i d like to whoops. Uh, good morning and welcome to the special board meeting of the Oakland Board of Education. Uh, MR. Rakestock, and we have a roll call to establish quorum, please. Yes. On the roll call to establish quorum studio director Simmons, student director Smith. Director Lauder. Director Williams the present, present. Thank you. Thank you. Director Hutchinson Director Barry present.
Victor Thompson Vice PRESIDENT Bachelor and PRESIDENT Brohar or present. Thank you, MR. Seia I was there in translation today MR. Hollis, sorry. There are no translators for this meeting. MADAM PRESIDENT. And with that, we will get started with today s agenda. I d like to make a motion to take all items together, but recorded separately. Second, you. Awful approval and and voted on separately, recorded separately. Second, is there a motion to approve
all items under Oh, you just made a universal motion which is effectively like consent, uh, to take them all collectively, so that s fine as long as we take public comment. Alright, is there public comment on these items? And, and I would say. allow more than 2 minutes. Mhm if needed Yes, we for public speakers, we have Asa Olubala and Sheila Haines. And she she understands that MRS. So, we re speaking on all items at once. Yes ma am. Ok I just arrived and I didn t get
a chance to go over. The agenda but I m just gonna write down what when I went over all 260-something items, what I pulled as uh areas of concern. Uh, there s several items that involve student data sharing. And I don t know if this board has confirmed if that data sharing is uh. An issue for which we need to have a discussion. There are items related to lead abatement. Sewer repair environmental service plans, environmental assessments, how
does this material abatement. Um, all of these are environmental safety issues for which I m sure uh board members have considered the legitimacy of what s going on related to those. Issues What concerned me was the item that has uh a portable removals from skyline, $88,000. And it s coming from the children s initiative. The Children s initiative is a funding for early uh education. And the other part of that funding is for Oakland Promise Career Readiness and college assistants. I don t know how
you spending $88,000 for portable removers from the Children s initiative. You have a ac transit mou from Skyline that started in JANUARY. Uh, you re just approving it, um. You have items that are multiple funding for uh sources across the district district that have to do with bus transportation, but no clear identification of where the funding is coming from. Uh, we have revisions of job, uh, descriptions. You have several items that uh amend amendment to policy Amendment to policy dealing with child abuse
prevention promotion, acceleration, retention, administrative nondiscriminative issues. English language learners and all of this a policy issue, you could rubber stamping without going into any detail of what s going on related to these policies amendments. You also have creation of new jobs within these 260 items. You, you have a development of a crisis response manual. You have all of the student achievement plans. That s very serious. Very serious You have the teach uh teaching of trade skills which I think is something that needs to be
brought under the umbrella of let s look at this more because right now it s being said a lot of the trade jobs you re gonna be making more when you go to college for 4 years. And we need to look at that Uh, last is my time. Lastly, uh, students, uh, support for students who have experience abuse. I mean it s just too much on this agenda to have this rubber stamping initiative in place. Thank you, uh, MS. Haines Looks like MS. Haine is not online. So that will conclude both speakers. Comments
Hutchinson? Thank you Um first off, we, we shouldn t even be here today, but for the fact that, um, the board has been mismanaged all year long. Um you know, and now we re at a meeting where most people in the community don t even know about it. There wasn t even an announcement set out by the district to say that this is happening. Everyone s on vacation. We announced the meeting last week as our final meeting of the year. And here we are again Now a number of the items that are here on this agenda.
This is actually now the 4th time that some of these items have been on agenda. Was on an original board meeting agenda, and we never got to the consent report. Then after the retreat, these items came forward and were not done. Then last week s board meeting, we never got to these. And now here they are at the 4th meeting, and again the board just wants to lump them all together to decide altogether. Now if you look at the items altogether, they total just 2 items on here basically total $300 million. So these items collectively
total well over $300 million. Most of them don t have a fiscal impact analysis. And as we learned last week at our final board meeting. Our budget for next year has what s being called a plug. And I don t think staff even realizes when they presented last week the plug. That was actually the document that showed on budget line 4395. Somebody inserted a minus $30 million. fraudulently and now they re calling that a plug. You don t load minus $30 million onto the budget when you haven t even made those cuts yet. And now that designation is not listed anywhere on the budget.
So because of that mistake expenditures in the unrestricted have been artificially lowered by $60 million. So if somebody says that this has been budgeted for. They re not being truthful because in the budget there s a minus $30 million that hasn t been accounted for. So by definition, how can we afford these? And again, this board cynical attempt to just push stuff forward when we obviously can t afford it and haven t even made a full agenda is scandalous, scandalous. So like I let everyone know, when I
m done with this meeting today, I m gonna be reaching out to multiple state agencies to file a complaint. Both complaints around fraud and complaints around duty of fair representation. I ve never seen anything like this, and this just continues the pattern where these people would show up and immediately say let s do it together so we can get out of here in 5 minutes. Are there any other board comments, uh, Doctor Berry? Just that I do think, um, I think this was mentioned, if not the last board meeting, the board meeting prior, but if either superintendent you or staff who are online.
