Welcome to the June 25 school board meeting. Mr. Rakestar, would you, do a roll call to establish quorum, please? Yes, ma'am. On the roll call to establish quorum, student director Simmons, student director Vasquez, Director Latta? Present. Director Williams? Director Hutchinson? Director Berry? Present. K. Director Thompson? Present. Vice president Bauschler? Here. President Brothard? Here. Quorum, present. Thank you. And mister Hollis, can we have a translation check, please? Yes, madam president. For tonight, for tonight's meeting, we have three languages available for live interpretation.
They are Cantonese, Arabic, and Spanish. We also have a translation Closed Caption feature available on Zoom that you can use by clicking the Closed Caption icon on your Zoom taskbar. With that, we will move on to Live Interpretation. We will start with Cantonese. I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom. Please only raise your hand if you need the language that's currently being announced, which is which is Cantonese. And I will ask miss Ho if she can come up on mute and get the interpret interpretation announcement for Cantonese. Thank you, Ms. Ho. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised with Cantonese interpretation.
Seeing no hands, we will not start with Cantonese interpretation at this time. Moving forward to Arabic. I will lower all attendees' hands. Please only raise your hand if you need the language that's being announced at this time, which is Arabic. And I will ask miss Abdi if she can come off mute and give the interpretation announcement for Arabic. Arabic instruction is done. Thank you, miss Abdi. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Arabic interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not start with Arabic interpretation at this time. Moving forward to our last language for this evening is Spanish.
I will lower all attendees' hands. Please only raise your hand if you need the language that's being announced at this time, which is Spanish. And I will ask mister Dela Torre to come off of mute and give the interpretation announcement for Spanish. Yes. Thank you. Spanish is done. Thank you. Thank you, mister Dela Torre. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised in Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not start with any interpretation at this time. That concludes the first, interpretation announcement for this evening, and, we'll pass it back to you, mister Rickstraw.
Madam President, the availability of interpretation in the languages announced, have has been completed. Thank you. We will now have public comment on closed session items. How many speakers do we have? President Rouhani, we do not have any. Sorry about that. In the closed session we'll discuss labor matters, D24-nineteen 26, conference with labor negotiators legal matters, D2, conference with legal counsel existing litigation, sorry, D2 20 four-one 163 D3 20 five-sixteen 75,
conference with legal counsel, existing litigation D4 20 five-sixteen 76, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation D5-twenty five-seventeen oh one, conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation D6-twenty five-seventeen 12, conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation public employment, D724-nineteen 67, public employment Real Property Manors D824-two 345, conference with Real Property Negotiators D924-two thousand nine hundred and fifty five, Conference with Real Property Negotiators.
We will reconvene to public session at 05:30 p. M. Are there any public comments, Mr. Hals? President Puhari, no public comment on closed session items. Okay. We will now reconvene to closed session and we will reconvene at 05:30. Welcome to the July I'm sorry, to the June 25, public open session of the Ellicott School Board. Mr. Raikstra, can you take roll call to establish quorum, please? Yes, madam president. On the roll call for quorum call, student director Simmons? Here. K. Student director Vasquez?
Here. Director Latta? Here. Director Williams? Present, sir. Director Hutchinson? Present. Alright. Director Barry? Present. Director Thompson? Present. Vice president Bachelor? Here. President Burghard? Here. Quorum, present. Thank you. And, Mr. Hollis, can we have a, translation check, please? Yes, Madam President. For tonight's meeting, we have three languages available for live interpretation. They are Cantonese, Arabic and Spanish. We also have a translation closed caption feature available on Zoom that you can use by clicking the closed caption feature on your Zoom taskbar.
With that, we will move on to announcements for live interpretation. We will start with Cantonese. I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom. Please only raise your hand if you need the languages being announced at this time, which is Cantonese. And if you are in the public and need a translation laptop, you can see the gentleman near underneath the basketball courts, to assist you with that. With that, I will ask miss Ho if she can come off mute and give the interpretation announcement for Cantonese. The Cantonese announcement is mister Hollis. Thank you, miss Ho.
Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised with Cantonese interpretation. Checking the public to see if there's any hands raised with Cantonese interpretation. Seeing no hands in the room or on Zoom, we will not start with Cantonese interpretation at this time. Moving forward to Arabic. I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom. Please only raise your hand if you need the language that's being announced at this time, which is Arabic. And if you are in the public and need a translation laptop, you can see the gentleman underneath the basketball court to help, to assist you, with getting a laptop.
Oh, so with that, I will ask miss Abdi if she can come off mute and give the interpretation announcement for Arabic. Okay. Thank you, miss Abdi. Checking the attendees on Zoom to see if there's any hands raised for Arabic interpretation. Yes. We do have a hand raised for Arabic interpretation, so we will start that as soon as the interpretation announcement is complete. So with that, I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom. Again, please only raise your hand if you need the language that's being announced at this time, which is Spanish. And I will ask miss Eva if she can come off mute and give the
interpretation announcement for Spanish. Of course. Thank you very much. And just a favor to presenters and participants, please help us out to provide language access by speaking clearly and at a moderate pace. Thank you. And now the Spanish instructions. Thank you, Ms. Eva. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Spanish interpretation. Checking to see if there's any hands raised in the room for Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands in the room, none on Zoom. We will start with Arabic interpretation at this time, and we'll make further announcements later on in the meeting.
And I pass it back to you, mister Rickstra. Madam president, the availability of translation services for the three languages that the district offers, have been successfully completed. Thank you. At tonight's meeting, there are several allotted times where you may make public comments, provided you pre register to speak online before the meeting started or if you fill out a comment card, which you can find on the table by the entrance, and you can submit those cards at any time. Closed session items, public comment has already been completed. There's public comment allotted under special orders of the day,
tribute to Michelle Vasquez. Measures BNY, Independent Citizens Bond Oversight Committee. Measure G1, District Teacher Retention and Middle School Improvement Act Oversight Commission. All non agenda items within subject matter jurisdiction of the district, adoption of general consent report, adoption of general consent report facilities, Student Board members' report, unfinished business, first 02/1927 local control and accountability plan, 02/1926 Fiscal Year District budget, employment agreement in East Sadler and the Remote Public Schools.
There is also public comments under new business, the District's twenty twenty four-twenty five Annual California School Dashboard Local Performance Indicators Report curriculum adoption, purchase high school chemistry curriculum, physics curriculum and world language curriculum and finally, declaring an emergency authorizing District staff to enter into contracts for emergency construction services for the repair of dangerous conditions at various sites. There is no superintendent's report tonight. Please be aware that in compliance with the Brown Act, Board members may not respond to comments regarding issues that are not on our posted
agenda for tonight. I ask all speakers to keep their comments to the scope of the item. If a speaker speaks to a different item, the Chair will need to ask that that speaker either speak to the specific item or hold their comments until the appropriate public period. If you don't get a chance to speak during public comment, I want to encourage you to use the e comments feature via the Legislative Information Center on the OUSD website. And of course, you can always e mail members directly using this format: firstname. Lastnameosd dot org. Report out of Closed Session, 06/25/2025.
Labor Matters on item D1, No. 20 four-nineteen 26, conference with Labour negotiators. The Board did not take up this matter. Legal matters on item D2, No. 20 four-one 163, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. The Board gave direction to this matter. On item D3, number 20 five-sixteen 25, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, The Board approved a settlement in this matter. Motion by President Brohard, second by Vice President Bachelor, vote five-zero. Director Hutchinson and Director Williams were absent.
On item D4, number 20 five-sixteen 76, conference with legal counsel existing litigation, the Board approved a settlement in this matter, motion by President Brohard, second by Vice President Batchelor, vote five-zero with Director Hutchinson and Director Williams Absen. On item D5, number 20 five-seventeen oh one, conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation, the Board gave direction on this matter. On item D6, number twenty five-seventeen twelve, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, the board gave direction on this matter.
Public Employment matters on item D7, number 20 four-nineteen 67, Superintendent of Schools. The Board did not take up this matter. Conference with Real Property negotiators on item D8, number twenty-two 345, Real Property Ground Lease, former Tilden. The Board gave direction in this matter. On item D9, 20 four-two 955, Ralph J. Bunch, Lakeview And Bond Street Annex, the Board discussed this matter. This is the end of the June 25 Closed Session Report.
Are there any modifications to the agenda? I would like to move item R3, Employment Agreement Denise Sadler to after, special orders of the day. Sure. I'd also like to, pull, item L12 from the consent calendar. And I would like to withdraw item L-one 150 three-twenty five-seventeen oh four contract with, Council of Great City Schools. Any other modifications to the agenda? Point of clarification. So did you say withdraw 153? And and so we're not gonna have a reason for that or anything.
And again, this is, it's it's strange that the board president who sets the agenda and the consent report would now withdraw this item with no conversation or no consideration. And again, it's indicative of the unilateral authorities that this board leadership continues to make. Thank you. We'll move student report to after J, public comments. Okay? Excuse me. I'd like to pull L58 as well, please. Any other modifications? Okay. At this time, we would like to recognize student director Michelle Vasquez for her contributions this year.
We are looking forward to student director Simmons' contributions next year, so continuing in that work. So whereas Michelle Vasquez has been serving as a student board director this year while a senior at MetWest High School and whereas Director Vasquez has been deeply involved in serving her school and the District for the last four years, taking on greater responsibility each year, including roles as Grade Representative and Media Director at MetWest and serving on the All City Council Governing Board and whereas Director Vasquez has excelled at balancing her service to
others with her schoolwork and investment in her own future, having already completed college courses and completed a paid internship and participated in the ChicanoLatino Youth Leadership Project Statewide Conference and whereas Director Vasquez, during her time on the Board, has exemplified her commitment to addressing community related challenges that impact students and highlighting the importance of pursuing higher education. And whereas Director Vasquez takes pride in her work with the Board of Education, especially having secured biweekly emails from the superintendent,
working alongside fellow ACC members and holding monthly high school and middle school meetings to amplify student voice holding the fellow Board directors accountable for their actions and giving informed Student Board reports and whereas Director Vasquez has graduated from MetWest High School and will leave her position as Student Director on the Board of Education of the Oakland Unified School District as she heads off to attend the University of California at Irvine in the fall. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Education of the Oakland Unified School District thanks
Director Vasquez for her dedicated service to the students, staff and families of Oakland, commends her for the passion and commitment with which she gave a powerful voice to the 34,000 students of the District and wishes her well in all of her future endeavors. Given under our hand on the District's seal this June 2025 in Oakland, California. Do I have a motion to, accept this? I motion that we accept this for Ms. Vasquez. Are there public comments? Well, who was the seconder? Okay. That's fine.
So this is a motion to approve the resolution. Right. Director Vasquez, would you like to make any comment? Yes. I will first like to thank everyone who's here, especially my parents because they've been such a huge support for me for the longest time. Twelve years, I believe, now. Elementary, middle school, high school, they've been there, so I'd like to thank them so much. Anyways, I'd also like to thank our, our former student engagement specialist at Lottley. She her and her sister actually were the ones who introduced me to this role and also the council as a whole.
So without them, I wouldn't be here today and sitting here at this dais as well. I would also like to thank our student engagement specialist, Adriana. Adriana. She has been such a huge support throughout this whole journey, and just working with her has been such a pleasure. I'd also like to thank Doctor. Simmons. Working besides him has been really a journey because we both have been through so much this school year, especially considering there's been so many changes and just so many challenges this school year. We both pushed through and we relied on each other heavily.
I know I relied on him so much, and I can't thank him more than the words that I'm saying right now. I would also I said it's funny because we're laughing because I we made a joke saying that I wasn't gonna cry. I mean, I told him I wasn't gonna cry, but you can hear my voice shaking right now. Who else? Also, just major, major thanks to all the students of OUSD. Without their vote and without their trust, I would not be here, sitting here and giving my thanks and just working this whole entire school year representing
them. They're the main reason why I'm here today, besides, obviously, my teachers informing me about this opportunity, but they were the ones who voted for me to be sitting here and representing them. So I would like to thank them so much. Just having and putting their trust on me was is honestly a pleasure and something I will never forget because it's honestly an opportunity that I'll always remember for a long time. I would also like to thank all the community members who would email me and
inform me about everything that has been going on through the district. Unfortunately, both doctor Simmons and I throughout this school year have not been informed about a lot of things happening in our school district. And without our community members being there and emailing us nonstop, we would have not known about these major issues and and we would have not been able to fight for them as well. So I would like to thank every community member emailing us nonstop, and even just emailing us, telling us that we did a good job and that they feel grateful about the,
about our work. That's something I'll also will never forget. Because I was born and raised here in Oakland, and just hearing all these appreciations from the people that are also like me, and come from the same place as me, and also were born and raised here has nothing has been nothing but an honor, and nothing that I will never, like, would never ever forget. And I would also just like to thank myself. I really pushed myself nonstop this whole school year. Honestly, the past four years I've been in high school were really just a battle nonstop,
just constantly growing on my end, but also academically, and also, like, through internships, and also just working as well. I've really pushed through and I've really made it this far, and it's something that I'll always be proud of because I'm just representing a lot of first generation students and also just my parents, and just demonstrating that their hard work is clearly paying off through my hard work. So thank you so much. And are there any public comments? President Breauxhall, no public comment. Board comments. Let's do a round. Director Hutchinson? Yes.
Thank you. Thank you, Director Vasquez. And I hope you have an understanding also of the legacy that you're now a part of. We have a legacy of amazing student directors going back a very long time here in OUSD. And hopefully, you are proud of your time and how you handled your time here on the dais. I've been very impressed you know, a couple of times in particular. And I heard you kind of mention it in your remarks about when things haven't been done the right way here,
how strongly you've spoken up, and, and always try to represent your constituents who put you in this place in the first place. And hopefully, that's one of the things you're gonna look back on and always carry with you. That when there's a time, even if nobody else is saying anything, it's always the right call to speak up for what you believe in. And I heard you say things to school board directors that I haven't ever seen anyone else brave enough to say. And so, hopefully, you really do carry that with you. And, of course, we,
we expect to see you back here in Oakland. And, hopefully, in your future, you'll be able to give back to Oakland also because that's just another part of the legacy that we have. I really want to, since you mentioned it in your remarks, also apologize for how the student directors have been treated this year and especially over the last few months as major decisions have been made or when the whole city council came to make their presentation. The utter disrespect that was shown to you all was just not not acceptable and is never acceptable. And, unfortunately,
things have changed here over the last few months. But I would request that you try to carry your empowering moments with you, and you learn from these other experiences when people try to take your true power away. So, I expect to see you here at least sometime. You know, we all know when UC goes on break. But I'm really proud of you. Hopefully, you're proud of yourself. And, again, all of us in OUSD are proud of how you now fit into this larger legacy of our Student Director. Thank you. I also would like to thank you,
Director Vasquez, for all that you've given to us, all that you've helped us realize and see. When I think about you and what you've done, I think about a quote that I really like, and it's yesterday is a beautiful reflection. Today is a new beginning. Tomorrow is limitless possibilities. And so I put you in that category and it makes me feel good to realize that you and I, sister schools. Look, congratulations Director Vasquez, on all of your accomplishments. I've, have only had the opportunity to serve with you on the board since January,
but it's been really, wonderful to get to know you and to see you in action at all city council meetings and convenings and also see the, determination and just kind of quiet tenacity that you bring, to your role on behalf of all of the students. And, having seen you out, with your peers, I know that, I see the appreciation that they have for you, and I just wanna, I'm sure there's so many more people that I haven't met who, have been impressed and learned from you. I know I've learned a lot from you and, I wanna congratulate you on your next transition into college. I'll echo director Hedges' comments.
I look forward to seeing you back here and hearing how, it's going. Congratulations. Alright. What's up, miss Michelle? Congratulations on glad to see you graduate, at from miss Metwest, this past, month last month. So congratulations on that. Yo. What I really wanna say is, like, I appreciate your spirit that, every board meeting, you come and you greet us. And I think it's it's this kind of, agape love is what the Greeks say. It's like a love for humanity. Love for just people. You know? And I really just got a good vibe from you in that regard that,
you know, you didn't you know, you're not judging folks. You just give each and every person an opportunity to be themselves. And you were very you you were the exemplar of that. And I just wanna thank you for just bringing such a positive, spirit to the board. We definitely needed to see that. You're definitely something special. You're an incredible youth leader, and I know you tirelessly have advocated for our young folks, for their dignity, for youth vote, but also for our immigrant youth as well.
And I just really wanna just appreciate you for the work you have done, and the empowerment of all of our students in in OUSD. So I just wanna say that I think one of the things that I've learned on the board, is that, you know, we need to communicate better, and I think we talked about that at the beginning of the school year, you know, about how we can support. And I just think that what I've taken from both directors is that we do need to have, like, an orientation at the beginning of the year so we can actually understand where we
are communicating, how best that works out. So I'm really listening to you on that behalf. And lastly, I just wanna say that, you know, I wish you the best as you move forward, your spirit as well, and, look forward to you doing great things. So thank you very much. Congratulations. I just wanna add one thing. Thank you for giving us the beautiful gift of your full self. There have been moments where, like, lots of lots is going on. It's clear that we frustrated you because we haven't communicated. But you do,
like director William said, always show up with joy. And I think it's important, and it has been important for me to see that and to witness that and for our community to see that play out in public because it is possible for two things to be true, for us to carry the weight of some of the issues that we're grappling with, for us to be frustrated with each other, and for us to still treat each other with care and with steadiness. And I have respected and appreciated that so much from you. And thank you also for just being communicative because I will be texting you to
check-in, and I hope that we can continue to build together. Congratulations. Yeah. I'll just echo a lot of what has already been said. But, yeah, I really have, seen you grow in your leadership, here on the board and really just really respect your opinion on things. And really appreciate, like, the weight that you've had on your shoulders. As someone who has been a first generation immigrant myself, I know what that feels like. And when you have your parents who have poured so much love into you, to make sure that, you are showing up every day, everywhere you are, in the way that you would want them to be,
in the way that they have taught you to be. And I think that's really powerful, and I hope that you continue that and you don't lose sight of the beauty that that is. And that you, again, just continue to have that positive energy and just develop every day. Because I know it could be a real struggle to, to continue when you don't feel like you're represented, when you don't feel like other folks look like you or, or have the same experiences you have, have been in those positions. But, you know, folks like us know how to be the first. So I think it's really important to think about that and think about the legacy
that you're gonna have. And this is just one of the many stepping stones you'll have towards that legacy. I'm going to make mine short, but the one thing that really stuck out for me this year in your contributions was your standing up for your fellow student. And I really appreciated when you made that when you sent me that information and that you really stood up and fought for her. And I think that really shows your dedication to your peers. And, so that was my short thing. But I just again, and I really appreciate that you did that for her as well.
So thank you. This year has really been a roller coaster. And we're on a roller coaster of life. Knowing that you have someone to hold you down and make sure that you don't fall off that roller coaster is a blessing. And that's what I had this year with miss Ed. I mean, I only got to say a couple of words. I told y'all she was gonna cry. I blame you. Michelle is one of the most genuine people I know, and I'm around a lot of politicians. And it's so hard to be such a genuine person.
And one of the things about being a genuine person is you probably spend so much of your time caring about other people and being so empathetic that you don't get a lot of time to check up on yourself, or you might forget to check up on yourself and take that time for yourself. So I'm truly grateful and happy that I was one of those people that you were able to come to and talk to. And you felt comfortable enough to comfortable enough with me to confide with me.
And I'm happy that we was able to create a safe space for us because it was really something that we needed. It was kinda like a a sanctuary and especially spending so much time with someone over the course of a year. A year don't really feel like that long, especially a school year. But when you see in that person multiple times a week, when you have to constantly call and talk to that person, and even if y'all disagree, you don't have no choice but to work with each other. You really start to
understand that person on a different level than even some of your closest friends. So I'm truly grateful that I was able to and to be honest, I was I was kind of frightened about who my other student director might have been. And I I didn't I didn't want to get somebody who I was frightened about getting somebody who didn't really fit my style, even though we have to adapt as especially as leaders, we have to adapt. But there's always gonna be that underlying fear of whoever you have to work with
and they might not fit your style. And Michelle was the complete opposite of a person than me. Honestly. We don't we're so much of opposites that we worked that it makes us work together so well. Because if I present an idea, your idea is totally separate than that. And I have to be able to still see your idea without shutting it down. And as people, that can be hard. But I'm so happy about all the lessons that we've learned together and all the
things that we went through together. And I know you're gonna be great. And I know we're gonna stay in contact. So it's not it's not even a goodbye, but it's more of a and then you also. Well, this is when we invite your parents up, and we take a picture. I'm sorry. We We have to do the officials first. So, can we take a roll call vote on this, please? Yes. On the motion to adopt the resolution honoring, student director Vasquez. Student director Simmons? Yes. K. Director Latta? Yes. Director Williams? Yes,
sir. Director Hutchinson? Yes. Director Berry? Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. And vice president, Bachelor? Yes. And president Brohart? Yes. Motion's adopted. Right. Let's pick Alright. All right. Moving right along, I'm sorry. Next on the agenda is the measure G1 commission report. This is a five minute presentation. And then following that, we'll be measures B, J and Y, which also has a five minute presentation. So if the, person from G1 would like to come up, I think the chair is here. Oh, on Zoom, okay. Hello? Yes, we can hear you.
