OUSD Board Of Education
Wednesday, March 25, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Wednesday, March 25, 2026 at 4:00 PM
Good afternoon, and welcome to the March 25 Oakland Unified School District Board of Education meeting. Mister Reichstroh, can we have roll call to establish quorum, please?
On the roll call to establish quorum, student director Simmons, student director Smith, director Lauder.
Present.
Director Williams, director Hutchinson, director Barry. Present. Director Thompson. Present. Vice president Bachelor.
Here.
And president Brohardt?
Here.
Quorum present.
Thank you. And mister Hollis, can we have a interpretation check, please? Uh-huh.
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 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 being announced, which at this time is Cantonese. And I will ask Cantonese. So
you'll find
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 on Zoom. Please only raise your hand if need the language being announced, which at this time is Arabic.
And I will ask miss Abdi if she can come off of mute and give the interpretation announcement for Arabic. 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 Spanish.
I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom. Please only raise your hand if you need the language being announced at this time, which is Spanish. And I will ask mister Delatorre if you can come off of mute and give the interpretation announcement for Spanish.
Yes. Thank you, mister Spanish is done, mister Hollis. Thank you.
Thank you, mister Della Torre. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for a Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not start with any interpretation at this time. That concludes the first interpretation announcement for this evening. There will be more later on this meeting, and I pass it back to you, mister Brickstraw.
Madam president, the first, interpretation availability announcement has been completed.
Thank you. Tonight in closed session, we will discuss the following items. Labor matters, d one twenty five dash eighteen sixty four, conference with labor negotiators. Legal matters, d two twenty five dash twenty six eighty two, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. Item d three, twenty six dash zero two one, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation.
D four, twenty six dash zero six four zero, conference with legal counsel, anticipated legal litigation. D five twenty six dash zero seven zero three, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. Under public employment, item d six, twenty four dash one nine six seven, public employment, superintendent of schools. Under pupil matters, d seven, twenty six dash zero six six one, expulsion, student SS. D825Dash0990, readmission, student s.
And we will reconvene to public session at 05:30. We now have public comment on closed session items. Do we have any public speakers?
Yes, we do, President Berardi. Have eight speakers.
Two minutes each.
Noted. The the eight speakers are JBL, Tanya Kapter, Benjamin Kukuujevic, Gianni P, Tia Johnson, Adarine Houge, Asalo Lobala, and Jose A. Those are the eight speakers.
If you heard your name called, if you could line up on the dais. And if there are students, we'll let the students go first.
Hi. My name is Tia, and I am inside the fifth grade, and miss Donna has been really helpful to us. And she's been getting stuff for us, and whenever somebody is being mean to someone, she sticks up for the person, and she asks for an apology or sends them to the principal's office if they're being really bad and being really disrespectful. And that's why I want missus Donna to stay. And this is my a friend of mine's letter.
She wanted me to read it for her. The reason why I want miss Darn to stay because she's because she is really kind and cares for us, and she's and she knows all of us, and it will be very sad to see her go. She's she looks out for us in every way, and when times are hard, she's always there for us. She's very helpful and not and nice, and she she she has empathy for all of us, and we all love miss Donna. And there's this another person's.
This is another of my friends who want me to read this. I am speaking out for miss Donna because she is keeping us safe. She gives us Gatorade when it is hot, and she cares about us super much.
Hi. My name is Gianni Pethel. I am here to speak about the cut made to Donna Jackson's noon supervisor position. I am Donna oh, dang it. I am Donna Jackson's adopted son.
The students and staff have grown a deep bond with Donna Jackson, and she is the familiar face students look up for in times of, need, bad problems, or injuries. My grandma is my hero. If not for her, I would be living with somebody I hate. She saved me, raised me, and has helped me for the past eleven years, and I'm grateful. Please consider letting her stay full time so she doesn't have to transfer to a different school.
Think about the kids, not the money.
Hi, my name is Aderene Hogue. I'm a resource teacher at La Esquilita. I'm an alternate rep for OEA and I'm a member of Eon Bam Caucus. And we have over 150 parents, students, and staff that have signed the petition to maintain a full day noon supervisor at our school, and I'd like to read from that petition now. Reverse the cuts.
Miss Donna must stay. OUSD's most recent round of budget cuts has slashed Las Guelita's new supervisor position by 50% starting in the fall. This cut will jeopardize children's safety at Las Guelita during outdoor playtime by reducing the staff to student ratio and effectively forces out La Esquilita's current noon supervisor of many years, miss Donna. Miss Donna's commitment to our school is evidenced by her recent statement in defense of her of her position to the Oakland School Board. My name is Donna Jackson.
I have worked as noon supervisor here at La Esqualeida for nearly five years. I truly love my job. I show up ready to provide the safety and support our students need while on the yard and during lunch. I take that responsibility very seriously. I am here for the kids.
They are my priority, and they know it. They come to me when they are hurt, frustrated, or simply need someone to stand beside them. For many students, noon supervisors are the adults they see most consistently outside of the classroom. I love the noise of a busy school, the quick hugs and high fives. I love being part of this community.
Students, staff, and families recognize and support miss Donna as an irreplaceable part of La Esquilita's school community. La Esquilita students should not have to lose miss Donna to another school elsewhere when she is a loved and trusted adult that knows each student by name and how to support them best. Therefore, we, the undersigned, demand Donna Jackson stay in her current position at as noon supervisor at La Esqualeida with her current hours, and any cuts made to vital student services at La Esqualeida or any other Oakland school be reversed immediately.
Hello, my name is Jose, and I'm a member of the Equal Opportunity Now, By Any Means Necessary caucus, and an ex teacher assistant in the Skyline High School Newcomer Learning Program. And I stand here with the students and the community members and the teachers in calling for to keep miss Donna in her position as new supervisor here at Lesquelita. Just like it happened with my position at Skyline. These types of cuts do not stabilize or fix the problems, the financial problems of the district, but do create chaos and instability in students' life. In a period of crisis and uncertainty, our students need stability and continual support more than anything.
That is what Ms. Donna provides for her school, and it's clear in the statements of students when they talk about her and the faculty at the school as well. She's a familiar face. She's someone that students can rely on for support. Again, this decision does not solve the problems of the district, but will take away a valuable and loved member of this community.
Once again, please keep miss Donna here at Les Cualita. Thank you.
Mark Ergood. I'm a a teacher at the virtual, school Sojourner Truth and, Eon Bam. The case here of miss Donna, I fully support keeping miss Donna in her position. It makes so much difference to the students. She's been there for a long time, and they know each other.
I mean, that's part of education, knowing each other, trusting each other. Miss Donna has that. The cuts like miss Donna's are part of Trump's attack on public education. Trump is absolutely hated. His war is hated.
But as long as we have the the program of attacking public schools still going forward, even under school boards, which I'm I'm I'm gonna guess most of you can't stand Trump. But if we still have that program going forward, he is he is one. He has gained more for his fascist side than he than he there's any right he should. So I really call on the board to stand up, not transfer miss Donna, and also take a position against the cuts. Thank you.
I, I first wanna address, I see students coming to speak at meetings. When I was teaching, whenever students participated in anything, it had to be proven that parental consent was given for that participation. So my question is, when students are coming to speak here, is it a policy that you require parental approval for them to speak? I don't know. And I see things like, students being transported and personal vehicles.
That's that's a that was a no no. And other issues where what are the perimeters where anything that goes on in this district requires parental consent. The lawsuit of the Oakland Jewish Alliance, I don't know what happened, but you were notified that the state officially found you guilty of discrimination of some of our Jewish community. Why have you not enforced it and why is it at the point that you're being sued for not enforcing whatever was required? There should be no I I don't know.
I don't know what's going on with that, but we shouldn't be in a position of a lawsuit. Expulsion of students continue to uplift. We should embrace the opportunity that you do have to fully educate expelled students. You you you were doing it with the community, day school. Why you gave it up?
I don't know. Readmission of students. You are required to have a plan. Somebody in this district has the responsibility of the plan to come back into the district. And what's gonna happen?
Where are we gonna place these students? I was at a school yesterday, an alternative school. Not gonna say the name because I don't wanna get them in trouble. But they say they have the capacity to take on alternative schools. That that they're under that umbrella.
OUSD alternative school.
Good afternoon. You probably already know me, many of you guys. Great to see you all. I just wanna flag few stuff and some of them that it's really matter to all of us here. As you all know, we already started the building trade constant strategy bargaining.
We had a couple of sessions so far. There is not much movement. We understand why, the fiscal issue that we have, but our contract expires in June 30. So all the contract doesn't make sound really good to be without it. We already put some monetary proposals on it, and that's when I say monetary, it's really minor stuff.
We didn't even wanna expose everything yet because we know the situation that we're going facing to it. And I hope so that you guys seen it, what's going on, and that you can kind of do a little bit better, not forget about building trade councils as we are maintaining all these buildings and maintaining all these structures for the kids of Auckland. I'm not gonna say much about it. I'm holding I'm not gonna hold you accountable for anything. I just want you to be open minded, transparent with us, and look deep into these bargaining tables that we have, and give authority for the people that are sitting across the table with us.
Because last time we didn't have that, and we're negotiating for the same stuff that I already presented four years ago. I don't want that happening again. The next thing is safety. I already had a meeting with superintendent yesterday, and this is the first one since I've been here in four years, and probably only one since my chief steward position I am, but also predecessor before me that never had those meetings before. Safety is a huge issue here.
I already know. I already flagged that up. The Elmhurst School site was shooting a few days ago. We didn't get any crisis go. Before that, three weeks ago, it was a King of State, same thing.
A King of State is one of the school that my brother, carpenter, get shot and later on died, couple of them. The next thing happened this morning was Emerson issue with the custodian getting attacked during the burglary, and that's something that needs to be stopped. The safety here, it's a priority not just about students, it's about community safety, about staff, and everybody else involving. This, we need to look deeper into it. I had a meeting today with the safety director, and we need to figure this out.
How to stop if there is a matter of calling one number and it's only one person assigned, we need to train more because relying on one person and it is our principal, it doesn't affect anything. I also ask for the have the phones for my building ground members. So we are the first one at those sites. If we have that access with the OSD phones, with many of us using our personal phones, it's a use for a business of district. Many people don't want to do it because that's not their business.
It's a common sense. So we need to figure that another thing out. It's really things that we need to look deeply. We are for the kids here. And when I say I really mean it, so we need to figure this proactively to stop this happening.
And this is not a first time that we didn't get alerted. That for the last one at King Estates, my members came to the school sites, every teacher and the students on the floor. They had no idea what's going on. So please look deeply into these resolving issues with the bargaining teams, with the budgeting, with everything else because they can't cut us anymore. I'm losing members' retirements that can't be replenished anymore.
And we're getting more and more stuff on our backs. Myself, I have 20 schools under my name to maintain in a week. I have no idea how I'm doing it, but I'm still doing this, what I'm doing right now in front of you, plus I do my work. So we need to look deeply into hiring more. I already flagged that we are understaffed.
So many departments are for two person. Fire alarm, intrusion alarm that's happened right now. It's only two people for the whole district, and one of them pretty soon leaving, is retiring. So I don't know how we're gonna continue this. Hiring the AI cameras that rely on it, which does happen at Emerson.
AI cameras has a security without intrusion. It doesn't make any sense. You need to have a somebody other alert system, not just one. Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm president Bruhard. We do have online speaker, Tanya Kaplan. Go ahead and unmute yourself to speak, please.
Yes, hello. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you.
Hello. Okay. I'm Tanya Kappner. I'm with the Equal Opportunity Now, By Any Means Necessary Teachers Caucus and a rep for Sojourner Truth Middle School Online. I am speaking against the cuts and the layoffs to Oakland Education Association, to the Service Employees Union, to AFSME.
I am speaking demanding that the school board reverse the cuts. We need noon supervisors. We need people like Ms. Donna who work with our students and keep our students safe. We need our conflict resolution.
We need our teachers. We need our staff that works for literacy tutors like at my school. We need to fight these cuts. I do not accept any of these cuts. You need to reverse them.
It is an outrage that our East Oakland and West Oakland schools are primarily black and Latino schools are facing the worst of it. Why should the Flatlands be getting this? Why should Frick Middle School have nine layoffs? This is absolutely unacceptable. This is a violation of the basic right to education.
And what this school board should be doing instead of trading cuts for salary, this school board needs to be fighting for the money for our schools, needs to be standing up, demanding that Newsom deliver the Prop 98 money to the schools, fighting for Prop 55, but also refusing to pay back money that we should not be owed to the state of California. We have the right as Oakland to democracy. We need to stand up against the attacks on democracy and the attacks on public education. I call on this school board to take on Donald Trump and the attacks on public education instead of implementing these devastating cuts that equal such inequity for our students and our schools. Reverse the cuts.
No, we should not have classified cuts. No, we should not have certificated cuts. You don't have to do this. Stand up and fight and we will fight with you. The teachers, the parents, the students, the classified workers, all our employees will stand together against the cuts if you fight for the money.
That's what you need to do. As you go into closed session, stand up against these cuts, reverse them, understand what this means for our students' education. We will keep fighting and building this movement until you do. You need to do this now, or you will be facing the entire communication. Mean, the entire community.
Thank you.
Thank you. And with that, we will re go into closed session, and we will reconvene at 05:30. If we could have all board directors at the dais so we can establish quorum. One more door board director, and we have quorum. Who will that one more be?
Are needed. Oh, very much.
Good job. Thanks. And mister Seichou, can you call the roll call to establish quorum, please?
Yes. On the second roll call to establish quorum, student director Simmons, Student Director Smith, Director Lada? Present. Director Williams?
Present, sir.
Director Hutchinson? Director Berry.
Present.
Director Thompson.
Present.
Vice vice president Bachelor. And president Brujahr. Here. Colon, present.
And mister Hollis, can we have a interpretation check, please?
Yes, madam president. For tonight's meeting, we have three languages available for live interpretation. They are Cantonese, Arabic, Spanish. We also have a translation closed caption feature available on Zoom that you can use by clicking the closed caption feature closed caption icon 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 language being announced at this time, which is Cantonese. And I will ask Ms. Ho if she can come off of mute and give the interpretation announcement for Cantonese.
The Cantonese announcement is done, mister Hollis.
Thank you, miss Ho. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Cantonese interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we will 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 being announced at this time, which is Arabic. And I will ask mister Tarek if he can come off of mute and make the interpretation announcement for Arabic.
Thank you.
Thank you, mister Tarek. 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 Spanish. I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom.
Please only raise your hand if you need the language being announced at this time, which is Spanish. And I will ask mister Delatorre if he can come off on mute and get the translation announcement for Spanish.
Yes. Thank you, mister Harris. Spanish interpretation is done.
Thank you, mister Dela Torre. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not have any interpretation at this time. That concludes our second announcement for live interpretation. And with that, I will pass it back to you, madam president.
Thank you. I'd like to welcome everybody to the meeting. At tonight's meeting, there are several allotted times where you may make public comments, provided you preregistered to speak online before the meeting started, or 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. There will be time after adoption of the pupil discipline consent report, the student board members report, parent student advisory committee report, the superintendent's report, the adoption of the general consent report, the adoption of the general consent report facilities, all non agenda items within the subject matter jurisdiction of the board, under new business under the 2026 facilities master plan, first read, under the twenty twenty five twenty six home to school transportation plan for pupils, under the application for provisional internship permit, California Commission on Teacher Credentialing named employees for school year twenty twenty five twenty six, After the declaration of the need for fully qualified educators, school year twenty twenty six twenty seven, and after the application for local assignment option permit California Commission on Teacher Credentialing named employee for the school year twenty twenty five twenty six.
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 that all speakers keep their comments to the scope of the item. If a speaker speaks to a different item, the chair will need to ask that the speaker either speak to the item or hold their comments until the appropriate public comment period. I would ask that my fellow board members help and support me in this regard. If you don't get a chance to speak during public comment, I want to encourage you to use the e comments feature via Legislative Information Center on the OUSD website.
And of course, you can also email board members directly using this format, firstname.lastname@ousd.org. For the report out of closed session, 03/25/2026, labor matters, item d one number 25 dash eighteen sixty four, conference with labor negotiators, the board discussed this matter. Under legal matters, on item d two number 25 dash two six eight two, conference with legal counsel existing litigation, the board discussed this matter. On item d three twenty six zero two one, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, the board approved a settlement in this matter with a motion made by director Lotta and seconded by director Thompson with a vote in favor, five to nothing, with one, director absent. On item d four, number 26 dash six four zero, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, the board approved a settlement in this matter, the motion made by director Lotta and seconded by director Thompson with a vote of six to zero, with one director absent.
On item d five, number 26 dash zero seven zero three, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, the board discussed this matter. On public employee matters on the number on item d six, number twenty four one nine six seven, superintendent of schools, the board did not discuss this matter. Pupil matters on items d seven through d eight. The board heard these matters and will vote on the matters in public in section I on the agenda. That is the end of the closed session report for 03/25/2026.
Are there any modifications to the agenda? I have one item, 61, is being pulled by the
staff. Withdrawn.
Withdrawn, sorry.
Yeah.
061 is a here, just a second. It's oh, I got it. Service agreement 2025Dash26, Oakland Public Education Fund MetWest High School. Thank you. K.
I would like to pull item o 22.
K. Okay. If there are no other matters, we will now take vote on the pupil consent. Is there a motion to adopt the pupil consent report? So moved.
Second. Mister Rakestar, can we have a roll call on the vote? Oh, mister Seche. Time to public comment and send.
For public comment, we have Sheila Haynes and Asado Labala.
I remember when I was teaching, I made the decision to take the most difficult children and be a part of their lives, and that was children who were at the brain stem stem level and who were being tube fed. Because everybody thought they didn't deserve to be in education. There was nothing you can do for them. And you need to be in that position. The greatest need students should be at the top of your list.
And one of the greatest need students are the students who have had the identification that they have been expelled from this district for whatever reason. Your mindset should be, we want them back and we're gonna do everything we can to support them to give them a chance to be as productive as they can. I don't get the feeling that you're doing that. When you make the decision to turn these kids over to and I forgot. I'm not supposed to use that word.
These young people over to Alameda County, and we never have an indication of we're gonna bring in and to discuss what they're doing. Is it appropriate? I don't see the plan. You're supposed to have a plan when you sit down and say, okay. This plan is gonna work.
This young person is gonna have the greatest opportunity to come back and be at the highest level of performance. So I will continue to speak to this until we make a decision to choose something better because I think at this point we are not doing the best we can, not only for the students who are being expelled but for the students who are returning. And where are they just thrown back into the school with no services or resources or support systems or intervention strategies or counseling or meeting with their parents or giving them some alternatives?
Thank you. Are there is there any more public comment?
For public comment on all registered name has been called.
Okay. Mister Reichstark, can we take a vote?
On the roll call to adopt this pool pupil discipline consent calendar. Student directors are absent and recused. Director Lauder?
Yes.
Director Hutchinson is absent. Director Barry?
Yes.
Director Thompson?
Yes.
Director Williams? Yes, sir. Vice president Bachelor?
Yes.
And president Brewer?
Yes.
Motion's adopted.
Thank you. The next item is the student report, and the students are unavailable tonight. I believe, director Smith is out ill. There is a packet of the report that's on the table, and, I would encourage people to take a look at that. The next item on the agenda is the PSAC report.
Clarification, Chair, is there still a need to take public comment on the student board reports?
Is there public comment on the school, on the student report?
Yes, president Bruhard. We have two speakers, Sheila Haynes and Marilla Jimenez.
Go to miss Haynes first.
Ms. Haynes currently is not online. Ms. Haynes is not online at the moment.
Okay. Let's take the next public speaker, please.
Hello. Good afternoon. For those of you who may not know me, I'm Maria de Jimenez. I graduated from Oakland Unity High School in 2024. I'm now a second year at UC Berkeley, but I'm here representing Families in Action for quality education.
I'm a youth organizer, and I just wanted to extend an invite to our Raise the Bar Awards, which we will be hosting tomorrow at Learning Without Limits from 05:30 to 07:30. We're gonna be celebrating 41 schools, both district and charter schools, who are just achieving an academic success for student outcomes. So you are all invited and welcome to come. I will send an email right after this public comment with more details and an RSVP, but yeah, we would love to have you there celebrating all these amazing schools and achievement in ELA, math, A through G, and just like to hear more about our students, from our students. It's student and parent led, they are all delegating and emceeing and facilitating this award ceremony, which is really amazing, and we also have a part of the ceremony where students will be sharing the work that they have been doing around A G.
So within our organization, we have been doing A G workshops at many different high schools. I think we've reached over 2,000 students this year. We've gone to schools like Oakland Unity High, Lionel Wilson, Oakland High, Oakland Tech, and so many other schools. So they're gonna be sharing their findings and overall work that they did in that sense. So yeah we were just it's just a really great celebration and you guys are all invited tomorrow like I said 05:37 thirty at learning without limits and yeah thank you so much
thank you are there any other speakers
For public comment, our name has been called.
Okay, thank you. Alright, the next item on the agenda is L, which is PSAC. Do you have other members coming later to present? We could actually if it's okay with the board, we could do m first, the labor partners.
I told them to arrive by six. It is, like, 05:50 whatever. 05:59. Apologies. We have one committee, but if there's a way to buy them a little time, I'll text We
can do that.
There's probably a parking.
Sorry. We'll we'll wait till they come. Are there any comments from our labor partners?
