
Richards i'm a parent of an Ali USD student an uncle a grandfather a brother to Ali USD students i was an Ali USD student i was uh born and raised in East LA schools uh Rowan Elementary Stevenson Middle School Garfield High School like
all parents I want my child to be safe at school but when wildfires happen and air pollution is high I worried about what's being uh breathed in as shown earlier poor air quality can affect health focus and attendance many classrooms need to update or or improve
the air quality by filters or air balancing the district has an opportunity to improve HVAC systems and continually making sure schools are properly maintained please take action to protect our children's health and learning thank you
thank you for your time uh Mr ruben Richards Senior come on up you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin evening board thank you very much um as a parent of uh LA USD school student uh
Rowan Avenue and uh Stevenson Garfield and uh my mom as an educator at Rowan uh for uh special needs students um it's a privilege to be here talking with you guys and um I think there's uh we heard some good things today combination of
things uh I remember growing up in a row and it was all asphalt right we go out there and all we play is an asphalt so green spaces is a good thing I heard um the reality of it is a lot of times you know when uh rainy days or bad air we got to be inside but you know we love
being outside obviously um but when we are inside we need that good air quality and uh especially with these fires I seen some of these pictures my son was sending me he's we're still residents in East LA right there and uh it was horrible everybody experienced it around the area you know with just that smoke
and that's all up in our ducks right now that's what the kids are breathing um so we need the state-of-the-art HVAC systems uh just to along with other items for our kids right i mean there's a lot of things so I know you guys are doing a great job and I just want to
commend you guys and I want to continue with this uh track that we're heading appreciate your time thank you for your time okay now we'll go to the folks who are listed as calling in aisha Mahmud are you on the line aisha M please press star six to unmute yourself and you have
two minutes to speak once you begin aisha Mahmud thank you my name is Aisha i'm a researcher with nonprofit Job Scream of America and I'm speaking today because clean air and healthy schools are important to me and I support the district's efforts to address the
impacts of the wildfires and making schools safer and healthier for both students and educators building healthy green public schools is important for our community's health but it also creates good jobs and protects job quality everyone tasked with cleaning
HVAC dusts properly installing HVAC systems retrofitting and weathering buildings and remediating wildfire damages all these jobs are essential in ensuring safe working conditions for educators and staff and these workers need to be provided with family sustaining wages robust health care
benefits safe working conditions and ample training opportunities to upskill these jobs are safe are jobs that are not only benefit the workers families but they also sustain campuses and the districts as a whole and create ripple effects throughout the local economy so
thank you i'm appreciative for today's important discussion especially with the lack of guidance from the federal government uh this local leaders leadership is necessary for climate resiliency and for providing cleaner air for students and educators while also creating safe highquality green jobs um
and so I want to thank everyone for the discussion today and uh for helping work towards reducing pollution both at the source but also mitigating the negative effects of air pollution and extreme heat that are disproportionately impacting vulnerable communities thank you
thank you for your time uh Julia Dael you're supposed to be calling in remotely i see you are logged in with a computer but we need you to call in using the telephone that you signed up with so um go ahead and call in using the number provided on the website and the agenda and we will be able to call
on you sarai Himenez I see you're on the line sarai Himenez please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin hello can you hear me we sure can please go ahead thank you my name is Sai Himenez i'm an
LA County resident and a former LA USD student of Puga Lake Elementary i'm speaking today because clean air and healthy schools are important to me and I support the district's efforts to address the impact of the 2025 wildfires and make the district's schools healthy
and safe places to learn and play extreme weather and poor air quality are two of the biggest impacts of climate change on local communities here in Los Angeles the 2025 fires were exacerbated by extreme weather and caused major air quality concerns for the entire region
including my family with a significant number of people still feeling unsafe in their home neighborhoods improving indoor air quality is important to the health and safety of our communities who are impacted from the wildfires and other pollution near schools the roll back of