Okay. I just wanna say thank you for the board for, all the work that you do. My name is Edmund Chun. I am the chairperson of the measure g one committee. G one is a property tax measure that has brought in about 11 and a half million dollars, for the last, twenty three, twenty four year. 65% goes to the teacher salary augmentation, 35% goes to the school sites. So that's about $5,000,000 that went across the 40 schools serving middle school kids in Oakland.
And I just wanna thank Commissioner Hubert Hong and Karen Lozano at the district for doing a tremendous job working with the school sites in crafting the proposals so that, they meet the fairly stringent requirements of the g one, statute. So, great job with them. A lot of a lot of the big difference between the three years that when I first got onto this commission versus now. Now it's very streamlined. There's very little back and forth. And after visiting the school sites,
I know that they are very thankful that it's very, very streamlined and there's very little reasons for us to deny applications as they were in the first year that I was on this committee. So, I think I speak for all the commissioners when I say that the best part of this was the visiting of the school sites and seeing how the individual school sites put into practice the money that the Oakland taxpayers, have allotted them. And of the 5,000,000
that was allotted to the schools, about 40% of 2,000,000 or so went into positive school culture, another 1,600,000.0 went into art. And the only recommendation that I would have for the board and for the district is that unlike art or music or language where we can see, each year the amount of students that those programs are serving, with something with positive school culture, it's a little more difficult to measure success rates. We have we're dependent on the California Healthy Kids Survey,
which is not not a very high response, survey. We don't get a lot of, responsiveness in terms of students. So we can look at instead, I guess, attendance rates, you know, chronic absences as well as, test scores for instance. And there are some schools who use that positive school culture and invest that into a more proactive measure of counseling, which tries to prevent harms and versus schools that are more focused on restorative justice,
which normally focuses on repairing harms and trying to prevent or prevent those harms from happening again. So it'd be interesting if the district now would dive more into the schools that show more, responsiveness as far as year to year growth in terms of their, lessening their chronic absences. And also looking at the the tick surveys, whatever comes in to see what they have in terms of school satisfaction and school safety. I also want to,
in my last act as chairperson of G1, to put a plug in for, the one shining example I think of OUSDs in general, but middle schools in particular, which is the OUSD music program. If you ever want to see the embodiment of, passionate, tireless, dedicated teacher, go visit an OUSD middle school. Go to OOPA and follow Kevin Robinson around Clear The Aik. Go, you know, walk over Fruitvale and go to United for Success and see mister Aguayo.
Go see mister Chile at Frick. Go look at the program that Randy Porter has built at Roosevelt and go see what Brian Cross is building at Bret Hart. Go see what Tanya Ross is building at Claremont. And you will see what I saw, what all the commissioner saw, which is an amount of dedication that we would imagine all of teachers all teachers would have for their students, especially mine since both of them went through OUSD middle schools. So I just want to and I know we don't have any control over the
spending of g one funds at at the individual school site. I just want principals and the leadership teams to know that maybe we should focus a little more on music. So that's all I have to say. Thank you. I agree 100%, with the music program. Are there any public comments? Yes. We have one registered speaker, Accela Lobala. She's coming up. I also want to thank you for your service, Mr. Chen. I know that's a lot of work chairing your committee, so I think we all appreciate the hard work that you put in today. All the minutes, would you like to allocate? So I I was looking at this,
and if you look at g one, there are a number of of services that can be provided for our students under this measure. As a matter of fact, I think in five different areas, attract and retain, school site educators, improve access to art and music, world language, and a couple of more. The problem is based on the enrollment, you get the funding. So some schools that have low enrollment get very little funding, like Melrose, I'm sorry. Hillcrest, $6,979. Francophone,
8,000. Melrose, 59,000. Now because of the low amount of money they are getting, they can only focus on one area. So Hillcrest is spending their money on art. That's it. Melrose, all the money is going towards safety and positive school environment. And the other school is Francophone, art. So the problem is if you have a low enrollment, you can't take advantage of the scope of identified areas that the funding allows for. And that's and so the the funding is based on numbers of students.
It should be based on needs of students. Okay? So that's the problem I have with this. 85 another problem is 65% of the funding was spent on staff salaries. 65%. So that didn't go directly to students. So anyway, I hope we can work on those areas and those low enrollment schools can get better opportunity to get all of the areas of funding that are available. Thank you. Are there any other board comment or public comments? No, chair. That conclude public speakers. Okay. Are there any public, board comments? Director Thompson? Yes. Yes.
I'll make this very, very quick. But as the liaison to, the G1 Committee, I have been very impressed with how each individual is very thorough. They review, the documentation to make sure that it that it follows what our key priorities are for the district. So there's always a great alignment. So I want to thank every person who serves, on that commission. And I really want to thank the leadership of Mr. Chang. Thank you. Director Barrett? Yeah.
I just wanted to say thank you to the group of folks who volunteer their time to make sure that we're, you know, managing this program and learning from it. On that last point, learning from it. Things that I left the report curious about Was how each school site is defining positive and safe and what the connection is to OUSD's value of joyful schools. And I hope there's an opportunity for us to hear more about that so we can be more expansive about the ways that we think about what joyful schools looks
like across the district. And in that way, also thinking about how we what the future beyond g one looks like and how we can begin to integrate some of the the lessons, the best practices into the way that OUSD promotes joyful schools or positive safe environments more broadly beyond the scope of the measure. Thank you all. Thank you. Student directors? Thank you. All right. Next up is, measures B, J and Y, Commission. You also have five minutes for a presentation. Are they on Zoom as well?
Yes, they're on. Okay. Hi, sorry. Okay. Wonderful. Hello, everyone, and thank you to the Board. So by way of introduction, my name is Andrew Butler and I'm the chairperson of the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee or CBOC. I also have two children who are students in the district and I'm a proud Oakland resident. And today, I'll be discussing, CBOC's annual report and it'll be about five minutes. So, to give a brief description of CBOC's function and purpose, CBOC monitors and provides oversight to the bond program to ensure that funds are being
managed appropriately and in compliance with the bond's purpose. So, our committee, CBOC, holds regular meetings throughout the school year. And during those meetings, we review and discuss bond program activities, paying special attention to planning, spending, reporting and accounting, and progress updates of building improvement projects. Over the past couple sessions and terms, we've also conducted site visits so that the CBOC members can get kind of firsthand
experience and, you know, we'll see what the plans are for different sites and also understand the needs of different sites. And one of CBOC's directives is to promptly alert the public to any waste or improper expenditure of school construction bond money. We also review and make advisory recommendations to the school board on proposed changes to project budgets, project timelines, and other expenditures. So, you know, taking a look at the year that was or the school year that was, yeah, this school year began with an urgent need to address unexpected issues concerning the drinking
water at several school sites and ultimately this required utilizing bond funds and managing the subsequent changes to existing spending plans for the bond measures. And CBOC was included in that process and district facilities personnel provided us with transparency and insights for how existing projects would be affected and reprioritized. And also during this year, the district began the process of updating its facilities master plan which it does every
five years. And during the course of the year, presentations were made to CBOC regarding how sites would be assessed and other details on the methodology for updating the facility's master plan. And for both the amendment to the measure wise spending plan and for the updates to the facility's master plan, CBOC was able to review and discuss and make recommendations to the board. And we also want to take a second to thank the district staff for our inclusion in those processes and also for their forthright transparency throughout
those processes. Okay. So, getting to the annual report and our conclusions. Well, first, let's talk about some of the duties. So, CBOC's primary duty is to provide a statement on compliance regarding our review of bond program expenditures and also our review of the independent auditors report. So related to those duties, at regular intervals the facility staff provides CBOC with financial reports regarding the bond program
and answers any questions that we have at our regular meetings. And additionally, each spring, CBOC receives a financial audit report conducted by external auditors concerning the previous fiscal year of the bond program. Okay. So, what are our findings after our sort of review and discussion and also taking a look at the external audits? So, our ultimate findings are that none of the observations and concerns that are noted in the report rise to a level that constitutes improper use of bond funds.
So, we therefore find that OUSD and the bond program are in compliance with the requirements. We, of course, as noted in the annual report, made several recommendations to the board regarding some of the planned changes to the measure why spending plan and kind of gave notes on how to, yeah, how to incorporate CBOC in the facilities master plan updates in a useful way. But ultimately, as I mentioned,
we found that the bond program and OUSD is in compliance with the requirements. I also wanted to give a special thank you to the director bachelor as the bond liaison to CBOC over the past school year. And with that, that's the presentation. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you very much and also thank you for your service to CBOC. Are there any board comments? Sorry, public comments. Yes. We have one registered speaker, Hassalo Labala. Okay. Two minutes. I wanna encourage the public to start participating more at these meetings because they're very
engaging, very informative. And the individuals who are represented on these committees do a lot of work. And, they they respect the public's engagement. And I think you who are concerned we say we're concerned about what's going on, but become more involved and even volunteer for some of these committees. They they've made some decisions that have challenged, what we are doing to get be better done, and I'm very happy about that. I've I attended a lot of meetings mostly because of McCliman's issues.
And they they respected, what we had to say, and some changes, I think, took place because of that engagement. And I'm not gonna go into details about all the issues at McCliman's, but I think having an opportunity to have another ear listening about your concerns as community members and as parents helps to resolve issues that you have related to teaching and learning. That committee is very valuable. We just had one person at the last meeting. And I this is just an opportunity to say, people are saying we care.
But if you care, you gotta get more engaged, and don't wait for one item. Look at the global picture of what's happening, in our district and participate in more aspects and not just one little thing that is your thing. Be concerned about the holistic betterment of this district. And this committee has done an outstanding job, and I just hope people have taken advantage of their voices representing you on things that you're concerned about. Thank you. Are there any board comments? Director Berry? I just have one question or something to offer for consideration.
I know it is outside of the scope of CBOC's mandate to pay attention to this, but just curious whether you all considered in any of your conversations, you you monitor compliance, but I'm wondering whether you also tracked any observe made any observations related to us optimizing the resources to address some of the big challenges and opportunities that OUSD has. Yes, great question. So in as the items are placed on the agenda, you know, we do provide
advice on how to sort of move forward and optimize processes. A lot of that is kind of beyond the scope of our mandate, but, you know, we're always trying to kind of expand beyond that for the betterment of, one, the district and, two, the students. Thank you. And Chair Butler, I would really just wanna appreciate you and the entire CBOC team, this is Director Bachelor, for working with me. And, and I think y'all's questions are just so helpful in really thinking through, again, like,
what are the major concerns that we have and do we have enough resources to cover those major concerns as we deal with as we think about, kind of, the future of OUSD. And I really appreciate the dialogue that you all have in the discussions and also the, push that you give me in order to really think about, like, again, just the best use of our dollars. We may not always agree or may not always come to the same conclusion, but I think the conversation is really helpful and, it's again another, like Missusata said, another space where folks can engage and feel heard and also have,
consideration. I know staff have taken a lot of consideration, especially around, you as we look at the emergency resolution that's before us today. So thank you for your advocacy and your work on that committee. Thank you and thank you for your support and partnership. Thank you very much and, again, appreciate your work and look forward to working with you next year. Okay. Next on the agenda is the employment agreement with Denise Superintendent Denise Sadler. Is there a motion to adopt this? I move the adoption of the employment agreement with Doctor. Sadler.
I second that. Is there there public comment on this issue? Yes, President Brevard. We have Lauren McDaniels, Dunia Wilder and Asolo Lobala. Two minutes each, please. Hi. I'm Dunia Wilder. I'm a little nervous. I hate speaking in public, but this is very important for me. So I wanted to come and speak on the need. Fifteen years ago, I no. Like, seventeen years ago, I met her and told her that I was moving to Oakland. And I had a young daughter, and I was gonna put her in in private school.
And she helped me navigate and said, no. You need to put her in OUSD. And she just kinda, like, helped me throughout this process with my daughter. And when she went into middle school I'm a little nervous. When she went into middle school, I was, asked to start a cheer program for OUSD in middle school, which I did, which now all the schools have cheer teams. And she helped me create a program of academics first, which in the eight years that I was a cheer coach, we never went under a six a 3.6
GPA overall GPA. And she helped me navigate that. Now my daughter's in college. She's at Xavier University, which I'm so proud of her. She was also a part of ACC, you know, and, Denise has always been a huge part of that. Now I'm a foster parent, and I'm going through some challenges. And she steadily has always been there to help navigate. And I'm just so happy for OUSD and the city of Oakland that she's the interim superintendent, and hopefully she becomes the full time superintendent.
So thank you guys for believing in her because I believe in her, and she's made a huge difference in my life and many kids' lives, you know? So thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hi, everyone. My name is Lauren McDaniels. I'm a all city council alumni. I also went to Oakland Tech and plenty other places. I've known miss Denise since I was about five years old when my mom and I first moved to Oakland, and I didn't know how to, like, read in English. I didn't know a whole bunch of different things, and I was just a small girl. And miss Denise helped me navigate what it's like being in OUSD,
going to the schools here, the changes of being from home to going to school all the way until where I'm at now. I go to the illustrious Xavier University of Louisiana entering my junior year, and she helped me navigate what it's like leaving Oakland to go to New Orleans, what it's like having to apply to scholarships, what it's like advocating for myself, what it's like thanking the people who have helped me get through hard times. And miss Denise Denise has just been such a light in my life. She's been helping us, like my mom said, with the changes that have been going on in our family and just helping out
my brothers with school and knowing her is to know that she will put her best foot forward for the community and for the students. And I really do hope that she stays superintendent. Thank you all, and have a great day. Thank you. Miss Sullivan? Yeah. Long beaten. So I identified every contract. You have a 153 that you're approving that you're approving before the implementation of the contract. And the majority of the contracts that you're approving tonight, they will start after today.
So we're moving to that end. We have more contracts tonight that will start after you approve them. So I hope we get to the final goal of every contract that comes before you will be approved before it is fully implemented. So that's all I'm gonna say. You got a 153 items. There are a lot of things on here I wanna talk about. But I wanna start off by saying something positive and move forward to make more positive contributions because that's what we need. Thank you for that.
Thank you, mister Siler. Are there any other comments? No, President. That concludes public speaker. Okay. Are there any Board comments? Director Simmons? I'll start at this end. I have one thing to say. Miss Adler is depending on if this is the Farewell. I am excited to work with you. But I do have one thing on the contract. It's more of a question with the contract. I saw the salary, and it was the same salary as our last superintendent. I don't know if that's because of any legal thing and or it has to
be the same salary. But, I just don't see why we would give same salary that we gave to Tyler when she was and she her salary was raised over those eight years. And we're starting her salary out with the same salary that we gave her that we just approved. And I'm not saying we shouldn't give her this money because she's not worthy of it. I'm saying doctor Kyla worked for that money, and it doesn't seem reasonable to give her the same amount.
I'm actually gonna ask the general counsel to, give an explanation why. Sure. Good evening. I can provide that, there is one salary schedule in the district currently for superintendent level. This was the same salary schedule that applied when there was a sabbatical period and there was an interim for that period. And the salary isn't, the same salary that the superintendent, but it is the same step. So it's on placed on the first step of the same salary schedule. And then the the way it works,
the way salary schedules works, folks move across the salary schedule over time. And that's how superintendent Kyla Johnson Trammell moved to, the step that she was on. So point of clarification, my understanding is this contract puts the Interim Superintendent on the Superintendent Pay Scale, not on an Interim Superintendent Pay Scale. So can you just clarify again that this is actually the stated Superintendent Payscale, step one, that this contract reflects? There's one salary schedule for a superintendent and interim superintendent.
So I would say that's the same thing I was saying. This is the superintendent pay scale and yes there's one pay scale for the superintendent but this job is actually the interim superintendent. Director Baschler? Director Berry? Director Williams? Anybody else? I'm just gonna go down the line if you have something you need to say. No. I just want a clarification from, why that salary was was, Oh, just one comment on this. I appreciated the two folks who delivered public comment today because what I heard from what both of you shared is a little bit more about
who doctor Sadler is as a person. And I do believe it matters how people live their lives, you know, at home is an indication of the kind of leadership they'll perform in positions like this. So I feel encouraged by that. So thank you all for, sort of, like, making use of your voice and your story tonight. I also wanna offer that, like, because I mean, even this agenda that we have in front of us today, it's long. So I'm actually gonna stop talking.
But it's really important that today, we get an opportunity to begin trying on what it is that we want to call on our superintendent for, you as the public, US staff, you in whatever role you occupy at OUSD in Oakland. And I hope that the opportunity to deliver public comment today, that we'll be able to hear that from folks today, similar to what you shared today. Today is the day to ask questions. I'm not telling everyone to fill up the time, but I I'm eager to see us step into the next phase of OUSD tonight.
And I think some of what you all are asking for, transparency, accountability, and answers, you know, we can begin to course correct tonight. Thank you. And are there any other board comments? No. Doctor Williams? I just wanna say, I I I am appreciative that, doctor Sadler would like to do this job. The leadership. She has really focused focused on a She has really focused focused on a restorative justice, reengaging relationships, and building respect with students, with, staff, with administrators. And we need that right now because there is a funny energy that is not
only happening here, but it's happening on a national level. There's an energy to tear people down on a national level. If we don't like it, we're gonna tear you down. That type of energy has to cease. And I'm just so proud that we have a courageous, woman who's willing to step on our board and be a leader in restoring how we should engage one another. That is restoring what respect really means. You can't tell me about respect if you're trying to
pick pick apart somebody's reputation and call into question their character. So I just wanna say thank you for stepping forward and saying I wanna despite the challenges we have in our district, I wanna be that person to bring the district community together. I wanna be that person to reach out and say, I'm here to listen. What are your challenges, and how can I support you? I am really happy that we have that individual who's willing to do that work. And I look forward to working with you because we need to change the tie
of this national, I'm gonna get you you're you're not qualified work, but I don't like you. We gotta change that. And it starts right here. This is the board of the whole district of 35,000 students. And if we cannot show 35,000 students, their parents, and our communities that we can work together, that we can lead in a restorative manner, that we could say, okay. Let me let me see how I can move forward.
Then we can't tell young folks in a classroom how to act, what their character should be. So we should start ourselves and say, let's give Doctor. Sadler a chance to do the work that is needed. We all know the work is needed. We've had many people say, oh, there's no trust in a community. We have many people say these things. Now we have a leader stepping up, willing to do that work. Let's give her a chance. Thank you for joining us, doctor Sadler. Are there any other comments? Director Hutchinson.
Sometimes, it's hard to realize where we're even at anymore. I mean, like I heard my colleagues' comments just there. We're in such serious trouble, y'all. As you'll see later on in this agenda, there's going to be a budget approved for next year that shows we're bankrupt. Because this board has tanked, tanked the district in six months. When we started this school year in August, the board voted to extend Kyla Johnson Tramiel's contract for three years because of the progress that we were making. We also made commitments to do restructuring work where we committed to having votes in
June. And we brought on an outside team to help us carry these community conversations across the district. Unfortunately, on March 26, in closed session, this school board decided to force Kyler Johnson and Camille out of here. And here we are three months later through eight closed session votes that were not properly agendized and that were not reported out, which means they were illegal. Kyla Johnson Trammell was forced out. A process was created to hire an interim superintendent. And in the end, the board interviewed two candidates.
Doctor. Sadler and Doctor. Sandra Aguilera, our second in charge in the district. And this board, of course, picked somebody who was not currently on the senior leadership team, rejected the second in charge, who actually knew of the work that we had been engaged in. Because you know what they've done? They've thrown all of the work of the last three years out the window. Part of this hiring process was not, What work do you think the District is currently doing? How are you going to step in? How are you going to create a senior leadership team now that they've been purged? None of that happened. Now as I told Doctor. Sadler when I spoke with her,
I have nothing against Doctor. Sadler. I have ultimate respect for anyone who has put in work in our district and especially us Natives. But that's not what this is. And people seem to forget. Doctor. Kyla Johnson Trammell is a native also. A lifer also. Her mom was a teacher before her and she led us out of the dark ages. And right now, as we are six days away from leaving state receivership after twenty two years, this meeting was supposed to be a celebration with Kyla leading the celebrations because she led us here. And instead,
we have a meeting where we're adopting a budget with no money going forward. We're in financial crisis. We have no plans. There's no work plan. The retreat on Friday was cancelled so we won't even develop a work plan. And we're going to hire an interim superintendent that didn't go through even a minimum amount of vetting. And really, like I told her when I was speaking with her, there's no way she can be successful in this position because this board has tanked the job and they think they're running things and that this is okay. I've lived in Oakland fifty two years. This is the biggest crisis this district has ever faced in my life.