Good evening. I'll start off with good first. We have our contract. It is done by the end of probably Friday. It should be signed, sealed, delivered for all of our members to have in hand.
I want to thank our superintendent for that, for pushing that. I wanna thank you guys for putting them putting a fire up under them and Gia for making it happen. But I don't know if you were aware. Today, one of our members got attacked at a school, a custodian. She was attacked by someone who intruded the building.
There was no alarm that went off to let her know that it was someone in the building. Nothing. So that is something that we really, really, really need to look at because we're gonna have more people scared to go to work early in the morning if the alarms aren't doing what they're supposed to be doing. We're paying for them to do a job, and it could easily prevented this issue had she known someone was already in the building. So please put that on your, agendas to have done.
Please. Please. Please. My second thing is the cuts for food service. We have a list of cuts for food service, but we have six contractors that are being paid $6,000 each to teach us who's been working here ten plus years how to cook.
You're cutting jobs, but we're paying for someone to come and teach. That's what they put it under, teaching us how to cook food. So I need to know how that makes sense to us. How is it that we're cutting 10 of them, but we're paying six of them $6,000 each? Contractors.
So I'm bringing this to the board because it's a problem for my unit members. It's a problem here. The vendor, Broach, is still there. He's getting paid too because he works in custodial services. And Preston, who conveniently left.
You guys are paying him a lot of money. Yes. He does good in facilities, but in food services, he's draining it. It's going down the drain. It's not working.
I'm not taking away from what he does for facilities. Good job. I applaud all good work. But when it comes to facilities, it's been in the toilet. It's been terrible, and he keeps making bad decision after bad decision.
We sat down with him. We had an agreement that the green shirts were never to hit our food service kitchens. They agreed, and they lied. And then you took 10 of our positions. So I would like for you guys to come out.
And, of course, they're gonna be on their best behavior because you're there. But come out and bring one of us so we can tell you what's going on. We understand that there needs to be cuts. I'm not saying that there isn't, but don't do it on the backs of us. Don't do it on the backs of a contractor taking our job.
It's not lawful, and it's not okay. All we're asking to do is to go look at the budget. We we've said in custodial services, they have six on the on the roster that they're taking off. Okay. If you're taking off some, how do you give someone a raise?
If I take your job and I give you another job that costs more money, that gives you more money, that's not helping the district. It's harming the district. If I'm using old funds to fund two people because I like them, that's not helping the district. It's harming the district. So it's good to see somebody come and tell you what's going on.
It's better to know what's going on. So I'm not gonna tell you false narratives. I don't have a reason to. I wanna save my members. If some if something has to happen, we understand.
We're in a fight with you guys. We sit with the superintendent. We sit with the board. We sit with, Preston, but we we extend the hand. And once you lie and conveniently do it the way you wanna do it, that's when it becomes a problem because you're not doing it right.
I'm in decent and in order. And this is not decent, and this is not in order. So once again, facilities, he may get a gold star. But for food services, he is garbage.
Thank you. Are there any other labor comments?
That conclude the comment comments by collecting bargaining units.
Okay. Cynthia, are your Alright. PSEC is on.
You guys are so prompt today. I'm sorry about that. Hi there, I'm Matt Glaser, of the lead delegates from PSAC and I'm here to give our school report, or sorry, I'm here to give our report to the school board. I wanted to talk first, we don't, I guess we're not getting it
projected, okay.
I wanna talk a little bit about highlights from our last meeting and that was on March 18. There was a long discussion of the changes being taken place that are taking place in the academic division for the twenty six-twenty seven school year and we focused on elementary, middle and high school networks, as well as central teams that support literacy and STEM. And in discussing these reductions and other changes, we aim to understand them in the context of things that have not changed and also consider both the immediate impact and the opportunity to do things differently, as these changes keep going on. And most of the questions and discussion in the meeting focused on the various safety and violence prevention contracts, as well as partnerships that are managed by the academic division, and whether they form a cohesive strategy for all schools, especially in high schools. And there was a possible there was a lot of discussion of the possible overlap between different types of curriculum and between staff in different teams that support the use of curriculum.
And we also talked about if or how the process that happens after layoffs could keep staff working within OUSD in positions that reopen or elsewhere. And there was a discussion around what different position titles mean specifically in the network such as chief network superintendent, deputy network super deputy network superintendent, etcetera, and why the offices are structured with those specific, positions. You can find the entire presentation, at ousd.org/lcap, and thanks to those of you who were there. I really appreciate that. I also wanna discuss, we we did have a relatively, for PSAC, a big announcement, and it's actually, we think, very important announcement for the future of the district.
That's what we're calling right now the multi stakeholder engagement process to reshape the district, and this is something that we are looking for a catchier name for, so more on that later. Alongside the parent leaders of OUSD's advisory committees, PSAC is helping to lead a multi stakeholder group. This is a group of parents, students, teachers, other staff, administrators, and the school board to help shape how engagement and decision making should look to inform the future of our district. In this work, we want to help develop an infrastructure for supporting effective decision making with stakeholders both now and in the future. We will assert our local control and our capacity as OUSD stakeholders to collaborate in making decisions that will benefit all of our students and schools, and we will assert the promise and power of acting as a unified school district.
This process is just getting underway and in general what we have been talking about is really getting back to the idea of a unified school district and and how we can best engage with the community around that vision. The changes that we're undergoing right now are, as everybody knows, ongoing and very difficult. We want to be thinking about the future. In our participant in our participants, we aim to achieve the type of balance that is modeled within school site councils with parity between the families and students of OUSD's advisory committees and OUSD employees whose leadership has supported our entire district. And we will partner with the board liaisons of our district advisory committees.
They've been in our meetings. It's been really great. Thank you. And the senior and the senior leadership team to prepare for phase four of the OUSD financial stabilization plan, which is set to begin in fall twenty twenty six. As described in the newly launched budget website, phase four is going to focus on rebuilding for long term stability and growth.
It will include one, a rigorous review of spending, two, evaluation of organizational structures, three, alignment of staffing and services to student need, and there are explanations to all of this linked up. We do, as PSAC, wanna give special thanks to Superintendent Sadler, who has expressed a lot of support for this process and has been in close collaboration with us. We believe that the need here is to develop first an engagement process that is going to be durable and essentially be there for years regardless of who is on the board, who is at the district, or who is even in our group of stakeholders. And we do have our first big engagement on March 31. That's next week on Tuesday, and we'd like to get the community to stay tuned and stay connected for that.
There have been some updates on that in the engaging OUSD newsletter. It'll be on Tuesday. There will be childcare, and it's at Santa Fe. Santa Fe, we are hoping to start the process of building what this engagement looks like. So that is the PSAC report, and I think we're going to Dell's.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Hi. This is my first time. I try to do my best. This is the Street English Language Learning Subcommittee, DELTS. On February, we're meeting with her USD staff.
We're working to make sure that all English learner take the English language profile agency of California, LLPAC. Learn about what will happen to position in the office English Language Learner and Multi Multiple Achievement, LMAD and Refugee Asylum Service. The next two slides show how the number of newcomer students of USSD is decreasing. Some positions are being being reduced because they are based off number of newcomer student and specific schools. Also, many of the students that are classified as newcomer this year will not be classified as newcomer next year.
Those those are student who are in the third years of new cohorts. You can see in the the graphing on the slide number forty one and forty two. The next two slides shows which of the central position that support English learning are expected to return in 2026 and '27, and how they will be funded. What position each school is expect to get to support the unique needs of newcomer students. And very special thank you for Julie Kisseler, director of newcomer and ELL program for sharing this information with us.
And you can see in the slide number 44 45. Parents and leaders also spoke with great emotion about what losing central aid engagement staff means to them. Several parents leaders spoke directly to Arcelia Gonzalez district family engagement, especially for newer network too. They shared the deep appreciation for her work and her dedication to the family. They shared very slightly about losing her support to next year.
You can link to the folder with our presentation and video. Enjoy us on on our next meeting on Tuesday, March 26. They ask the question that we we will try to answer. Which school most need support and reclassify English learners? Which school have the lowest reclassification rates.
What could help close the gap? How can family help meet the goal of reclassification? Third, what is the place for family to support that world of promotion and supporting reclassification. We will also get information about summer program. We are the USCD.
Thank you.
So I will briefly fill in for Coriander Melius who was making her way here for the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education. The committee is happy that we celebrated inclusion week in OUSD from March 2 to March 6. A special thank you to Aruna Sumaramnian, Amanda Seaton, and everyone else who organized this week and participated. In the next two, parts of your handout, you will see the flyer and you will see some pictures of activities at schools and in classrooms. Congratulations to the winners of participation contest for inclusion week, Tammy Adams at Horace Mann, first place.
Noah Christensen at Bridges, second place. And Robin Brody Claplin at Wams, and Valerina Hilton at Lesquelita who tied for third place. So there is a survey disseminating through Parent Square for a few weeks that's extremely important about the participation of disabled students in school and district programs such as after school, athletics, and electives. There's a QR code and a link, and it is in the main space. It will also be at ousd.org/lcap.
There is a folder for these reports if you wanna find them. Highlights from the meeting. On March 9, the committee reviewed suspension data for disabled black students in middle school to learn about the impact of actions to reduce suspensions, and got basic information about summer programs, including extended school year. They shared the data from twenty eighteen, nineteen when this effort first first started, where, suspension rates for disabled black students were close to twenty five percent. Then they shared date end of year data for 2425 which was last year which moves it forward to full to that full school year where suspension rates were for sixth graders nineteen point five percent, for seventh graders twenty four point eight percent, for nineteen point seven percent for eighth graders.
This is specifically disabled black students. Then they shared data for how we're doing compared to last year. That that is where there is some progress and some traction. So decrease four point two percent in grade 1.4% in grade six, and one point three percent. I am concurring with the audience on the small percentage that that is.
So to find out and and regrounding in the work, to find out how particular schools are doing, there is a link to the folder. It has the school by school breakdown with some dramatic reductions in certain schools that should be recognized. And then the CAC has a working group that meets monthly with the middle school network for this work. They would like to hear from schools that are working to specifically support students with this intersecting lived experiences and help advance their work. And there is their email address, CACOakland@gmail.com.
And they are asking you to join them on April 13. They will be in dialogue with staff from after school programs and athletics about what they're doing to ensure disability access and that disabled students fully participate in those. So foster youth advisory sadly had to cancel their meeting this week. Their plan was to be in dialogue with a few elementary principals around suspension of elementary foster youth, which is a really hard topic. And they wanted to speak about how they know about the implementation of the suspension policy and what they need to, implement it well.
So they wanted to learn from those principles. That will be their topic at the next meeting because they are committed to having that dialogue. So thank you so much. I'm proud to be able to, share their work.
Thank you. Are there any public comments on the PSAC report?
Yes. We have Carol Doton and Asado Labala.
K. Two minutes each.
I'm not gonna spend too much time repeating that you do not serve African American children well in this district. Since 2018, you've been aware of the need to do something about the high suspension rate, mostly of African American boys. This is not gonna happen in terms of real change unless you get a level of expertise in the room to deal with this. Parents can't sit down and these classroom teachers can't sit down and solve this issue. The first time I heard a conversation about how it was doing, they were talking about changing the behavior of the children as a way to reduce the suspension.
That's ridiculous. Now related to, students who are labeled English language learner, I get this email from EdSource and just recently entitled many California students still label English learners despite testing as fluent. And it says in twenty twenty one, twenty twenty two, and as well as in 2223, about 18,500 statewide annual possible scores on the English language proficiency assessment for California remain these students who were English language learner, they tested proficient, but they were still labeled English language learner. And this was about 18% of the students who of the total number of 18,500 scored at four. Now to deal with this, they're gonna have a bill called twenty five fifty five, which will automatically reclassify English language fluent student as proficient when they score four on the ELPA C.
So, what I'm trying to say is we have students who have become proficient but they're still labeled English language learner.
Thank you. I believe Carol Dilton is online. Right?
Yes. Miss Dilton, if you can go ahead and unmute yourself.
Terrific. Can you hear me now?
Yes, we can hear you.
Perfect. Okay. Thank you so much. Thanks always to the PSAC members for the work they do and for their reports. I would like to highlight that the CAC, which usually meets on the second Monday of the month, is open to everybody.
And it was really wonderful to have board member Williams there last time and asking some questions from more of a general ed point of view because our our services are really on a continuum with the MTSS framework and with preventative services in the general ed setting that align with some similar types of services that are offered by special education, but are offered in a more preventative and proactive way. There are a lot of topics that are of interest to both special ed and general ed families, and also as someone who has worked in special education for the bulk of my career, I really encourage people to come and listen to what goes on because some ways it's a different world. And as a truly inclusive community, it would be wonderful for more people in the general community to understand the supports that are needed by students with IEPs to receive their education. Thank you.
Thank you. Are there any other board comments or public comments?
No, president. Audience Member: Okay.
And are there any board comments? Director Hutchinson.
Yes. Thank you. Just a couple of things quickly. A reminder to the PSAC committee. We already have a restructuring plan on the books in the district.
Unfortunately, the school board has refused to follow through with it. And one of the things we really need to maintain in terms of the structures of the district is when anyone in the community, wants to launch a new program, pass a resolution, or do any sort of work, the most effective way to do it is through your elected representative on the school board. And when we don't do it that way and we try to set up other bodies that don't really have the authority that's needed, things won't work, and it'll just be spinning their wheels over and over. And so, you know, hopefully, the district four leads will continue meeting with me like I've met with my district four leads from the PSAT committee for years and for any new proposals going forward. The most effective way is through the school board, and and really a separate body from that that's a committee on its own is not going to be able to call another committee to spearhead work.
And so, hopefully, we can all learn how to work together, but there really is a process to how things should work. Sister Asada, with your comments, first, reclassification has been a long standing issue in the district, and it's one of the many things where as we've fallen apart as a district, especially after the pandemic, a lot of the progress that had been made has really fallen by the wayside. And if you can't tell, we're really in free fall right now. And the the increase suspension rates of of, particularly, black male students has been alarming. And what we have now is a rate that's higher in disproportionality than when we were under a voluntary resolution with the Office of Civil Rights years ago.
And as a side note, it was that voluntary resolution that led the school district at that time to form first the Office of African American Male Achievement. And one of the things that I complained about at the time with the forming of that committee was that it was just gonna open the door for everyone wanting to have their own group and not really addressing the issue. And the other thing is the first step that office took was to set up what they called manhood classes, and it was the most offensive thing I'd ever seen before as a way to address systemic racism, having young brothers in middle school have to take a manhood class instead of an elective or another academic class. And so even when we've, been able to have, quote unquote, solutions, there's still a lot of victim blaming going on here. And as you can see from the general tone of how things have been going, we're actually moving backwards when it comes to OUSD and the school board respecting the community and especially respecting black folks particularly.
Thank you.
Director Thompson.
Yes. First, I want to thank you for your report. All of the individuals from PSAC. Also, I think it's very important to give I'm sorry, can't remember your name, but you gave the Dells report, and I think you did a very good job on that. So continue to do so because you did a great job.
Also, I'm wondering about something, something that really piqued my attention the moment you mentioned about the suspension rate of disabled black kids. And you said you looked at you did a comparative analysis necessarily of 2023, 2024, and then 2024, 2025, and you saw a reduction. So I'm wondering, is there a mechanism by which you can actually share how you achieve that reduction with other entities in the district so that we could see the same thing because as director Hutchinson mentioned and also miss Asada, we've mentioned that there was that there's still a problem in the general ed population. So I'm wondering since you guys mentioned that you received a good report in terms of reduction, I'm wondering if there is a mechanism by which you can actually share that with other entities in the district. And I don't a a response does not have to be given right now.
I just want them to think about it and then maybe share it with other individuals. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Director Barry?
Yes. Thank you again for the presentation. I wanted to ask a question about the data that you shared on black disabled students. Is there have you all collected information about the schools that are doing a good job on this and sort of like identified the best practices? Okay.
And then yeah. Please come go ahead. And then I'm also interested in whether you have been able to assess I know it's early. What the potential impact of any of the staffing changes that are occurring right now might have on those programs and services?
So to clarify, because I think the data that's here. So the when you see the data here, it's separated by black students without IEPs and black students with IEPs. So just know that that first row shows both experiences. So when you're seeing black students without IEPs, you see the kind of additional impact of being both black and disabled. So clarifying that for data.
The other thing that I'm clarifying, which I heard, director Thompson speak about, no, there wasn't a decrease in middle school black disabled student suspension rates from 2324 to 2425. I read each grade and then you see the year before, and there's an increase in each grade. So let's clarify that. For this year at this time compared to last year at this time, we see a reduction, but the year's still left. So if that doesn't hold, that doesn't mean that we've gone down.
So this whole thing about what is working, it's for black disabled students, we can't speak that way. Just just and when we see the rates, they're double digits for black disabled students as compared to black nondisabled students who are in the single digits. So let's be clear about that distinction. The other thing about the schools, yes, there is a folder that has all the data, and you see a school by school analysis, and you see you see some dramatic reductions in certain middle schools. That's where we need to look.
So I'm encouraging everyone, like, you know, like in the tens, double digits reductions. And we also need to see the schools that have, like, one or two reductions for large numbers of students, like Elmhurst or like Claremont and so even though they have high populations of black disabled students. Please pay attention to the school stories and this is very detailed work. The middle school network superintendent meets with a set of CAC members. They look at the data every month.
They talk about where the hotspots are. They speak about conditions. So that's why they're encouraging people instead of waiting till the end of the year to find out what happened to get in the mix. People can help the committee and can lift those stories that you're talking about. As it relates to specific staff, I want to commend the special education department because they talked about the impact of their board certified behavior analysts.
So, and they showed data that showed when they work with certain students, set of students, what is the impact? So, please look at that. And, in terms of next year, no, this is backward looking, mostly fall and last year. But definitely, when we all need to be aware of the information that's being provided to make good statements about what's working and what's not. So thanks for your questions.
Thank you. Any other comments? Oh, sorry. I hit the button again. This March 31 meeting at Santa Fe at 05:30 to eight, it has been a really collaborative effort between senior leadership staff, PSAC members, and the board liaisons, myself and Director Lotta.
I believe this is kind of community school board district collaboration is really what is going to move our district forward. So I appreciate the work that people have done to organize this, and I am really looking forward to this meeting on the thirty first. Thank you. And thank you to PSAC for and again, another excellent report. Next on the agenda is the superintendent's report.
Thank you. Good evening, president Brujah, director, staff, and community. Tonight, I will report on six areas, our fiscal position and stabilization work, enrollment and attendance. Thank you. And summer learning, academic progress, facilities, and our shared commitment to safe and inclusive schools for every student and staff member.
Let us begin. Before
I move into each section let's see here. Before I move into each section, I wanna share the frame I carry into the room tonight. We are approaching the close of the third quarter. The work is intense, and the decisions are consequential. Every item on this agenda connects to a child, a family, a classroom, or a community that is counting on us to get it right.
So let's get into it. Where we stand. There's no formal fiscal stabilization plan presentation tonight, but what I wanna report is meaningful progress. The discipline of this quarter has moved us forward. Our team has worked deliberately within the framework the board adopted, and the results are visible.
I wanna name one concrete expression of that discipline. I've instituted a personal review of all planned expenditures above 25,000, which I look at every evening and approve or disapprove. The second lens review ensures the timeliness, accuracy, and demonstrated need of every significant commitment before it is made. Fuels fiscal stewardship is not a quarterly exercise. It's a daily practice, and I hold myself accountable to it.
This board has made a commitment to enhance compensation packages for our educators and staff. That commitment reflects our core value. We care for those who care for our families. It's right and it's consequential. The savings previously reported to the board, approximately 65,000,000 through phase two reductions, are now more necessary than at any prior point in this process.
Without disciplined fall through on expenditure alignment, the compensation investment we have made will accelerate the very state intervention we're working to prevent. We must collectively hold the line. And you'll notice when we when we go over the consent calendar, there are fewer items for consent contracts. The fiscal stabilization plan is a living work. The plan was never designed to sit on a shelf.
We're now entering phase three, budget development. The administration is reaching out to stakeholders to develop an engagement framework that improves transparency, broadens participation, and ensures our community has a meaningful voice in the decisions ahead. Budget adoption is expected at the June 24 board meeting. Every decision between now and then is measured against that date. I will return before the close of the school year with an update on nonpublic schools, the application of pars, and the reduction in forced decisions in our forward path through the twenty sixth, twenty seventh budget cycle.
Now let's look at our care centered leadership. The framing we established in October remains our compass. OUSD's approach to this fiscal moment is care centered and we are not managing a budget in isolation. We are stewarding the futures of 34,000 students and the careers of thousands of dedicated educators and staff. Every difficult decision is made in that context.
That care extends to our people navigating the hardest news. Our chief of talent, Tara Gard, has been doing genuinely difficult genuinely difficult work with a caring heart, managing the pars and the reduction in force processes while simultaneously building enhanced transition and retirement support for our valued team members who will be leaving us at the close of this year. Their contributions to Oakland's children deserve recognition, and next month's OUSD Cares fair is our opportunity to honor them. Tara, I wanna thank you for carrying on this work with both rigor and grace. And at the same time, our general counsel has been indispensable throughout the period providing sound legal guidance that spans student care, and that means even going to court supporting our students when they have been in distressful situations, supporting our labor negotiations, and all the litigation that we've had to endure.