Um can share the extent to which the expenses on our gen consent. Agenda are accounted for in the budget. That we just reviewed for next year We re checking to see right now if MS. Gar is online. No, but they re, because there s, there s so many. But I mean if Preston wants to speak to the facility items, that could be proxy for the others In point of clarification, at the retreat. The special meeting afterwards when uh MS. Garre wasn t here. Um, the superintendent stated that these things were budgeted
for. And let me just state unequivocally, it s unacceptable that the head of the financial department is not available for this meeting. That s why senior staff is salaried at a very high rate. and if she wasn t going to be available, then this meeting shouldn t be scheduled now, so this isn t, this isn t good enough at all. In terms of, uh, ensuring that things have been budgeted when we know that they haven t been. Services Officer, um, I can attest to the fact that in the consent report, there are multiple funding sources that are utilized under my control. All of them are either budgeted for in the general fund or in the spending plan related to um the bond program, so they re
all currently budgeted under capital programs or in the general fund, particularly for some of the maintenance items. But that s not what s listed on the memo. And so for somebody to say it doesn t matter. We ve had the same memos for these for these items. This is now the 4th time we re, we re not debating. That s, I know you re not debating anything. I know what you re going to do, but I m pointing out that that was not clear, and if we had this information, it would be in the packet, and we wouldn t have to ask questions. So to have somebody stand up here and say something that they couldn t include in the packet, the 4 times this has been brought
forward. Call shenanigans ok, I m going to address this in just right now, and that I didn t, I want to note that as these items came up in the the um last agenda meeting, I did discuss all of them with Director or I m sorry, um, Assistant super lieutenant guard. She had many phone calls. I call on to make sure that there was the resource code was listed to make sure that the master, so make sure that all of it was clear. Um, I also want to say I have never witnessed a meeting where the entire consent report was pulled. So I want to go through a few things that are in here that are essential to our students.
Number one, r 9 and r 10, which are tree cutting trees. These are fire hazards in many of these schools, and again, I think they ve spoken to the fact that we don t have the staff to do this in buildings and grounds. I certainly, excuse me, I certainly would not want to see a fire take place at any of these named schools, and there s quite a few of them. Um, also, I r 27 and 28. are um fire protection controls again in a school, I would want to see or in any offices, our fire, um, controls working appropriately. Um, number, I m gonna go through and see another one here. The, um, extension of our workers
comp contract again as many of our workers, particularly in buildings and grounds, I would assume file workers comps claims. I would not want that expired. Um, we can go through here the installation agreement for the grading, the turf replacement again where we ve placed an emphasis on joyful schools all of our schools deserve to have turf that is not ripped up and the kids can play on. When I go through here, number r13, 113. Are non-public, non-sectarian school agency services master contracts again, we have students in all of these schools. The contracts, excuse
me, need to be in place. Here we have an agreement with Roe Health and Special Education. Providing nursing behavioral and therapy staffing solutions to support our students. Those are just a few of them. So I think again I have never seen. The politics played with the consent agenda item. And with that, I ll ask if there are any further. I don t see any, and MR. Rakeshaw, can we take a roll call in the vote, please? I m sorry, I m sorry, I have my hand raised. Sorry, Director Williams, I didn t see that. I was watching the screen there.
Thank you. Go ahead. Thank you. Um. I, I will be moving this forward, but I really wanna uh express my concern because um um r9 and r10, I don t know. You know, why that, that, that was an issue for you, is an issue for me, because we, we are talking about uh the practice of, um, riffing, releasing district staff members. For budgetary, uh, um. Operations to reduce our expenses, and instead of actually finding
ways to utilize them. We contract out those services. The services in r9 and r10, our services that are building the grounds folks do on a regular basis. What we really have to do is evaluate the department to see who s going to be able to handle those services. It s easy to just send them off to a vendor to do it. So I really want to, uh, address that as concerns that we have to talk about, um, really it s a valuation of the department. We ve already had a, a, um, an ad hoc committee on having labor at the table and looking at these contracts, and it just, again, we
re gonna have to do a better job at that and look for the solutions in there. R 2728 is very similar. These are very, um, you need certificated, um, individuals to do certain work and then you need just regular staff people to do that work. We have to go ahead and look deeper into these contracts, so we ll know which ones our departments can do and which ones do we contract out, um, and I do have some concerns with that. I think that s gonna have to elevate our conversation again. We ll have in our labor partners at the table, so they understand what we need to do.
Also, if we really are talking about becoming more efficient than there has to be an evaluation or an assessment in these departments to see what can get done and what are we contracting out. Um in addition to the, uh, Zoom and all the additional transportation services. Uh, we did have a conversation with the director at the time, but there are some uh escalator clauses in there that need to really be looked at, and we need to really have a better understanding of how our particular transportation
system is working committing 30 years is not a very good policy on my behalf. We re at a year to year, um, uh, moment in our particular budget where gonna be battling to make sure next year is right and having a commitment of over 30 years, um, and pulling money out the system is not what we really need. Should have a deeper conversation on that. Um so I think there are some things that should be further discussed. I m going to move this, uh, and, and support, but I, I do have some deep concerns in the practices in which we re moving forward in this budget. I m expecting our district staff to be more diligent and
actually having um these conversations that, oh, and the, the brace bracefield, uh, Dunleavy. We have um you know expenses of $250,000 of folks flying in and out and and all this stuff. I travel on a regular basis, and I know that um expenses can be high at times, but we don t have no mechanisms in these contracts to track the expenses, and that s a really big concern for me. And lastly, we have community outreach with Arcadl and our, our other communication staff to do some
of that work. And again, I would like to see our districts come back to the table and work it out with our staff to get this work done, to keep our people working and not put them on the sidelines through layoff notices. We re gonna have to change the way we do business moving forward. Thank you. Thank you. MR. Rakestrack, and we have a roll call in the vote, please. Yes. On the motion stated proving all items at once, uh. Student directors are absent. Uh Director Lauder Yes Director Williams Yes, sir Director Hutchinson? No. Director Barry
Yes. Director Thompson s absent Vice PRESIDENT Batchelor Yes. PRESIDENT Brohart, motions adopted. Is there any new legislation? It s meeting, ok, um, and with that I would like to close in honor. Of um two translators that have had over 40 years of experience. We will MISS Them in there, but wish them the best luck in their retirement. Uh, David Ewan and Angel Ho. And with that we