And for anyone who's been around even for a minute knows that's really saying something. And I actually apologize to Doctor. Sadler that she has to be put in this situation. But I'm shocked. I'm shocked that still nobody is standing up and demanding that our school board actually represent the will of the community they were elected to serve. Thank you. Thank you. I'd like to welcome, Denise Sadler to our, to this dais and to our school district. They're super excited to have you in this position because they know the many decades of experience that you have both in the classroom as an administrator and as a
community leader. And again, from the comments that we got today, from the comments that I've heard from folks across my district, I know that you will have the steady leadership that we need. You'll have the steady hand and the, the manner in which we can have conversations, even though they're gonna be challenging conversations, to help us work through those. And, again, I'm excited to work with you. I'm excited to meet with you. I know I haven't made time quite yet, but I'm excited to do so. And again, I'm thankful that you are taking on this role. I know it is going to be, a lot, but I also know that you,
have the capability of doing so. And my constituents are very excited to have you on board. I'm also going to echo that welcome to Doctor. Sadler, as someone who's been in the district for thirty seven years. As our conversations, we kind of traveled around and went to we were both at similar schools and similar working with different people. So, I both look forward to your experience and your institutional knowledge. I think that's also important at this time. So again, I'd like to welcome you and look forward to working with you. Thank you. Mister Raikstra, can we have a roll call vote, please? On the roll call to approve the
employment agreement with the interim superintendent designee, doctor Denise Sadler. Student director Simmons? Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Madam president, on the agenda, can you make the benefit notations into the record, please? The salary and the it's a big Oh, I'm sorry. Okay. Sorry. It's back here. The employment agreement with Denise Sadler, Interim Superintendent of Schools, approval by the Board with the provisions from the agreement with a salary of $350,000 $357,053.83
per annum plus salary and benefits delineated in Section three of the agreement. Okay. Thank you. On the roll call, Student Director Simmons? Yes. Okay. Student Director Vasquez is absent. Director Latta? Yes. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? No. Director Berry? Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president Bachelor? Yes. President, Pruhar? Yes. The motion is adopted. Welcome, Doctor. Sadler. Next on the agenda, we have public comment. We have thirty minutes for that and then following that will be student report.
Yes, we do. We have approximately 11 speakers. Let's give two minutes each. Two minutes each? Noted. First five speakers are Carol Dilton, Sheila Haines, Kareem Weaver, Asalu Labala and Tanisha Harris. It's a public comment on non agenda items. Good evening. My name is Carol Dalton. For this item, I'll say I'm speaking as an individual. I believe it was last night I saw there was an article in the Oakland side that I think is very good news and I wanted to lift that up,
for the public just in case, it's not incorporated in any of the presentations tonight, which is that the enrollment department, looks like is bringing Urban Montessori into OUSD, into the Brookfield site. And this, not only, brings an alternative educational philosophy and practice to be available for the students of OUSD. It's something that families seek. I believe there are at least three private Montessori preschools
in Oakland and children who might have been successful with this approach might be very interested in continuing it in elementary school, without the high private school fees that otherwise, it otherwise costs. I think that this is an opportunity also for the enrollment and attendance department to support the incoming families, with understanding attendance. It might be too quick to adopt the policy that Ms. Grant Dawson was speaking about for,
encouraging and requiring, in fact, certain attendance level, but materials that would support their understanding of how to make sure their attendance is counted despite, for example, an outside appointment, how to make sure that they can get attendance credited for work packets and so forth, and the impact on the school, the positive impact on the school that attendance has would be very important. Thank you. Next speaker please. Good evening, board members. My name's Tanisha Harris.
I'm a proud parent of three children left in schools in Oakland, OUSD student as well, myself, and a parent leader with Families in Action. OUSD's termination as superintendent doctor Kyla Johnson Trammell now obligates taxpayers to pay the full time salary and benefits for two superintendents. Doctor Johnson Trammell will be paid her full salary through January 15, plus severance pay thereafter. Interim Superintendent Doctor.
Denise Sadler will be paid an annual salary of over $350,000 plus benefits. It is unclear how OUSD will meet these obligations amid a looming 95,000,000 budget deficit and at a time when OUSD still does not have a final budget. These decisions reflect an unacceptable misalignment of priorities all to the detriment of OUSD students. I also wanted to address how this is the last school board meeting and how nowhere in this agenda are we talking about student outcomes.
80% of Black and Brown students cannot read at grade level. What are we gonna do to address this and keep schools accountable? Thank you. Next speaker, please. Hello to the board. My name is Kareem Weaver, long time educator and just wanna say a few things. Welcoming Doctor. Sadler to the district and, also wishing outgoing superintendent, Doctor. Carla Johnson, who I've known since she was in high school. All the best. Just wanna say a few things. As as many of you may know, myself and others I work with focus on literacy. I've done a variety of roles in the district,
but I haven't been into board meetings too much because that hasn't really been a focus. And I've decided that that is where I wanna drop my bucket. I just wanna share with you a few things that have research behind them to say that literacy impacts these things. Student attendance. School enrollment. Student discipline. School and district budgets. Teacher turnover and retention. Teacher satisfaction. School library services. Student mental health. Student engagement. Parent satisfaction, algebra access,
curriculum decisions, teacher preparation time, history and social studies access, Special Ed enrollment and expenses, athletic eligibility rates, technology use and access, internship access, access to scholarships, college and career readiness, access to complex texts, which according to ACT, is the number one determinant for college persistence or dropping out. The message is, please, I beg you, I implore you, keep the main thing the main thing. Thank you.
Next speaker. Past, I've been afforded the opportunity to understand from the teachers and the principals in this district what their concerns are. They have come before you and expressed their concerns and asked for changes and asked for assistance. And I'm understanding that some people who have come here, retaliation has been taken upon them. And I'm talking about the young man who came here from Fremont. And I remember I heard him.
And he expressed that there was some racial strife going on at Fremont between the Black and Brown students at the school. And then I heard that he lost his job. I hope that's not true. I hope that's not true. Because this ought to be a space where people can come, staff, anybody, and speak to what they are involved with. We had a principal who came who spoke about some of the racism she was experiencing. So now I'm hearing that Fremont I called Fremont the next day and asked them
to look at if there was an issue of racial discrimination or, conflict between the Black and Brown students to work on that. And I left it alone. But now I'm hearing that because of this issue, there's a anti Black agenda being pursued to deal with our conflict between our black and brown students. So if this is happening and we need to deal with it, we deal with it. K? We got the same thing going on yesterday with our Head Start program. Parents coming black parents coming saying that their their children are not being allowed.
Black people saying that they can't get jobs in the Head Start program. You have to identify anytime an issue comes up, not to punish anybody, but to work on correcting it if it needs to be corrected. And I hope you're saying that gentleman wasn't fired. I hope that didn't happen. Are there any speakers on Zoom? Yes. Miss Haines, if you could unmute yourself to speak. Alright. Ms. Haines? We're waiting for is she on Zoom? Yes, she's on Zoom. Ms. Haines, if you can unmute yourself to speak. Ms. Haynes, can you hear me? Hi. Can you hear me?
Yes. We can hear you. Hi. So, I I was really kinda troubled just now to hear on the CVOC presentation about, oversight to fundings and water quality in the same sentence. As you know, they talked about transparency just now. But with that $1,000,000 block grant that was taken in the way that violated the process, I mean, even as I said on our meeting, it's it's hard to move on without an understanding. And all I can do is just pray. I'm really worried with the budget crisis. The student need these fundings to go back to their daily education. And while I appreciate the Prop 28 presentation with comments from board members in support
of these services, I still don't have the trust that more funding won't be cut. I mean, too too many students are suffering who have been already harmed by district actions of school closures, program, and funding cuts with my son being one of them. Longstanding trauma. He's been suffering from actions a decade ago, and I'm still his only music teacher. I'm currently having to go through the IEP process just to get him into a music program, and none of that should be necessary under the prop 28 arts and music grant and grant funding.
And with ongoing lack of staff and carryovers from the fundings, I ask you again to please prioritize. You know, I actually tried to get him into a summer program, but after speaking with the coordinator, they weren't even able to accommodate him. He has extensive support needs. So if the board doesn't prioritize, you're then causing more harm by not giving these students the opportunity through these services. And I was looking at the various contracts for funding. While I don't understand a lot of it, it looks like so many millions are being paid out for consulting services for various
projects. And is that really necessary? It seems that, like, out of all the funding sources, there shouldn't have to be more cuts coming from arts and music services. You have to put the needs of our students first, especially those like my son who was still living with this trauma. He needs so much help, and I really hope to hear back from you guys soon on how you plan on, making up for that million that was taken away. Think about our children and what they need to best thrive. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any speakers on Zoom? Not through Zoom, but we have in person. Okay.
We the next speakers are Acadia Caballero, Luan, Cohen Foster, Luca Ekoi Walton, Stephisha Ekoi Walton and Myron Godinho. Those are the last speakers. Thank you. Two minutes each. And can we have that translated, please? One second while we translate. Yes, Madam President. Ms. Vargas, if you can come off mute and provide the translation. Can you hear me now? Okay. I'm sorry. I was having issues with my audio, so I'm gonna need to request the participant to repeat the statement if it's not
a problem. I can try Dela Torre to see if he was present. Okay. Yes. I can do that. Thank you. Okay. Good evening. My name is miss Caballero. And the reason I'm here is I I'm I'm the I'm the leader mom of family engagement, and I represent the school I represent the school Greenleaf. We have to we have to do the we have to prioritize, and we have to do let me see. We have to do some preparations for the families and the students and also for
the members and the community to present this. We we are demanding for the we are demand the community is demanding and the families are demanding. We have to incur we have to encourage the culture and we have to also have some transparency transparency with results that we have and also with the plan that we have with this meeting, the school, the families, and for the students too. The reason that, and the reality that most of the students in Oakland are not getting the education,
the quality of education that they need. And, we also want to, make a culture of transparency with all this. The reasons that we're doing this let me see. The reason that we're doing this is we have to, most of the students in Oakland, they do not they they need to receive the education that they need. We also support all the, we also support what, Barry, director Barry. I'm sorry. What director Barry was proposing, the proposal that they did in the last meeting. So we are we thank you for everything that you are doing,
and we have to see some result for the families and the students. Let me see the last team. I'm so sorry. Let me see the last team. I have the last team. So and so we can have, to okay. The last important thing, the okay. We're just talking about the last meeting. It was very important. The last thing that we haven't done the last meeting, we have to give priority to the results of the students. Thank you very much. Thank you. I'm sorry, we are going to use the Interpretation Services, from our service. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, board of, board members.
My name is Luan Nguyen, and I am an incoming senior at Oakland High, and a student leader with Families Match. Board mem Board President Boulevard. So sorry. Brohard. I want to ask you directly to please make sure we are keeping student outcomes as a priority when making decisions and and about how we use this time during our board meeting. As a student, I've seen firsthand when OUSD students slip through the cracks from the mishandlings of this board and I hope that, hope there are continuous drives for focusing on parental engagement and student outcomes,
especially in regards to how you are bettering students in math and reading. A few months ago, I alongside a 100 other parents and students were here to raise concerns about quality, transparency, and redesign. We came because 80% of our black and brown students who are getting left behind, they don't receive enough support for them to improve in both math and reading, to reach grade level standards. And we are calling that that to stop now.
We need all board members to keep students student outcomes at the forefront of all your decisions. Thank you for your time. Good evening, board. How's it going? My name is Stephisha Ekoi Walton. I'm an Oakland resident, Oakland parent. I do a lot of work in the community around education, specifically financial literacy. I am a licensed financial adviser. That's my trade. That's what I do for over a decade. And so I just wanna say when it comes to the budget, I really, really would appreciate, more community engagement, like, in the process because that's what we deserve. And,
you know, that's what you commit to when you decide to be voted onto the board by, you know, your constituency. So, with that being said, with the deadline expiring for the budget to be passed and despite a warning from our superintendent, Elise Castro, that ongoing patterns of budget revisions and leadership instability placed the district at risk of state takeover, OUSD, is adopting a budget tonight that is not fiscally sound. The budget process has lacked adequate transparency and public input. And more alarmingly, the LCAP meant to be a community driven strategy for student success remains incomplete.
And without proper input from the people who really matter. Recommendations from the Parent and Student Advisory Committee, the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education, and the Foster Youth Advisory Committee, all critical players in the LCAP compliance, have been inadequately reflected in district planning here recently. And OUSD's failure to satisfy the LCAP requirements is quite irresponsible, and it puts us at risk of services and supports that our African American and students of color desperately need. These students are already suffering, as you know, from low outcomes.
And with that being said, I'd just like to ask, of the board and of our upcoming, you know, incoming superintendent, how are we gonna prioritize our student outcomes? How are we going to agendize it and make it a priority? How are we going to get out of the fiscal crisis that we are in and not do it just by the people who are sitting in the chairs? But how are you going to engage us, the people who genuinely can give you feedback and professional input from a financial standpoint on how we can be better? Please engage us. We would appreciate it.
Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, Board. My name is Vivica Ekoi Walton. I am a parent of an amazing 11 year old and a family organizer and civic engagement lead at Families in Action. I'm here today, though, as an Oakland resident and parent. To see OUSD engage in so many patterns of decision making in closed sessions, including budget decisions that harm our children without any fair opportunity for public input and without reporting some of those very crucial decisions as required by the Brown Act.
Issues have also raised about the potential conflicts of interests of some of the board members sitting on the dais. OUSD has ignored formal requests and collaborations made by NAACP as well as other organizations. OUSD has not even publicly disclosed how the board and the interim superintendent will engage with various stakeholders and justify any financial decisions that have been made. Nor have us parents been reassured that the board stake that the board majority still feels that unfair labor practice strikes are illegal.
The public has lost complete interest in this Board majority. And the OUSD and because of that, it and it doesn't appear that the best the best interest of our students are being prioritized. Our children can't read, and the students deserve better. So we definitely demand transparency. And if you can't deliver that, we demand your resignation because you're not fulfilling the contract in which we put you in. Next speaker, please. Hello, board. My name is Quorn Foster. I'm a father of four OUSD students and a Hoover parent leader with Families in Action. In a time of so much uncertainty after leaving receivership,
the community deserves transparency and genuine engagement. To achieve a new era of board governance, we make these five demands of OUSD. Demand number one. Demand number one, host public forums to receive community input on leadership and budget priorities. Demand number two, by June 30, adopt a fiscally responsible budget in line with the chief financial officer's recommendations to avoid receivership. Demand number three, publicly disclose how the board and interim superintendent will engage with various stakeholders and justify to find financial decisions. Demand number four, cease to cease decision making driven by union alignment and divisiveness and work as a
unit for student outcomes. And demand number five, timely respond to formal request for collaboration sent by the NAACP, FIA, and other community leaders. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Thank you. May I have a translation, please? Yes, Madam President. Sure. Good afternoon. My name is Maria Godinho, and I am not here not I am here not only as a mother but also as a fighter looking for equity and justice for all students in Oakland. I have three students at Bridges and at CCPA.
And as a mother, I have I understand the frustration about exclusion because I have received many times reports for my students. And I asked teachers, what is this? These reports are very vague, and I don't understand them. And at the same I receive all kinds of informations from the school reports, and I have a lot of questions with no answers. At the same time, I do I I have have I have worked or collaborated with people that are incredible, however, with no resources to support students.
And when we go to the school site councils, we don't feel empowered to be we don't feel like the families are empowered to understand about the powers that they have to make decisions in terms of the budget. So, we just are looking to have a budget that reflects our values for quality. So I am here as a leader and not to ask or request a special treatment, just for to ask for what we deserve. And we deserve we have rights in terms of transparency,
accountability and information. And these rights are not only for students, but for the future of Oakland. Thank you. President Bruchard, we have one additional speaker and it came out after the item was taken up. Okay. Paulina? Good evening, Board members. My name is Paulina, and I'm a family organizer with Families in Action. And I'm just here to represent my wonderful parent, Katia Caballero. Good evening, board members. My name is Katia Caballero and I am I am a parent leader with Families in Action. I represent Greenleaf Elementary and Unity High School.
Two months ago, I sit here with 100 other families, students, and community members to lay out our Raise the Bar demands to foster a culture of transparency and accountability in Oakland between the school board, families, and students. We are motivated by the reality that the majority of Oakland students are not getting a quality education and our student outcome data is not improving at all. With the minimal increase we see in proficiency data, it would take nearly eighty years for our Black and Brown students to be on grade level. Can you honestly say that is okay with you?
I am deeply concerned the last board meeting, there was a policy put forth by Director Berry that prioritized student outcomes. Or we support it. On behalf of all of our families, we are in support of the policy that Director Berry put forward that would prioritize measurable student achievement metrics, ensure consistent monitoring and data driven decision making, and to hold the superintendent accountable through clearly defined goals. We appreciate Director Berry's leadership and focus and are so committed to realizing the goals of this policy that we sent our recommendations directly to Director Berry and all the
board members directly. In the last meeting of the 'twenty four to 'twenty five school year, and as we look forward to the 'twenty five-'twenty six school year, the most important thing this board should be focusing on is student outcomes. Board, I ask you, how can you claim to care about Oakland students if this is not a top priority to you? Thank you so much. Thank you. That concludes public comments. And up next, we have the, there's no people discipline report, no item K. So we'll have item N, which is the student report. Our report today isn't really, we just wanna put some things on the record.
So I kinda just want to first some of you may not know, but I'm a part of Mary Lee's transition team and a part of her advisory council and her staff. And I've been with Mayor Lee since before her election, and I've been a steady part of her ship. And I've seen a lot of how the city is working, and how our city is advancing and really want and really is committed to making Oakland a better place and really making sure that we're steering this ship in the right direction.
And the city right now is in a rebuilding stage. And for as long as I've been conscious to what's going on in Oakland, this is the kind of the first time that city council and the mayor's office and the city have been working in a kind of unison to push forth in Oakland. And I just want to kind of emphasize that OUSD cannot be left behind. Because
honestly, it kind of feels like we're about to be left behind. OUSD is one of unique districts that is able to represent almost the entirety of Oakland's youth. There's not a lot of cities who represent who has one district who represents almost the entirety of their city. Oakland is unique in that way. So there's so much pressure on us to be able to deliver, but I want to emphasize again how important it is that we don't get left
behind. And first, we need a hard reset on our values and our habits in this district. And I've been saying it all year, but this is my first time really saying we need a hard reset on our values and our habits because it is just terrible. Honestly. There's been a lot of from the from the new board, there's been a lot of hasty moves, I believe, that has been happening. And not saying that these hasty moves are coming out of bad intent or
you're trying to destroy our district or anything like that, but they're hasty moves. And actions that are taken in the spare of the moment can either be great or denture or detrimental. And it's up to us to be able to look at ourselves and understand if that decision was great or detrimental. It's up to us as representatives to be able to look at that and realize that. Because when the community is telling us that they don't believe we're doing a good job,
they're not saying that because they're joking. They're saying that because they believe that we're doing a bad job. And I don't like to call people out, but there's been a lot of meetings canceled. There's been a lot of meetings that were rescheduled. Right? Were that were rescheduled not correct not on the right time schedule. And I understand and I empathize that. And I honestly can't even begin to put myself in your shoes because this year has been very stressful for me. And I don't even understand how stressful these past few months could have been for
our board president. But I think there has to be a time when we step back and kinda look at all the the feedback. Because the communication wasn't good. And really the scheduling with the meeting, it disrupts a lot of a lot of stuff. And a lot of stuff that we as a board might have going on. And it also especially when you have a lot going on in your schedule, when something changes, so short notice, it disrupts almost your whole week.
And it kinda ruins your mood a little bit. And there are a lot of policies that this board does not listen to. And I think one is because these policies are a bit old. And time is and society is changing so fast that it's hard to maybe listen or to still follow policies that were created before we were alive. Well but, we need a new way of thinking. And I think it's up to us as a board to decide
when that time is gonna be. And we're seeing so much change happen in Oakland right now. I feel like it would be kind of ignorant of us not to hop on that train and begin to change ourselves. And I'll leave that there, but I also do wanna emphasize that I am going to reach out to you all, and I am going to meet with you all about doing this and creating these new habits and values that we put onto paper and that we follow. And I have one more thing before you tell me to be quiet. Second,
I feel like we need to set up a relationship, a collaborative race relationship with the city. And I know we're I know on paper, we have a relationship down, but I think there needs to be program and internships and initiatives set for the city and the district to have a collaborative relationship that's more than just on paper that is going to benefit our students. Because it's me being on the mayor's team, I've seen how important it is for us to have that relationship.