This complex policy terrain of this district has been navigating fiscal restructuring and much more. I wanna thank her for her presence in a very hard room that has made outcomes much more possible. Now I also wanna speak to our TK Hub expansion. I am pleased to announce that we are moving forward with the TK Hub expansion for the 2627 school year. The early facility scoping and identification work that makes this possible is a direct work of our leadership of our chief of systems services, president Thomas, who took on this cross cross functional challenge and delivered the groundwork that allowed us to move with confidence.
This enrollment growth and early learning access, I believe can give us, a major opportunity to have an impact on ongoing learning within our district.
Slide four.
As we as we look at, enrollment and attendance, every seat matters, every day matters, and the data shows we are moving in the right direction. Enrollment and attendance sit at the intersection of everything we care about. On the academic side, chronic absence is one of the strongest predictors of long term student outcomes. A student who misses 10% of school days is significantly more likely to fall behind and disengage before graduation. On the fiscal slide side, I didn't mean on the fiscal side, every student enrolled and attending generates average daily attendance funding.
ADA is the lifeblood of our operating budget. When a student misses a day, we lose revenue, but most of all, they miss instruction. Enrollment recovery and fiscal recovery are the same project. Now what the data tells us, district wide con chronic absenteeism has fallen from a post pandemic peak of sixty one point four percent in 2022, 23 to twenty six percent in 2526. That's significant.
It is substantial reversal a reversal that required sustained strategic work across every school and network. Teachers achieved 100% attendance reporting completion in both '23, '24, and 2425, and it was up from eighty seven percent, which was pre pandemic. Accurate, timely data is the foundation of effective intervention and our educators delivered. The Parent Square 10AM auto notice system expanded to all elementary sites in 2425 has produced an overall 11.9% improvement in instructional days lost across participating schools. When families receive same morning notification of an absence, they intervene.
For ten consecutive years, including this year, OUSD has had zero financial impact from attendance audit findings, and that's a big deal if you've been around as long as I have. Prior to our current attendance leadership, findings reached as high as 1,200,000 in a single year. The architects of this system deserve to be named, and we will hear from them directly at our April 22 meeting. Shilya White, senior director of strategic product projects and Duane Bartholomew and our director of multi tiered systems of support have built something that is both rigorous and deeply human. Shilya and Bee, as they call them, the numbers will tell the story, and you'll hear more about that.
I also wanna speak to another partner around this, and that is Oakland Natives Gives Back. And, their partnership, one of the most promising new efforts this year is Everyday Counts Attendance Initiative launched under my direct leadership in partnership with Oakland Natives Gives Back at no cost. Oakland Natives Give Back conducts targeted phone bank outreaching to families of chronically absent students, and at Castlemont, which carried the highest unverified absent rate in the district in January at seventy four point three percent, that rate has dropped to 59.8%. At McClymond's, the overall absence rate dropped from 13.9% to eight percent over the same period. The Everyday Counts program gives students a simple powerful incentive.
Show up, earn points, win prizes. Monthly cash rewards support food, transportation, and school supplies. And end of the year grand prize will be $5,000, which are rate awaits the strongest performers. Every student gets a fresh start each month. In fact, yesterday, I joined Oakland Natives Give Back to recognize a Castlemont student, who didn't know about it until we arrived.
Gwendolyn mirror Miller, you may have seen something on the news yesterday on channel two and channel four. She improved her attendance significantly to and became our first perfect attendance student with a certificate of achievement. That's going going from chronic absenteeism, not showing up at all, participating in this program, and winning this wonderful prize. So she got a check yesterday for $500, and she was absolutely shocked. I'm really proud of her.
And this is what community partnership looks like when it's rooted in Oakland, powered by relationships and focused entirely on kids. In fact, it was wonderful to actually be there to witness this because other students in the class said, I'm gonna sign up to participate in this program. And I asked them, you know, why are they deciding to do that now? Well, they now see a connection. I visited several classes when I was there yesterday.
Students were in class. They were listening to their teachers. The school looks beautiful, and I wanna commend our head custodian there, mister Dana. It is I've visited Councilmont in one of your schools, mister Thompson, many times. And there's a clearly a change.
There's a desire to do more. The environment is conducive. There were many alums there who were excited. The teachers were excited. I'm really pleased with the direction that they're moving.
They're not where we wanna go. But remember, we started with a high number of chronic absenteeism to really almost cutting that in half. It's very significant, and we did it with a partner that was invested in supporting our schools without us having to pay another contract. So I'm really excited about that. And current enrollment actions, the first offer window for on time applications closed closes tonight.
The second round officer offers will be released on March 31. TK Hub offers release in the third round on April 20. The enrollment marketing team is deploying a second round of billboards focused on pre k, focal schools, and general OUSD visibility. Families accepting offers to focal schools will receive a personalized magnet. Small gestures, large symbolic power.
Now I'd like to talk about our summer planning. You know, we're always thinking about the next step. Summer is almost here. I ran into Julie McCalmont, who's been working on this for years, and she was very excited about, the programs this year that we're hosting. Summer learning is not remediation.
I wanna say that clearly because the framing matters. Summer learning is not remediation. OUSD is preparing to serve more than 7,000 students from p pre k through young adult this summer. This is an extension of the school year for students who are ready to grow, who need additional support, and who deserve to stay connected to learning and to each other. Enrollment for extended school year programs opens this the week of March 23, this week.
T k eight district, the program enrollment will open on March 30, and high school students needing credit recovery will be referred by their school counselors. Families can enroll at ousd.org for summer learning or email summerlearning@ousdorg with questions. And please note for our special needs students, many of those students will have an an opportunity to have extended school year as well. For t k through eighth grade families, the enrollment process is straightforward. You log in to choose o u s d dot org, click summer, and see what programs your child is eligible for and submit an application.
Families are placed on a wait list based on priority groups. They will receive an official offer and they must accept that offer to secure their spot. So if a family needs support with enrollment, please work with your child's school. We want all of our eligible students to have a certain a summer learning seat. We're also proud to support community based summer programming through our expanded learning office.
Several community partners offer full day summer programs to OUSD students and that enrollment system for these programs runs through our in play tool. Registration starts March 23 and families will receive invites via text. So to learn more about our independent programs, families can visit in play. I know this is the time when lots of our families are looking, for these resources during the summer. I wanted to mention our academic progress, which is significant.
Our chief academic officer, Sandra Aguilera, and her team have held the instructional program steady through one of the most disruptive budget years in recent memory. The LCAP mid year report reviewed by the teaching and learning committee this month reflects continued movement on our high school graduation rates and a to g completion even as the organization navigates significant structural change. The holding academic focus through fiscal turbulence is not easy work, and I wanna thank doctor Aguilera and her team for getting it done. I also wanna, thank her for I had a chance to witness the presentation that was provided at PSAC and the budget and finance committees and the commitment to transparency about the specifics of what our plans were in the past and what they were this year or what they're gonna be this year was absolutely clear through those presentations. Now I'd like to share highlights from across our schools.
These are the moments that remind us why we do this work. At Think College Now and the ICE, International Community School students are now enjoying enjoying three brand new sports fields funded through Measure y, a smaller field on the playground across the parking lot, new soccer and baseball fields that are generally beautiful, and there was a ribbon cutting on March 17, and a celebration of all of the possibilities there. Director Barry joined the students for the ceremony, and the joy in that moment was real. Those fields were overdue for replacement, and the voters of Oakland made it possible to turn those plans into a reality, and our students are the beneficiaries. On March 6, the San Francisco 49ers brought their advocacy for reading directly to our students at Manzanita community and Manzanita Seed Schools.
Team employees joined students in the auditorium and read to them and shared the importance of being strong readers. Naturally, the most popular visitor was the team mascot, sourdough Sam. This event was part of the 49ers Foundation celebration of read across America week. The message was simple and powerful. Reading matters and our students are worth showing up for.
We could not agree more. Am I on the right slide? Okay. And then, All City Council Middle School Conference, the twenty eighth annual middle school peer resource and ethnic studies conference brought 250 students to Northeastern University and I would say Mills College on March 6. Youth co designed and co facilitated the entire conference running 27 restorative justice circles with more than 60 student facilitators.
The workshops covered social justice, disability inclusion, social media, poetry, and more. And this year's theme was chosen by the students, realize, realize, realize the youth is the future. They are not wrong, and watching them lead confirms it. At the citywide celebration for Oakland's own Olympic gold medalist, Alisa Liu, on March 12, OUSD students played prominent roles. Fremont High's drumline opened the event, led by their teacher Malachi with a high energy performance that set the tone for the entire evening.
And I, was there along with president Brewhart and many other Oaklanders were part of the the excitement. Then Skyline senior, All City Council L CAP director Lina Nguyen took the stage. And, I have to say, president Broehaward and I got to watch as Lena gave a remarkable speech about what Alyssa's accomplishments meant to her and her fellow students. She told the crowd she was nervous, that public speaking is not her identity, and then she delivered the most professional, profound remarks that I've heard in a long time, and I think she handled it well. It was heartfelt, honest, and extraordinary.
Lena shows us again that our students are learning and growing right in front of our eyes every single day. And now let's let's talk about, facilities, capital projects. The major capital improvement projects are now advancing from design construction, pending the final approvement approvals from the DSA, and that's the division of state architect. Coliseum College Prep Academy, the guaranteed maximum price comes before the full board tonight. This community has waited and we are ready to deliver.
Melrose Leadership Academy in the old Maxwell Park, the GMP goes to the Citizens Bond Oversight Committee on April 13 to the Facilities Committee on April 16, and before the full board on April 22. In McClymonds High School, their final DSA approval is anticipated by the March. Given the size, complexity, and the contractual obligations of this project, the GMP comes in two packages. Pack package one will be covering demolition, abatement, size utilities, and mechanical and electric work, which will be followed by the April follows the April timeline. Package two, which will be covering architecture, landscaping, structural work, and the track and field comes before the board in May.
And these are investments in the safety and dignity of our students and communities, and again, we don't take that lightly. I wanna thank, president Thomas and his team for presenting these projects. You'll hear more about the discipline that's gonna be needed to get all of this done this evening as we talk about our master plan and more. Tonight is the first read of the draft facilities master plan. The, facilities committee approved advancing this draft to the full board.
It is posted on the district website with an interactive dashboard for transparent public view. I'm really proud of that process of having that in the forefront and on our our website. The timeline tonight, we will receive, board feedback, and April staff will incorporate that feedback and return to both the facilities committee and the full board for final consideration and adoption. Now let's think about the vision. This plan replaces fragmented site by site decisions with disciplined long range thinking aligned to our enrollment realities, community needs, and fiscal future.
We are a united district, a unified district. Facilities decisions must improve the health of the whole OUSD body, not simply benefit one limb at the expense of others. These are values decisions and financial decisions that the board and the community must undertake together. So with diligence and care, I look forward to tonight's dialogue as we look at our planning around master our master plan facilities. I wanna speak directly to the board, to our community on a matter that requires full voice.
I want everybody to know as we, will be receiving our sites will be receiving information around anti Semitism and it just has no place in our schools or our community, neither does it have any form of hate, neither does any form of hate, bias, or discrimination directed at any student or staff member because of their religion, ethnicity, identity, or background. OUSD is and must always be a safe, welcoming, and inclusive space for every person who walks through our doors. I wanna state clearly what our experience has shown to date. No OUSD family or student has reported a harm or physical injury from antisemitic conduct on our campuses that does not diminish the seriousness of what has occurred. Every time property on an OUSD campus has been vandalized with hate speech or threats, we've addressed it as quickly as humanly possible.
That is our standard and we will not lower it. CDE findings in our response. CDE has issued findings that have contributed to an environment that has been challenging for some of our our many of our Jewish students and staff in several instances. We take those findings seriously. We are committed to full compliance with every corrective action required.
We're not waiting to be compelled. We are acting because it's right. The context around us is sobering, and these incident incidents in The United States have risen, and we want to be a part of the solution. And that's by working together as a community, and that's the Oakland way. Our commitments through the end of the school year, all employees will participate in professional learning, focus on recognizing and presenting preventing and responding to any kind of hate based behavior.
Site leaders will be responsible as as expected for full participation for modeling that standard. We are reviewing our policy straight strengthening reporting and working with community partners on continuous education. I ask every family and staff member, if you see something, report it. And lastly, in closing, I wanna say I'm deeply honored to serve with our senior leadership team. This is a team that's been showing up with expertise and heart and commitment to Oakland students and families.
The fiscal stabilization plan is not an academic exercise. It's the operational road map for protecting the district's future. Phase three is underway. We are building the budget, engaging stakeholders, and making every decision through the lens of what our students need and what our finances can sustain. OUSD students will graduate and I already have received information about early acceptances of several of our students to college to date.
And several of our students have been admitted into many career other career opportunities and will be a part of many other community, programs. That's our mission. That's our promise. That's the work. Every graduate who walks across the stage in May, where our hope is that they will graduate with the skills, the knowledge, and the belief in themselves that adds something irreplaceable to this city and to the world.
And that is why we hold the line, that is why we stay disciplined, and that is why we care. Thank you.
Thank you, superintendent. Are there public comments on this item?
Yes. We do. I mean, yes. There is there there are six total speakers at
k. Two minutes each.
Six speakers are Carol Dalton, Sheila Haynes, Asala Obala, A. V. Ringer, Michelle Jeter, and Misty Cross.
And can we take the ones in person first? If you're in person and heard your name called, if you would come first.
Yes, in person. We have Carol Dunn, if you can unmute yourself to speak. Apologize, in person.
I just wanna spend some time very briefly because, when I looked at the busing busing item, I googled what are some of the concerns about busing of OUSD students, and it gave me this piece of information. Due to a lack of district adequate wide busing, many schools experience high absenteeism. It has led the district to focus on improving transportation or the need to do it. So then it says here, this is very important, every child that needs to go to summer school will not go to summer school. And you have a tendency to write all students.
There is nothing that goes on in this district that includes all students. You always have a prioritization process, and you mentioned it in this document that you're gonna prioritize through some method the summer school participation. And it says, families will be placed on a waiting list based on the priority groups. How do you choose the priority groups? Okay?
That cannot work. At some time, you gotta develop a system where every child is served. You don't have the option of prioritizing. I don't know where this came that you decided that it's appropriate to have kids get on a waiting list. And this goes on all through the district.
Okay? Then you got the audacity to to put in print new sports fields, measure y, and McClymans hasn't gotten one yet. Scheduled to be done in the summer, not a part of the modernization process, allocated the funds separate from measure y just like for other schools. You never did the field, and Preston Thomas decided we're gonna combine it with the modernization process. Why?
Nobody will ask him why. Because they don't wanna remediate the toxins in the soil. And I'm glad that lady got up and talked about he lies related to the nutrition program. He lies about facilities. Y'all brag about him, but that could be considered anti black what he's doing to McClymonds.
And do not insult me or the McClymonds community by saying we're gonna start in March when on February 22, mister, Williams, you told me it had already started. And I'm sure you said it because somebody had told you.
Thank you. Your time is up, miss Asana.
Thank
you. Next speaker, please.
Misty Cross picking up where miss Asada left off at for all of the reading programs and the things that you said. We want it to be articulated throughout OUSD for the reading program that you talked about and it's very important because the state level shows that our kids are not reading well. So if we have a process where we have it tested twice a year when the kids come in, when the kids leave, we can have some progress moving forward with our kids learning how to read and pushing them forward. Words start off small and they grow into big words. If kids start going back to the algorithm of reading, of getting the high frequency words and us starting at the beginning, all of our kids will be great in reading.
So we won't have these low levels. Again, for the McClymans area, we've never seen anything happen at the building. PG and E has already told us where that tank is held underneath our football field, and we have lost football players. Lead does connect to cancer, and four football players have passed from that. No parents don't wanna see that, but the blood is on OUSD hands, And I hope OUSD knows that.
We are not here for broken promises. You cannot lead us on, lead us astray and say what you're gonna do. We wanna see some things happen now. The time is now. We can't wait for later on.
Our children continue to fail. This is a continued process every year. We come to these meetings, and it's just a hardship, and it doesn't make any sense.
I've said it several times and I keep saying it, Thomas needs to be fired. In 2016, I first brought the issue of the lead in the football field. 2016, coach Peter's bringing water from his mom house across the street so that the kids can drink safe water. 2018, I came back and asked about remodeling our school. And here we are still being told the lies.
I know we got a new superintendent, and we're hoping that this stuff will start to correct itself. It's discrimination. And no one sitting up there or maybe not enough of you sitting up there wanna do something about it. We've had our first four blocked off ever since school started, and no one knows why it's not being worked on. Innovation got people, Preston Thomas, to work on that school charter four weekends in a row, making time and a half.
How did they get that deal? And we can't get a clock that works. I went to the football game. Started at seven. Five after seven, the stop the the clock stopped, and they had to use stopwatches.
We have a winner, though. The principal at McClyman's High School is awesome. I hope we don't lose him and move him around. This man surely cares about those kids over there. And I've watched him work and he's so patient with them.
I came back and I asked him about what do you think we need? And I've been pushing for this one for the last twelve years. We would like to add, superintendent, choir and band. If they wanna continue their music, they will not come to McClymond's unless we have a band and a choir starting this summer. Max enrollment is up 300.
We've lost four students so far, three or four students. Our our enrollment went up, and this man is probably responsible.
Thank you. Next speaker, please.
Thank you, madam superintendent. By every indication, you're a committed lifelong educator. When we met this fall at MLA, you were warm and welcoming. I I wanna thank you for your years of service to that school and to the district more broadly. But I do wanna get to the bottom of this December 10 memo that I brought up last meeting, because this was a big deal.
Right? This was your major recommendation about how to address the deficit, the origin of scenario three. And it's highly unusual what went on, that your senior staff would hand you their recommendations and then you would just go in a different direction less than 24. So unusual that your chief business officer and your chief of staff left the district as a result. Can you explain how that all happened?
Can you tell us who assisted you in preparing that memo? If not, your chief business officer and your chief of staff. And president Brohard, when I addressed this last meeting and asked you whether you still had confidence in your interim superintendent, because of this issue, you praised her for listening to the board. But I'm not sure what that means because when I'm reading the November 19 resolution that she was responding to, that directs the superintendent to present to the board on 12/10/2025 budget scenarios and recommendations without restriction. Pretty open ended.
How could it be that the superintendent departing from her senior staff's recommendations was better listening to the board? You must have been talking about something else that she was listening to. What was it that you were referring to with this remark? Perhaps you'll have a chance to address this. I know you don't have to, but certainly it appears that something untoward has gone on, and I would love to understand that that was not the case.
So I look forward to hearing from you both on these questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker please.
Next speaker is Carol Dalton. If you could unmute yourself to speak.
Good evening. I also wanted to speak about my concern, Superintendent, that the district has not issued a, not particularly detailed, but a comprehensive overview of the implementation of the recommendations so far and including the numbers. In order to figure that out, I have to go to one memo after another, and I can do some math. So I know that the figure that is in the has been repeated in the newslet newspaper sometimes of 11,000,000 as a yield from the reduction in force has to be an error because so many positions were reduced. But I shouldn't have to be doing that math for myself.
So I am urging you at the earliest possibility to put something like that out for the community, I think that we waste your times at meetings when we have to ask questions that we shouldn't have to ask. I do want to, though, respond based on my experience to the previous speaker's remarks. Yes, something untoward was going on. I was attending meetings and senior staff was not presenting their plan to address the board recommendations without, in my opinion, the superintendent's actions that led to scenario three, OUSD would be looking for a loan again. And that is the last thing that I think this district needs.
So while I was very disappointed at that time, and while I think the public deserves more information now, I am pleased that doctor Sadler took the helm on working with staff to direct the production of scenario three. And I hope you will be reporting to us more on that. Thank you.
Thank you. Are there any other speakers?
Yes. We have Sheila Haynes.
Hi, can you hear me okay?
Yeah, we can hear you. Thanks.
Hi, thank you. So thank you superintendent for the report. It was great to see you on the PSEC meeting last week because as you know, was speaking on the need for student safety. I also sent you an email of other concerns with civils in Oakland. I did love seeing so many RJ circles in the report as well, but I did also learn on the meeting last week that Oakland Tech and other schools don't have RJ.
And so I know that there has been ongoing meetings and actually students from Brewer speaking up on their strong RJ program, and I also wanted to mention in regards to black suspensions that Brewer is one of the least impacted schools with students, black students get suspended, and I believe that is due to the RJ program, so we need to continue to prioritize on that. Since my resolution, includes hate speech, I am happy that you guys are also addressing hate speech, but also as I shared, there was a girl outside of, Oakland Tech where they don't have an RJ program just using the B word and using violent words. So it's gonna be a priority for our students to have the best mental health that they can be in with these ongoing cuts that are gonna happen and with the uncertainty of the budget, I also continue to worry about rollover funding from the arts and opportunities that our students can't participate in, especially our online students, and I wonder if there will be a way without the need of an IEP for online students, you know, that are suffering trauma so much with social, emotional loss and learning loss that they'd be able to engage in some sort of ongoing, arts program somewhere, you know, as a consistency.
I still haven't been able to get anything from my student, even though we've been requesting it online, so I know it's a lot that the district's dealing with, but continue to speak on student safety with the arts and with no hate speech, so thank you for your ongoing work.
Thank you Ms. Haynes. Are there any other public speakers?
No, president. That includes public speakers.
Okay. Thank you. Board comments? Director Barry?