many safeguarding measures at the federal level has led to fear and uncertainty in our local communities on so many fronts as a public agency with a history of creating sanctuaries for students and educators alike LUSD has already taken the lead on passing key protections recently revoked by the
federal government climate justice is just another just another uh important front on which L USD's leadership will be essential to protecting vulnerable communities in Los Angeles and today's discussions on clean energy energy efficiency and indoor air quality and cool clean are so important for those
protections making LA USD schools healthy and safe for students educators and community members is critical so thank you so much for today's important discussion thank you thanks for your time uh Julia Dowel I see you called in using the number uh that we provided so
please press press star six to unmute yourself you have two minutes to speak once you begin julia Dowel hi thank you so much uh my name is Julia Dowel and I am a senior campaign organizer at Sierra Club i work on our
electric sector campaign so working to decarbonize uh the electric sector in California and I also specifically work on LWWP advocacy advocating for LWP to reach 100 100% clean energy by
2035 and L USD plays a big role in reaching this goal and protecting communities and students i found this discussion very interesting actually because I I did my master's thesis at Cal State Long Beach on the disproportionate impacts of extreme heat
due to climate change specifically on disadvantaged communities so thank you for having these important discussions today and from our work at Sierra Club we know how important clean air is and how connected clean air and clean energy are to each other with the recent fi uh
wildfires earlier this year the terrible impacts we saw the terrible impacts that the change in climate has on students and communities and unfortunately it was not the first time that extreme weather has impacted our students schools and our communities and it won't be the last
not to mention the fossil fuel pollution that exacerbates climate change also directly impacts our community's health today's discussions are so important to combat these negative impacts and protect students educators and the community the renewable energy being
built on LAUSD schools the next steps being considered and the importance of addressing indoor air quality and extreme heat through upgrading HVAC systems which can also increase energy efficiency and help to decarbonize our schools these are all pieces of the
puzzle to ultimately protecting public health advancing environmental justice and a thriving environment and especially to protect and prepare LA from future uh climate disasters right now too many of LUSD students of
color live in environmental justice communities like East LA where they are exposed to dangerous levels of pollution and heat impacts that affect their health and ability to focus which can impact learning outcomes as today's presentation showed HVAC update thank
you very much for your time Miss Dow we appreciate your patience but the the two minutes has has elapsed and we went a little bit over just to get that last thought out you want to get your last thought out uh no no just thank you so much for this discussion right on thank you so much uh
Mr david Tokovski I see you're on the line mr david Tokosski please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin david Tokovski thank you very much
Dr mcclean um let's see a couple items um thank you Morlson for hitting the question about uh the solar panels uh you'll find an audit by the inspector general's office is the one that discovered that
the companies were not honoring the contract uh so there is oversight but it was not oversight it was an oversight by the company to not companies to not pay and it was the inspector general's office that brought them to number two
uh board members it's time to uh ask the general counsel if they're preparing any litigation against the city of Los Angeles for the damages uh in the hundreds of millions of dollars to the loss of schools by negligence with
respect to the fires of the Palisades as well as potentially filing an Amikas brief in the um Alavina uh litigation as many of our schools sit under Southern California Edison's wires if you've been
to any of the southeast schools in LA Unified the children are adjacent to high-powered wires that do not go underground which is part of the litigation of Pasadena uh the county and so on uh and the school district number three um first of
all again it was a wonderful uh charming meeting and I thank the chair for bringing the the union the the students uh and the curriculum together um it there needs to be some oversight on the electric buses the coops that are paying for the uh bus stations there's still
another $250 million of coops taken from the general fund at a minimum uh that's 20 30 million that's 1% pay raise it's a lot of health benefit money and whether or not those sites are actually being constructed at the pace uh that you
expect as a board for the oversight um and and finally um I think there was a good question by the board member as well what what is the curriculum K through 12 mr schmurson was the leader in getting that curriculum moving uh I