And I'm already advocating in there for us to have that relationship. Thank you. Appreciate your contributions. Do we have public comment, Anasay? No public speakers. I wanna thank you for your advocacy on the city. And I also wanna thank Keith Brown for for also reaching out to board leadership as well. So hopefully, this will be happening over the summer. We can get this started. So thank you. Sorry, I know I'm as Keith Brown. Are there any other comments? Yes. Thank you. And thank you, Director Simmons. And again, I want to give an apology to you personally and to the full all City
Council for for some of just the ongoing treatment this year. A student director should never have to send me a message to ask me to read it for them at a special meeting because they didn't know about the meeting in time enough to even be able to attend. And, just like the student from the All City Council shouldn't have had to wait till 10:00 to make their yearly presentation. I think it was I think it's really telling that I remember when you first came into this position in the first semester, you often talked about how the Board needed an RJ circle and was really in
need of RJ. I think it's telling that your language has now changed to this board needs a hard reset. And, I think that's very perceptive of you and definitely true. Unfortunately, the person who held the best, longest relationships in the District was superintendent or with the City in the District was superintendent Johnson Trammell and she's been forced out. The next two people who held those relationships with the City were our two Chiefs of Staff, Curtis Siricki and Doctor. Dexter Moore. They're no longer in the District anymore either.
So we've actually moved backwards. And unfortunately, the board leadership that we currently have has done nothing to further the Ed Partnership Committee, which is our statutory committee, where we're supposed to work on these things with the city. I share your frustration. My mood has been ruined, almost daily, especially over the last three months. And I would really, I'll just not go all the way there. I think we need a call to action. I hope that you spend some time over this summer organizing with your fellow students. In the past, when we've had real issues come up in Oakland,
in OUSD, it's always been the students who led us. And one of the ways students started to do that by organizing themselves. And when students in the past have been frustrated with the adults around them, with the adults preventing them from playing a role, Adults who don't listen to the wisdom that so many people hold. Then people have organized. And I need you to hear that. You have 50 students in this meeting every meeting. Every school board director will cave in. If you organize a student march of five, ten thousand down the street, like has happened in recent years,
even when the police release rubber bullets on our students, the students still leave us. I can go back through it, eliminating the police, stopping school closures, every step of the way to when I was a high school student fighting against the military recruiters getting our names. So, I really appreciate your work this year and how you I've seen you grow. You have a unique opportunity now as a student director moving into their second year to hit that ground running. And please pack this house in this first meeting when we come back in August, and let's really get the people and our students and our community back in control
of our district. But thank you for everything this year. Other board directors? Director Thompson? Yes. First of all, I just wanna say thank you very kindly for, the wonderful report. And I just wanna highlight a few salient points that came to me as you presented it. The hard reset, I immediately thought about introspection that each one of us should do. That means just really looking inside ourselves and saying, what makes us do what we do? And I immediately thought about, a good individual who worked hard,
in this district, but unfortunately, was murdered, several years ago. And his name is Dirk, Dirk Tellison, who actually worked hard. And he spoke to me after I took two years before I could decide to even run for a position to represent District 7. And he told me something you said just a few moments ago. He said, you have to have the value here. And you have to stand on that when you have tough decisions to make. Make sure you have it inside. And I appreciate that.
Also, I appreciate the fact that you said something that I've been saying for quite some time and that is we have to turn the pyramid over. Right now, we have the pyramid with two sides at top with one point at the I'm sorry. Two points at top with one point at the bottom. We have to turn it over and make student outcomes number one. And then we are to deal with the other things that help support student outcomes. That's a difficult thing for many people to understand.
And I'm gonna conclude by saying, you have actually addressed the five pillars that I use in my classroom as a teacher, the five pillars that I use as an administrator when I was an administrator. And that and those are a number one, establishing relationship, understanding the importance of culture, always use effective communication, have consistency, and have structure. So thank you very much for what you presented. I'm sure all of us will take in those things and allow those salient nuggets
to rise to the top of our decision making. Thank you very much. Holly, is anyone else? Tabari? Max, I just wanna say thank you again for being a constant sort of, like, anchoring voice around the need for us to come together and create some unity around the all the things that we really care about. But first and foremost, students. I am the liaison to the ed partnerships committee. I know that there is a lot of interest in coming together for that committee to sort of, like, create a work plan and a vision for the work that OUSD and the city
will do together. So I just wanna say this on the record that I have already been following up, and I'll make sure that you're looped into that work, particularly in the role that you're in, to make sure that we take advantage of that space that already exists to to to have a stronger partnership between the city because I'm gonna heed what you're saying. We don't wanna be left behind. And we can't be, especially when the federal government is attacking programs and services. We're actually gonna be one of the largest providers of services to students. So we gotta get it right.
So thank you so much for the reminder and I'll be following up with you. Thank you. And that leads us to the L oh, sorry. Director Williams. Alright. Thank you. Just wanna wish you happy summer. About to step on out of here and get your summer started, and I'm sure it's gonna be busy as well. And, so happy to see that you're doing work with with our mayor, Barbara Lee. Really appreciate that. I'm sure that's, just an amazing experience. She's Barbara Lee. Right? So I'm sure you're getting a lot of that. One of the things I do wanna share is that our new superintendent,
Denise Sadler, has worked with Barbara Lee as well, has worked for, previous mayor as well. And she has been very in tune to what's going on with with the city. So I think there's some ways to work with her and really starting to reset. She's really strong in restorative justice. That's what you do as well. It's gonna be a really great opportunity to see how you two work together, and we wanna support it as a board as well. I think there's a great opportunity. Sometimes we take missteps,
but we always assume positive intent in folks that they're not trying to do things on purpose, sneaky, devious. We actually say, you know what? The communication was broken. Let's see how we can fix it. Right? So I appreciate that call to action to say, hey. Let's work together because there's some things going on. I really believe that there still needs to be, like, an orientation so we all know how to talk and communicate in the plan. There probably has been a few missteps. But I I think the intention is not to harm,
but just to grow from that. And every time we fall and get up, we grow from that experience. So I think this is a learning experience, and I'm really excited again as we move forward that we have a particular, superintendent that wants to do the same work that you want to do. Right? And so I think we're gonna start building on that and, look at ways to look for solutions before we look for problems. If we see the problem, we wanna bring the solution as well. So I'm just really excited to hear about your growth and hear about your engagement
because I think the board is really ready to work with you and work with the new board member coming in to really do the work that is needed. So I just wanna thank you for that, Really support you, and look forward to having these conversations for sure. Thank you again and have a good summer, sir. Alright. With that, we move on to the, L, which is the consent items. Those are general consent items. Minus L12, L58, and L153. Is there a motion of, consent? Yes. I move that we adopt, letter L minus the numbers that you mentioned.
Second. Thank you. Any public comment on this agenda, Mr. Seichao? Yes. Vice President Bachelor, we have Keith Brown and Asada Olobala. Miss Asada is, indicating she's already made her comment, and I don't see Keith Brown here. I wonder if he's online. Checking online to see if he is there or not. Keith Brown, if you can raise your hand, thank you. I see you. So I will allow you to speak. If you can unmute yourself. Great. Good evening. Should I speak on I'm actually speaking on l 12. Should I wait till,
that item is up? You can do either. Okay. I'll I'll I'll, I'll speak now. Thank you. Alright. Well, good evening, directors and staff. I'm speaking, against item l 12, and I'm on back. And I'm Keith Brown, representing the Alameda Labor Council. We represent, over a 135 unions and a 135,000 working people across Alameda County, including 38,000 labor households here in Oakland. I want to give appreciation for the work of staff.
However, we do have serious concerns regarding the proposed recommendation to award OUSD's waste, hauling contract to green waste recovery. And, as a labor council, we urge this Board to reconsider this decision in light of the standards set forth in public contract code section eleven oh three, which allows the district to award contracts only to a responsible, bidder. And,
respectfully, we do not believe that Greenway's recovery meets the standards of a responsible bidder for some of these reasons. We there's no commitment to union labor. Also, the displacement of local workers. The current waste hauling workforce represented by Teamsters Local seventy includes many Oakland residents and OUSD parents. Greenways has not demonstrated that it can meet a standard of proven safe and disruptive free service,
nor do they bring an established track record with Oakland public facilities. And GreenWaste has not yet provided a credible plan where OUSD waste, will be dumped. So, the Alameda Labor Council, we urge you not to vote in favor of the current stat recommendation until all risks are fully addressed and the long term interest for open student workers and families are fully understood. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes public speakers under adoption of the general consent report.
Can we Mr. Reixstock, can we roll call on the vote please? No, Borten, Borten, Borten, Borten, Borten, Borten. I didn't see your hand. Well, that's because we didn't go to it, so my hand wouldn't have been raised yet. You know, like I've been saying now for three months, I refuse to approve any of the consent reports that have been coming forward. Largely because the consent report on the agenda is created by our school board president, in conjunction with the superintendent. We can see we have no superintendent sitting up here and we haven't for months. And if anyone's been watching even for a little bit,
they'll understand that there shouldn't be anyone who trusts this board president to create the consent report. Even tonight, the fact that the board president chose even though we can all see everyone in their bright vests in the audience, chose to leave this item and make everyone sit here for hours, should give everyone a message about how they really feel about us and how they've been running things. We have directors who claim to totally support unions. They're union folk. You know, but look at how people are being treated.
Look at how you didn't even know this was happening. And now you find out about it days before the vote, days before the contract expires. And honestly, to y'all sitting out there, I don't know why y'all sat there quietly and peacefully all these hours. Like when are we as a community going to get back to the way Oakland used to be and is supposed to be? Or as a community, when our leaders fail us, we stand up and demand that either they get it together or get out of our way. It is unconscionable that there's people sitting in here now worried about their job for
next year, who have worked these union jobs under the same contract for decades. It's just like how they did our superintendent. It's just like how they tanked our budget. So please, no matter what happens today, I need all y'all's help. Your unions endorsed these folks and look at what they're doing to us. So I'm waiting for people to stand up. I've been doing everything I can shouting to the heavens to stop this from happening. They're destroying our district after all of our work. And yet, we have an empty meeting and you know what? We don't even have our other labor partners here in attendance today when we're gonna
be approving next year's budget. We've been failed by everyone and everyone is failing us. That's why I won't vote for these consent reports. That's why so many of you have been forced to sit here for hours tonight. And the only question left is, what are we going to do to change this? Thank you. I feel I have to respond to this and I'm sorry. I've worked with many of the leaders over the last few days around the green waste management or recovery. I have always supported unions and always will support unions. Your leadership knew what time.
They called today to make sure what time you would be on the agenda, and we are actually exactly on time. The way we found out about this was a call from your union leadership. And once that happened, many of us worked together with your leadership and with your members to make sure that we supported union workers, to make sure that we saw that environmental justice and labor justice work together as one thing. So again, you have the support. You have my support.
I've worked with your leadership to do this. I've appreciated the district leadership in resolving this. And again, I have tremendous respect for all of you and for all unions. Thank you. You ready for the roll call, madam president? Director Williams, how can I help you? Just just want to, say I I thank you for your service, for sure. And I thank you for standing up, Union Proud and Union Strong. I think what we know, if there's been any question, board has actually been very inclusive with,
labor. We've built relationships with it. We've walked the lives together. We've actually done a lot of things together. This particular instance, you know, glad we got the call because a lot of times, things are brought to us at the at the moment. But one of the things that you can always assure is that we stand with our labor partners. So when someone comes and tries to create a wedge and they use this concept, Fear, uncertainty, and doubt will constantly use that to drive a wedge between you,
and all you have to do is talk to your labor and the community to know who stands with you. Building trades, we stand with you. With, SCIU, we stand with you. There's never been a question, a doubt. As a matter of fact, board members here have been more anti union even though they were endorsed by the union. So let's not get it twisted that people are trying to change a narrative and create doubt when actually our record show and has stood.
We've been strong with, PLAs. We have we continue to advocate for our labor partners, and we will continue to do so. So I just want you to know that. And if you you can reach out, you can look at my record. I've been 100% with with labor. So please don't have folks twist conversations and try to make it seem that the board is anti union. Thank you. Thank you. We're not having a second round. As we approve a consent report full of outside contracts with outside consultants who are
non union. So let's remember who made this agenda and put this contract on there in the first place, y'all. I'm sorry. Can we have a roll call vote on the consent, please? On the roll call to adopt the general consent report, minus l dot dash 12, l dot 58, and L153, which has been withdrawn. On the roll call, student directors are absent. Director Lara? Yes. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? Abstain. Director Thompson? Yes. Director Berry? K. Vice president Bachelor?
Yes. President Brothard? Yes. The general consent report minus the items noted is approved. The next item is item l 12, which is green waste waste recovery systems. As the person who actually pulled this item, and, also stands with labor, as soon as I found out president, we cannot have a debate on the matter until the motion. I'd like to make a motion to reject this contract. Matt, you have to be in the affirmative as opposed to the negative because then you have no motion pending. And the vote to reject is not positive.
It's either to approve, and if the board can then decide whether or not there are four votes to approve. And if you get no four votes, it is not approved. So I need a positive motion. A vote to approve? I second. Thank you. So there's a move and a second to approve. Thank you. May I speak now, miss Raikstra? Yes. Thank you. So as the person who pulled this item, I was really concerned once I heard, all the commotion around this item. Again, I don't believe that, we, can have an outside contractor that doesn't even have a base in Oakland,
that has no workers that live in Oakland, that does not employ union labor to be handling our waste. I'm really also concerned at the, where this waste is going to be deposited because, again, they do not have a location here in Oakland. Our roads, as we all know in Oakland, need a lot of work already. I cannot imagine what additional issues we're gonna be facing with additional traffic, that is not foreseen in our district, around this issue. And again, as as soon as I heard about it, and I appreciate the labor union's leadership in letting us know about this,
I worked with Preston Thomas and, Janine Lindsay to make sure that we could figure out any and all the different ways that we could, prevent this issue from from happening and to prevent this contract from moving forward. We have been told that we just we the only ramification is that we have to take a vote. So that's why I pulled the item so it could be specifically voted on. I will be voting no on this item because, again, I believe that we cannot be taking union jobs away from folks. We have to be creating more union jobs here in Oakland.
Oakland is a union town, and OUSD is a union school district, and we will not stand for anything like this. We are gonna be working with our staff to to figure out what other ways we can make sure that this doesn't happen again. And to your point, Director Hutchinson, around other contracts that have that don't have labor unions, I have also started having conversations with after school providers, or I will be, sorry, having conversations with after school providers and other folks who do not have union staff to ensure that we are trying to make sure that we can have those folks be union as well. Because,
again, we know from my own history, from my own, experience, we know that union jobs are safe jobs. They are respectable jobs, and they are jobs to make sure that our community, all of our community members are uplifted. And we should be uplifting every single one of our members of our community and not degrading the work of anyone in our school district. So I will be voting no on this item. Madam president, I would suggest that you, allow public comment to be made on l 12 before the Board engages in further debate. Is there public comment on Item L-twelve?
Yes, President Perjar. We have approximately 28 speakers: Susanna Perez, Rich Furrow, James Reid, Noel Gallo, Carl Chan. Those are the first five speakers. I'm gonna give one minute each, and we can take, 10 speakers. If there are other people who would like to speak, you may also send comments to us. But we do have a really packed agenda, and we want to take a vote on this item. Okay. Next the next five speakers are, Warren Chu, Cameron Martin, Jessica Jones, Joseph King and Alfonso Flowers.
Those are the ten first speakers. And Jessica will be the last speaker. Thank you. Thank you, members of the school board. I'm Noelle Gallo, member of the Oakland City Council, and I had the pleasure of serving on the School Board for twenty years. Certainly, my three daughters and sons graduated from Oakland Unified, Fremont High School and Oakland High School and went on to Stanford, UC Berkeley, Davis and so forth. So I express my gratitude to Oakland Unified. But the reason I'm here today is regarding the contract before you regarding waste management.
Oakland, the City of Oakland about several years ago made the same mistake where we went and chose another company, another company that was not Oakland based that had the experience, and we made that mistake. And we went and chose another company after that as opposed to trying to work out an arrangement with waste management that's in Oakland, that hires Oakland, that hires our young people and trains our young people. And so what I'm I'm here to advise you to please do everything possible to
negotiate with waste management. They're here in Oakland. I see your trucks because we're out there cleaning the streets and around your school every day. But I see also the Oakland Unified school district trucks going to Davis to unload the trash. And and and if you don't keep that effort, they're not gonna drive to San Jose and be dumping the trash. And that's what Oakland made a mistake. We were having to go to Albany to dump our trash as opposed to Oakland. So, anyways, my advice to you is please do everything possible to negotiate with waste management and
solve that contract, and I know you can get it done to benefit our schools. Thank you. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I'm Rich Fierro here on behalf of Teamsters Local seventy. Yes, so obviously, as the union impacted by this, we're highly concerned about how this made it on the agenda with almost no knowledge and we keep a very close eye on this kind of stuff. But what I would like to point out to you is everyone you see here tonight, the workers that are here, majority of them are union members with union children with children in your schools. So it's not just about union,
nonunion, what company, it's also people. And people are the most important thing that we need to keep our eyes on. So we very much appreciate your comments, Director Hutchinson, and everybody else who's had our support as well. So thank you very much and we urge you to reject this proposal. Thank you. Hi, everyone. My name is Jim Preet. I'm the Chief Shop Steward for Alameda County Waste Management and most of the Vice President for Teamsters Local seventy. And yes, we're very happy to hear that it sounds like you're going to reject this proposal. It was kind of a silly thing to start to begin with since there was no real plans on where anyone was going
to dump or where they were going to base their trucks. And the place that they intended to dump is not permitted for trash. So they wouldn't have been able to do that. So they would have to dump somewhere in Alameda County where else, you know, Waste Management has Davis Street, San Leandro. We have an Omer that they built there. I don't remember what it cost, dollars 20,000,000, dollars 40,000,000. They did it for Oakland. They did it because you guys wanted a 64% diversion rate. They did it for for here, the employees, with a 50%,
hiring rate for the whole book itself. So our employees are from here. They're they're not from Santa Clara. They're not Big Tech. They're right here. They're in Oakland, just like my family started. Thank you. Hello, my name is Susanna Perez. I'm a member of Teamsters Local seventy. I was born and raised in Oakland and now I'm in Parham of two with both of my kids attending schools within the district. Many of the men and women behind me from Waste Management are also fellow Oaklanders and are parents of the OUSD. We hear Oakland Built quite often and it has to be more than a slogan,
especially at a time when Oakland residents are counting on public agencies to help uplift the communities with jobs and resources to defer, so to defer this obligation to an outside entity would be disappointing and unnecessary for the community. So, I thank you for your support in voting no. Thank you. Carl Chan defer his time to me. I'm Alfred Wong Gong Lee. We're family. I graduated from Lincoln. My daughter graduated from Hillcrest. We're family. So is waste management. They do more than what they require on the contract.
They're part of our community. They pick up, and they're just all available for us for years and years. I hope that means something because we're all family. Thank you very much. Hello, and thank you OUSD Board of Directors for this opportunity to speak. My name is Warren Chu, Public Sector Manager for WM. I'm a Oakland native and proud OUSD alum, Skyline High School. That's right. No ties. WM is a local company that's proud to hire locally. Oakland residents live and work here, and we employ over 300 drivers, technicians,
and administrative staff. We also work with the Oakland Private Industry Council, West Oakland Job Resource Center, and the City of Oakland Workforce Development Board on local hiring. Also, recently had a meeting with Mayor Barbara Lee's staff and they were really excited about this cleanup program. They wanna get streets clean, get areas clean around schools. And I talked to their chief of staff and I said, I'm not sure we can that's our jurisdiction to clean up the schools because, you know, you know, come June or July 1 or right when this contract ends, it's a possibility you might have a different contractor.
So that was a big concern of theirs. So that's a big issue, and we wanna make something happen this summer, provide the support. This entire city needs to clean up our city. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Good evening, board directors. My name is Cameron Martin. I'm a West Oakland resident and a child of a retired OUSD employee. I live just across the street from the center over on West Street, and I work for WM Waste Management as a recycling education rep. And I do outreach in Oakland,
to residents about waste diversion and how to sort waste. For the past four years, I spent half of my time supporting, OUSD's waste prevention team led by Nancy Deming, who recently received an award from StopWaste for environmental leadership. These past four years have been pivotal as students were starting to return to the classroom and adjust to many elements, including sorting waste. And we continue to build a culture of empowerment around waste and how it relates to our environment. I hope to continue this work to positively impact OUSD and remain in line with
one of OUSD's commitments to create a school district that holds itself and its partners accountable for superior outcomes. So please stand with, Waste Management. Good eve good evening, board members. I wanna thank you for your time. You guys are doing a great job. And you guys have a lot on your plate. K? You guys should not be worried about us. It should be automatic. K? Just automatic. And we have the manpower, the trucks, and the facilities. So just, you know, thank you for backing us, and thank you.