Thank you so much for the report. The one thing that I wanted to flag is, a, I'm glad that at least in your oral report, there was some sort of budget stabilization update. I was surprised when I was preparing for the meeting that it wasn't in the deck. And I do think it would be good if it was formally on the agenda for every board member meeting until the work is done. Yes.
Progress report on sort of like the implementation process, and that would also include sort of what we're learning. And I know doctor Frutos has said in prior conversations, least expressed some hesitance to do that because the numbers, you know, are constantly changing. But I do think to the extent that we could provide a snapshot, every time we convene, it would be helpful.
Director Hutchinson.
Yes. Thank you. I'm I'm trying to pace myself tonight. No. That was a very disappointing report.
In the printed version, the PowerPoint that's handed out that everyone has to take with them, all it has is stuff about the summer and highlighting some schools. Yet you proceed to just rattle off all of this other information without a document to show it or to prove it, including everything about facilities, everything about the finances. And one of the reasons why we're facing claims and lawsuits of antisemitism and people really upset that it hasn't been addressed is instead of putting your statement in writing where everyone could see, you just read it off here. This isn't good enough. Not good enough at all.
And the fact that there's no financial person here to make a presentation tonight? You know, again, you mentioned that, the $65,000,000 that's been identified against our deficit. Fine. I'll I'll I'll take your number even though we've seen no document to prove it. But that means we still have an over $50,000,000 deficit for next year.
There's no moving into budget adoption when there's a deficit that we have no way to be able to fill. I'm really disappointed about what happened at our last board meeting, the exchange that was allowed to happen with the consultants, and it wasn't addressed. And I'll talk to you privately about how upset I was in our one on one meeting that I only had you there for a few minutes. It's just not acceptable. It's just not good enough.
So I sent you a list of 17 questions over the weekend asking for answers. Everything from how much savings are being achieved to some of the staffing cuts that we've seen listed, the policy that directed those decisions, and even most importantly, where do I send my resolution to get a fiscal impact analysis? Because I know the truth of the matter is there's nobody currently in the district who can even do it. So you haven't taken any actions to hire a new chief business officer. Yet on today's agenda, you're going to be spending another $450,000 to extend the contract of the consultants who are unvetted, have an awful reputation, and are giving extremely poor advice.
That'll bring their total contract to 865,000, three times what it would have cost to keep paying a chief business officer. This is unacceptable. And so when we get to these questions later, I hope there's somebody here from the finance department to answer the many questions that I have, and I hope you're prepared to answer questions that I have about the extension in the contract with HYI explicitly, because I now know that there is some real shenanigans going on, and I'm gonna keep saying it as long as I have to. And just so I can clearly say it before my time is up here. Unfortunately, because of this poor performance, and we still don't have a fiscal solvency plan, I firmly believe, doctor Sadler, that you should resign, and I'm really troubled by your tone of conversation where you make it seem like you're going to apply for this long term job after what's happened in your eight months as interim superintendent.
Nobody else has ever had a year where we got out of receivership and we're now going back in in the same calendar year. This is not the kind of history that we should be making here in OUSD. Thank you.
First of all, I just want the public to know, you made a comment about our short meeting, one on one meeting, and I just want the public to know that during that meeting, I got a call from the hospital. My husband was taken to the hospital, and so I got off the phone immediately. Over the weekend, when you sent the information, I was at the hospital from Thursday through Sunday. I took time off to, participate in a class, like, for three hours that I was required to do. So I want you to know I made that really clear and my chief of staff was on the phone with you and also made that clear.
So I want the public to know where I was and why I stopped that meeting.
No one is Respectfully, Miles Man will put out then our meeting schedule then publicly. Like, it's just really unacceptable that we only have one superintendent. No staff has been made available to me to answer those questions. Nobody has been made available. So if you weren't available, you should have made it available
You don't.
By somebody else. Please don't tell me what I don't
or what I do do. There's a lot things
you don't do also.
Thank
You'll have your turn to respond after this, but but right now, the superintendent has the mic for
So thank you. So I'm gonna have my time to respond now because that's what you just said.
We're going in order. You'll have a second round.
Thank you. I would like to commend you, superintendent, on your communications with myself. I think it's been really helpful that we have meetings and we talk about not only what's going on with the budget, but also the facilities and, like, the academics that's going on in our school campuses because there's many, many things that we're holding at the same time. I really appreciate that. I also wanna appreciate the time that doctor V, that mister Nelson and mister Soraki have given to continuing to find find funding for the Department of Violence Prevention work that is being done at our school sites.
I'm getting many questions from my school communities around where we are with that work. And, again, you know, we're having conversations, continued conversations with the city around it. I am also seeking some private funders to to fund part of that work. And, again, the staff that have been made available to support that work have been incredibly amazing to continue to support and to have those conversations. We're hoping that we could start the next school year with that support already in place, and we will be working diligently to continue to have those conversations and and to get assurances, for next school year.
As I did last time, I also wanna uplift, the Latino honor roll that's happening on Saturday, the twenty eighth. And then as superintendent mentioned to me in our conversation, African American honor roll is also set to happen on May 11. These are wonderful celebrations of our students, and we hope that community is a part of those conversation a part of those celebrations. And we look forward to having many more of those types of celebrations for our students so that not only can they potentially get a little cash for coming to school, but they can also be celebrated by the entirety of the community. Thank you so much.
I would also like to appreciate the superintendent, I think, for the honesty in our discussions. I think your availability has been amazing. I think that we've had some heartfelt conversations. I think we've worked through some issues, particularly around academics, which is kind of both of our strong points and where we come from. I appreciate the transparency of those discussions, and I've also appreciated the conversations with senior leadership team as well.
So, thank you. Director Hutchinson, did you wanna add me here?
Yes. Thank you. One of the reasons I was so upset about not an answer is of the questions that I sent, there should have been easy answers actually for all of those questions. This is not something that took any work if we were doing things the right way. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make sure I read my 17 questions here into the record so everyone can hear what I'm talking about.
And, again, this is the first time in my five years on the board that I've ever had to email the superintendent questions because I couldn't get an answer from anyone. What supports are available for me to hold the town hall? Where do I send my resolution for a fiscal impact analysis? How many and which schools are being left with zero TSAs in 2627? What is the policy governing how TSAs are distributed across OUSD?
How much savings did cutting TSAs achieve? What is the policy on which schools get community school managers? What is the savings from the cut in community school managers? Are community school managers still on eleven month contracts in twenty five-twenty six and twenty six-twenty seven? Are some teachers and TSAs still on eleven month contracts in twenty five-twenty six, twenty six-twenty seven?
What policy said to cut middle school electives? What is the cost savings from cutting middle school electives? Have outside partners in philanthropy been asked to help fund OAL staff positions? What is the total savings from the two approved RIFs, reduction in forces? How much of that is in the unrestricted?
I need a detailed accounting of the 65,000,000 that has been identified to address the budgetary shortfalls in 2526 and 2627. How are the savings achieved, and in which funds? Are dollars being taken from measure and measure H and G one to address the deficit? Is the superintendent going to sign off declaring that OUSD can afford the OEA tentative agreement? And lastly, how are you going to present a balanced budget for the board to adopt when OUSD still has a $50,000,000 deficit for 2627 even before the OEA tentative agreement, and if the tentative agreement is approved, deficit will be over 100,000,000.
Most of those questions should be able to answer be answered off the top of people's heads, and the rest of them, all it should take is a senior staff being put in touch with me, and they could pull this information up quickly. But what I fear most of all is going on is there's no answer to these questions because nobody knows and nobody thought about it, which means there is no policy governing our financial decisions, and we don't have a financial person here to even be able to explain it. This is a complete failure, and at this point, I take it very personally because I also represent 50,000 constituents, and the people in District 4 deserve the same sort of treatment that everyone else seems to be giving to themselves and seem to be receiving from you. Thank you.
Director Williams.
Thank you, president Brohard. Thank you, doctor Sat did I say doctor Sadler? Thank you, doctor Sadler. I I I know that community and and their individuals who are concerned about as we're moving forward. I think we all are.
And I wanna say you've I commend you for the job you've done to stabilize our budget. Thank you. I think there are more things we all can do. Think there are community conversations to be had. You know, it's you know, the thing about it is I I think so many folks are focused on all the negatives when really we should be partnering up together and really look at a reenvisioning of our schools.
So, I do apologize for members of the community that have failed to look at the experience that you have brought to the district. I think I can put your record up at anybody who's sitting out here in the community at forty years of doing this work. I wanna partner with you, and I see your leadership. I see that you've been focused on lifting up students. The budget is a challenge, but I think we all recognize that we inherited such a bad budget, and we are trying to stabilize that budget.
I don't think people really understand like how bad it was when when this board actually came in. I don't think the people really understand that, there was only one person who was actually the president of the board at the time that the budget was so bad. I don't I I don't I don't think we understand that.
What what time was that?
You say your conversation every time as well, and I say the same thing that we should recognize that we have inherited some and that we actually are moving through it into a better place.
Sun is in a better place?
A better place than 2018.
Thank
you. So, miss doctor Sadler, again, I I think as part of this district leadership for all the 50 students in the school. I think I wanna treat you with respect. I wanna treat you with reverence that you are a a senior a senior statesman in this particular job, and so I just wanna give you your credit on that. I appreciate all the work you've done, and I'll continue to support you.
Thank you.
Thank you. And with that, I'm gonna turn this over to vice president Bachelor.
Thank you. So I believe the next item is o, which is the consent minus, oh, I didn't write them down here.
Here. Thank you. So I'll turn this off.
Thank you. So it's minus o 22 which was pulled by director Barry and O61 which was withdrawn by staff, I believe. Is that correct? Thank you. Is there a motion to approve o consent?
So moved.
Second.
Thank you.
Are there any public comment on this agenda item?
Yes, we have a A solid Olabala.
This rubber stamping process that you go through every meeting, indicates that the vetting of what we do for children in terms of teaching and learning facilities, nutrition, opportunities for grants, all of that's in here. So you have an advice on college applications, social emotional learning, trauma informed care, payout to student stipends, wellness program for educators, sessions for recent immigrants, and for first generation immigrants, restorative justice. Now you got Department of Education grants for Life Academy two, Fremont, Oakland Hill a high I'm sorry, three grants, Oakland Tech. And you I don't know how you came to give grants to these schools. When's McClime gonna get a grant?
Then you have, and you also have the Oakland International High School getting a grant from the Department of Education. You have you have something that is gonna result in a decrease of the likelihood of involvement with the justice system. Rugsdale, again, every every agenda, you have stuff for Rugsdale. In this case, it's for academic and social emotional data management. Something called paid work based learning opportunities, support for again, for immigration.
You support immigrants and you support newcomers, you do not support African American students. You have items that are dedicated for transportation of special education students. Do y'all actually read this stuff? You pull one item out of 50 something items that you don't need to go through and say, well, what does this mean? How is this gonna work?
Who is gonna be doing this? And our professional development for our teachers with their wellness, what are the issues? Why do we have to do this? No discussion. Just rubber stamp it.
Thank you. Board Yeah, have one additional speaker. Great. We have Ben Tab Scott.
Coach, come on up. This is on o, consent items. Yes. That's correct.
How many of you known that they closed 16 schools in one year? Seven of those schools were in West Oakland. They totally destroyed any type of pattern. The biggie we got right now is West Oak West Oakland Middle is only half of the space over there because on the other side, Ralph Bunch is there. So we need to find Ralph Bunch a home so we can have at least one middle school.
So let's just take this scenario. I can't get my child in West Oakland Middle. The next school is west all the way out. Westlake. I timed it this morning.
It took me twenty five, thirty minutes to get close to the school, plus gas is going up. So I don't know why we stuck Ralph Bunch there. They need to be removed, and we will have at least one full middle school for West Oakland children. The other item I had now was, and I've already spoke to it, that we have to do a better job. We're increasing the enrollment at McClymond's.
We hope that continues. He said he needs four or three or four portable classrooms. That'll give him a little more space over there. The enrollment went up 300. I talked about it.
We hope that he stays and the fact that we have a positive movement. The other thing is I thought we were gonna go with open enrollment. I don't know. I don't like this signing up for schools. I think the neighborhood, enrollment is a better mix for a lot of people because they're going for certain schools.
And then the last thing I have down here is the fact that we have to move Ralph Butch and get him off of that campus. So we'll have one middle school. Actually, need two.
Thank you. Is that all the public comments?
Yes. That conclude all the registered speakers.
Okay.
Board colleagues, director Thompson, any comments on 0, director Lotta, Williams, director Barry? I just have quick comments on 09, 012, and 066. So as a neighbor of Oak, which is Oakland Academy of Knowledge, I'm very excited that they're gonna be getting a new play structure, soccer field, outdoor playground, garden beds, and recreational spaces. As someone who hikes there every day, it's gonna be beautiful to see students being able to have, like, a new space that they can enjoy. I'm also excited about the new project or the project that we have to make sure that our school toilets at for the boys' bathrooms are updated with our deferred maintenance dollars at Markham, because I know that that has been a challenge throughout our facilities in the school district.
So I'm glad that Markham is getting that support. And then I'm I'm excited to see that Sojourner Truth is also participating in the ECHO program and getting stipends through Measure H to their students. Know that we're trying to through the outsourcing task force, we're trying to bring those stipends kind of in house. But again, I'm excited that they're able to participate in that kind of program and getting those stipends as well. Because they do have high school age students on that, at that school site.
So with that, let's go ahead and take a vote on this item. Mister Riggstra.
On the roll call to adopt the, general consent report minus items zero dot dash twenty two and zero DotDash61. Director Thompson? Yes. Director Barry?
Yes.
Director Hutchinson? Director Williams? Yes. Director Lauder?
Yes.
Vice president Bachelor?
Yes.
President ProHeart? Motion's adopted.
Thank you. And, we will now take the item that was pulled, which is o 22. I believe there needs to be a motion to bring it forward.
I move to approve item o dot dash 22.
I second.
Great. And then director Barry wanted to say.
I, as founder of this initiative, have to recuse myself. Thank you.
We will wait for you to recuse yourself. Is there any public comment on this agenda item? We're talking about o 22. Miss Asada or Coach, would you like to speak to o 22? Okay.
Any other board any other public comments on o twenty two? Not seeing anyone in person. Is there anyone raising their hand online for o twenty two?
Yes. We have Carol Dillon has hand raised for, I believe, this current item.
Okay. Go ahead, Delton.
Thank you for calling on me. I had actually registered for the consent report as a whole. So I'd just like to quickly make a remark that you just approved $900,000 to the Oakland Public Education Fund. Three of the contracts were over the $119,000 limit that's supposed to be for considering them in the category where they're fully analyzed. The I submitted e comments on those.
And then I realized that there were another seven contracts that were also to the Oakland Public Education Fund. These contracts, when they come, what I can see as a member of the public, it's not clear how much of the money is for the stipends and how much of the money is for the processing. And when they get to this volume, it is clear to me that the district needs to consider a way to bring this in house. And beyond that, one of the contracts was for a two year period. I've seen other situations where the district's hands have been tied, and the district would like to make decisions that it can't because it's already committed to a private entity for more than one year.
Thank you. Thank you for giving me this time to mention this.
Thank you. I see miss Asada and then doctor Sadler would like to respond.
Go ahead.
I just wanna make a a a and ask a question in that. Can you pull an item like this item that started on March 1? And if you pull it, for what reason and you do you have the ability to stop the contract if it's already started? I don't understand why you're pulling something that's already in place.
So the reason this item was pulled is because there is a board director that has to recuse themselves around a conflict of interest.
Okay. But this could could be, any other circumstances.
Correct. And so I'm gonna let the soup I'm gonna let the superintendent answer the second question that you had there if she wants to.
So the first
Excuse me. You didn't been
through enough. Thank you very much.
That's why I said if she would like to. I just think
you should recuse yourself from answering any more questions.
Thank thank you. I do wanna mention and make sure everybody is absolutely clear that the Oakland Edge, Public Education Fund, in many of these contracts ask acts as our fiscal agent. So many organizations that are giving funds or providing funds to the district can't give them directly. So they go through the education fund which acts as a fiscal agent. They take a small fee to be able to do that because organizations, businesses, etcetera cannot donate directly to the district.
So, it is they are providing fiscal agent services in these cases. So, I just wanted everybody to be aware of that and that's their their Oakland. So we have several businesses and organizations that donate to the district through this process. But I will get back to the community about the specific fees so that everybody knows what comes out of the actual funding that's received.
Thank you, doctor Sadler. Alright. So reminding everyone that we're on o 22, which is an item that was pulled because the director had to recuse themselves. So the motion is on the floor. There's a second.
We took public comment. Are there board comments? Director Hutchinson?
Sure. If you want me to. I'll continue the pattern that next month is the one year anniversary of me abstaining from every consent report because I have no faith, as we can see, in the people deciding what's on the agenda and the people making decisions around our finances and our contracts. And I don't understand why today, there was a special meeting called for 07:00 just to extend the consultant contract with HYA, the fiscal advisers, instead of waiting to the next meeting and putting it on the agenda the right way. It sure seems like it was an effort to make sure that nobody knew what was happening by only giving twenty four hours notice.
And, you know, as I've heard a lot of people bring up transparency transparency, I'm gonna keep stressing the fact that the school board, the seven directors on the school board, have sole fiduciary responsibility over the district. So there's no thing for transparency when it comes to the school board. By definition, the school board needs to know and needs to vote on every financial decision. So when I have to write questions to the superintendent asking answers about things that supposedly were already decided without a school board vote that have a financial impact, that shows there's something really broken in our system. And the fact that I'm the only one saying it shows how broken it truly is.
And so, just so everyone knows for a fact, July 1, if I'm remembering correctly, is ninety eight days away. In ninety eight days at the most, the county superintendent will be forced to take us over, because we have no ability to pass a balanced budget, and all of these consent reports that are always approved have only just added to the deficit. Thank you.
I'd just like to remind my board colleagues we're on o twenty two. Doctor Thompson? Doctor Lotta? Doctor Williams? Alright.
Mister Eggstrack, can we take a vote on this item?
Yes. On the motion to adopt item zero dot 22 as stated.
Mhmm.
Director Lada?
Yes.
Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson?
Abstain.
Director Barry is recused. Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president Bachelor?
Yes.
President Brohard? Is absent. The motion is adopted.
Thank you. And with that, we will go to, p, which is consent items facilities. Is there a motion to adopt? So moved. Is there a second?
I will second. Great. Is are there public comments on this agenda item, mister Sechow?
Yes. We have Asolo Lebala and Ben Tapscon.
Times is bunch demolition gonna be on the agenda, and you're gonna actually do something to remediate the toxic issues and actually demolish the blighted property that's over there. The city should be fining you for that blighted property. How many times? When will you see it appropriate like coach Tascott says to give Bunch a home? You're so disrespectful to anything that's predominantly African American.
They can sit over there as long as you think it's it's necessary because they don't count. It's not important. You have change order for door entry system and sec security camera system. You know, McClellan's doesn't have a a door entry system since you move them to the other half of the building. They have to open the door up no matter who comes to the door.
They don't have a camera to look and see who's out there. But you're delaying the project and you have those kids and the staff at risk because they don't have the safety intrusion camera that you're giving Coliseum College prep, which is ridiculous to add more new classrooms to any school project. Then you have, p four. What is this about? Existing gym and other projects required.
That's the same school called Coliseum College Prep. Extra money. You know how much more money? It went from 59,000 to 62,000. You know what money they're using?
Measure y. P three, measure y. But you told us you couldn't give us any more money at McClyman's. You said there wasn't enough money we had to raise the that was originally what you told us. Additional funding for McClymonds, we had to raise the money.
Thank you. Coach?
I have these, and I'll let you pick them up later, but it's talking about we're about ready to go. So I go back to 2016, lead in the water, coach bringing water from home. 2018, we said, oh, we're gonna get our school fixed. Now I keep going back to the same stuff to make sure you get it. Every high school has had some remodeling done except one.
And we were the first when Tim White was here in 2018. He said, coach, we gotta go to lunch when he came back. We went to lunch. He said, coach, God is my witness. We're gonna we're gonna remodel McClime.
That was 2018. And president Thomas gave us a delay of two years. He hasn't delayed any other projects. That date came and left. Now where are we with Matt?
When are they gonna start putting the shovels in the ground and bring it? Go by if you got any free time, right by Fremont. They've had four different upgrades over there and construction right now as we speak. Tim White did the bleachers. That's rude to be talking when I'm talking.
So we had that date. It came and went. They went and blocked off the main hall, and the superintendent saw it. They haven't done anything, but they can work Saturday and Sunday at charter school. We want a date.
When are you gonna get your general contractor and your architect, and we start getting stuff done so we can have this thing ready to go when school comes back. It's I'm tired of coming down here saying the same thing over and over again. Nobody brought the boiler back, and Vince Edward can't get that back. And if we had cold weather, we couldn't keep the building heated, and we have 10 classrooms that are saying it's cold. 17 restrooms with no hot water.
And nothing happens. I come up and say the same stuff and almost said a bad word, and my dad told me not to do that in public. When are we gonna put the shovels in the ground and start remodeling? Why can't they work on Saturdays and Sundays? Why is that hallway still blocked off and nobody knows about it?
Okay. Board colleagues, any questions on p or comments, I'm sorry, about p, which is the consent agenda items for facilities. Director Barry? Director Williams, director Lada, director Thompson Williams. I'm sorry.
Hutchinson.