didn't hear anything in the coming attractions there that said that fourth grade will be doing this and seventh grade will be doing this in this class or that class thank you very much Mr as it comes forward as it comes forward look for that detail thank you thank you
for your time uh Monnique Lukans I see you're on the line monique Lukans please press star six to unmute yourself and you'll have two minutes to speak once you begin monnique Lukans hi board i'm returning today requesting giving Dr fetzer American Professor
Ammeritus of the Philosophy of Science a board agenda item i have read news for him and during this time he showed visual evidence which seems suspicious with regard to a sensitive topic the Sandy Hook incident i mold this over as
I am aware of mo photo manipulation since then though I have scanned through and listened to Dr fetzer's Supreme Court case regarding this incident and the fact the judge did not allow Dr fetzer to give evidence penalized him for holding his ground and Dr fetzer
being denied a trial by jury which is a guaranteed constitutional right now that tells me there's something wrong including those people who have been punished in silence when questioning the Sandy Hook incident so when I saw in my led email Sandy Hook Promise appear as
your partner I believed it was my ethical duty to speak to you especially since there's a donation button the 2012 incident spurred a hugely justified emotional response from the public including myself but if there's any question of deceit I would like to place
it on the public record what I can tell you is this brave professor's reputation has been smeared for speaking up he's been financially harmed and has said denied his constitutional right all school districts must be concerned about this education is truth no truth no
education it's miseducation does L USD wish to contribute to miseducation of course you don't so for the public's awareness members of the public are able to place matters directly related to school district business on the agenda that's at code
35145.5 we've contacted LUD nine times about this so please create an agenda item for Dr fetzer thank you all right now we have Dr fetzer on the line please press star six to unmute yourself and you have two minutes to
speak once you begin much appreciated Monnique for the past three years I've been in contact with participants in the Sandy Hook event for those of you who know Emily Parker and Victoria Sto were
supposed to be among the victims but they're very much alive and well they reached out to me with a third party a friend who knows them both very well to explain their support for me for being
abused by the judicial system which found me liable by for a defamation by denying my right to submit evidence on my behalf it's an outrageous case I carried all the way to the Supreme Court
what I am doing here now is to encourage you to give second thoughts to partnering with Sandy Promise among the information they provided to me included the Connecticut State FEMA schedule showing the Sandy Hook event listed as
exercise L366 they even sent out a map showing how to get from Bridgeport down to Dickinson Drive where the school was located it was a two-day event for which we even have the manual now I say this
because I don't believe the school district ought to be played the way the public has been played i was born in Pasadena South graduated from South Pastina High School metriculate at Princeton Magna Kumladi served in the Marine Corps including two years in
recruit depot in San Diego where I had 15 DIS and 300 recruits under my command i would subsequently earn a PhD in the history and the philosophy of science and have a 35-y year academic career since my retirement I've been devoting
myself to research in areas of controversial events by bring That's all the time we have for public comment uh that concludes the public comment portion thank you Mr mcclean um thank you for all our public speakers for uh calling
in today we appreciate and also the ones who are here in person so now as we come to the end of today's committee meeting I want to once again thank every one of the presenters for your participation your dedication and valuable
contributions to this committee today and also want to thank our committee green committee members the work that we are doing here today greening our schools fighting climate change and creating safe and sustainable spaces for our students is so so very much critical
and I know all of you um know that and agree with that um today's discussions have not only highlighted the tremendous progress we've made but also underscore the work that still lies ahead so let us leave here today energized particularly
after our last presenters are mindful gardeners um motivated knowing that each step we take no matter how small brings us closer to a healthier more resilient future for our schools our students and our communities i'm very proud of the
work we're are working we're doing here together working alongside one another and I look forward to the continuing important work particularly from our facilities and our uh uh eco sustainability office and I look forward to continuing the work together so our
next green committee it will be May 28th at 4 p.m and we look forward to seeing you all uh at the next committee members so until then please take care of yourselves and have a wonderful wonderful rest of your day thank you [Music]