Hi. My name is Jeff Carter. I've been a waste man for twenty years. I've been doing, front load, and I'm your guys' recycle driver. I'm the king of schools, and, matter of fact, this is one of my schools out of service. At one time, we had service problem. Those cars are blocking the the enclosure, but I came every day to try to take care of you. I take care of my school. If I have problems, I've talked to the janitors. They got my phone numbers. If I can't get in, I talk to the principal. I talk to Nancy. I do area takes take care of Oakland School. You know, we're a family. You know us. We got the.
Anything go wrong, you can call us up, and we'll take care of it. Going to somebody else that don't know you, you don't know them, grass is not green on the other side. Be the be the best team. Be the 18. That's why we're very green. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Jessica Jones. I'm the area general manager, for WM of Alameda County. And I work in the Oakland offices with this amazing team. I'm just so fortunate to be here with all of them and and your support too on how important we are in Oakland. And many of these people live and work in this community.
I've worked there for many, many years. I wish I could I see them go to work every morning, but many of them will be on the road at 03:30 tomorrow morning starting their day. So, thank you for your support. I would like to offer, with all respect, that you do have a couple of options tonight, including awarding the contract to WM as we proposed it. But I wanna assure you that July 1, we are still gonna pick up the waste just a few days from now. We don't want you to think that we won't be there for City of Oakland. So thank you for your time. We really appreciate your support. Next 10 speakers are
next 10 speakers? Okay. Are there Board comments? Director Hutchinson? Yes, thank you. It's really hard for me sitting up here these days just hearing, all the mistruths that my colleagues on the board put out there. So let me just stress again, it's unacceptable that you all are in this situation tonight. You know, since people wanna throw around credentials, my family served as representatives to the Alameda Central Labor Committee before most of my colleagues on the board even knew about Oakland. Okay? And so the way our school board works, especially for contracts, is we have an agenda that's set.
And for when we have a large number of contracts, they get put in the consent report. There's one person who has the authority to create this consent report and who makes the agenda. That's the board president. So when I hear the board president say she only learned of this when somebody reached out to her, I know there's a huge problem someplace. Because when the agenda is set, board staff and the district staff say to the president, do you authorize this agenda? That's the responsibility of that role. And the agenda setting meeting happens the week prior to when the board meeting even
happens. And so there was work going on around this all along that the board president is notified of in the agenda setting meetings. And I would suspect that the board vice president attends those meetings as well still. And I've heard for the last three months the superintendent has not been in those meetings. So there is one person responsible for this contract being put on the consent report of tonight's agenda, and that's the board president. So I have a real problem because if some people were the real allies they claimed to be, this would have never been put on the agenda.
When they first heard about it from staff, as the only person who hears about these things first, they would have reached out to you. So to create this false narrative that, oh, thank you all for telling us About what we're doing to you is wild. So, of course, I'm gonna be abstaining from this because I've been abstaining from all of this garbage for three months. But please don't get it twisted. And the thing I hate worse than anything because I know remember, on this board, I'm the only Oakland native up here. One thing I can't stand is when people come and blow smoke to my community.
I need everyone to know what they know and to believe what you've seen and witnessed tonight. And please, even after this is taken care of, we need your help to make sure this doesn't happen going forward in OUSD. And just lastly, keep an eye on that contract that's being approved tonight that has no money and we're bankrupt. Because even with this contract, it has implications for the future of this contract, and it has implications for anyone who lives in Oakland and especially those of us who have family in our schools. So please be very careful with who you trust up here and what you listen
to and trust your instincts. Thank you. I feel like I need to. I know that you all want to get home because you're getting done your trip. You're starting your work tomorrow at 03:30. And again, some of your support for unions. But I wanna explain a little bit how the consent agenda is agendized. The suggestions are made by site administrators, by the senior leadership team. The consent items are brought to the board planning meeting and that's where they're discussed and talked about. Excuse me. I have the floor right now. And
I had received a phone call from Heath Brown prior to that agenda setting meeting who said, are you aware that this is on the agenda? I had not seen the agenda at that point. At that point, both Director Bachelor and I, Vice President Bachelor and I went called immediately to talk to Roland Broach, to talk to Preston, to talk to our General Counsel. We have been on the phone constantly since we saw that on the agenda at our agenda planning meeting. Support from District leadership realizing that this that there was not support this, that there was not support for this item. Again, so I just wanna clarify,
that's how the consent agenda is made. And right now, I'm going to unless there are any other board comments, Director Hudson Point of clarification. Point of clarification from either the general counsel or the parliamentarian. Is it true that the board president's approval is required before anything is put on the agenda because when I was president these are the items that I wouldn't put in the consent report and on the agenda so point of clarification who does the sole authority to put items on the agenda rest with or the dual authority? Please,
if somebody could clarify. I'll respond in this matter. There would on the matter, on the question regarding L-twelve, This was a bidded matter. State law requires if there is a lowest and deemed responsible bidder, the board must consider that. The board does not have to approve it, but the board must consider it. This is an item, pursuant to state law, that must be placed on the board's agenda. The board then has the right to dispose of it. And and and and I understand I understand the bidding law of this.
Mr. Richardson, may I finish, please? And when all of the items have been given to the board staff from the sources that the president of the board stated, we then compile them and then send the draft copy to the vice president and the president and a number of other people. And so the president of the board then gives the final word that she approves the items on the agenda. And because l 12 is a mandatory consideration,
she had no option. So so thank you. So the clarification was yes. The board president has the authority to approve the agenda. Okay. I would like to is it necessary or should we just take the vote? It is necessary. It is necessary. I I just wanna be straight up facts here. For thirty seven years, the president has been a teacher in the teach and a teacher member in the union. For thirty seven years. We have another member who has been working in a union for fifteen years,
working on advocating for classified folks. I've been in a teacher for twenty five years and have been in the member of a union membership. So I say that because those who were board members who were president, there was a union strike under that individual because because that but they they I'm gonna stop here and excuse me. So why don't you tell everyone why don't you tell everyone who pays your paycheck? And let's get into the conversation.
Let's go. Madam President, both comments from the directors are out of order. They are out of order. The motion before the board is to whether or not to approve L-twelve. May I call the roll? You may call the roll, mister Raikstra. Okay. Student directors are absent? Director Latta? No. Director Williams? No. Director Hutchinson? Abstain. Director Berry? No. Director Thompson? No. Vice president Bachelor? No. President Brothard? No. The, motion is not agreed to. The contract is not adopted. Moving on to L-fifty
eight, which I believe Director Hutchinson was when you pulled. Yes. I pulled oh, I if somebody wants to make a motion. I make the motion to approve l 58. Second? And is there a public comment on this matter? Well, so I thought I was going to have an opportunity like everyone else does when they pull something. Go ahead. You may have two minutes. Thank you. So the reason the reason that I pulled the personnel report is we've had a lot of stuff happening in closed session over the last three months. And as more documents start to come forward,
it starts to prove some of the real problems and the real conflicts of interest we've had. So I wanted to pull the personnel report to point out something. So on page 12 of the personnel report, the top name is actually the husband of Vice President Bachelor. And what that shows is that this year, he worked at Fremont High School, which means when the board in closed session voted for eleven month contracts for just three schools on top of the CBA. One of those schools was Fremont High School.
Vice President Bachelor did not recuse recuse herself from that vote. And my understanding of California community property law is if you're married, you share property, which means Vice President Bachelor voted a raise for her own for her own self through her spouse in closed session, not recusing herself. That is a conflict of interest. It should be illegal. It is enriching herself through her vote. And this personnel document proves that he was a teacher at Fremont High at the
time of that vote. So I wanted to make sure to share it now in public and open session. I encourage everyone to check the document. And he is listed as separation from the district, which means he's leaving. And what people should ask is, there's another personnel report from the beginning of this year for July, where he was put on leave. People should ask what happened with that. Because I just know if somebody does go on sabbatical and then they don't come back and work in the district, they are responsible for repayment of that salary. So these documents show it.
I encourage everyone to ask some questions because the real conflict of interest has tens of thousands of dollars at stake. And that vote that happened for impact bargaining was illegal. Thank you. Madam President, I would just caution the board not to respond to issues regarding personnel in a public session. I agree. Thank you. Is there a public comment on this issue? President Berghard, the item was pulled, so I would recommend extending the time to the public to see if there's any public speakers. Okay. Are there any public speakers?
If you'd like to fill out a card, you can do so. I I paid attention to the personnel report related to the number of, individuals separating from the schools. Teachers, I'm assuming, most of them. So the highest number was, Fremont where they have nine teachers separating from the school. And for every, separation, an impact of what that means for that particular school. I know it I looked at my clients. We have five. So I just when we look at the number of teachers we're losing,
what does that mean in terms of our schools being able to provide best teaching and learning to students. Thank you. Are there any other speakers on this item? Mr. Reykstra, can we take a roll call vote? Yes. On the roll call to, adopt the personnel report, which is known as item l 58, student directors are absent. Director Lara? Yes. Director Williams? Yes. Director Hutchinson? Absent. Director Berry? Yes. Vice pardon me. Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president, bachelor's? Absent? Okay.
President Brogaard. Yes. Motion's adopted. Okay. The next item, l fit one fifty three was withdrawn. And I believe that's it for what's been Yes. Okay. Was it a general consent report and the item is pulled? That's it. Okay. Next on the agenda is Item M, which is Consent Item Facilities. Do we have a motion to adopt Agenda Item M? Yes. I motion that we adopt Item M. Second. Is there any public comment on this? Yes. We have Rosado Lobala. We have several items under M that are
with regard to the soil contamination issue at McClements. So there's going to be geotechnical and environmental services, testing and consulting. Also, there's going to be pollution prevention having to do with stormwater. And I just want to say that I hope we are moving forward as it relates to MacLiaman to thoroughly make sure that as we deal with the field that any soil hazard contamination will be remediated. And I'm hoping also that we take under consideration that we have the track that
is not going to be dealt with. We have a up a scoreboard that doesn't work. We have a sound system that doesn't work. And if we would consider fully functioning our, athletic field and not just halfway doing it because that's what we're doing. We're not completing the work that needs to be done related to our athletic field. And so, at some point, mister Williams, can we make an effort to get that done. But I am very appreciative that we are looking at not allowing turf to be
put down on hazardous contaminated soil at MacLean. Thank you. Are there any other comments? No, President. That concludes public speakers. Mr. Rodsner, can we have a roll call vote, please? Yes. On the motion to adopt the general consent g on GO Bonds, general obligation bond, report. Director the student directors are absent. Director Latta? Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Director Berry? Yes. Director Williams? Yes. Director Hutchinson, absent. Vice president, bachelor, absent. President Brohart?
Yes. President Breaux Hart? Yes, I'm sorry. Okay. The motion is adopted. Next on the agenda is Item P, comments by collective bargaining units. Do we have any bargaining unit representatives? Checking online to see if we have any bargaining units. If there's any bargaining units, please raise your hand. There's none, Chair. Thank you. The next item on the agenda is item R, which is unfinished business, R1 twenty five-sixteen thirty four, twenty twenty four-twenty twenty seven, local control and accountability plan
for the year 02/1926. Is there a presentation? Oh, is there a motion to pass this? I'm sorry. So moved. Second. I don't think there is a presentation there. Is Diana Sherman available? Okay. So I am promoting Diana Sherman to a panelist. Give me one moment. Thank you. Good evening. Good evening. So this does does not have a presentation that accompanies it beyond, our presentation from the public hearing. But we do have the board memo, which summarizes the changes and the feedback that we received,
much of which you heard at our public hearing. And we've included the presentation from the public hearing for your reference, but otherwise, ready to take questions or other comments and feedback that you may have around the revised draft. We'll take public comments first. Are there public comments on this? Yes. We have Asado Lobala. Thank you. I'd just like to say that, as it relates to LCAP and African American students, the report reflects that they are working towards some, disproportionalities of issues around identification of African American students under certain labels.
I can't remember what label it is, special education label. And also with the suspension of high rates of African American boys in middle schools. And that's great. But under LCAP, we get concentration on English language learners, foster children, children who come under the label of being impoverished. But you cannot concentrate or any just the same level of concentration for African American student students because of proposition two zero nine. That's race.
So we don't get and I hear people saying Black and Brown students or and I get this all the time at City Hall. We always like to group everybody together. But we have to admit within the school district the the concentration of, assistance of services and resources is not the same for rate African American students compared to English language learners, newcomers, refugees, immigrants. And that's and when you try to have this conversation, you say you're against people. No. You're not against people. But we are not the same in terms of what we need and what we're
getting. And so I'd like for us to stop doing that and to realize that we need to find a way to give assistance to African American students wherever it is needed as well as any student in the district under whatever label they're they're under. And and when we get there, we'll have equity. Thank you. Are there any other speakers? No. That concludes public speakers. Any board comments? George Gerlada. So, yeah, I I wanna thank you, miss Sherman, and the, you know, the team for putting together this report. I'm actually wondering if it would be possible to project page 470 of the report
because it has the the list of recommendations from the LCAP statutory committees. There is a mention on, you know, kind of I guess my question is around you know, we have these committees made up of parents, community members, students, staff, and they give these very you know, they spend hours of volunteer time and we've, you know, we've heard from them throughout this year, and over the years. And I just would like to know what our like, what specifically we changed in the LCAP based on those,
recommendations. So, there is a statement that, you know, the impact of the recommendations I think it's on page 39 of the, of the LCAP presentation. But I'm just wondering if you can, miss Sherman respond to which of the recommendations actually changed, the, LCAP. Sure. So we take OCVEC throughout the year. And one of the pieces that we do with that is we figure out what can be operationalized this year, what can be operationalized in future years, and what requires additional resources. And so one of the things that we asked staff to do as they helped
us craft those responses from the superintendent, this year was to be really articulate around what they could do with the current staffing and resources available to them, what they could do if they had additional resources, typically staff, that's really our limitation most of the time, and what they can't do and why. And if they can't do something entirely, like, what is the rationale or reason for that? And sometimes there are barriers, particularly when we get to data. Sometimes there are data that we can't provide because it gets down to a fine
grain size that identifies students for other reasons like that. And so then we go through that. And this year, the work we did essentially was to begin with those things that staff could commit to doing now and where we could to add language throughout the LCAP, to say, this is where you can find this. This is what this looks like. One of the two responses or two requests we had were around really better understanding OUSD formulas. So we've created that document. It's not quite complete, but it will be complete by the week's end, to really explain, like, how do we allocate each of the types of positions that we use these dollars
in the LCAP to award to schools, so that it doesn't feel like such a black box in terms of like what's happening that we can't see. The second piece, and I think, I believe all board members have seen this in the past, but we really do try to really encourage community members, staff, others to look at the school's done school life money profile page, which is a historical resource going back to 2122, I believe, that shows every year each school, what were all the positions, what were all the allocations that they received. And so we did add that to the narrative of the LCAP this year as
well, in addition to the many positions and other investments that we added based on feedback through the spring. So yeah. Just one quick follow-up as I really appreciate that, but I do think it would be helpful. I'll just say, a question that I have had is that from last year's, LCAP, there were some specific commitments that staff made that still didn't make it into the LCAP, this year. And so I just, would like us to, and I think this is maybe something we can put in our board work plan, is actually have some specific commitments to follow-up with our,
LCAP designated committees. That's the PSAC, the CAC, Dells, and even though foster youth isn't technically a a committee, them as well. Because I do think that in order to meaningfully, include that feedback from those committees, it it those actions, we need to follow through on our commitments to those, to the to what we commit to and also, the outcome needs to meaningfully change. So, I'll, see the I'll I'll leave it at that. But thank you again. And are there any other board comments? I actually had, a couple, and I thought it was more, I think that,
some of the information in the LCAP, I think, is really beneficial to the teaching and learning committee. I guess I was concerned I'm gonna bring up the looking at the dashboard as well, I know that that's a later conversation, but our, decline kind of across the board of the schools, that I looked at in our, English learners. And I was just wondering, you know, how the yeah. I'm sorry. How the, the LCAP was gonna be addressing that. My other question was really also around, our Black students that when I was looking again on the dashboard how,
low the reading scores were and yet how high the graduation rates were, I was wondering if there was some, I guess, follow-up or some way to look at, how, prepared, I guess, our graduates were for the workforce or for college afterwards with that discrepancy. So again, I think those are things addressed in the LCAP. I think there are also things for the teaching and learning committee. But I have to say the one thing I really did appreciate in the memo is I like the way things were laid out and also the kind of strengths and challenges.
And I thought some of the challenges that were raised were, again, I think, helpful to, looking at our work in teaching and learning. So thank you. Mr. Raistrucker, can we have a roll call vote on the adoption of the LCAP? Yes. On the adoption of the LCAP for the next school year, the student directors are absent. Director Latta? Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Director Berry is absent. Director Hutchinson? No. K. I I'm not I'm not finished yet. Director Berry, you're back. Okay. Alright. Would you like to vote on this? Yes. Oh, your answer is yes.
Alright. Yes. Alright. Thank you very much much. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Okay. Vice president Bachelor is absent. And president Burlhardt? Yes. The motion is adopted. The LCAP for next school year is approved. Thank you. Next on the agenda is item r two, the adoption of the twenty twenty five, twenty six fiscal year district budget. I believe we have a presentation by the chief business officer and I need a motion to adopt. So moved. Second. Good evening, president Brohard and directors. Thank you for hanging.
I know you have more items on your agenda, so, we're gonna move through this quickly. Did not receive, any questions, but I'm just gonna talk about the highlights from when we had the public hearing. Gonna jump through. We know that annually, again, we have to adopt our budget. Our budget adoption is in alignment with the state budget. And so with that, there are times when the state budget is adopted on time, which when legislation changed that our lawmakers would not be paid if the budget was adopted on time. Sometimes that means we have legislation that's framed but not completely known by the time
we adopt our budget. And then what happens is then we do depending on the materiality of it or what is, potentially known after we do a forty five day revise. We're gonna do a forty five day revise of this budget for a few reasons, which we'll talk about. A large part of it was local and internal to our process and why in the spring, doing major things when you're planning to adopt a budget, can become challenging. And so you have to continue to work through those things after your budget adoption. And so with that, get to so, we have,
completed up to this point, the implementation of many items in attachment c addressing what when we adopted the budget last year, it was a $95,000,000, deficit. The combinations of different things and why we're doing a forty five plus day is also because there are items on this agenda tonight that affect this budget. And so with that, that means that when you're looking at the budget now, it doesn't have all the components in all the places because there are some things that are being adopted tonight that will affect the budget later.
So there's a couple a b 1,200, items that are being adopted tonight. Those items are regarding labor agreements. So where you see that we've used strategically a forty three ninety four object code, which although the board did not prefer that, we I am the accountant. And in order to make sure that that reservation was there and money available, because that was the commitment, that superintendent Johnson Trammell as well as the team made, that is where we have placed, the reserve. So that money has to move from a 4,000
object code to the 2,000 and the 3,000 object code. But we do wanna make sure that we account for it. Right? Otherwise, you don't have any visibility that there's money that's planned to be expended. So those things will impact the budget where we see it again. Money will move from one place to another place. So what is currently not here is the AskMe TA. You have already approved that, but we've not implemented all of those things yet. Tonight, you also have the Teamsters TA. That will get approved after this,
assumedly. So, therefore, then we'll be implementing that. You also have some changes that will also are also at the later part of this agenda regarding, some, MOU MOUs from UAOS and from, OEA regarding impact bargaining. That also will affect the budget and where things actually will sit. So just kinda wanna frame, and there's a few other things that we'll talk about, that at the end that still have to be done after actions get taken. Okay? So with that, we talked about this at the last,
agenda. Do want to share that this current year, when we were adopting the budget, we were still using p one, p two, which is the second period as far as attendance, did come in as we were doing the budget. So did not change the local control funding formula projection during that window. But when we're looking at our p two, our attendance is down. So when you see this budget again as another change that will happen, we're projected to have revenue for 2526 at amount of 2,000,000
less. How does that happen? Again, when our attendance continues to, on average, decline, it's going to impact us from a revenue perspective. So when we come back at the forty five day, you'll also see a comparison of where we were tonight compared to, where we, will be when we make this adjustment. But most of the other components and parameters are, included in the adopted budget. As the other agreements, which is that middle section, are, completed, you see we've added AFSCME, and that was since, we added that third interim. Teamsters comes through.