I almost said it out loud. So, again, when it comes to our, public facilities, just like our public dollars that we see reflected through the budget, there's been gross mismanagement, and I hope that, people will follow file lawsuits and go to the grand jury immediately. You know, it's now been a year since our long term head of facilities resigned. And in the year since then, somebody else has been hired. I I'm not even sure who it was.
I wasn't a part of that process, And we can see that there's been no forward movement. And then in the end, it's the superintendent's responsibility to make sure staff is directed to implement all approved plans. But especially as there's families here today, who also wanna put the issue of the temperature in our classrooms on the table, I think we as a community just need to understand a couple of things about how this all works. You know, first off, unfortunately, we don't get funding from the state for our facilities, and it puts us in a hole where we have $2,000,000,000 worth of need across our district. So the way we've addressed it is through a series of maximum facility bonds to help finance some projects, And the way that's worked is the board then prioritizes how those bond dollars are gonna be spent based on the language within the bond.
And for this cycle of what measure y, we are supposed to have rebuilds at Fremont High School, Roosevelt Middle School, and Garfield Elementary School. We are also supposed to engage in a number of district wide projects, and as of last year, with the latest reprioritization, there was supposed to be a lead remediation plan. It's also been a year. Haven't seen a lead remediation plan. And later on tonight, our master's facilities plan is literally a year late.
And so the one place that we do know that there's money left in measure y is this board a few months ago voted to take $7,000,000 to demolish 2nd Avenue across the street. So as the community is advocating for funds to address the temperature in the classroom, the only dollars that we have available now is instead of putting that money into demolition, to put that into a plan to address that issue as a start. There all the other money is already approved. And as we can hear with McCleiman's and other projects, everything because it's been delayed so many years, the costs have ballooned where we barely have enough money to get through that. And this is the kind of gross negligence and mismanagement that plagued the district in the past.
It is unconscionable. These are our most expensive dollars. And for McCleiman's here three years after this project was supposed to be started, which was actually seven years after it was originally supposed to be started, we're still waiting for anything to happen. This is a failure across everyone. You'll see usually when I say yes, then we'll hear a couple people say no no matter what the issue is.
But as a community, these are our public resources. So I'm asking everyone to get engaged. I'm available to sit and meet with whoever wants to talk about these issues. But until we demand a change, it's feeling a lot like what measure j our last one, where it took a grand jury report and a mass exodus of the senior staff involved in legal and finances before we saw any sort of remedy, and now the people who brought the remedy have been forced out of the district over the last year.
Director Brohard, do you have any? So the only thing I would like to say is P 3 and P 4, are CCPA facilities expansion projects, which, again, I'm really excited that those are moving forward. We have high school students in that high school space yet. If anybody has been there, it doesn't feel like a high school space. The gym is for middle schoolers.
I wanna say in the seventies. And so I wanna make sure that we have sports play areas that are actually adequate for our high school students so that they feel confident and successful versus feeling like they're you know, we all have that one shirt that we really love, and we really can't fit into anymore. Right? So we want to make sure that, our students are able to be successful on those school campuses, especially at a school site like CCPA that is expanding, that is serving the students within that community. So I just wanted to highlight that.
I also want to thank our community citizen our community bond oversight citizen body. I'm totally making that completely different. But I would like to thank them for all of their dedicated work to review all of the, all of the items that come before the facilities committee, to review all of the audits of the measure y, and also to con to continue to share with us what are some of the priorities. They've also uplifted the priority that families have come here tonight to talk about, which is the the heat mitigation in our classrooms, and it's really important that we tackle that. We do have $8,000,000 in measure y to tackle that, but it is coming at the third draw, which we just went for recently.
So as soon as we get those dollars, we will be implementing it. I think in April, our facilities discussion will be about how we are implementing those heat mitigation strategies, and the processes that we as a district have to take because, again, I jokingly said, you know, Preston doesn't just get an $8,000,000 credit card that he can then can go to Walmart and buy air conditioners.
Can we
Miss Asana?
Can we just take a moment?
Can we just take a moment? We'll take a, two minute recess.
Mister Smith, they're absent. Director Lauder? Unless we have a a a a response to the roll call, we'll have no quorum. Director, Williams? I am doing a quorum roll call.
Here. Alright. Director Hutchinson? Director Barry? Present.
You said present?
Present. K.
Alright. Director Thompson? Present. Vice president Bachelor?
Here.
And president Burghard?
Here. Quorum present. I would
like to remind the audience that we have board business to attend to. There's ample opportunities for public comment, and we're going to continue with the agenda. Thank you, Director Baxman. So
I was just finishing up my statement and saying that we have certain processes and protocols that we have to go through because these are public funds in order to purchase equipment, to purchase, and get labor to install different pieces of equipment. And so once again, when we get those dollars, we will then go through our process to make sure that there are no more grand jury reports and findings, and we do, use our dollars in the best way that that we've already said that we will be using them for. So I'm again, it's a work in progress, and I am working with our facilities team and community to make sure that we are levying those dollars as quickly as we can.
Okay. On the pending roll call, moved by director Lotta, I believe, seconded by director Bachelor to approve the, adopt the general consent, report on general obligation bonds. Due to director Simmons and Smith are absent. Director Lada?
Yes.
Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? Abstain. Director Barry?
Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Vice President Bachelor?
Yes.
And President Burghard? Yes. The general obligation bond consent report is adopted.
Great. And now I believe we're gonna do an interpretation check.
Yes, vice president. As stated earlier, there are three languages available for live interpretation. They are Cantonese, Arabic, and Spanish. I will lower all attendees' hands, and we will start with Cantonese. I will lower all attendees' hands on Zoom.
Please only raise your hand if you need the language being announced at this time, which is Cantonese. And I will ask mister Yu Nguyen if you could come off mute and give interpretation announcement for Cantonese. 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 or have 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 being announced at this time, which is Arabic. And I will ask miss Abdi if she can come off from mute and get the interpretation announcement for Arabic.
Every construction 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 now start with Arabic interpretation at this time. Moving forward to Spanish, lowering all attendees' hands on Zoom. Please only raise your hand if you need the language being announced at this time, which is Spanish.
And I will ask mister Dela Torre if you can come off of mute and get the interpretation announcement for Spanish.
Yes. Of course.
Thank you, mister Delatorre. Checking the attendees to see if there's any hands raised for Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands, we will not start with any interpretation at this time. That concludes the third interpretation announcement for this evening, and I'll pass it back to you, vice president.
Thank you. So next, we have q, which is public comments, on non agenda items. Do we have any public commenters, mister Sechow?
Yes. We have 10 public speaker for this item. First five speakers are Carol Doton, Brenda Wall, Tonya Tanya Kappner, Kim Davis, and Sheila Haynes. Those are the first five speakers.
Thank you. Come on up, everybody. And I know Ms. Sheila Haynes is probably online. Are you there?
Yes. That is correct.
Great. If you did hear your name, though, if you could approach the podium and line up, that would be wonderful. Sheila Haynes, go ahead.
Looks like she lowered her hand. We have Carol Delton and Tanya Kappner.
Okay.
Ms. Delton, go ahead and unmute yourself to speak.
Evening, Thank you for this opportunity to speak. Just to again come back to the issue of the Oakland Public Education Foundation contracting, other districts do not have this kind of an organization running so many grants and so many stipends through them. And it is completely possible to work without such an organization. I think that's an area where OUSD needs to develop. There may have been a time when, because the district was in receivership that organizations wanted to donate through another entity, but we hope that time is in the past.
That's one of the, what I will call myths of contracting, that persists in this district. Another one is that contractors in a variety of job categories, including my own, are treated better by contractors than they are by direct employers. As a speech language pathologist, I can tell you that I am recruited several times a week through different agencies. Through the course of my career, I actually worked for two different agencies. I was never treated better at an agency, And my pay rate never equaled what I made as a direct employee.
What is different and what the agencies do better is that they convince people. They go out. They recruit at the programs, they tell new speech language pathologists, psychologists, and social workers that they can do better with them. It's not true. I'm hoping that this district will allocate hours to job alike peers to go and talk to those that we'd like to bring into the district directly as employees and not as contractors.
Thank you.
Next speaker on line, have Tanya Kappner.
Go ahead, Tanya.
Yes. Good evening. I'm Tanya Kappner. I'm with the Equal Opportunity Now by Any Means Necessary Caucus of Teachers and a representative from Sojourner Truth Online School. I want to restate what I said earlier this evening to the community.
I want us, the school board, to reverse the cuts and the layoffs to our classified workers and our certificated workers. We should not have our crucial services being cut. People like our noon supervisors, Ms. Donna at La Esqualeita, our crucial conflict resolution programs. Disproportionately our Black and Latino schools being affected in East Oakland and our Flatlands and West Oakland.
This is unacceptable. We need to restore our SEIU positions, our AFSME positions, our Oakland Education Association positions, and give our students the services they need and deserve. I call on this school board to reverse all the cuts and instead to be fighting for the money for our schools, to be demanding of Governor Newsom to put all that Proposition 98 money down to our schools, to be fighting for Prop 55, to be saying that we do not refuse to repay funding that has been taken from the Oakland schools by the State of California, that we deserve equity and that we will stand up and fight against these attacks on public education that we are seeing coming from the Trump administration and from the rise of fascism in this country. It is the duty of this school board to fight for what students need. I say chop from the top, no cuts to our schools and our services, reverse these layoffs, make sure our students get the staff and the teachers and the educators and the people working in their schools that they deserve.
So I just wanted to speak against the cuts and say this school board needs to be fighting instead to build the movement against these cuts along with the teachers and staff members and community members who are making that fight and building that member, that that movement to defend the rights of everyone to a quality public education. That is it. Thank you.
Thank you. Is miss Haynes back online?
No. I haven't seen her.
Okay. Alright. Go ahead, miss Davis.
Vice president, she just raised her hand.
Go ahead, miss Haynes.
Miss Haynes, if you can unmute yourself to speak. Yeah. We're not able to hear it, miss Haynes.
Right, we will come back to miss Haynes since miss Davis has been waiting for a minute.
There you go.
I want to say a couple of things about community school managers, and about the TSAs. And historically speaking, those were positions and the funding sources are for our students with greatest needs. And the state has established that there is a 55% UPP limit for community school grants, and most of our community schools are funded with that grant money. The former superintendent made it her personal project to expand the community schools across the district and to use targeted dollars for our highest need students to fund those positions. And each and every year, they were funded with one an explanation of one time dollars.
These were one time positions. And I warned at that time that we were gonna come to a point when when there wasn't those dollars anymore, and it's hard to give up positions, and not have we all wanna have those adults in our schools. But we need to prioritize where that is with the dollars that particularly our supplemental and concentration dollars that come from our student I mean, from our highest need students. I am surprised, to say the least, about this resolution in part. One thing about it, that it looks like Karl Monk, which is not in District 4, is going to become a a hub for TK for district four students, which strikes me as strange.
But even more importantly, this this resolution with its 360 student cutoff is going to harm every single school in West Oakland. It is going to harm every single majority black school with the exception of Allendale and Laurel, and it is going to benefit those schools that have the lowest number of students who generate these dollars that they're being paid for. I know and I want everyone to have all the adults that they need in their classroom, but not at the cost of the black and brown children that this will harm. Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker.
Good evening board directors, interim superintendent Sadler, members of the community. My name is Brandon Wong. I'm a parent at Crocker and Edna Brewer. What do we want our students to accomplish? What is the best way to help them get there?
How are we progressing towards those goals? I challenged the board to spend time discussing these three questions during each board meeting. On February 25, Fresno Unified also held a board meeting. Like OUSD, they had taken had to take action on potential layoffs. But before that, they shared progress on their college and career readiness goals.
Yes, we have a budget crisis. Yes, we must make difficult financial decisions. But we cannot wait until our finances are stabilized to focus on the work that is the reason why we are all here. Right now, just one out of three OUSD students are reading on grade level, and for black and brown students, it's one out of seven. Those students cannot afford for us to pause the conversation about literacy until the budget is fixed.
If we wait for perfect conditions, our students may be waiting forever. I have a personal connection to Fresno. My mom grew up just outside the city, and my grandfather always told me when he visited us, education is the most important thing. Study hard. It took me years to realize that the sore the source of his adamance.
World War two derailed his own educational aspirations when he was relocated from San Francisco to an internment camp in Arkansas while he was in high school. Oakland has 60,000 school age children who need us to all act like we believe that public education is the most important thing. Thank you.
Thank you. Miss Esada.
Hold up the agenda tomorrow for rules and all and rules tomorrow, they will be approving what will be on the agenda on April 15 when you have your partnership meeting. So I want you all to be prepared. Status of the Oakland Children's Initiative and Oakland Promise and First Five. Now that comes from this $19,000,000 that y'all supposedly got for Garfield. That process wasn't correct.
So be prepared to explain how you you approved it when the process wasn't done well. The other thing that's on the agenda is a oral report from Oakland Public Works regarding illegal dumping that's going on at your school sites. Have a list of schools that are being dealt with this ex at higher levels so you can have them deal with it. The other thing is you're gonna have a report from the Oakland Youth Commission. Encourage your school board young people to be at the meeting so they get a chance to see what other youth are doing in their work.
Let me see what else they have here. School safety. They're gonna be talking about your school safety protocols. And you got a big problem with this George Floyd thing where y'all don't wanna deal with the police. You need to establish some kind of relationship with the police department.
The police department under the NSA has to do a stop data report every month and on that is the number of students they pick up who are truant. They pick up students who are Truant. What are they doing with them? You need to find out. And let me say this.
I got a call from a parent. Miss Asada, I'm at the doctor's office. My son is here because he's got lumps on the back of his neck.
Can you
tell me what are those chemicals that are on the field? This is a football player. Do you see being lead? Parents are wondering if they've had now I told the doctor eventually said it's too early. Those kind of chem chemicals, it takes a a longer period of time for something like that to show up.
But parents at McClyman's understand that their children are being exposed to chemicals that can cause different forms of cancer, respiratory disease. And y'all act like, oh, I'm a talk about how happy and celebrating about what's going on in college Coliseum College Prep. This is going on. This is going on. And I'm getting a call from a parent worried that their child has been exposed to a toxic substance because they got lumps on the back of their neck.
Mister Sechow, can you read the next five names
for speakers? Yes. We have the last four speakers are AV Ringer, Jack Nelson, Misty Cross, and Ben Tab Scott.
Okay. If your name is called, please step up to the podium, Provide public comment. So coach Warren, public comment on non agenda items. Either coach is fine.
Little interlude here. Some good things going on at Skyline. One, the all alumni thing is either June 26 or twenty seventh, the last Saturday. There's gonna be a free barbecue there. Before that, you've got you've got one thing you guys have done right for sure, and that's you streamline the nomination process for teacher of the year.
I will tell you, I've been in education a long time and I wanna sit here and it's over thirty years, but Dawn James has been nominated and she is a teacher of the year. Whoever beats it must be really, really good. We are her last performances are May, and you're cordially invited. You can come as my guest because I am a a financier of that program. In fact, we're gonna be given more scholarships this year than we ever have on May 14.
I'm really excited about that.
That's it. Thank you.
Thank you. Coach?
I'm to call that. I don't know what happened to it. So where did all the money go? Measure b, 435,000,000. Measure j, 425,000,000.
Measure y, 735,000,000, over a billion dollars. And we can't get our school fixed. And this board sits up there and listens every time we come in here every two weeks. And I'm saying it over and over again, every high school has had some remodeling except one. In 2018, we were told that we were number one on the list.
And Tim White died and president Thomas lies and says we're gonna do this. President Thomas lies and says we're gonna give you a two year delay. It's gone. It came and went. And this board sits up there every two weeks and not one of you say, where when when are they gonna do something at Mac?
Why? Except one person. It's not money. Every high school has had improvements except one. 2016, we had lead.
We did the bleachers. We did the cafeteria. We did the gym on the repiping. Who's checking all the water filters right now? Because they were putting them on the faucets and nobody asked, so what does this mean?
I said, is it the date it goes on or is it the date it comes off? They didn't know. And I told the engineers the date that it should come off. So who's checking them right now? Not only at Mac, but every school.
President Thomas had 40 schools that had lead. 40 schools, and he kept that a secret for six months? And he's not fired? What's wrong with you people?
Any other public speakers left that submitted public comment cards?
Avery Ringer and mister Cross and mister Cross online. Okay.
How remarkable is it that I would need to make my comment concerning our massive 10% structural budget deficit during non agenda items. Does that tell you pretty much everything you need to know? Because I hear all the time from other parents, how can they just abandon this three r's process? This major restructuring effort completely halted. In June 2024, this body wrote, be it resolved that the school board will lead a citywide re envisioning process in 2425 to provide recommendations for OUSD's future footprint by June 2025.
That didn't happen. Now on the district website, we find out that it's not slated to begin again until 2027. So I've I've been learning a little bit more about the rules and the history of all this, and sure enough, you can't just abandon it. Proved actions of the board are binding in perpetuity unless and until modified by a subsequent action according to the parliamentarian. But this is not just the three r's.
This is actually supposed to be a culmination of a whole process agreed to with the county in 2023 as a result of our structural imbalance going back to the 2016 school year. And you just abandoned it? What accounting has there been as to why the execution of this action didn't occur, president Brohard? Has the general counsel been asked to weigh in on this? Every community member should be demanding an answer to these questions.
Many are. But I'd like to ask our county superintendent in particular, isn't it about time to step in? The district signed this agreement with you in 2023, and anybody wanting to look it up can look it up. It's 23Dash2328. An agreement meant to be enforced through this school year.
And now this board has just abandoned it with no accountability, not even engaging with a speaker talking about it. It does appear that the county should step in.
Mr. Cross, if you can unmute yourself to speak.
Oh, she's online. Great.
So to the four board members that we voted in and ran a slave for, just very disappointed in you guys not being able to set your egos aside and understand the position that you've taken. The people have voted you in. The children and the students are relying on you to do what's right. We talked about chopping from the top. I don't know why that's not being done.
We have been going through the same thing about the lead and McClymont's fan Cedric. And it's a shame that miss Asada just got up there and said that. I'm trembling right now because I can't believe that you have done nothing for McClimates. It's a slap in the face. You should resign right now.
You should step down. You're doing nothing for District 3. I don't understand the patterns of dysfunction that are keep being repeated. This is static. This is that this systematic failure keeps going across and across and then we keep going through the same thing.
The lack of preparation before a meeting and understanding what's on the agenda and knowing how to vote and knowing what it means and how it affects the students. We are getting ready to start a lawsuit. There is no more talking with you guys. This is neglect, child neglect, this child abuse, and you guys are being held accountable. I hope that parent child is going to be recovering from whatever it is that is in that soil and in that air at McClime's.
And there's other schools that have lead in the in the water. We want Bunch to be removed from Lowell. They need their own campus. And if that can happen, then we want the parents to have the option of sending their kids to McClimmons, which is a high school four or six blocks down the street. A high school, not to combine a middle school with a high school environment.
Thank you. With that, that is the end of our public comment time. Now we're on to r, which is public hearing, which we have none. S, which is unfinished business. We have nothing there.
So we're at t, which is new business. Remind me, parliamentarian, is there a motion needed for t one?
No. First reading.
Okay.
Which means it's a discussion.
Thank you.
I am only.
Thank you. So now we're at t one, 26 dash zero three zero five twenty twenty six facilities master plan facilities. First read. So I'd like to start, just by saying a few words and then, turn it over to doctor Sadler. But tonight, we're bringing forward the first read of the 20 of the draft 2026 facilities master plan, which the facilities committee has reviewed and voted to advance of the full board.
I wanted to recognize the depth of collaboration, that has shaped this work, including efforts of staff, the facilities committee, the citizen bond oversight committee, students, families, and community partners. This plan is best understood as a bridge between our vision and action. It translates our shared priorities into consistent framework to guide future decisions in operational planning, capital investments, partnerships, and long term term stewardship of our facilities. Importantly, this is not a list of specific projects or schools or school decisions. Instead, it establishes the data, criteria, and strategic approach that will help the district make more transparent and informed choices over time.
By bridging this by bringing this work forward now, we will be advance sorry. We will be we will advance any future bond measures the district is taking, to to taking in proactive approach to long term planning and aligning, with evolving state expectations, including retire including requirements connected to proposition two. Before we turn it over to staff for the presentation, again, I'd like to invite doctor Denise Sadler to share any additional context and words.
Thank you, vice president Bachelor. I just wanted to make some comments, as we talk about facilities. Facilities shape the daily experience of learning. They influence how students feel when they arrive at school, and how teachers deliver instruction and how communities connect with their neighborhood campuses. Having spent much of my career in Oakland Unified, I've seen firsthand how our schools have evolved.
I talk about it a lot from just being nothing but green and gray and beige buildings. The investments that have transformed campuses and also the challenges that remain as many of our buildings continue to age. I've attended several, celebration of some of our facilities that have been are over a 100 years old. I've watched generations of Oakland students move through these buildings, and I believe deeply that the environments we create today will shape their opportunities tomorrow. What excites me about a Facilities Masters Plan, this one, is that it helps us look forward.
It allows us to think intentionally about what our schools should look and feel like not just today, but over the next twenty years for our students. This has been a comprehensive thoughtful process. Community members have contributed through workshops, surveys, and advisory conversations, many of them of which I participated in. Their voices helped elevate priorities such as learning environment quality, modernization, sustainability, and transparency in how we make decisions. In fact, some of our students who are entering school next year will be around in the twenty second century.