You'll also see that with the projected changes by year, and most of these agreements are multiyear agreements. So, again, that's what, again, impacts our ongoing, expenditures. So when you're looking at the proposed budget, what's important to note is that last year at adoption, you look at the first column, unrestricted, the last number in the unassigned, unappropriated. So that means all of the expenditures were, considered. Our reserve and other components were included, and we have $4,000,000
remaining. This year, we have 329,000. I was unable to complete this budget with a full 3% reserve. You have a 2.9% reserve in the budget because the expenditures exceed the revenues. What about all the items in attachment c? We implemented a lot of those items. A few are coming back, tonight. So how do we get back to a place that we see more resources? So now it's really relying on our year end close. It's relying on us not expending as much,
which again, as we continue to watch the final expenditures for June, what number we'd be looking to see change. And again, it's still a onetime number. It's the number that's in F1, the beginning fund balance. That's the same number as it with third interim. Right? So that's the same, beginning fund balance that we projected at third interim. So we are looking to see how is that beginning fund balance gonna change once we close the year. If that number grows, then it allows us to make the designations and other areas that we've done historically to show we have other commitments that we wanna make sure that we're designated,
especially with onetime money. But, that presents a challenge. Our restricted resources, as we share with you at third interim, are also significantly being used. We have, and I used the word before, shoved a lot of unrestricted expenditures that, again, we've been cleaning up a lot of areas to make those distinctions, but local control funding formula supplemental and concentration is an unrestricted side of the house. When we say we wanna keep all of these things, we go and we look at the restricted resources to try to make sure that
we're able to maintain. So if you look at the restricted column, we're projecting 285, 286 if you're rounding million dollars in restricted resources. But then look at the But then look at the total expenditures. Right? 468,000,000. Now there's a component that gets added to this. So that row e, the net increase, that 100,000,000 is the amount that the base that 100,000,000 is the amount that the base on restricted general fund is contributing to restricted resources. In this budget, we did use the options for, parcel tax use to balance this budget to get us through this moment.
So 5,000,000, which was on attachment c from each parcel tax, is being used to be able to offset, and it it nets in that same row e. Right? The details are there, but we used 15,000,000 there. We also did reduce the vacancy budget as we also discussed because these are the larger items, the majority of our budget being people, in order to present a balanced budget. And then you heard me say, I was still short. A million and a half, gotta reduce the reserve. Our statutory required reserve is 2%.
The board's, enacted reserve by by policy is three. So do I think that we can get back and reshuffle? Yes. But it's still gonna be tight. So as we move to, this essentially tells you the same story. You see the, proportions of revenue and and expenses, here with this pie chart. The only thing that this is missing so the way that our, draft budget, shows up in the budget module, it doesn't show you the benefits. That's the only thing that's missing. Otherwise, there'd be another splice. But with that, same thing for restricted,
and we've gone through that. That's what these pie charts just show you the array of different expenditures. This shows you all of the FTE. So if you look at the twenty four twenty five, which I didn't put here, but likely will show at the 45. If you look at a year ago, last year, at the number of FTE, essentially the same for, certificated, and there was a drop in classified. So another component of us balancing these comp these pieces is the number of positions that we have and our ability to afford them ongoing, and we can't.
We can't. So with that, we have built a budget to be able to maintain as much as possible to include making some modifications, but I I just don't want us to walk away tonight thinking that everything is okay because it's not. And so that's what all these charts, tell you. This shows you, just like we did at third interim, the comparison by the major object codes revenue, and you can see the increases and decreases, between year to year, as far as where we are.
So what would change is as we prepare to close that left group would change as we finalize the year and would say these are the actual numbers that we ended up with. These are currently what our projections were again at third interim, and you have already heard me say that we're looking to see, again, if our revenues, maintain, which they commonly do, how much in expenditures? Because when we budget, it's fund accounting. You budget to spend you show your budget that you're gonna spend, all of your resources. We also talked about with the local control funding formula,
we have a resource six that is our carryover from supplemental concentration. When we look at how much that we are in a deficit, we always subtract that because that money was really earned in prior years. And that helps everyone to be able to make sure, especially, we didn't have a separate resource before, and we created one so we would be able to really easily see how much in Resource 6. We're spending a lot in Resource 6 again next year. So it continues to decline, and so we still count it as onetime resources, although it has really supported the district's efforts,
over time. This is just the bottom section because it's a big spreadsheet of, the before and after so that these two reports go together. When we're looking at, what we call, all of our funds to include anything beyond the general fund, it's all of our, other funds. So, again, this is where we if you look at the revenues and expenditures, we're still a billion dollar organization as it relates to revenues and expenditures. So, again, a lot of resources to be responsible for and and thoughtful of. We've shared with adult education that continues to be area.
If you look at third row, fund 11, why, you know, do we look at that number? Because we look at, again, how much we are bringing in, which is a little above what the expenditures are, but the fund balance continues to decline. So we gotta make sure that when we're continuing to plan and program, that we're able to maintain those expenditures. Child development wasn't in the position that it was before, but, again, thanks thanks to the, Oakland voters and residents, there's additional resources that come in. We have to be responsible for those resources and not over allocate and overspend.
That's our habit, real bad habit to overspend. A real bad habit. Right? And so we we know that this is due different. How do you reset so we can make sure that we're building programs that we can see systemically grow? That's what the fiscal sustainability is all about as we move forward. So with that, that's what shows here. I'll point out that deferred maintenance, when we're talking about a lot of various subjects that have to do with our facilities and needs, I just wanna make, really clear to the board again. There was a commitment in 2019, '20 for the board to commit $7,000,000
a year to deferred maintenance. Two years later, that hadn't happened. We began to allocate 5,000,000, to deferred maintenance for one year. And then when the board didn't want to make some decisions again about restructure at that time, we pulled 2,000,000 away, and so we've still been only funding deferred maintenance by three years. That was not my goal. Why? Because the same things that we talk about that are needed, we're not funding it enough. So those are things that, again, that 3,000,000 has gotten us through,
but it's still not enough. So how do we balance that? Where does that 3,000,000 come from? It comes from the base. So all of these things the base has in its responsibility to support this entire district is why we continue to wanna make sure that the board is clear. We have to support the base. And every decision that's made without an ongoing funding source, the base takes a hit. It's the house, and it is responsible for all of these things. So as we're thinking throughout the summer about next steps and how we move forward
as we look at the multiyear projection, which continues to show us, just like we projected four years ago, three years ago, two years ago, been consistent, We don't have a systemic plan to be able to support us. Now it's not 95,000,000 or 87 as it was a year ago. So we've done the work. We've done a lot of good work. Still not enough. We knew that at attachment c. We had onetime strategies there. We need a plan, and I don't know how we're going to approach the plan. But what we can have happen, clear that we should not have an attachment d.
We we gotta change the name. I don't know what we need to do. But the flavor has to change where we're in agreement about how we move forward, and I don't wanna have this criticism of attachment c, this is not the direction, without understanding what that direction is. It doesn't matter who's standing before you. They need that information to be able to support a balanced budget. And if we're at 2.9% of the reserve, which we haven't been at, this is not an amber light anymore that's blinking. It's red. So the district needs your partnership to be able to figure out what's next step.
So our multiyear projection shows that we would have a $78,000,000 deficit to address next year. We still have one more bargaining unit that's at the table for ongoing negotiations. Again, we don't talk about negotiations during this period. You just need to know that that's on the trajectory. Right? There that means that there's 70,000,000 of the deficit in which we're still building the same strategy that we started with 2223. How are we gonna be able to progress forward without some dynamic changes?
And we talked about how attachment c, b, and a. None of those things were popular. Didn't wanna do a lot of those things. But what are we gonna do together as a unified school district and a unified body of leadership? You have now hired your interim superintendent. She is walking in the door holding this $78,000,000. That's what she's walking into. Well, it was known, and I'm sure she knew that. Right? So back to courage. She's walking in the door with courage. How do you support her? Next year, if we do nothing, right, we still have 72,000,000 to clear. So, that first number again,
that $329,000, that's jump change left. So, the restricted general fund, again, there are resources that we are spending faster, and I've shared that before. So when we come back, because I wanna make sure all the movements that we needed, be done are done. I want you to see the multiyear and how we have resources. If you look at the actual financial report, the form NYP that's listed, you could search it, in the big packet. It has the list of our resources that are sunsetting for '24,
'25, '25, '26, '26, '27. And there are some that were scheduled to sunset 2728. Because we're spending so much, I had to eliminate them a year or two years early, which means we don't have as many resources to carry us forward as we plan if everything we plan to spend, spend. So that's why you see the restricted resources are now spending almost double what's coming in, you know, as far as revenue. And so with that being said, you know, those are things to watch for that that beginning balance on one a.
So in '24 '25, '26, we started with a 151,000,000. By the time we get to twenty seven twenty eight, our ending fund balance is 56,000,000. So we would have spent a third, right, of the fund balance within a three year period. So that's just the combined. Our cash is all contingent upon how much revenue we bring in and how fast we spend it. So we showed you this at third interim that, essentially, we're at 300,000,000 now, another 200,000,000 a year from now, and a 100,000,000 a year from that. So, essentially, because we're burning down our resources and until,
right, there's a new or some other ongoing resource, that's where, you know, our cash projection looks. What we don't wanna return to again And this is the new normal because we had a lot of onetime money that came in, but we don't wanna get back to the place that when I arrived, we were borrowing $30,000,000 from the county every year in September. Meaning, we couldn't even start the year with enough cash. That's how real our deficit was. And that really started from agreements that we couldn't afford historically and we didn't have
the cash for. Right? So we agreed to it on paper, but we didn't have the money in the bank to pay for it. So we wrote the checks. Right? Didn't have the cash. And so we haven't had to borrow cash since then. And so with that, we don't wanna go back to those places either. This just we can show you the LCFF projection. This is one sheet out of many sheets, that you place the data in. So the thing you look at, right, is the average daily attendance, which is the average daily attendance on how we're paid, which again, we're still getting some upside with using averages.
But you see the COLA keeps going up. And where can you see the COLA? It's the, top percentage above where it says ADA and base. So we've updated that as we did at third interim based on the projections. So we're at 2.3% this year and then 3.02. So meaning our increases are mostly driven by the state saying this is what we're projecting that we're gonna increase with your COLA. But every salary agreement, every, invoice, a lot of the expenses, they're exceeding the COLA.
So the COLA is not covering what we have to expend. And so, you know, with that, that's why I shared previously, even when we're looking at our contribution rates and things like that, they're growing faster than we're bringing resources in. And, And, again, the base is covering those pieces. So our next steps with the budget is to, continue to suggest and recommend that the board adopt the budget. You hear me say that we're coming back with a forty five day revise because we got a lot of movement. That movement also includes moving the 5,000 object codes back to,
where they were when the budget was originally planned. So that's another thing. When you look at where those codes are, it looks like all of a sudden our communications budget grew. It didn't. Again, that's just where we placed those special object codes so we can find our way home. Right? They're bread crumbs to place, those resources in a place that's easy to be able to find. So those are things that have to be, moved. And then the state, adopted budget, is completed, but yet the details about some resources are just not rolling out. So for instance, we just got confirmation about discretionary funding that's gonna be added.
We would also put those areas as long as there's enough information for us to be able to place what Oakland's, awards would be. We would include that in our forty five day and then subsequently the first interim. And then now we're at this period as we're ending June. We begin our unaudited actuals process where we're closing the books, making all the final payments and expenses, in July, and then, therefore, we'll finish out the close, and we'll be back to you in September with how we ended the year. So with that, I will yield the floor back to the president, for any additional questions or comments.
Thank you for the time. Thank you. Are there any public comments? Wait, I'm sorry. What is the motion? Can we do board comments first while Ms. Grant Dawson is here and before public comment, please? First, we need a motion to adopt the, budget. Oh, we did it? Okay, sorry. Sorry. Yes. I have recorded as a Yes. Sorry. Right. We can do Board comments first. Can we keep them on the topic of the budget, please? I don't need to be told what I need to do while I'm making my comments. Thank you respectfully. Could you please turn it to page 22 of the PowerPoint, the multi year projection for unrestricted?
K. My partners are pulling it back. Or at least, it's it's 22 on what I see here. And so, I wanna see this very clearly to the community, to my constituents, to all of Oakland. OUSD is now bankrupt. OUSD is now in financial crisis. OUSD, now in its unrestricted dollars, has an $80,000,000 almost structural deficit. That's what these numbers show. To show that there is $329,182 left in the district above our reserve and next year's budget shows we have no
money left. That means if anything unforeseen happens, we can't afford it. If there's any overspending, we can't afford it. If any of our labor partners' contracts expire and want to negotiate a new contract, there's no money set aside for it. And this also shows that the following year, one year from now, there will be an $80,000,000 deficit if nothing changes. And that $80,000,000 deficit is going to continue indefinitely every year until something changes. Now this is not the situation we were in in the start of this school
year. But this board has moved away from our restructuring, reenvisioning plans. We had committed to having votes in June around restructuring the district. That was always a key part to how we were moving forward financially. When I finally looked at these numbers, it was shocking. As somebody who's watched the budget for a long time and remembers the bad old days before Ms. Grand Dawson got here, we didn't even have a structural deficit then. We weren't bankrupt then. So this Board, by its decisions in six months, have burned a hole through everything and left us bankrupt.
And that's what it means when you don't have any extra money to spend on anything. And more than that, it leaves us with no path forward for any work. There is no ongoing work around our budget where when we start off next year, we can pick it up and we know we'll be okay. Nothing's been done. And the board canceled its retreat, so there's not even a board work plan to guide us. So, specifically, miss Grant Dawson, I I have two questions. With this unassigned, unappropriated money, in our unrestricted here, the 329,000, so if something unforeseen happens in the district or,
if the board decides that we wanna use money to negotiate a new contract, what happens if those dollar amounts are above $329,000 And what happens if our needs also exceed the 26,000,000 that we have in our reserve? What happens now that there's no cushion left if these monies are used? Or do we have even the ability to use these monies? So we would have to look at our current expenditures and make adjustments. So meaning, that's common, like, spending freezes and, you know, other things like that or back to,
even with the adjustment to the vacancy dollar amount that we're, adopting. So we took 10,000,000 off of '25, we would then say we we would not be able to recruit or hire certain positions. I mean, again, keep in mind, we're using a multitude of different resources that, again, can't all be used for. The same thing. So when we would look at it, we'd have to look at where is it coming from. Unrestricted and restricted because when we're negotiating with with anyone, it hits multiple resources. So that's what the steps would, have to be. And if there was an emergency but the other thing is I shared at third
interim, remember that our reserve at 26,000,000 is not coming from the base. Other unrestricted resources are really, like, supporting it, and we were steering away from that where the base was able to fund the whole twenty six or twenty eight million. So with that being said, that's the other part. That reserve is not being made from the resources that truly can pay for it. So would it be accurate to say then if we do need other resources that we'd have to make immediate cuts to our expenditures in order to accommodate those? We'd be at that midyear cut cycle again.
Thank you. Are there any other board director Latta? Oh, director Bair? I was going to ask a similar question, but I just wanna ask it the way I thought of asking it before. So are you actually not afraid, but is it how likely is it that if nothing changes, a midyear cut would be necessary? '25, '26. So how likely is it? It's probable that if something happened or some other funding mechanism changed again, remember, we're still, like,
waiting to see what may happen. I think there's a whole lot of other distractions perhaps going on federally that we typically won't see. Typically, it's not in the same year, but the point is, yes, it's it's very possible. I think I'm probably more concerned about budget development. I One second. I I that's so dark for me because I don't know where we are and what we're planning to do. So we're building strategies, and this was, like, the smoothest budget year we've had as far as implementation even with all the changes
and start stops. Right? But how are we gonna address that 80,000,000? Yes. There's still things on attachment c we haven't reviewed, but we I mean, we haven't implemented. But we also need to make sure that we don't have other things happening to be able to pull some of those things together, and that's what we lost, you know, in time of being able to implement something. So, so it is hard to say, but it is what, you know, is top of mind for us of how are we gonna get through this next because we know where the answer is. The answer is we're going to have to reduce programs,
and we're gonna have to reduce staffing. And I just shared, even in the restricted general fund, I don't have resources to keep the things that are there now that we're now burning down faster. So with that, it's probable, but not likely that we do a midyear. The question is, how do we get through '26, '27, and '27, '21? So my follow-up question is around strategy because I do feel like that's also missing. And you mentioned earlier really needing to have guidance from the board, which you just reiterated right now.
And I'm gonna be a new board member for, like, fifteen more minutes, so I'm a ask a basic question. Mhmm. Mhmm. What is the specific kind of direction that you're looking for? Because there's one way of doing it, which is, like, give prescriptions around programs and staffing to cut. But to me, in my mind, my interpretation of that is another attachment d. And then there's, on the other side of the spectrum, something more I don't even know. You mentioned the word, systematic, or systemic. Mhmm. Sustainable? Yeah. Is it is it somewhere in between of that?
Is it, like, a specific set of broad or, like Yeah. That's a great question. What we've shared before is it's there's not one thing that can address it. It's multiple components to address it. And so, you know, that is what when we had attachment b, we wrote, here are all the tenants of what we would need to address in order to have a year or two years to plan and then implement. So now we don't have many of those components. Right? We don't have a pathway. What we've done is here's our recommendations of,
adjustments and modifications. That's what attachment a, b, and c were. Before that, the midyear cuts were we gotta get to a number, right, by any means necessary to get through the year. So our strategy in getting through that has been what, you know, the deep attachment a, b, and c. What has happened is we don't like that. Schools are saying this, and there's no counter. That's all we get it. We get it. Well, what are we gonna do as an alternative? That's the question. And so when we don't have an alternative or don't have an alternative to discuss
in a timely manner, we're stuck like Chuck, which is where we have been. So, really, attachment c is the end of a strategic cycle. That's part of what director Hutchinson is saying. We're at the end of that cycle. So now we have to start a new cycle, but how are we gonna start it? And it it's not gonna help us with us providing a list of things to do and then getting to a certain date, and we don't wanna do it. And so that's that's where we have to figure out how we're going to to
flow in order to to to get there. So, so I would call this an unfinished song, but there could be a new page, and how does the board wanna work through that and be consistent and committed to it? Right? Because I've signed my name on many documents saying, yes. We have to make budget adjustments in order to to do this, and I signed my name before you even ratified it. But I've had moments where you reneged as a board, and you didn't do the part. But I still signed my name to all 5,000 employees that were gonna make this happen,
and I'm still committed to that. But I can't do this by myself, superintendent, interim, or existing cannot do this without the board aligning. And so we've said it. We repeated it. I I don't currently speak multiple languages. I can only say it in English and hope it's being translated. We need the partnership, and we need a different way forward. And it really doesn't matter whether we like each other. We have to respect each other through it. And if you wanna move in a different direction, we can do that too. But your people are relying on you as of July 1.
It's on you. You will not have the county, department of finance, Figma. Nobody's coming to say a word. They'll just be watching. So what are we gonna do? But that's where we are. We don't wanna we didn't wanna go backwards, but it feels like we're about to. And that's that's definitely something I just cannot stomach. It it bothers us. My team is upset. You need to know that they are upset. Wanted to come to this board meeting multiple times saying, what are you doing? Why are you doing this? I have people emailing. They're so concerned.
But my job is to help you shine so that you can be, right, the champions in the community. How are we gonna work this out? How are we gonna work this out? So we'll be waiting to hear how we're gonna work this out, but do nothing. You don't have that option. You don't. So thank you for the question. Sorry for the extra, but it is spilling over. It's spilling over. Welcome. So I, you know, I think I've said this before, but I'll just say, you know, appreciate you, miss Grant Dawson, and your team for the work that this takes. And I think the clarity in your memo around what are the kind of the
next steps with the forty five day revised, the unaudited actuals, and then what are the things that we you know, that are our work going forward. And, I also am looking forward to all of us, up here and in the finance department and in leadership collaborating on what are our priorities moving forward. I think one thing I'll just call out that was in the audit report that I think I've also heard you say, periodically, or maybe actually a lot of the time is around attendance. So I think, I kind of have been watching I've always watched enrollment,
but I think, again, in listening to your comments over, you know, kind of this year when I'm sitting in the seat, also taking seriously the what are the things that we can do to really focus on ADA, increasing our attendance, because those are students that we, you know, that not only need would benefit from being in school, but also in terms of funding the program is also something that we need to cut you know, we not only need to increase it, but we need to get back to pre pandemic levels and maybe even higher. And so I think one thing I'll just say that I,
you know, kind of look forward to as part of the collaboration is, you know, how do we also, in addition to, yes, making some difficult choices around reductions and all of us getting on the same page, some of that you know, there is some unfinished work around, you know, kind of proven to increase our revenue? And how do we invest more deeply into ADA recapture? And, also, how do we evaluate programs to ensure that our, students are having improvements in their achievement and outcomes? So I think I, I'll leave it there and,
you know, am invested in the work ahead. I look forward to our, you know, our budget and first budget and finance meeting in August where I presume we'll have some conversation around kind of, what has, what is the in the forty five day revised before we have to adopt in, mid August. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other board director Williams? Thank you very much, miss Grant Dawson. I appreciate appreciate, you sharing what what our next steps are, and I I look forward to working with you. You know, I sound like a broken record. You probably even know what I'm gonna say. I'm not I won't say that.
I won't say that. I'll take that back. But I think that, this year, we we we took the recommendation of cutting a $100,000,000. We actually did that. Back and forth, the cuts got the approval got done. So what you brought to us, we actually did. So I do wanna be clear that, this board stepped into a $100,000,000 deficit. Now we're gonna have to step into a $72,000,000 deficit next year.
And I think when people start to say, well, what has the board done? We've done what has been asked of us to do, which is to cut a $100,000,000. And I've been telling everybody, I said, you think a $100,000,000 is bad? We're gonna cut at least 50 or 60 next year. Now it's already up to 72. And then when inflation and everything else go up, it's gonna be 82. And then by the time we roll around in January, it's gonna be another 100,000,000. So we already know how that game is being played. And still,
we're taking your leadership on this, on where we need to move and have those conversations. So I just really wanna appreciate the work. I know it's not easy. You see us go back and forth, but you keep the ship right. And I remember when when I first got on, you said, we as a district need to change how we think about this. You said that four years ago. And we've been in that moment of change over the last four years, which helped us get out of receivership. Thank you. Thank you for your guidance and your leadership on that.
And I think you don't get enough credit for it. But you said it at four years ago. And year after year after year, our board could have been making decisions to move us in that direction, and it did not happen until now. And now we're our backs are against the wall. We're at the cliff. We have no choice left but to move forward, and we will. I have I think we all have supreme confidence in your leadership and your guidance, and I look forward to working with you next year.
So I just wanna thank you very much for, being a steady, being very steady and keeping your message consistent. I hear you, and we will continue to support your leadership on this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Mister Rickster, do do you want a second round of comments? Okay. Alright. Can we have a roll call vote, please? Oh, you have public comment. Oh, oh, public comments. I'm sorry. We switched the order. Yes. How many do we have? We have approximately six speakers. Two minutes. Two minutes. Okay. We have Carol Delton,
Asado Lobala, Oliver Brennan, Dilu Morris, Vivica E. Coy Walton, Cynthia Adams, and Sophasia Eco Walton. And if you're online, please raise your hand. Thank you. Good evening, Board. Oliver Brennan, Parent of two at OUSD. So I'd like to thank Lisa Grant Dawson for that detailed end of year presentation and I'd be following it all year, what we're doing and for the last four years. And I will commend this board. You took some tough decisions this year to bridge a $95,000,000
deficit and most of the work was done before December 31 or thirtieth. But that was attachment C after B and A and these were all one time adjustments to our budget to get us to where we are now. And Ms. Grant Dawson has said many times throughout those last three years, our team are running out of one time adjustments they can do. So the direction of the board up till the end of last calendar year was we're going to do this adjustment,
attachment C, but thereafter we're actually going to never again have to do these annual $78,000,000 this year, $72,000,000 the year after, one time maneuverings. We were going to look at the entire district and restructure the entire district that includes Central Office, that includes the footprint and that includes everything. That work was supposed to be in the planning stage this year, mainly in this calendar year 2025 with deep engagement with the community in the spring.
But let's not go back into what happened this spring, but it got totally sidetracked. So now we're at a situation where we have $78,000,000 We've been told we can't do any more attachment D. I hear two of you just talking now talking about attachment D. You're coming back with a view to doing attachment D. We have to look at the whole thing and we have to get it done. Thank you. Good evening Board, Carol Dalton. I've been following the budget since late twenty sixteen and every year what I see
are large packages of cuts presented to the board all at once, and presented to the community all at once. It's very hard to digest and that is not how you make sustainable change. I think sustainable change happens one operational issue at a time. Ms. Grant, I haven't been at Board meetings lately, but I have been following and listening to discussion. As Ms. Grant Dawson says, operation, academic operation and budget go hand in hand.
I say as soon as possible, implement her proposal for attendance policy. I say as soon as possible, bring back or bring in whatever the staff proposal was that came up at the time of the contracting discussion. Ed data reflects that contracting, certificated and classified administration are some areas where OUSD spends more than other districts proportionally. Investigate why sub costs are excessive,
that's another thing I heard. Investigate why after years of the CDC paying for itself and improving its revenue, why is this happening? Look at how OUSD can best use its existing facilities. Look at each of these issues, discuss these issues, get information on these issues, and make decisions that can be sustainable. I think that going forward, it's not the package of cuts that will do it,
it's many places where spending is more than it needs to be that will add up to the district being fiscally sound. Thank you. Thank you. Next comment. Alright. First, I wanna say thank you, Lisa Grand Austin, for that amazing presentation. I was listening, and I was engaged, and I was plugged in and locked in. Next. Again, my name is Vivica Ekoy Walton, a family member, a parent, family organizer with Families in Action. I'm very shocked and disappointed.
Dollars 329,000 left under the 3% reserve that is required. You heard my wife mention she's a financial advisor. You all have a fiduciary responsibility just like an financial adviser does. The difference is your clients are the students, and their lives are in your hands. If you did not handle your fiduciary duty as a financial adviser, your license will be stripped, taken away. You will never handle somebody else's money. You guys have children who are depending on you to build to to talk to
each other and balance a budget. If none of you have a finance degree, there's no reason why none of you were asking her questions. What can we do? What other exact steps? And I have seen her time and time come with recommendations that she just said, you guys said you'll do it, and renege on her. Where do you think that distrust is? She's the one that knows the money, and y'all don't. So y'all need her more than anything. We need her. Our students need her. Oakland isn't broke. We've said that plenty times before. Y'all just don't know how to how to spend the money properly. Spend the money properly.
And the board majority that is deciding where all the money's going, that is deciding who gets the contracts, y'all should be answering the asking the most questions instead of in your phones. Disrespectful. And then you wonder why administration doesn't even wanna deal with you. And parents are are are done. At this point, I've said it already. You as a fiduciary responsibility, your slices should be y'all don't have any licenses to be a board member because we know some of y'all are unqualified. So what should happen? Again, as a community member, resign or you will be recalled. I promise. Good evening,
board. Once again, my name is Tafisha Ekoy Walton. I'm here, just to kinda speak to my from my heart. When it comes to, like, having a budget, like, the way that I think about it and I'm sure all of you guys have families. All of you guys have people that you take care of. If you consider a budget and what it takes, it's not like a happenstance kinda thing. And if you think about it, some people really, like, genuinely don't know how to look at a budget. Right? Like, there are actually some parts of the budget that you genuinely do not understand, and that is okay to ask questions about.
The thing that's not okay is if we don't ask the questions in regards to how can we get to where we need to be. Right? So when I think about what you said, director Williams, you said, man, we cut x amount of millions of dollars, then we had to cut x amount of millions of dollars, and it's gonna keep going up. Right? And the one thing that came to my mind was the rule of 72, compounding interest. And then I thought about the time value of money, and I thought about how the longer you wait, the more delayed your decisions are, the higher the prices that you pay.
Right? But it's not necessarily the board that has to pay the price. It's the students that have to pay the price. So I encourage you, in spite of how you feel about anybody or anything, work together, find a way. And if you can't find a way, find somebody to stand in your place from your community that can take suggestions, that can take feedback, that can host a listening session, that can bring some other financial professionals into the space, like maybe from Merrill downtown. Right? They in the 1011 Building right there on Broadway. We can bring some of them down there to genuinely chop up the books and
look at them so that you can understand every single line item. Because contracts that go outside of Oakland, where you have to pay more, or outside of the district, where you have to pay more when, genuinely, we can hire people that are in house or that are in city or that might be a little bit smaller, but just as effective. That goes a long way. It's just like at your house budget. You ain't gotta buy, you know, C and H Sugar. You can buy off brand sometimes, and it works just as good, just better for your budget. So just think about it. Alright? Love y'all. So I'm not good with money,
so I can't tell you too much that's very helpful. But I did listen to some keywords, we're spending too much and we're overspending, and we're going to have to reduce programs and reduce staff. That's the thing that stuck in my head. And so ever since we've been dealing with the budget, I've been looking at the consent agenda, and I say, golly. We need this spending. Why are we spending like this? So for an example, L7 through L10 were three items,
dollars 10,000,000 each, a total of $30,000,000 for future program. We can't allocate money for something that's gonna be happening in the future. We just don't have the ability to do that. The other thing that stood out, with the budget, You had 14 contracts that were getting ready to expire and you extended them with time and more money with no indication that it was appropriate to keep these contracts going,
14 on tonight's agenda, okay? So you're going to have to look at things and say with that consent calendar or any item involved in spending, can we do this? You can't give people money to save for future projects. We don't have the ability to do that. And as far as reduce it's hard to make these decisions because y'all wanna please everybody. If I was sitting up there, I'm sorry. We got to do it. And some people are gonna be hurting. I'm hurting because you have to hurt.
But this is what's happening. Look at all the other districts. Everybody's doing it. They're reducing programs and staff, and they're merging schools. Y'all don't wanna talk about those 20 schools. Are we gonna have to have that conversation at some time? That includes my school, my Climates. I love my Climates, but we only have 250 something students. So if I'm willing to say, if my school's gotta make that sacrifice, you gotta make sacrifices for schools that you care about. My time's up. But please,
working together is the key thing. Working together. Making tough decisions and being willing to say we got to do it as much as it people a thousand can people can come to the mic and say we wanna keep the pro I'm sorry. We got to do it. This is the only way we can survive this district. Thank you for your service, all of you, because it's easy to talk when you're back here and saying all of this stuff, and you don't really have to do the work. Okay? Y'all have to do the work. Thank you for your miss doctor Morris,
if you're online, you could unmute yourself to speak. Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes. We can hear you. Thank you. First, I wanted to just acknowledge real quick, director Simmons and chief business officer Lisa Grant Dawson for their transparent and honest recording tonight. Good evening, board members. My name is doctor Dila Morris. I'm the educational chair for the Oakland branch of the NAACP. And I simply come before you today, not to sow division as some of you may assume, so relax, but to ask again for responsible governance for Oakland students and families.
I think it's really, misleading for board members to suggest that community leaders, many of whom who have dedicated years to supporting OUSD students, leaders, and families in opposition to decisions simply because things are just not going our way or out of personal preference because that's really false, and it's also an insult to our daily work to uplift the district. So I wanna be here. Our repeated offers to meet with board members to collaborate and to even host public
forums for transparency around the budget have gone unanswered. These officer these offers are documented in emails, and you can go back to your emails and find them. So we're not the ones closing the door on collaboration. OUSD is about to flatline financially. So amid this crisis, the board has to discuss or publicize a fiscal recovery plan based on the recommendations of the former superintendent or CBO. This budgetary irresponsibility is unsec unacceptable, and it's unfair. And even to talk to Shadler.
And I know she's present tonight, and I hope to meet her soon. If you want to have community and end the divisiveness, you guys have to be the examples. You need to listen to the experts and stop acting like you have all the answers. You need to engage the broader community and meaningful dialogue and demonstrate leadership that the children deserve. If the pattern of exclusion and fiscal management continues, then you leave us no alternatives than to continue to work with the parents and ensure accountability and demand accountability because open students deserve it.
Thank you. Cynthia Adams, if you're on Cynthia Adams, if you're on line, please raise your hand. President Breauxhall, can we do a second round? I mean, a $1,000,000,000 budget, I think, is worthwhile for a second round. I would definitely like a second round, please. Okay. I'll just go ahead and lead it off then. Thank you. You know what, y'all? This really isn't rocket science. It's really not. And to hear folks claim ignorance that they just don't know how things work or will do better in the future, it's not even close to acceptable. And so,
Ms. Olobala, people are working together. Can't you see how the votes have been going? There's no divisiveness. We have a group of people who have tanked our district. And so just so we remember, in 2024 when we approved Attachment B, I sat on this dais and said this is not a big enough adjustment. That adjustment was under $20,000,000 and we knew it was creating a big future hole. But then I pushed forward and the board, we approved a fiscal sustainability update where we made 10 different commitments to the county, including voting on recommendations in June of this year on restructuring and voting on recommendations
for re envisioning the footprint based on community conversations and the Master's Facilities Plan, which was supposed to be done. We also had eight other commitments in that. We haven't done any of those things. And so that's why there's now a hole in the budget because this Board has walked away from our restructuring work, from our long term sustainability work, from our commitments to the County, and even from our own resolution that we unanimously passed. And so because that restructuring work hasn't been done and I can hear the sighs
now but everyone can go, Look, I'm furious that when we voted on a resolution and made an agreement that called for June, why didn't anyone enforce that there was supposed to be recommendations voted on this month? That is a clear violation of what we voted on as a board. And as much as they wanna sigh, that vote in August was seven-zero. It was unanimous. So now because not only did we not do that work, because not another director had any community engagements around re envisioning or restructuring, But there was one person who was leading up the restructuring work because that's what it said in the resolution and the agreements.
And that person was the superintendent. So now the superintendent who was leading up that work is no longer here. The two people most responsible in helping her, the two chiefs of staff, are no longer here. We have no votes on recommendations. So of course now our budget shows we're bankrupt because we haven't done that work. So this idea that, well, we'll think about a plan going forward. You know, Ms. Grant Dawson was still too nice. We had a plan that we approved and this board disregarded it. And now we're seeing the budgetary outcomes of that. And unfortunately, these folks weren't here when we used to have mid year budget cuts every year
from 2014 to 2018. When we had millions cut in the middle of the year. So please y'all, this is an emergency. I can't believe the casual nature Thank you. I can't tell you what the hell you're talking about. Seriously. We're talking about Thank you, So until the community takes it seriously, we are now in crisis, and the only way to change it is to change the board because they're the ones who caused this. So I ain't ever working together with people who are destroying my community,
and I expect the community to help me Thank you, Mr. Hutchinson. That's your time. Thank you. Any other board comments? Yes. Thank you. So I just wanna set the record straight as I was the sole person who did not vote to support the three R's resolution, because one of the challenges that I had with that resolution is that it was so vague that I believed that it was going to lead us to school closures, which it almost did. Half of this board decided that, we were going to look at the mergers of school sites that were connected to
each other. And again, I was the one that opposed that. I said that we do not have the time, that we, can support those school campuses. We do not have the finances to support those school campuses. And the director that's cackling is the one that supported that. No. The director didn't support it. I'm the director who wrote the resolution to rescind school closures. Let's not tell a false history. There is no excuse for what's been going on. And I'm not gonna let you lie to my community. Go ahead. I just wanna remind people to be respectful of each other's times. Thank you. I apologize.
So as I was saying, I continue to be, really concerned, actually, about the three R's resolution. And that's the reason why I didn't engage my community around it because it was so vague and so something that I didn't really feel like it made sense. So Madam madam president? Yes. We have a motion on the floor at least the board has a motion on the floor to adopt the budget. The other legislative items that are being referenced at the moment are not relevant to whether or not you pass this budget at this moment,
at this hour. Thank you. And we and we are Yep. Only so many minutes away from having to Yes. Yes. And just the last comment that I will make is that over the last six months, the budget and finance committee meeting has only met three times. That committee is, part of what, supports us in creating this budget. So I hope that the chair of that committee actually takes the role seriously in the next year and continues to have budget meetings so that we can have, more, information and more support in understanding our budget and making sure that we have, a budget that is sound. Thank you. I'm gonna ask you to raise your hand.
You don't understand what's happening here. So if you don't know how to work things after this many years on the board, it ain't no chair's responsibility. That's all on you. May I call the roll to adopt the budget? Student directors are absent. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Berry? Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Director Latta? Yes. Director Hutchinson? No. Vice president, Bachelor? Yes. And president Brohar? Yes. The motion's adopted. The budget's approved. Thank you. Can we have an interpretation check,
please? Yes, madam president. As stated before, we have three languages available, which are Cantonese, Arabic, and Spanish. I will start with Cantonese, making the announcement. I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom. Please only raise your hand, for the language being announced at this time, which is Cantonese. And I'll ask mister Yuen if he can come off mute and give the interpretation announcement for Cantonese. Can any announcements done, mister Harness? Thank you, mister Yuen. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Cantonese interpretation. Seeing no hands,
we will not start with Cantonese interpretation at this time. Moving forward to Arabic, I will lower all attendees' hands. Please only raise your hand if needed the language being announced, which at this time is Arabic. Now I'll ask mister Turek if he can come off mute and give the interpretation announcement for Arabic. Thank you, mister Turek. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Arabic interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not have Arabic interpretation at this time. Moving forward to Spanish. I will lower all attendees' hands. Please only raise your hand if you need language being announced at this time, which is Arabic.
And I'll ask mister Dela Torre if you could if you could come up on mute and give the, announcement for Spanish. Nice. Thank you, mister thank you, mister Dela Torre. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised with Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not have any interpretation at this time. That concludes, our interpretation announcement at this time, and I will pass it to madam president. Thank you. At this time, we are moving into new business, and our first, new business is s one, just the dashboard indicators.
Ms. Sherman, do you have a presentation for this? I do, yes. Okay. Great. Thank you. So this is the California School Dashboards report on local indicators. This is our annual report to you on our local indicators that we will be submitting to the state this year. Ms. Sherman, I think you went on mute. Thank you. Sorry about that. Next slide, please. Okay. Next slide. Okay. So our local indicators here are outlined. They are a company, our state indicators. And these are the indicators that are provided on the California School Dashboard. Our local indicators are self reported.
I apologize. This slide is a bit grainy as I'm seeing it at least. But they are basically our areas of parent engagement, access to a broad course of study, school school climate, implementation of academic standards, and our basic conditions. Next slide. Okay. So, our first priority, priority number one, is basic conditions. We look at teacher misassignments. We look at the number or percentage of students who will have access to their own copies of instructional materials and the identified instances where facilities do not meet the good repair standard. Okay? And we just start outlining our changes this year.
Next slide. And here you'll see our implementation of standards. And this is our current status. For each of these, you'll also find these in your board document. Four is full implementation, Three is initial implementation. And two would be beginning implementation. Next slide. Okay. Moving forward, again, these are our areas, each content area, and as well as our support for teachers and administrators. Next slide. Okay, this is parent and family engagement. This is our ability to support our staff in building relationships with families as well as to support our families in the community. Next slide. Okay. These are our partnerships for student outcomes.
This is very closely allied to our families' work. Next slide. And continues here. This is principals and staff as they engage families. Moving on to the next slide. School climate. This looks like this is an outdated slide. I apologize. But your packet has the current numbers. And this is our California Healthy Kids Survey data. Next slide. Okay. Our school climate. I apologize. These are hard to read on this deck. And moving forward, this is students who feel connected to their school and students who feel safe at their school. Next slide. There. All right. Moving forward.
And broad course of study. This is our access to coursework that students have at each grade level throughout. And these are broad courses studied at our high school level and then moving forward. I think that brings us to the end. These are some of our areas of work moving forward. Fund making constraints and staffing challenges, are it's our biggest area and remains that. And then our CTE work, we are also remaining as an area of learning. These are some of the revisions. This a lot of this is continuing work. But new investment areas and continuing to expand multilingual assessments,
our graduate capstone work, computer science in middle schools, and our link learning work throughout the district. Next slide. That's the end. Any questions? Are there any public comments? Yes. For S1, we have Asolo Lobala. She left. Okay. Are there any Board comments? I just want to say I really appreciated this, report. I did go look at the, dashboards and it looked, like our CTE work was really, doing quite well. But again, I was concerned about the EL work and thinking about how I know the new master plan for our EL work that was presented a few weeks ago should,
I think we'll alter some of that. Yes, I would encourage everybody to spend time on that dashboard. Yeah. Only one observation and, I think, under priority seven where it talks about access to A to G courses, I think that's a wonderful idea, but I think we have to be a little more aggressive and move past access to implementation in each person's program, for a to g courses. Because if we wanna get to the place where we're actually making certain that all of our students are prepared for post high school education,
then what we have to do is not only just provide access, but also make sure that we implement in each person's program. In high school they call them low credit cards and that kind of thing but then, you know, we'll be able to figure that out I think. That's my only comment. I just want to relate something. I think a conversation we had in teaching and learning last week around the physics curriculum and it kind of relates to that because I think looking at how do we look back at, say, fourth grade math and science and looking kind of backwards planning so that all students are prepared for physics whether
they take that or not that they become that looking and I really do think it's looking back to like that fourth grade, and again, how do we build out in each of those the A to G subjects. Because I think agree. I think if not enough to just take the class, I think it's to really be, prepared for that. So, did you remind me? Anybody else? Director Williams. Just real quick. Priority seven, broad course of study. See, as as doctor, director Thompson has spoke about a through g, I I just think that we should have a separate bullet for career technical ed.