We have to think about that. This plan reflects a shift toward more integrated and strategic planning across the district. We need to think long and hard, bringing together facilities, academics, and operations into a shared framework for prioritization. Tonight is an important first step and I want everybody to listen closely to this presentation in continuing that conversation. With that, I will turn it over at, to our chief systems and service officer, Preston Thomas, and Purnita Rambish, executive director of planning to walk us through the draft plan.
Thank you.
Awesome. Thank you, doctor Sadler. Good evening, board members and community. Tonight, we're here to give the first read of the facility's master plan, and this has definitely been a year and a half in development to be here tonight. The plan is designed and and specifically, we're at a juncture in this district where we're not going out for a bond immediately.
Right? We're developing a framework that you will utilize to make decisions about the future of the district and the and the and how we're going to invest future dollars. One of the things it brings together for the first time, and we'll walk through this in the presentation, I think this is really important, the facility condition data. It's also the educational adequacy, how the classrooms are structured and schools are structured to best support student learning. Also, the enrollment trends, both immediate and long term.
Also, we have equity indicators that we're including, which includes, like, the UPP and the percentage of special education students within school communities. And also a new feature is the state eligibility. There is the through the new proposition two and the requirements around master plans, there is state reimbursement that you can get and that's very transparent in some of the dashboards we'll see tonight. The goal is to walk you through the structure of the plan, the planning framework, and to and how this works, to more strategically and responsibly plan moving forward. And so there is still an opportunity after this meeting for you all to engage with staff, to provide feedback, and it'll be incorporated.
It's gonna go to the facilities committee one last time for final approval to move forward to the board. And at your second read, it'll be a voting item. So I just wanna give you that arc. And I'm here with Pernita Rambisay, who is our, our executive director of planning over the facilities department. And also Gavin is here from Perkins Eastman who has been leading a lot of the work at hand.
So, without further ado, I'm gonna jump into the plan. I am gonna go relatively quick because at the end of the, presentation, we would like to highlight some of the dashboards that allow you to we'll show you how they're interactive so that you and the community knows how to leverage these as as tools around long term planning. The ask of the board tonight is is to just essentially review the feedback and provide feedback to us, and you do have until about three weeks of time to be able to do that to incorporate it into the plan. Introduction, feedback, key highlights, and the investment frameworks are gonna be discussed this evening. Okay.
So there are links within this document. So I just wanna name, if you wanna see it, QR codes and links that connect you to the actual draft plan, and it is lengthy, and it's broken into different sections. But there are also going to be one pagers that break down into specific sections, and that link there is to the dashboards that allow you to interact in different ways with the data that we've been collecting. And I just want to reiterate this, it is a planning document that we are utilizing and it is a framework for future decisions that the board will make. And we heard this loud and clear in some of our study sessions that we're it's too premature to start offering projects and start thinking about that, but to really identify how we're gonna plan future dollars.
So I'm gonna pause on this slide for a second. This is really important. You're at the part where the planning tools are here with the facilities master plan. And on this slide, there are other plans that are happening parallel to this and will complement this plan. And I wanna name them specifically.
The academic program plan, any planning for future programs, for example, prop 28 came forward around arts integration. That those types of investments in where we wanna support arts infrastructure within the district comes out of the master plan. Right? Asset management plan, we are currently undertaking feasibility studies right now. That will emerge from this and we'll integrate that into the master plan data.
Deferred maintenance plan, there's dashboards that you can review where the status are of individual schools. Energy management plans, there are contracts that the district engages in around solar and different ways that we're managing our energy, which is your third or fourth largest cost within the general fund. Education specifications, you're gonna hear a lot tonight, I'm sure, about air quality and thermal comfort plan that is currently being developed and will be presented out in its first form at the next facilities committee meeting, LCAP, and other planning efforts. So I do wanna say that this is a basis for many plans that will drive board decision making moving forward. Those strategies and operations then get implemented in other initiatives that the district is is considering and the board is considering.
So, like, I just wanna name it in terms of the timing, and then it will actually be upon us sooner than you think because there are three areas that you can think about future funding. One, grant opportunities that may be coming forward for for the district or new funds. Secondly, as the major projects move forward, you do have a $60,000,000 contingency within the bond to support those projects. But at a certain point, that funding will become available. And then with long term planning, a sec the the next bond would be a consideration in terms of how the the board really wants to put together project lists for that area.
So I just wanna name, those are kind of your time points that are coming forward on where you'll start leveraging the plan to create those project lists. This is a really important slide to for you all, and I just I'm gonna name it for a reference. But, like, it's not just our facilities that measure why. There are many other funding sources that the district can access to complement that program. Here is a list of some of them, but this plan allows you to start leveraging other other resources to support the the the capital program.
A good example of that at the last meeting was the the complementary use of measure AA to support early childhood at the Garfield project. Let's see. So I will turn it over to Pranita who's gonna talk through this piece really quickly around engagement.
Good evening board and community. I'm Praneeth Aranvase. I'm the executive director of facilities planning. Thank you for the opportunity to present draft of the facilities master plan. I'll pick up from where Mr.
Thomas left off in terms of you heard already in the introductions. This has been a comprehensive and a very iterative process grounded both, in data and the feedback that we have received. We engaged with more than 1,300 students, families, staff, and community members as mentioned through survey, town halls, various workshops, conducted several student engagement, ad leadership classes, as well as, we met with all student, All City Council. So it has been a very robust engagement throughout. What what you see on the chart here on the right is, what we have heard so far in terms of, the feedback that we received through the survey.
On the left, we also attempted based on all of the engagements that we've had so far, to identify a few clear priorities that emerged through the information that we received. Infrastructure reliability, which includes HVAC, our heating, ventilation, and air conditioning, and the thermal comfort, electrical systems, restroom, and water quality. The second priority that we heard is outdoor spaces and safety, which include shade, play spaces, and secure campuses, as well as we heard the need for creating next generation learning environments, which include modern classrooms, technology, spaces to support our CTE and STEM programs, special education support services, arts, and specialized programs. These priorities reinforce a broader need that you see in the box in green up there. Invest in long term sustainability, modernize facilities to support enrollment and retain our staff, and create environments that support the whole student experience.
This was this is a table that shows you just the key, feedback that we have received so far. Rather than going through, feedback line by line, I'll just give an example of how we have been incorporating, this feedback. For the first one, the thermal comfort and climate readiness, as you have been hearing already from, our community, as well as within the data that we have received, one of the clear themes we heard was about thermal comfort and climate readiness, and the need to address classroom heat and overall thermal comfort. Health and safety has been identified as one of the priorities within the master plan and it's in the tier one priority investments, that you will see, which Mr. Thomas will also be talking about in a minute in the, slides to come.
In parallel, staff has also been actively developing a district wide facilities focused on heat mitigation, which we will be bringing forward at the Facilities Committee meeting in April for further discussion. Just to also touch on how we have been strengthening the equity framework. The second major theme is the need to strengthen how equity is embedded within the decision making framework. This plan builds on that positioning equity as the core driver of our investments. Specifically, have also been bringing resources within the dashboard as well as the report that highlight the citywide equity index.
The City of Oakland also has an equity index. We're bringing some resources to use that as our planning tool. Within the dashboard, as Mr. Thomas mentioned, we have an equity score. We're looking at our unduplicated population.
We're looking at where the needs are across our campuses from an equity lens. In terms of some of the key highlights, I just wanted to take a moment here to, highlight this is a living document. So what that means, is staff will be going back, annually to be able to revisit, and update the information that's available within our dashboard. So we're constantly, responding to the needs that we're seeing in our community as well as in our district in terms of enjoyment trends, and the the projects that we're seeing, that are making progress, we will continue to reflect those in our dashboard. We also wanted to highlight that, in November, the board approved to, expand the scope of work for the master plan to include water quality strategies.
So that's reflected in our dashboards too. In the report, there's a comprehensive section that includes water quality. Another key highlight from this master plan cycle is that the district would own and manage and maintain the data. That So gives us again an opportunity to be able to go back every year and bring you all a refresh of what this information looks like to inform the planning process. To highlight a few findings, the master plan responds to a set of inter interconnected challenges facing the district, which we have been all talking about.
First, much of our portfolio is aging and increasingly costly to maintain with campuses needing reinvestments to meet today's expectations for safety, accessibility, sustainability, and quality learning environments. We also continue to rely on portable classrooms, many of which are beyond their intended life cycle. At the same time, similar to several districts across the nation, we're experiencing shift in enrollment along with shifting residential patterns and family choice dynamics. Together, these factors make clear the need for a more intentional, long range, and data informed approach to how we plan, invest, and manage our facilities. This is just a snapshot right now of the various products that we have been developing as part of this process.
What you see on the right is a screenshot of the website. Rather than just a, report which is 200 pages plus, we're also attempting to make this report more accessible. The website is set up in a way where you're able to navigate to different sections, and find the report a little more interactive and easy to read through. Additionally, as Mr. Thomas mentioned, we also have a dashboard to go along with the report.
We are also, what we heard is, is there a two pager that's you know slightly more like a summary of what the report is. So we're developing that as well, which will be accessible on the website. We're trying to make this information available in various ways so it's more accessible, it's more distributable, and then it continues to to inform the decisions that we're trying to make. Here are a couple of screenshots, and I know we're going to be looking at the dashboard as well, but we just wanted to show you what the different views that are available in the dashboard. What you're looking at here is a district wide view of all of the assessments.
On the right you will see several filters and sliders. So basically you can slice and dice the data and, identify various ways to view information district wide. What this shows you is it's a map with all of our campuses district wide, and on the right there's, there are categories which you can filter out. So if you want to look at our age of our, average age of the buildings across the district, you want to look at the number of portables or what the age of those portables are. You want to look at facility conditions.
So you basically can interact with the data using this view at a district wide level. This is another view where basically you have a campus by campus comparison of all of our assessments. Some of the key indicators, as we've been talking about that we've included are enrollment health equity along with the facility's condition, along with education adequacy. You also see up there a field called OPSC funding. There's a tab that provides descriptions, to all of these terms, but this is what Mr.
Thomas was mentioning in terms of, the funding that's available at the state level for some of our projects. So this column identifies exactly how much funding is available for each of the campus at the state level if we proceed to make a facility investment. Here's another way of looking assessments. If you want to look at the core systems across our campuses, their life cycle, how are the assessments looking for these core, systems, and then the cost to address those needs right now in 2026, as well as the cost to address those needs if you do nothing right now by 2040. So it's an escalation that we have applied, which again, we keep going back every year to refresh what the current market conditions and construction costs would be.
So we'll have an opportunity to continue to update, give you an updated information. This is another view where basically now you're looking at a more campus level, almost like a profile or a report. This is also included in the draft master plan that you have within the appendix. We have included as an example, three school samples, but the next version would have all of our campuses across the district with a profile for every campus. With that, I will pass it back to mister Thomas.
And then I'll just reiterate, in a second, we're gonna pull up some of the dashboards, and president Brohard asked that we can start with her district just to show you how they'll work and how you can use them real time. One of the signature pieces in here is really a framework around a t shaped investment. I really wanna highlight the previous planning that had been done around measure y really did fix a lot of things in the district. If you look back, the very first master plan was really focused on addressing deferred maintenance. This the last the the expenditure plan for measure y does two things.
It invests across the district in every single school to make sure that they get investments. But it also goes deep in certain schools that needed additional or much deeper investments. Right? And those are I'm just gonna name them. They're McClyments, Roosevelt, Garfield, CCPA, and MLA Maxwell, the campus.
But there were also investments in in Claremont in terms of the fire that had happened. So it did a lot to, like, address some major issues in in the district. But that band across the top is our district wide investments. So when you talk about security cameras, when you talk about door entry systems, that is for every school. Right?
And so we did feel like, and and when we were doing some of the surveying and talking to community, that framework really works for people in terms of getting investments across the entire district, like living schoolyards where every school will eventually get a new schoolyard, but also allows you to pick projects to go deep. And we're gonna walk through some of the tools that you'll be able to use that. I wanna highlight in the top area across the district wide initiatives. One of the things that we heard was we do want you to prioritize significant dollars for these certain items. Right?
But also don't let go of the things that are really critical. Right? At the time when the second draw of measure y came forward, there were three fields that needed to get replaced. Right? We now know all of the next times that every future field gets updated, and so we can utilize the bond and make sure that that's included with any bond programming.
So those would be examples on the sustain investments versus like high priority investments. And here's a closer view of what the high investment areas are that are recommended based on the engagement. One, high investment areas around HVAC. Right? Continue around water water quality, plumbing, and electrical infrastructure.
And electrical infrastructure goes hand in hand with the HVAC piece. Restroom modernization, in listening to our students, that was critical for them in terms of their voice around their daily experience in restrooms, lighting fencing, lighting, and seismic issues, and and clearly deferred maintenance. Right? Your bond has done a lot to address the leaky roofs across the district, the asphalt conditions and some of those other deferred maintenance projects. The second tier medium investments are really around investments in TK, for example.
Specialized programs, STEM, art, CTE. Special education space upgrades to make sure that people have workable spaces at their school sites. So these are kind of the tier two. And then like I said, they're sustainable investments. Things that we've done that families have really, really appreciated.
Kids have talked about their importance, and that we need to continue on that path moving forward. So when we're talking about those transformative projects, where you're going deep at school sites, the tool that we're gonna share, and we're gonna start with this right now as we start sharing it, is that these are the criteria that the board should be considering in terms of selecting those projects. And that's in the future major projects. Campus facility condition index, what's the condition of that school? The overall educational adequacy, the current or potential enrollment for that campus in particular, an enrollment health score that we've integrated using some of the work that mister Betlock has done into the facilities master plan, equity indicators, and state funding eligibility.
And then also thinking about proximity to city services and also city parks and things of that nature should be a factor that we're considering. There are additional factors over there, but there these are the major ones. So with that, I think I'm gonna join the Zoom and try to share one of the dashboards. So let me see if we can get this going. Yeah.
K. Here we go. Okay. So let me show you let me walk through this dashboard dashboard in particular. And I I'm sorry it's a little bit small, but hopefully I have selected over on the the side over here, it has board district number 2.
And you could pick the grade span that you're interested in. Right? So you could pick, and I've picked elementary here. And so what's listed on this page is all of the elementary schools that are, in District 2. And you could see it's Bella Vista, Cleveland, Crocker, Franklin, Garfield, La Esquilita, and Lincoln.
Okay? Then as you go from left to right, there are the ability for you to look at the overall facility condition, how did it rate. Now there are different ways that you can present this data. I just wanna be really clear. We we utilize categories, but there are also numerical ranges that could go with this as well.
So, like, this is kind of the look and feel and this is where we would like to have feedback from you all. The educational adequacy scores are there as the second the second measure that you could look at. Then you go to program capacity. That is and and this has changed. Right?
The the formula at the state is the the occupancy rate of the program or the program capacity. There's two numbers. One, the number of classrooms multiplied by the maximum class size. That is what the state uses across the board. But we know that when we're talking about planning programming, sometimes we use those classrooms for other spaces.
Restorative justice spaces. Right? Family resource centers. So it allows you to adjust the capacity based on the program that's in the school. Then you see the per occupancy rate, like what percentage of that school is full.
Then you see the OPSC funding available, and you could see that each of these sites, and I'll just read them. Like, if you look at Garfield, the Garfield project, after we have completed that project, the district will get down the road $3,900,000 back to the district as a reimbursement that can support future planning. There are ways that you can use that information around your deferred maintenance program, and I think this is a really important point because it hasn't been a historical use in OUSD. You can stack multiple deferred maintenance projects together to meet that threshold to get that reimbursement. So instead of just doing a roof, you do a roof, you paint, playground, HVAC, electrical, or some configuration of that to be able to get that reimbursement.
So that is an important strategy about building your funding stack to address capital issues. The equity score that is there is an equity score where we've just really simply used the percentage of students that are in special education and the unduplicated percentage, and then created an average for those two. We can create a rubric. There's other ways that we can look at it that is based on kind of particular facilities, some of the data sets that we have, and we can talk through that a little bit more. The enrollment health is and really we're looking at the number of kids that live in the neighborhood, right, which is defined by the attendance boundaries.
I just wanna name that for the school because those can also be adjusted. But they're also around the percentage of kids that attend the school within their neighborhood. So sometimes you can have a high number of students that live in the neighborhood, but a low percentage that attend that school. Right? And so there's multiple factors in there.
So you see vulnerable, meaning that they're declining or they're not meeting the standard level for the school site, stable or strong. And we can change those criteria, but generally, those are generally accepted principles for that. Then there's areas around the average building age. You can look at the current enrollment so that you see how many kids are currently in the in the school, and then proximity to city services. I'd also point out on this top part right here, if there's a specific ethnic group that you're interested in, you can actually look at how what's the percentage.
You put a threshold and find out how many African American students are in that school. How many Latinx students are in that school. And so you can start looking at the demographics of each of the school communities based on this dashboard. So this is one of them. Are there do you have questions on this or do you want me to show you a different view?
Or do you want me to click around on a few things here? Okay. There there I and I well, definitely, I'm gonna turn it over to you all for questions in a second. So I'll just show you two more views and how they could be used. This slide right here, I think as it loads, this is the beginning of your deferred maintenance comprehensive plan that this is just looking if you wanted to just filter or sort by HVAC, you can do that.
If you wanna look at various different criteria, you can look at that as well. I wanna be really clear. This was a comment that was made in the facilities committee. The electrical assessment that's here is an electrical assessment of the quality of what is in the walls. Right?
And like kind of doing an assessment of it. It's not about the electrical capacity. We're meeting with the buildings and grounds team to do an overall kind of assessment across the district of all the capacity for those sites. So that's another view, and then I think I'll stop there.
If you wanted to know the so say the electrical capacity. That's the condition of the wires and stuff like that, Yeah. Wouldn't you also wanna know the outlets? Would you wanna know that specific I guess I'm thinking of, like, the educational adequacy and the the HVAC, you'd you'd wanna know. Is there a way to know that as well?
That's exactly right. I mean, that that is where and I just one of the things that's really important about this, in the past, and I've heard the board talk about this, the past dataset was done through a Jacobs assessment where it was kind of outside consultants had developed it, and the the district did not own that in a database. We have built a database that can be updated, and we can add new features as, you know, as we move forward. So these are some of the things that if there are things that aren't here because the district and we've been partnering with our RAD department. We have a GIS person internally within the district to develop, like, some of these plans.
We can add new features as the board sees in your consideration around things. We can definitely add that information to this. One other thing that you've heard over and over again about, like, the many of the projects in Measure Y were done in the the pricing for those was done in 2018. And we know that the rate by which those projects escalate over time, and that's far long before I was in this in this role. All the numbers here will naturally be updated every year.
So that means if the board, when you develop your project list and you say, this is how much we wanna dedicate to the school, it will show you the level of what that will be in the next year, what that'll be three years out, so that the board has the best information possible that it'll be dynamic and fluid based on market conditions. So when the COVID happened and there was massive inflation that increased the prices of everything, that didn't get factored into all of your facilities projects. And you have seen us trying to correct for that, but those those will be inherent in the future plan as we move forward. So
So those will update automatically? I mean, I'm
Automatically as the master plan on a yearly basis, it'll update and you'll get new prices and new new cost based on the information. And it some of them drop down.
Right.
As you as you repair or put a new roof on it, the whole the that category will go down for that specific school and across the entire district. So I think that's where we're at. I just wanted to show you this is I'll leave this up if there's specific questions around the data, but at this point, I'll turn it back over to you, president Brohard, and if we're we're happy to entertain questions or comments from the board.
I guess we'll start with me. So we talked about the dashboard at the last facilities meeting, but it wasn't live yet. So because it's within this presentation and you kinda walked us through it, it is live now. Folks can start utilizing it and start providing us with feedback.
Absolutely. And and we're fully, like, open to sitting down with board directors and walking through your schools with you so that you can make sure that the the data that you would like to use to drive decision making, that you're familiar with it, that you make sure the tools are there. And like I said, at the time when you adopt the plan and whenever that might be at the next board meeting or beyond that, if there's still requests around data and ways that you wanna view it, we can modify that and change that in the overall dashboards that are available to the community and to the board.
And so I'm also wondering if we could, similarly to the kind of feedback sessions that we received, if we can have, like, almost a tour of the PTSAs, you know, SSCs, different governing bodies to kinda show them this as well so that they can be more comfortable and, like, working through it so that they can also, you know, be a part of the conversation and bringing back some of that. And I know that that could that could take different supports from different staff folks to do. So, again, happy to have this document or this, whole tool. And then maybe that's something that we also do as school board directors, have conversations either with our school communities or have sessions in which we're showcasing this tool so that our families can best understand this and can also provide us with feedback around what maybe they would like additional information for or what they would like us to see in future bonds. I guess my question is towards my next question is around the bond.
So remind us, like, when is this bond gonna be completed? And then when is the timeline for us if we choose to to go out for another bond?
So the timing on this is the district has been on an eight year cycle around the bonds. So this bond was in 2020. The next window would be probably 2028, and that is when most of the major projects would be be coming to completion. So the the next window is that presidential election year in 2028. And that's that's at the at the board's discretion as to when we go out for that.
So I
guess that was my question. Was it gonna be November 2027 to start in 2028 or November 2028 to start in 2029?
That is for the board. We will we will work with you all around the those windows, but typically, it's the primary and the the November election that are your opportunities Wonderful.
And, yeah, I think, like, once once those projects are completed, right, having, one pagers that we can also show to community, as well as tours and things like that that we can provide. Maybe, again, since we have online capacity as well, doing some of that online so that folks can see what their bond dollars have gone towards. President Bahar, I'll hand it back to you.
Board comments. Director Berry? Thank
you, Preston. This is I asked a question about this during an earlier read of the plan, slightly modified, to account for recent events, but I'm curious. So, well, first, a comment, and I think I've shared this with you before. It seems like the value, not the value, but our ability to fully utilize the plan is dependent upon things like, our vision for teaching and learning, budget priorities, restructuring vision, and other sort of decisions that may emerge through the processes that are currently underway or that will be. And so I'm wondering to like, what other conditions need to be true in order for us to, like, actually actualize that other than some of those decisions?
Do you have the staffing you need? The city county partnerships you may need? Just trying to think about what we actually need to make use of this. And I'm naming for the public that I do think the vision for teaching and learning and restructuring budget are all part of that. And then my second part is around actually, just answer that because my second one is dependent on that.
Your answer to that one.
I I think one of the places, and I'm I'm happy to point to it at a certain point if you wanna follow-up, there are areas in the plan where I would say, historically, we school districts benefit a lot by a board and the school district that has a clear vision around teaching and learning. And I I wanna actually name something specifically. You know, in my previous role of launching Measure n and building pathways across the district, one of the things that I realized is our bond private program never complemented that work. Right? So what I mean by that is that we didn't intentionally look at CTE spaces to align with some of the offerings.
We've been able to do some things around that. Right? In terms of we've talked about Fremont and kind of some of the investments of Fremont. There are gonna be engineering labs that are incorporated in McClemmons. But, like, we we do benefit from a longer term strategic plan around that that incorporates teaching and learning.
We've tried to build like, for example, TK was not something that was on our radar when the last master plan was done because the governor came through with universal pre k that included TK expansion. So in terms of I think there's a clear direction around what the academic programming is gonna be by each, like kind of regionally. I would say that also the district benefits greatly by understanding the overall issues around the footprint and how to best serve students. That's a that's a conversation that has been repeatedly brought up. I think there are a series of things that we can put together, that support kind of the overall facilities, master plan, but I think you do want all those things working in unison together.
I'm sorry. Yeah. Was that does that address it?
Yeah. Wanna go And I think a follow-up question, which you may not be ready to answer now, is, like, I think I would be interested in seeing what a decision making framework would look like so that any decisions we make over time are kind of durable, like the work that this facility's master plan informs is durable and survives changes that may occur over a period of time. And I think that slide 26, I think it's slide 26, had some of the different elements that inform. But, like, the vision for teaching and learning isn't one of them, for instance. So just wondering how it intersects intersects with those things.
And I think that that's that's an area of feedback where how do you incorporate it into that framework. Right? Because there's different metrics that you can use, but I I I hear the feedback and we'll definitely look for.
Doctor Williams?
Yes. Thank you, Preston, for that. Yeah. I just I just wanna thank you for, the investments that have happened in West Oakland. I mean, I think they're we lifted up McClime.
It's a great deal, but, the investments we've had in Prescott, has been fantastic. Martin Luther King, Hoover, West Oakland Middle School, Westlake, all those investments in district three are paying off. Enrollment has been up at each of those schools. Kids and parents are really excited about, their school. From the outside, it is appealing.
And so I think those are first steps to really kinda capture the needs of the districts, schools within the district, and and you've done a good job on that one. No, we're still working with McClime and we get that right for sure. I have confidence in that. We'll be we'll we'll work close we will partner closely with our community folks and continue to hope.
Yes.
Yes. Director
Williams, do you wanna continue?
I
my I apologize. I know McClain
is a
volatile issue. You need to Very volatile issue. But all the other schools you have really well, if we're talking about the district and
Director Williams, we need to not not engage with the sorry.
Thank you. So, you know, the thing that we also in the community is talking about is the city Of Oakland has a state mandate to build 26,000 new affordable homes in the area and there are areas like the Mandela Parkway, West Oakland Station. They're they're moving to building out over four plus 100 units. You know, we have possibly opportunities to build more housing in West Oakland. So, just what I I hopefully as we're looking at the master plan for West Oakland, let's keep that in mind that there are there is building that is happening over in those areas.
Our plan building, hundreds of units are coming up and if you've actually been over to Prescott Market, there are a lot of new families that are coming in. We built a lot over in that area in West Oakland And there's a lot of younger younger families together. So just Go
ahead and wrap it up, director Williams. Do you you wanna take do you have some more?
Nope. Okay. Thank you.
Do you mind? Can I make one comment on director Williams? Yeah. I I just wanna name one of the things that transcends not just and and we agree with some of the developments that we're hearing is we are integrating the city's planning into where it's incorporated into your facility's master plan. So we do we are tracking the developments, particularly for affordable housing because we know that those families will join in and and and and join Oakland Unified School Districts as their primary provider for educational services.
So I do want to name that one of the things that you'll see in the master plan is an integration of the city's planning around future development. So I do want to name that as force that hasn't been in past master plans.
Thank you.
Thank you. Director Director Lotta.
Yeah. I just wanna appreciate the thorough presentation and I think the importance of of us owning the data because, yeah, I think the being able to be nimble over time and adjust is very important. So I just appreciate the foresight that that took to kind of bundle that into this preparation. I have a couple of things that I also want to lift up for the second, which I also appreciate is the intentional way that this tool was built based in our values around equity. Because I think it's one thing to say that you believe in equity, but I think it's another to think about how did how do we operationalize that?
And so one, I just wanna appreciate using the UPP, but adding in disabled students because students with IEPs, self contained programs, as we saw in the Garfield rebuild, absolutely need to be centered in the work that we do because as you know, many of those self contained programs are in the oldest portables in the corner. And so I think I saw that change and I think the, you know, members of the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education, I think appreciated feeling like their feedback was heard and they saw a change after their session. So I also want to just lift that up and looking forward to using that as we make our decisions. And then the last thing, which I might, I'm just going to say around the way that we think about how we also bundle investments that are important, but that are not seen by our families versus investments that we can see with our eyes. And so, you know, I'll take in District 1 an example of Emerson got a new roof, which was incredible, right?
Very important in deferred maintenance project, But nobody's looking at the roof. But Emerson also got their new playground, and it happened around this in the same school year, so it felt like the campus got a refresh. Whereas if we just did the roof in isolation, I think it would not have been as impactful. So I just wanna think about as we're doing some of these, and security cameras are probably another good example where it's like, I did see them on my school and I was like, there's a camera. But how do we obviously, the the teaching and learning that's happening in the building is the most important thing for our kids.
And I think but it's also the case that when a district when we invest money in a building, it also shows a level of care that I think is really important for families and students. So so I think if there's other ways that we can maybe think about that going forward, think that would be great.
Thank you.
Director Hutchinson.
Thank you. You know, one of the problems we have district wide and, I I know I just heard it here in this conversation is, we have a very inexperienced school board that doesn't have a strong knowledge base on how these things have worked in the past. And, you know, first off, this is actually the 2025 master's facilities plan, but it's a year late. You know, that shouldn't have happened. This was supposed to be one of the documents that we then used as a, databases for the work we were going to do with the community to reenvision the footprint.
That never happened either. And for those of us I I know, coach Tapscott remembers Jacobs when they came and did their report, which really informed the 2020 master's facilities plan, where Jacob showed up out of Texas at McClyman's High and started talking about Mandarin classes. And so it took some of us a long time to make sure we scrubbed those false reports out of the district. But it's really hard in this conversation when I don't think people fully understand what this document is supposed to be and is intended for. So, we need to understand as a community, the dollar amount listed in here is 3,500,000,000 to repair everything.
But the master's facilities plan is supposed to be is the data to inform us going out for our next bond. So we have the dataset to then make decisions on what are we going to address first out of the 3,500,000,000 in need. That's not the conversation I just heard here. And I I think it actually did us a disservice tonight not presenting directly from the draft plan and the straight making a presentation that paraphrase things. You know, for example, we have a long standing now, close to fifteen years, portable reduction strategy.
That's the stated strategy of the district until it's changed. And so to hear about how many dilapidated portables we have, to me misses the point because this should be informing how do we execute our portable, reduction strategy because we don't wanna keep buying new portables. We also, as a board, voted to prioritize lead remediation. That's a vote that already happened. I have still not seen a plan for how we're going to fully remediate lead across the district.
And now to see that as a decision that's already been made, listed underneath other things on this master facilities plan, sets off a lot of red flags for me. And so this is just not how it should be done. It's a year late. And if the board was genuine about this, we would have done a whole lot of work, put in hours to understand what this is so we could fully represent our communities but this just isn't it. This will allow us to go out for a bond but it's just really disappointing hearing the conversation because we don't understand.
This is about square footage, the dollar amount of our needs. So, when we do have resources, we have data to inform our decisions going forward. Thank you.
As a newish board member who taught in really old portables, I I really appreciated this, report. I thought going into the the web page, I actually dove through all the sections. I thought it was really accessible. Took a little bit of time to read through it, but I thought, really appreciated the organization. I also really appreciated you taking us through the data because I think when I first looked at the presentation, it did seem really flat and I thought, we could, I guess, but I really appreciate kind of how to use those things.
My next question is really how do you prioritize using that information, but I'll talk to you more about that. Mean, how do I really dig into it, and make those decisions? But I do appreciate a new plan, a new way of looking at things. I appreciate that we own the data. I appreciate that even though it was late, it took the time to really develop a plan that I feel is sustainable for years.
I mean, we'll be able to use this data, we'll be able to make plans, we'll be able to talk about, you know, some of the areas that we need to improve in in our districts. I mean, I I can actually see going out and talking to the sites in my district about this. So I appreciate that, again, one thing I also did appreciate is kind of linking to Director Barry's comments, think in teaching and learning that might be an area that we can branch out in and looking at how facilities, and I know that you and I have talked about that a lot, how facilities really play out that vision of teaching and learning. But the one thing I did wanna ask a little question about was if you could explain education adequacy the that is a criteria.
I'm gonna phone a friend on that one. But
Okay.
Do you wanna talk about educational adequacy? I just don't wanna misspeak on this one. I
appreciate going to the expert. Thank
you. Thank you for the question. So in terms of, the education adequacy, this is a measure or an indicator that we've used as a part of the master plan development process for the first time, across the district. One of the assessments that we have done is whether the physical environment really supports the programming at the sites across the district. So what that really means is we looked across, correct me if I'm wrong, like a 160 different metrics or two sixty different metrics, and, they're categorized as an entire section in the master plan that talks about safety, the sense of community or identity for the school, the physical environment in classrooms, so that includes light and ventilation and technology setup.
And again, this is a visual inspection, but when you walk into the building, is the front office accessible and welcoming to the community? How does it feel when you walk into the building? So all of these, indicators, we put it in a measure that we, that you'll see education adequacy. There is a separate tab in the dashboard that has only education adequacy or education adequacy assessments, and they're broken down. So I'm happy to, break them down further for you to be able to see what each of those mean.
So example, so I'm thinking of schools where even the shape of the room is is makes teaching difficult. So if you've got students in one area, it's there are areas where the students can't see what's going on. So it would it include that kind of thing?
Yes. So it would be included there's an indicator called organization, and I'll just read out how key functions are arranged, including offices, collaborative spaces, student activity zones, and the layout of the classrooms.
Thank you. Are there any other, director Thompson, I know you had did you have any comments?
No. No. Actually, I don't have any, questions about this because this was discussed extensively in the facilities department. Alright.
If there are no other questions, thank you, and then we'll come back in April with our vote, I believe, Frank.
Thank you.
Like I said, we're definitely open for ongoing conversations and dialogue as you go through the tools in the plan.
I may call you up to get more training on that. Thank you.
Thank you.
With that, the next item on Oh, public comment. I'm sorry. The public comment on this.
Yes. Total, have 21 speakers. I will call the first five.
I'm sorry. How many speakers?
21.
Okay. Two minutes each.
I'm sorry. It's 22 speakers. First five speakers are Kim Ayers, Brandon Wall, Rachel Kirk Cortez, Mikhaila Kobo, and Benjamin Kukujevic. Those are the first five speakers.
Since we do have so many speakers and we want to be able to hear everybody, if you really could pay attention to the two minutes, that would be allow everyone to be able to speak.
Alright, thank you board. One of my collaborators is handing out things related to the need to cool the schools. I am here to talk about something bigger than that, which is how we begin rebuilding trust as a community. And that has to start one small step at a time. And I think that's been on display tonight in many different ways, right?
And I want to first acknowledge that there are generations of reasons for McClymans to not trust this board or the city or anything like that. So the way that trust gets rebuilt is one small step at a time, and that's through actions. That's through seeing things, seeing proof, seeing lights, seeing fields, seeing UV clings, fans, whatever it is, to make sure that the people in your schools have their basic physical needs met, that they're not getting sick from being at their school, whether that is from something that has been there for generations or whether it's because they have asthma and that is asthma attacks are induced by heat. This is real for me. This is the part that's really missing when we talk about facilities.
I understand there's a need to talk about the five year plan for bonds. But I mean, I've been told to wait for a year now that we were gonna be able to talk about our plan for how we're going to keep our classrooms at a reasonable temperature once the master plan was done. That's not happening. And so we're tired of waiting. You'll see in these handouts, you'll see letters from kids who are tired of waiting.
We need to be able to rebuild respect and trust. And when we get nothing, that means that these kids, these teachers, everyone's feeling neglected on their basic physical needs. So even if it brings something down from 85 degrees to 81 degrees, there is proof of something that you're trying to help. And even if that's not in all classrooms, we need something this summer, please, as a proof point. Thank you.
Good evening. I'm here sharing this comment as a parent in the OUSD community and with the Cool the Schools movement. Teachers across the district have reported that they have had to submit OSHA complaints in order to get their blinds fixed and replaced with solar reflecting shades, and that they've waited four years to have their blinds fixed. This causes an issue for heat safety as it makes classrooms hotter than if they had working blinds. We all know how blinds work.
Some of our most vulnerable students are those who are medically fragile and neurodivergent. And when they are in classrooms without functioning blinds, they are unable to be protected from the heat that's simply coming into their classrooms and the sun that is making it uncomfortable to learn and to be cared for. It is a broader safety issue as well, as teachers report that they're unable to close broken blinds in the case of an active shooter. This is a safety measure that the district encourages us to use in order to stay safe in those situations. Vice President Bachelor, you're the chair of the Facilities Committee and the representative for d six, which includes Skyline High School, where they unfortunately did have a school shooting on November 12.
What do you have to say to the teachers and students in D 6 and across the district about what actions you've taken to instruct Preston Thomas to make sure that classrooms have adequate working blinds to protect students both during extreme heat events and in the case of an active shooter?
Okay. Last board meeting, we heard about the part of the fiscal recovery plan focused on expanding TK seats. One class at Burbank, one at Hintel, three at Carl Monk, all in D 6. Vice president Bachelor, last month, you called out the deficient facilities at Carl Monk. So I'm wondering if you or superintendent Sadler have confirmed that for our youngest students, four years old when they start school this August, if they will be safe in these facilities.
Last week alone, we are aware of at least three TK and elementary students who had heat induced health emergencies. Two students taken straight to the hospital from school in ambulances. Another student whose family does not have health insurance had multiple severe asthma attacks and spent the night in the hospital. Superintendent Sadler, who on your team is responsible for tracking incidents, monitoring spikes, and creating policies and solutions to protect our students? Can you confirm that the expanded TK classrooms are safe for our youngest students to learn in August heat waves?
This is my son's preschool class. These kids are going to five different OUSD campuses next year, including these TK hubs. Can you tell me and my neighbors with full confidence that these kids will not be sent home vomiting with nosebleeds, hives, heat induced fevers, or asthma attacks as the comments put out detail has happened to students last week. We've watched Preston Thomas run down the clock on this issue all year. Valerie, with your connections to OUSD teachers, I have to imagine how that you're aware of how long teachers have been raising the alarm about this issue.
What do have to say to families? Will our children be safe if we enroll them in d six schools? Thank you.
Good evening, board directors and staff. My name's Brandon Wong, I'm a parent here with Cool In The Schools. Please prioritize a district wide equity focused heat mitigation strategy. If it's impossible to improve every classroom condition at all 80 plus sites this summer, I hope the district facilities team will continue to take an approach that includes the following guiding principles. First, I hope you leverage data informed prioritization using indoor temperature data, building conditions, and tools like cal shaped sensors to create a clear shared understanding of where conditions are most urgent.
Second, I hope you use a rubric or prioritization framework. If we're gonna make tough decisions, we need a transparent and consistent way to compare classroom conditions and ensure we're leading with equity. Third, I hope you'll commit to implementing strategies and pilots this summer, allowing us to move quickly, learn what works, and build momentum while still being thoughtful about scaling. And lastly, I hope you commit to learning and scaling quickly. This cannot be a one time effort.
It has to be a phased strategy where we measure outcomes and expand across the district as fast as possible. I'm thankful for the progress happening already with efforts like Living Schoolyards where trees have been planted, reducing asphalt, and creating shaded greener spaces. This work is meaningful and makes a real difference for students and teachers. At the same time, I completely agree with the other commenters. We cannot wait.
We must do as much as we can this summer. Thank you Board Director Barry for your leadership and for engaging with the community with input. This is exactly the kind of work where strong partnership between parents, teachers, and the central office staff can help us to move fast and get it right. I also want to thank the facilities team, which I understand is planning to bring a comprehensive heat mitigation approach to the April Facilities Committee meeting. Thanks for your consideration.
Next five speakers.
Next five speakers are Asolo Labala, Ben Tapscott, Katherine Camp, Jayna Luth, and Aria Fleisher. Those are the next five speakers.
Hi. I'm Catherine Camp, Glenview parent. I wanted to just first address the dashboard that we saw that Preston presented and just recommend that you scrutinize the actual benchmarks and equity indexes that are being utilized within that data. A definition between what I consider is good or stable or equitable may be different from someone else's. And that's really important to understand the data before sharing it with others or making inferences from it.
Second, I'd like to speak about the passive heat mitigation. When we came to the Facilities Committee meeting last week to talk about the 2026 master plan, Preston Thomas clarified that the 2026 plan is a course change from the previous master plans, then it focused on active HVAC investment instead of only passive mitigation efforts. Given the severity of climate change's impact in Oakland, we believe that expanding from only passive measures to include active cooling is necessary to keep students safe. And we would like clarification. How many schools received passive heat mitigation investments in the past?
Preston has referenced Glenview as receiving state of the art passive mitigation. Beyond ceiling fans, can you tell us what was implemented at this school and what empirical evidence proved they were sufficient for meeting OSHA safety standards? For example, there are classrooms at Glenview and across the district on the hottest, sunniest day sides of the building. They have windows with no shades, blinds, and curtains and dew breach over 90 degrees. This means that teachers cannot block the sun even if they want to for heat or even to make it, so students can see the expensive digital screens for lessons.
They can't actually see the screens. The computers turn off. We have heard about window replacements at West Oakland Middle, Lock Steam, Lockwood Steam, and CCPA. Together, that's four schools or about 5% of the district's footprint. Facilities chair Valerie Bachelor, have any other schools across OUSD received investment in passive cooling?
And if so, which schools? Thanks.
Hello. My name is Arielle, and I'm a parent of a kindergartner at Crocker Highlands. One of the things I think a lot about is our values, how our budget reflects our values, and how our actions reflect our values. And what has been missing is a focus on student outcomes. Cooling our schools gives us the opportunity to recenter students in our board meetings, in our governments, in how you stored our education system.
Our children cannot learn. Our children cannot thrive in sweltering conditions. It is frustrating that for such a blatant health risk that so interrupts learning, it takes such a heavy lift just to get some action. We need to move fast. Action is how you build trust.
I'd like to read some comments from students sharing how heat impacts their learning. Yesterday, the temperature reached 97 degrees. And when I get really hot, I get really moody. And I say stuff I don't mean. And I'll also have a hard time focusing.
You guys are the OUSD board, and Superintendent Sadler, this is your community. You have more than enough money, so start helping us by getting more air conditioning and cooling the classroom. Liletta, a student at Sequoia. I'll read one more. From Anisa, also at Sequoia.
Yesterday, 03/24/2026, I was doing in my math class, it was 79 degrees the whole time. I could not concentrate at all. I don't know if you know, but it's been so hot that kids in other schools have fainted, and you're not doing it other you're not doing a single thing about it. Nothing. So here are some things I need you to do.
Upgrade school air conditioning, fix our older schools, which get really hot, or just do something about it. I think it's not just me, Anissa. These students are ax asking their board to take action, to do quick fixes, to help cool our schools, and create environments where students can learn. Thank you.
Write any plan you want to. You can write a book 500 pages, but I'm a say something. In the words of James Baldwin, I can't believe what you say because I see what you do.
You
I I don't I've stopped listening. And let's talk about the facilities meeting. I'm very well abreast of the Brown Act. You can only address agendized item whether you have in a board meeting, a committee meeting. There was nothing on the agenda that spoke to dealing with the heat issue that these people are talking about.
You were given the facilities plan. You spent the majority of time trying to figure out how you could work through this heat issue. I told you, you can't do that. Where was the parliamentarian? Now I can I can understand you don't know what the hell you're doing, but the parliamentarian is supposed to be available at every meeting, every committee meeting, and interject?