That is a specific skill set, and, we need to really highlight that. Although there is link learning pathways, it's it's yeah. It's a little different than actually, specifically, career, vocational classes that are that are needed. And often, a lot of time, the Linked learning pathways don't actually include that option. They have other service type careers, but an actual, skill set, a hands on skill is not necessarily included in, like,
learning pathways. So I I would like to see that we actually specifically carve out a space for our young folks. Not all of the folks are going to college. They should have a college education regard I mean, a college experience regardless. But, we should be very, we should make sure that the options are there for them to actually transition to a career, especially, you know, a career that can include, electrician, construction, and and other hands on professions. Thank you. I'm actually going to play, a little devil's advocate on that and then I'm sorry.
I think that preparing students for A to G courses is important. I think having the opportunity to choose what you want to take after you're and I agree. I mean, I think the trades are, you know but I also know that the trades require some BIF certification. And I think those critical thinking skills that students will get in A to G, in many A to G classes and that broad kind of scope, I think really does prepare I mean, we have to prepare our students for the certification product and the ongoing certification progress
as well. So, I know there are people who know way a lot more than I do about that process, but, yeah. And just real quick, the governor, Governor Newsom actually, introduced a framework for career technical ed starting in middle school. So he actually they're building this out over the next twenty first century, where actually there are schools that are starting to implement it. And not after you graduate, but actually in middle school. So I just think that there's a conversation there that we haven't fully dove into that would see how we best reflecting or or providing opportunities for our young folks.
Thank you. Gary. Yeah. I was just going to thank Diana for the presentation. I also wanted Diana to name that we should connect on the prioritizing student outcomes policy because it would be great to make sure that the work we do on that policy reflects potential uses of the dashboard. I took, I went to a webinar on the dashboard, and it was it was it was not only interesting, but it was instructive, just like playing around with the data. And I think there's,
like, the practice of looking at data, responding to it, and integrating it into strategy that I think we need to begin adopting, just as a board and how we engage with the the topics that we explore. So I'm excited to include that in a future conversation with you. Thank you. I can see that doctor Aguilera has her hand up. Yes. He's actually referring to the comment that director Thompson made. I just wanted to offer the clarification that, most of our courses are already A to G,
or already meeting the requirement of A to G. So it's more about, that kids are passing those courses and that we have updated courses. And we can, be sure to include that with, just a clarification or the question that doctor Thompson, asked to say, these are the number of courses that are already meeting ADG requirements. So it's more about students passing those, those courses and us having, our courses updated. It's it's not so much that they're not programmed to have certain classes.
That's a different topic if we're talking more about our AP, courses. So just wanted to offer that clarification because it can get kind of confusing, but most of our courses have already been updated and are in alignment with UC requirements and therefore, I mean, A to G requirements. And Thank you, Ms. Sherman. Appreciate the comments. Thank you, Ms. Sherman. Appreciate the report. And we will move on to the adoption of S let's see, S2 chemistry adoption, S3 physics adoption, S4 Chinese world adoption. I would like to, take these up as one item and recorded separately.
Is there a motion to adopt? So moved. Second. And are there any public comments on this? No public comment. K. K. And are there any board comments on any of them? Okay. Miss I had a question that I'm not sure, who can answer. So for the Chinese word languages, that were Is it specifically Cantonese or Mandarin, or is it a combination? We can answer that from a teaching and learning committee. Oakland Tech has Mandarin and Oakland High has Cantonese. And they're using the same book. Oh, I'm I'm really excited about that because I know that we have a large speaking
large Cantonese speaking community here in Oakland. So thank you. Mister Raikstra, can we take the roll call vote, please? Yes. On the roll call to adopt s, dot dash 2, SDotDash3, and SDotDash4 and record them separately, student directors are absent. Director Lauter? Yes. Director Williams? Yes. Director Hutchinson? Absent. Director Berry? Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president Bachelor? Yes. And president Brogaard? Yes. Motion is adopted. Thank you. We now have S5, which is declaring an emergency and authorizing District staff to enter into contracts for emergency
construction services for the repair of dangerous conditions at various sites via demolition. I believe Preston Thomas has a short presentation. We need a motion. We need a motion to adopt. So moved. Second. And President Brohart, we would also like to, amend as staff, amend the language, just to for clarification purposes and that can be placed on the screen. Yes. The clarification is just highlighted there in yellow. And the remainder of the resolution would remain as, in the record. Was there an additional clarification around one of the Where As's?
Just, there may have been a typo that has hit one site that should be Hillside and that can be corrected in the record. Great. Thank you. Okay. Good evening, board. Preston Thomas, the Chief Systems and Services Officer. The resolution that you see before you is a resolution addressed throughout the summer some of the significant issues that are happening across our site. We've been hearing it through public comment. You've been hearing it at the facilities committee where we've been talking about some of the situations at three campuses and I'll name them. Second Avenue, which is right behind us that has two buildings, 1025, the Paul Robeson Building,
and the second building is the Moore Building, the Ralph Bunch Campus, that is and the Hillside Campus and that was the correction that was that sits on the Castlemont Campus. We've seen significant vandalism, fires, and encampments in some of these places. And what this resolution will allow us to do is address these as if they're as an emergency, and it would allow us to go out and start doing some of the bids and contracting to secure these buildings. And in some cases where they are red tagged or damaged, that we could actually demolish the buildings.
So what this would be doing is we'd have allowing staff to move forward through the summer to address these issues across those spaces. And is there any public comment here on the order for you? Yes. We have Carol Dilton, and Carol Dilton, Asawa Bala and Zack Alexander. Hi. I'm Carol Dalton. I wanna say that I very much support the substance of this, resolution, and I understand the emergent circumstances with a month in which the Board won't be
meeting. I'm also very glad to have heard from Mr. Raikstra some of the parameters around what is required and it's a lot in terms of what types of contracts must be voted on. What concerned me more was this sort of blank check look to this before I read all the fine print. So I was very glad to see that there is a monetary limit and there is a statement that staff will adhere to the usual process as much
as possible. I just want to call out that some of the additional money within the app that's stated there is taken from, according to these papers, projects to install solar. And that really points to how within the district there are competing needs and that's very understandable and that need would also potentially be a revenue generating issue. So I know that,
Mr. Thomas is terrific at finding money and alternative funding sources and I hope that solar is with them and I hope that these demolitions are able to be carried out safely with qualified personnel under the budget cap that's stated. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker please. Hi, my name is Zach Alexander. I live in West Oakland across from the Ralph Bunche School. And to be clear, I think this is
not where the Ralph Bunche School actually meets. It's the abandoned campus on Eighteenth Street. I don't think anyone's met there for years. So I can't speak to the money, I can't speak to the other facilities, but I very much support this motion in regard to the Ralph Bunche School. It's about 10 times worse than the memo suggests. The memo mentions two fires last year. We've seen seven fires this year just at Ralph Bunche. I can show you a video from two nights ago, and I can give you a list of
fires. We had a fire December 26, February 10, February 18, April 12, May 13. I think I actually e mailed some video to Director Williams after that one. And then June 17, June 22, June 23, and I'm afraid what I'll find when I go home tonight. We're kind of on a first name basis with the fire department. And we're just worried what will happen. My building is right across from it. If there's a windy day, you could imagine fire crossing the road. The the the school is adjacent to the West Oakland Public Library.
You you could easily imagine that getting burned down or the Oakland Auto Parts store. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any other speakers? Madam President, all names for this item have been called. Okay. Board comments? Director Berry? Yes. So I was excited that this resolution was coming forth. One, because it's a direct response to something we all engaged with community about several board meetings ago. The risk continues. The dangers continue. And so I appreciate that we're taking it seriously.
I was also excited because, maybe little known fact, but I'm a strong advocate for some of the conversations around us developing a a site for housing and services for transition age youth at ten twenty five. And I was excited because this was an opportunity for us not to to address the emergency situation, but for us to also put forth in motion work that as a board was agreed on back in 2022 when Amy Ng and director Thompson authored a board resolution
related to doing demolition at 10/25 and developing the TAHUB. So my I wanna state this for the record. My concern is that now this resolution as written, because of what I see in the memo, there's additional work that needs to happen before we can sort of, like, green light demolition at that site, that there may not be funds available left in Y or elsewhere to initiate demolition at 10:25. So I wanna make sure that we prioritize that,
not just because of the emergency situation, which is definitely the most urgent thing in front of us, but because there's, like, a lot of work that could have been happening over the last three years that hasn't been put in motion yet. And I think it's really important for us to take it seriously. So I'm eager to get to the next steps thereafter, or or after tonight on that. So I just wanted to name that. And if you wanna respond to that, you're welcome to. Yes. Zach, thank you very much. I wanna make sure you said you was on a first name basis with the fire department. I want you to meet Preston,
so you'll be on a first name basis with Preston as well. Most definitely, he's our facilities guy. He's coming up with the plans. He's putting out security. Preston, do you have a card for him? Is there I I will I will make sure. We're talking about getting security over there and really taking care of it. And, I'll make sure we stay all connected. Thank you very much for, sharing. And, I I from the bottom of my heart, I've been by there multiple times. I've talked to Preston, you know, and we've coordinated. He's done a lot of work in District three,
and I appreciate the work that he's done with our eight schools, facilities wise. And the the challenge we've always had was, just trying to find the funds to actually do the specific work and get it contracted out. But it looks like now we finally got it here, and we're gonna move forward. But I will connect you two so you'll have first name basis with Preston. Thank you. Thank you, my friend. And director Preston. Thank you. So I am very excited about, these three properties, getting demoed. I will just say none of them are in District 6.
And we do have a property in District 6, Edward Shands, that my constituents have continuously reached out to me. Similar videos, similar situation. Can you just, for the record, talk a little bit about why, we can't do much about that as a school district at the moment? Madam vice president, I think that it would be great to agendize that specific property, but it would be outside of the scope. I think that's why our parliamentarian is waving both hands in the air. Can you tell us the difference between this these properties and Edward Shands?
It's just one word. Groundly. How about I just answer that, to spare, question. So we do we are currently in a ground lease for the Edward Shannon support. Thank you. So yes. Appreciate the work that's happening, but I also wanna just reiterate, what, Director Berry was also saying. I think that, you know, I wish we could go back in time and actually have demolished these sites and have had actual plans for these sites so that they could be activated spaces for our community. But we are where we're at. And these buildings have been crumbling,
some for ten years or so and others for a shorter amount of time, but they are crumbling. And so I'm glad that we're doing something about it now, but I do really want to encourage us and push us to figure out what to do with these 10 sites. If we are to do any sort of other consolidations or closures or mergers, we are then gonna have even more sites that we need to take care of. So we really, as I always tell folks, we need to do our laundry first before we start taking out new shirts. So, I want to make sure that, that all three of those properties get handled. Can you talk a little bit about, though,
why 1025 may not be able to be demolished within the summer and why it needs that carve out? Definitely. Thank you for the question. There's a time frame and certain things that have to happen in the process of demolishing or addressing even to get prepared to demolish it, which requires like hazmat testing and different types of testing. Given that there is an encampment within the building, there are certain limitations on what we can do within the building immediately and so we will be able to do some of that testing over the window of the summer, but that's as far as we'll be able to get under the emergency resolution and
then the Board will come back into session and then we'll be able to bring further items in utilizing the public contracting code appropriately around how we're gonna dispose of other properties. And and that also aligns with some of the work the board has been doing around the asset management and feasibility studies around how we're gonna utilize those properties. It also is a historical building. Yes. So just one last question. So from that information, we will know if these buildings are actually inhabitable and whether or not we could rehab them and or we have to get rid of them completely.
Is that correct? That is correct. Thank you. Again, I'm glad to see ten twenty five on this list. You know, I've been calling you regularly about this. I do I think, again, for this community, La Escuelita, Dewey, MetWest and the CDCs, this has been a real not just an eyesore but a very dangerous situation for our students. So I appreciate the work moving forward and I appreciate the work of Director Thompson and Director Berry in really formalizing the, need for the CTE TAEHOPE.
So thank you. Director Hutchinson. Yeah. Thank you. Facilities is kind of like the budget for this board. There's just really a lack of understanding of the historical context and also the laws that apply. And so one of the things that makes Edward Shands very different than all of these other properties is it actually went through a seven '11 process and was declared surplus. So what the board could have done is torn up a lease and actually immediately put out an RFP for a TAHUB there or for housing if that's what people wanted because that's the one property that's actually been cleared to do that.
But unfortunately, that's not the kind of actions this board takes. And it would be extremely inappropriate and illegal to demolish Second Avenue in our buildings across the street. After just in March, the board voted not to do that and to instead use those dollars for lead remediation. And there are strict laws that apply to our public property. And, you know, just in my time on this board now, we've watched, bunch go from a school that was inhabited to having a chemical leak underground. So those students were sent some to another school site.
Then the pandemic happened. And now the site has been infested and now is in ruin. That's all happened in the term of the current school board director for District 3. And so to put some of these things into an abstract blame on somebody else and woe is me, just isn't accurate and at this point is offensive. This is another thing we were supposed to have votes this month, as you know, Mr. Thomas, around re envisioning our footprint. And it was gonna be based on also the work from the master's facilities plan. And so our stated plan for over a year as a board and as a
district is this month we were gonna be voting on those very recommendations that should have answered a lot of these questions. But instead, this board has thrown out that work and now we're back into this mess again. And so, just so the board knows as they sigh and yawn while I'm speaking, they can't just dispose of our properties any which way. And until they go through a seven eleven process, they can't be sold or leased. And the only exemption to that is Prop 39 and charter schools. And so what this board leadership could have done is start a seven eleven process
and do things legally, but they refuse to do that. And just lastly, with what's happened over the last, twelve months, there are now certain groups that it would be illegal if they ever wound up with our properties because they had access behind closed doors to move them to the front of the line. And so when a developer gets brought to a board meeting, if they're ever awarded that property afterwards, there's gonna be some real legal questions. Same with the CTE TAHUB, which former director Sam Davis was a member of that committee and met with them and helped form it.
And then we had meetings behind closed doors. So I'm disappointed Edward Shands isn't back in our control, and some people could have used it for the plans that they like to talk about. I'm very happy that Tilden is back and will be now included as part of the campus. But we need to secure all of our properties. We should have done that a long time ago as a board, and that's entirely separate than demolishing our public land, which belongs to all of us. Thank you. And, Mr. Thomas, I appreciate your work this year and I appreciate our conversations. Mr. Raikstra, can did you Yes.
I just want to say my hand gestures, a few minutes ago was in relation to the Brown Act, not otherwise denying any board member information. Just wanna make sure we remain legally compliant. On the, roll call direct and this requires five affirmative votes. Director Latta? Yes. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? No. Director Berry? Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Vice President Batchelor? Yes. And President Brothard? Yes. Motion is adopted. Thank you. Next on the agenda is item S6,
which is the application for provisional internship permit, California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, named employees for school year twenty twenty five-twenty six. Do we have a motion to approve this? So moved. Second. And is there any public comment? Director Bachelor moved it and Director Alada. Alada. Okay. All right. And is there any public comment? No public comment. Thank you. Is there any Board comment? K. Mister Reykstra, can we have a roll call and vote? On the roll call to adopt s dot dash six, director Thompson? Director Thompson? Yes. K.
Director Berry? Yes. Director Hutchinson? Yes. Director, Williams? Yes, sir. Director Latta? Yes. Vice president Boeschler? Yes. And president Breaux Hart? Yes. Motion is adopted. Thank you. There is no superintendent's report. I do not have a president's report. Are there any board reports? Director Hutchinson and Director Berry. Thank you. You know, I spent the last few days, actually tearing up almost every day with what's happened to our district after all of the hard work. And, when I started off this the beginning of this school year,
I could have never imagined that we'd wind up here. And so now the board work plan that we agreed to do this school year, nothing's been done. And I know that there's probably not a director on the Board who could even mention any of the items that were in that work plan. The superintendent's work plan wasn't completed and actually the superintendent is not even here anymore. And now with the approval of this budget, OUSD is now bankrupt. All of this happened in six months. It's much like what happened to San Francisco two years ago, where in six months they tanked their budget.
And the level of concern and the level of seriousness and the level of experience and expertise up here is shocking. I'm used to these folks laughing and talking while I speak. I'm used to the personal disrespect from them. But I also know that as the only Oakland native on the board, that how they treat me is indicative of how they feel about the community and how they treat all of us. And, I know most of them don't even realize what they've done, which is the scary part. But now what we just heard today, we're back in the period where we are in a cycle of mid year budget
cuts. We are in a cycle of our facilities being in disarray and having no plan. We violated our strategic plan, our fiscal sustainability commitments, and the three R's resolution, just like we violated Superintendent Johnson Trammell's contract. And the saddest part about everything is we're actually leaving receivership in less than a week after twenty two years. When we first got word we were leaving receivership, the state, the county, and the district, we were all planning to have separate celebrations to celebrate this historic event.
Now here we are after the last three months, nobody's celebrating anything, nobody's talking about it, because this sure doesn't feel like we're finally getting free after twenty two years. It wasn't supposed to be this way. To see that there were only six people here for budget adoption today shows what a problem we have. The fact that even the unions didn't come to weigh in on the contract. That should really set off alarms that the fix is in. Why would this school board and the union support a contract or support a budget that that doesn't have any room to negotiate anything further.
Two years ago, they tried to force an intentional strike. It's happening again. So this is no holds barred. I'm gonna spend the next six weeks talking about what they've done, their criminal activity, and how they've been operating under a conflict of interest. And when we come back in August, if we're able to open our schools, I anticipate this room being full because we know that nothing will change or get better until we change this school board. Most depressing meeting I've ever had at an Oakland school board meeting and I was here when they closed my schools. Thank you.
Director Lotta? Yeah. I just wanted to take, this opportunity to just, share that tomorrow we're, we'll be having our last Charter Matters Committee meeting, of the school year, and we'll be, the I I'll say this tomorrow, but I just wanna give a quick shout out to, the Office of Charter Schools. They actually just presented, to, the California Charter School Authorizers Conference, where they actually were teaching other districts, their like, the best practices that they've, developed here, to, over you know, authorize charters. So, I'll I'll again, I'll I'll shout them out in person, but I just wanna say it here.
The other thing that we'll be talking about is we have six, charter renewals coming up this fall. And one thing that is on the agenda for tomorrow is, some proposals about how we could, streamline and make our, board question, process, somewhat more, streamlined, because, you know, I think we have an as authorizers, important duties to ask hard questions but also, finding ways that we can get those answers into the public record and, and have them be aligned with renewal criteria. So, I look forward to the conversation and, thank you all. Thank you. Director Berry? Director Lotta made Charter School Matters sound fun,
so I will not be going, but that was a commercial. I just wanted to say that my dates for summer open, I mean, office hours are the nineteenth. So similar as usual, third Saturday. But I will also be convening on the fourth Saturday of the month. That's the twenty sixth. And then there will also be both morning and evening office hours offered on Wednesday, the thirtieth. And I'll post specific times and locations on the Instagram that I never use but will use for this purpose. And then I also because it came up earlier this afternoon or evening,
some point during the meeting today, I wanted to speak on some of the sort of, like, challenges around anti blackness at Fremont High School. And I just wanted to name that when I go to Fremont High, you can feel, you know, the positive energy of the school. And that is a consequence of leadership. And the principal there, principal bias works really hard on that. And the there are some challenges, but the community there is actively addressing it.
So because this came up and was a question, they I think as with many things like this, this is going to be a unifying experience that is gonna leave us, not just Fremont, but the district stronger and better. There's a a a community of educators, of leaders, of OUSD staff coming together to create a plan. And I'm excited to sort of, like, see that work evolve and track. And, if it seems appropriate or beneficial to the community, there's probably an opportunity for us to do some, like, sharing around what's happening there. Because I know that Fremont's not the only school that is seeing and experiencing some
of these things. And particularly at the in the the environment we are all living in right now, I think we need more stories of success and creative solutions. So I'm excited to lift those up. Thank you. Madam president, if we're going to go another three minutes, we will need we now need a motion to extend. It will it it'll be thirty seconds. Yeah. I'm timing. Go ahead. Once again, I just want to reaffirm my commitment to doctor Sadler. Thank you very much for taking on this tall task. Really look forward to having monthly meetings with you and supporting the work that you
would like to, do. Have supreme confidence in the years of leadership experience at multiple institutions, to really bring us together. I think that is something that will, definitely be needed as we move into the school year And definitely want to, congratulate you and your chief of staff as well. That has been, confirmed as well. Dan, we look forward to working with you, and have many conversations. I've heard none but good things, about you, and so look forward to,
really diving into this. I think all of us Oh, and I'm jumping off right now. Thank you very much. Okay. And with that, there's no new legislation. We are adjourned.