You have to direct your comments to the agendized items only, and you didn't do that. Do you know I'm a use some of the language I look. Do you know how disrespectful you are? How humiliating you've been? How insulting and crude, disgraceful, abusive, rude, offensive, discourteous.
To me and to my black people, do you know what you did last week? Do you see how biased you are? You can agendize this item and fully discuss it, but you didn't do that. And somebody just said, oh, fully went. You weren't there.
I don't think you were there. Were you there? Okay. Well, how can you say that? Okay.
If that not that last week. Not last week. And that committee recommended that this be forwarded for first reading based on they spent the most of the time, 90% of the time, talking about a very valid issue. I applaud these people for the intensity of how they're looking at taking care of the business of their children. I wish we'd get some McClyman's people like this to come.
But you were totally wrong, and you violated the Brown Act. But you'll do it for certain set circumstances. So when I get out of place, oh, you expect me to sit here, enjoy, and respect that you give to others and you don't give to me? I've been through that. My people have been through this.
Be patient. Wait. Don't get upset. Black angry black woman. Why in the hell y'all ain't angry?
Everybody that's black should be angry. Not to take away from these people. God bless them for the care and the time and the way they've done this, and and they collectively stay together. But guess what? Y'all violated the Brown Act, and you're gonna do it again.
Thank you, miss Asada. Your time is up.
Oh, baby. My time will never be up as long as you don't respect black people. My time will never be up. I wish your time was up.
Next speaker, please.
I don't understand it. It's rude to be talking when I'm at the mic, So they need to give me some time back. I want you people talking to other people during the meeting, and you should be listening when somebody's here. That's very disrespectful. Not one of you asked him, why is it such a delay for McClyman's High School?
And the answer to that question is because they're black students for the most part. That's what I'm saying. There's a barrier in the hallway. No one knows why it's there. People can come up and work in innovation for work four weekends in a row and paint and get time and a half for a charter school.
You refuse to tell this man that enough is enough, that that school needs to be remodeled, that the lead in the football field needs to be removed. You you removed it at Cole before you put that new building up. I don't understand it. We're in Oakland, California, and we're looking at segregation and discrimination right in front of us, and we're doing nothing about it. And those kids deserve the best.
Not just for the athletic program, but the other things that they do over there and the things they don't have. Every school's been remodeled by one? That doesn't that's not a red flag? And then Cedric, he needs to be recalled. Weak leadership.
And I'm gonna count on you, superintendent, to make this right because we are getting ready to seek legal counsel.
Thank you. Next speaker, please.
Hi, good evening. I'm Jana. I'm a parent of a first and a third grader at Sankofa United. I wanna start by thanking all of OUSD's facilities related staff, both those we know by name at our own school, like our beloved custodial staff, as well as those who go unseen as part of the central office employees, whose work is critical to the day to day functioning of the buildings we send our children to every day. At the start of the school the past two years, in addition to wanting to know who her teacher will be, my oldest daughter has wanted to know whether her class will be on the sunny side of the building because she knows that the classes with the south facing windows get extremely hot.
And although she's not on the hotter side of the building this year, her 2nd Floor classroom is still quite hot. When we went to back to school night, the lights were off, the industrial fan was blowing to the point that I couldn't hear the teacher. And that is the conditions in which our teachers are trying to teach and our kids are trying to learn. Meanwhile, my first grader's classroom, which is on the south side facing of the south side of the building, The room has been boiling throughout the year. There's something up with the boiler or heater or whatever we have.
So it's hot in the winter, and it's also hot on these gruesomely hot days the last couple weeks. A parent in her class wanted me to share that her daughter went home with signs of heat exhaustion and a fever of a 102 last Tuesday last Thursday. Couldn't go to school on Friday. Another parent talked to me about how her kid comes home wilted at the end of the day on these hot days. Meanwhile, our kid's teacher has been spending her time after school trying to pick up misters and ice packs to cool the kids down because she knows the kids are hot and melting.
So I hope that the board will take immediate steps to cool the schools, but also think critically with this facility's master plan about the overall footprint. How do we ensure all our kids and our educators are in buildings that are safe with the conditions for teaching and learning. Thank you.
Next five speakers.
Yes, next five speakers are Megan Parker, Allison Mehta, Nicole Satcher, Corey Jeong, and Jack Nelson.
Good evening, my name is Allison Mata. I'm a parent to a third grader at Manzanita Seed, and I wanna thank you all for being here tonight. In October 2023, a Laurel Elementary parent filed a Williams complaint regarding unsafe classroom heat. The district took eighteen months to respond, finally claiming in January 2025 that there is no practical way to cool these rooms and no mandate to do so. This extremely late response was flat out wrong.
Six months before that complaint was filed, the district completed a thermal comfort study at Laurel Elementary in Manzanita C. That study concluded that while passive solutions aren't a total fix, they are affordable and achievable, and would achieve similar effects to AC for the vast majority of the year. The district's official response to a parent was that they are exploring options, while their own research already provided the solution. Superintendent, is it okay for the district to mislead parents about its own research, while kids can learn teachers can't teach? Just last week, multiple students were sent to the hospital with heat induced emergencies, including severe asthma attacks and loss of consciousness.
Is a four year wait for a known health crisis acceptable? We are done being studied. Deliver these affordable solutions this summer. Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker please.
Good evening. My name is Corey Zhang. I'm on the executive board of the Oakland Education Association. I also teach eighth grade ethnic studies at Urban Promise Academy. So did you know that in some school districts, like Sacramento City Unified, every single classroom and school has air conditioning?
Imagine being in a classroom with 30 sweaty teenagers right after recess or PE, with constant requests for water and to use the restroom, because they're drinking so much water and need to stay hydrated. Then imagine asking the same group of students to concentrate and write an essay or follow along with the lesson. In my classroom, I'm currently running six fans, keeping the lights off, closing all the blinds, and opening a door to the interior hallway to increase circulation, and it's still unbearable. Teachers are using their supply budget allocations or spending their personal money to purchase fans and UV reflecting window clings. Learning conditions should not lead to dehydration, difficulty concentrating, headaches, nosebleeds, vomiting, heat induced seizures, hives, hospitalization, asthma attacks, and spikes in behavior because students are so uncomfortable, not to mention the adults who are forced to work under these conditions.
Excessive heat impacts cognitive performance, results in learning loss, and leads to physical distress. As we know, global temperatures continue to rise with every year becoming the hottest on record. We need solutions now. We should not have to endure another day, let alone another school year under these conditions. Allocate measure y funds immediately for high impact solutions like UV reflecting window clings, heavy duty blinds, fans, and portable air conditioning before the 2627 school year.
Please cool our schools now.
Next speaker.
Hi. My name is Megan Parker, I have a first grader at Manzanita Seed. And I'm going to read just a few letters from some kiddos at school that wrote to all of you, and thank you all for being here tonight. Dear OUSD board superintendent Sadler, my name is Tobin. I am 10 years old in the fourth fourth grade.
All the schools in OUSD need air conditioning. During scorching day, I get so hot. Now you might think, well, just bring a spray bottle and fan it. We'll solve all of your problems. Well, no, it does not.
I know this because last week I brought a spray bottle and a fan every day on Saint Patrick's Day. I had silk scarf for Saint Patrick's Day. I put water on it, and I was still hot. If you say you care about the kids the the way then why do you not give kids air conditioning? My teacher, Sarah, said that some schools don't have air conditioning.
I really get hot on blazing days so much that I get dizzy. I got sick because you will not give us air conditioning. Dear OUSD board and superintendent Sadler, my name is Ashley and I am in fourth grade. When learning when the classrooms are all are really hot, we are done waiting. What will you be doing this summer to cool the classrooms across the district?
Can you please bring more air conditioners to the schools? I hope you make a change with this message. Bye. Dear OUSD board and superintendent Sadler, my name is Carol. I am at an elementary school in fourth grade.
I have felt angry and sad because of the heat. Sometimes I am sad because of other schools, and our school has to deal with the heat. And sometimes I am mad because no one does something about it. Sometimes people feel sick because of the heat. So please, we are done writing.
And that's it. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for sharing the packet of letters. Any more speakers?
Yeah. Nicole Sadler, if you could unmute unmute yourself to speak.
Good evening, board. My name is Nicole Sadler. I'm a parent at Sequoia Elementary to two kids. As Oakland tax payers who voted for Measure Y, we expect bond funds to be spent on what we voted for. That is why we're deeply concerned by the resistance from facilities leadership to spend dollars that were already specifically allocated four years ago to heat mitigation.
Systems Chief Preston Thomas regularly highlights the $3,000,000 spent on window replacements at two campuses, Lockwood Steam and CCPA. In comparison for $1,000,000 less than that, OUSD could install UV tinted window clings in all 2,100 classrooms that currently lack cooling. These clings don't just lower temperatures, they create a more efficient building envelope saving utility dollars that currently drain our unrestricted general fund. Superintendent and board members do you align with a strategy that prioritizes costly isolated projects over broad affordable relief the district's failure to spend designated bond funds to remedy a documented health emergency is more than a policy disagreement It's a failure to perform a ministerial duty. We are not asking for a decade of construction.
We're asking for a 2,000,000 investment in student and teacher dignity this summer. Thank you.
Jack Nelson, Skyline High 1972 grad and Oakland resident. This is what I've heard over the last year and then now the last few meetings. McClymans is up here. They are the number one, to get the respect back and to show respect on both ends, McClymond's needs to be taken care of totally, number one. Number two would be these schools, Laurel, Manzanita, Glen Park, Sequoia, because they're here.
That's respect. What are we gonna do if a kid passes out and dies? We don't want that. You don't want that. So there's a way around this if we don't have the money right away.
And I talked to Preston about this a little earlier. You go back to the old Oakland way of doing things about 1975, and that is you go a hundred and twenty to a hundred and fifty days. You tell them when they bid to fix these classrooms. We'll pay you in a hundred and twenty, a hundred and fifty days. They'll still jump for joy because people aren't working.
How do I know this? I run Jackson Ladder Company of Oakland, and people have laid off people. They would jump for joy if they won these things. Last third priority, Skyline and Kalismarck. They have needs.
Skyline, they need the partition taken down. That costs no money, but that's way down there. McClellan's up here. We've got, the elementary schools here and the two high schools down here. Thank you.
Thank you. We have seven more speakers. If you hear your name called, if you could line up behind the podium so we can kind of move that along, that would be great. Can we have those names, please?
Yes. The last seven speakers are Jasper Lafortune, Taya Kepner, Leigh Hansen, Diane L, Laura Peerpoint, Angela Fung, and Sarah Wright. Those are seven last speakers.
Thank you. And were any online? Okay. Alright. Go ahead.
Go on. Alright. Hello, everyone, and a good evening, especially to all the OUSD community members who made time to be here tonight. To the board members at large, I hope that tonight as you go to sleep, it takes you as long as you wasted our time to get to sleep tonight. And to Mike Hutchinson in particular, you're also here for some reason.
My name is Jasper LaFortune. My pronouns are he, she, they. I'm known to my students as Mix LaFortune. I teach computer science at Elmhurst United Middle School out in the part of Oakland that you like to forget exists, especially when you're drafting facilities management plans. Did you know that in a study of over 10,000,000 PSAT scores over fourteen years, average scores dropped a full percent for every single degree Fahrenheit hotter than the outside temperature was, and that's an average, including schools that do have adequate cooling.
I see it on the ground every single day during the hot months. I work in a south facing room next to the blacktop, and I take every single reasonable action that the district asks of me. I open the windows for an hour every single morning. I run fans all day. I crowdfunded a portable AC unit, and I run that all day.
I keep the shade blinds down a 100% a 100% of the time. This district also the district also told me to avoid using optional technology such as projectors. I did ignore that one. Despite taking every reasonable measure to reduce the heat, nearly all of my classes are over heated every single day, and my afternoon classes are downright dangerous. Last week, I sent multiple students to the nurse with headaches and stomach pains.
As soon as the temperature rises, behavior suffers and focus evaporates. It becomes nearly impossible to hear students over the litany of fans, and that especially hurts my English language learners who already need every single encouragement to be able to make their voice heard. And all of that is a Ground Floor classroom. Upstairs adds 10 degrees easily. To those of you on the board who care about student safety, I come before you in good faith asking that you take urgent action to cool our classrooms because you made a commitment to provide all OUSD students with a safe learning environment.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker please.
Hi, my name is Doctor. Talia Kemper, and I am one of the teachers in the Technology and Augmentative Communication for Learning Enhancement, or TACL CLAS, at Redwood Heights, which is an extensive support needs classroom for some of our students with most severe disabilities. I also have two students at Manzanita Seed Elementary School. But tonight, I'm gonna be telling you about my class. In the TACCO classroom, we educate kindergarten through fifth grade students who are complex.
They have complex communication and medical needs. We serve a large percentage of students with physical and other health impairments with a myriad of different disabilities and health concerns, including but not limited to epilepsy, cerebral palsy, intellectual disabilities, and autism. Some of my students receive daily tube feedings, suctioning, and oxygen. Our team includes highly specialized and qualified professionals, including speech language pathologists, adaptive physical education teachers, physical therapists, occupational therapists, nurses, along with, of course, our teachers and great, paraprofessionals. Our classroom on hot days are frequently hotter than the outdoors.
They're hotter than the hallway. They are hotter than the main office. They're hotter than the cafeteria. And yet, this is where our students must be in order to not only receive their education, but also their medication, their medical care, and their toileting support. Our classroom can reach temperatures of 10 degrees hotter than outside.
So on days like last week, it was in the upper nineties, and it was cooler to actually be outside in the playground than inside our actual classroom. It is so hot that parents do not feel safe sending their child to school.
So let
me say that again. They fear for their child's safety if they send them to school. They feel forced to pick them up early. They feel forced to keep them at home because they may become sick. They fear that the heat could trigger a seizure, heat stroke, cause vomiting, a nosebleed, or another medical complication for a child that's already fragile that often when they are not at school, they're in a hospital.
This is a critical situation in my classroom and across the district. This is a critical medical situation, and this is a critical educational situation. So, please direct, decide to act quickly. I also have the best students you'll ever meet, so I invite all and any of you to come to my classroom for a wonderful day, but you know, pack appropriately because it'll be very, very hot to meet my students. Thank you.
Thank you. Next speaker, please.
Good evening. My name is Leigh Hansen. I have a first grader. I'm very grateful to have followed the previous speaker. Last week, my six year old son came home with bloodshot eyes, complaining of headaches and stomachaches, and then began to vomit in my car.
And it was very upsetting. And as I was trying to comfort him and rubbing his back, I honestly was thinking to myself, if Tim White was here right now, he'd be installing these fricking UV clings himself. I wanna see action. So my comments are directed towards OUSD counsel, Janine Lindsay, because it seems that's where we're headed. Last week, we saw public comments as was echoed by this previous speaker about the impact that the heat is is having on our medically complex students.
They have been unable to attend school as well as many days in the past due to lack of temperature control. We've publicly heard multiple parents over the last month describe heat related injuries, illnesses suffered, and California law requires school districts to maintain safe premises. When a student or staff member suffers a documented heat related illness at school, there are grounds for personal injury claim under California Tort Claims Act, government code eight ten nine nine six, and dangerous conditions of public property statute, government code eight thirty five. A district that knowingly operates buildings with a broken or inadequate ventilation in extreme heat and fails to act after receiving notice such as the Williams complaint that you received three years ago in 2023 is liable for harm that results. So general counsel Lindsay, are you aware of this precedent set in Birdville Independent School District OCR investigation versus the US Department of Education in 2015?
Have you reviewed the significant legal risks of inaction that poses to the district? As a taxpayer, I really hope that this board is considering the implications of inaction. Have you advised that your client, these board members sitting here tonight, to immediately direct superintendent Sattler and Preston Thomas to meet their duty under the law and implement these common sense cooling measures. If you are unwilling to do so voluntarily, we are absolutely prepared to pursue this issue further and will take action to compel you to comply with the law.
Thank you. Next speaker, please.
Hello. I'm an OUSD parent. Over half of the 1,200 responses you got to the survey that informed the 2026 facility's master plan were urgent calls to action for heat mitigation. I just wanna name the takeaway from our community is that your plan is moving too slowly to protect students and teachers. They are in danger during heat waves when they're in rooms without adequate temperature control.
You heard all the comments. Long term planning to modernize buildings is very important, but it should not come at the cost of immediate safety. Your responsibility as stewards of the district and caretakers of our children is to do both. Children cannot be kept for decades in unsafe and inhumane conditions while the board and district staff plan for the future. We have one year of email chains and on the record remarks from the Facilities Committee meetings by Preston Thomas, where he says that the district is unprepared to act sooner than five years to solve this health emergency.
Thank you, Preston, for offering to meet with the group next week, but that took a year. Superintendent Sadler, can you tell us if you agree with Preston Thomas' perspective from as recently as yesterday that it's appropriate for students and teachers to wait five years before they can be safe in classrooms? Thank you for your consideration.
Thank you. Next speaker please.
Hi, good evening board. My name is Angela. I oversee the Family Resource Center and the Expanded Learning Program at Manzanita Community School through EBC. I also have an eighth grader at Edna Brewer. First of all, superintendent Sadler, hope that your husband is feeling better.
And I also want to appreciate director Berry for always checking in on us and making time to meet with our families and listen to their concerns and answer their questions. And president Brohard as well, he always made time for us even though we are not one of your schools. I'm here tonight to advocate for my students and to express my concerns about the temperatures in the classrooms. Thank goodness we haven't had any serious medical emergencies, but I am now a professional nosebleed stopper. The classrooms get especially hotter in the afternoon during after school program.
The district even sent out a message to families to warn them about how hot it will get inside the classrooms ahead of the heat wave. Students cannot focus on their school works or enjoy their enrichment activities. Last week during science, my students were supposed to make ice cream, using, you know, the rock salt and the cream and the we had a manual ice cream churn, and they couldn't do it because the ice was melting in the bucket. And in arts and crafts, students were painting self portraits. And I originally thought that it was watercolors because the sweat dripping from their head onto the campus was like diluting the paint.
So this is not a healthy or safe learning environment for our children. So I'm asking the board to please use Measure Y money to cool our schools. Thank you.
Hello, directors. We appreciate you having us here tonight. My name is Lara Peerpoint, and I'm a parent of a second grader and a fifth grader at Sequoia Elementary, and I'm a voter in District 6. I also have a PhD in engineering systems, and I've devoted my entire career to studying climate science and climate technology solutions. And we are out of time.
That is the reality. We can sit here and talk about the debate between long term solutions and short term solutions, but there's no debate anymore. We need both. We need this to happen immediately. I want to read a piece of the email that was sent out in the Berkeley Unified School District last week.
They started their email by saying, I wanted to take a moment to address the high temperatures we all experience and to acknowledge the strain this places on our students and staff. We know the impact is not minimal, and we also recognize that managing heat conditions is an ongoing challenge during this time of year. They start with a call to urgency. The next piece of the email admits a mistake that they made on something at the facility's level. The next piece then gives an update on what they are specifically doing to address this problem, including saying that they installed ceiling fans in every single classroom a year ago, and they intend to install blinds that are state of the art in every single classroom this summer.
Then they start talking about the things that are the teacher's burden to take care of in the classrooms in order to improve and mitigate the heat during the day. There has been some question about what exactly is it that we're asking for here and why is this contentious? Contentious, we're all on the same page that we need to mitigate heat. There are two very specific things we're requesting. One, reflect the urgency of this crisis.
It is a crisis, and it will get worse. Two, take action now. It's that simple. We don't want frameworks. We don't want prioritization schemes.
We don't need more data. We need action. We want to know what you will do and when you will do
it. Thank you.
Thank you. And this is our final speaker.
Thank you. A lot of pressure going after all that. I'm a parent in the district, and I wanna thank you for the opportunity to speak. First, I do fully support the urgency around the passive heat mitigation interventions that a lot of, these folks have talked about. This is critical work that touches on every outcome we care about.
It touches on student learning, on attendance, and probably on teacher retention as well. Second, in regards to the facilities master plan more generally, I do believe that it makes an incredible amount of important information more accessible and that the team is to be commended for that. I also really appreciated director Barry's point that, there really needs to be a coherent vision around teaching and learning in order to use this data to drive decisions. And that both mister Thomas and director Hutchinson made the point that the footprint is a part of that conversation. So what strikes me when I read the mass facilities master plan is how the number 600 is woven through.
600 students as a recommended minimum enrollment for our schools and 600 students as an ideal enrollment for elementary schools. Making infrastructure investment decisions with an eye towards what our future footprint will look like makes a lot of sense. But given that this board has repeatedly stated that mergers and closures are quote unquote off the off the table, And given that the vast majority of OUSD's elementary schools and many of our secondary schools are well below this 600 enrollment target, I am left wondering what to make of this. What does the facilities team know that we don't? And is there a way to read this in which the facility's master plan does not contradict the board majority's promises to the community around school closures?
Thank you. Thank you.
With that, we will move on to item t two. I'm gonna browse this for just a moment. I'm gonna move on to item t two, which is the home to school transportation plan for pupils. And I believe that Kim Rainey is on the line.
Madam president, there's no presentation for the transportation.
Oh, there's no presentation? Are there any public?
Motion to adopt item
T2. Second it. And is there a public comment?
Yes. We have. Excuse me. We have Carol Doton, Asala Bala, Misty Cross, and Ben Tapski.
If your name was called, could you please, approach the podium? It's miss Asada. Coach is coach still here? No. Okay.
Transportation.
I I I do have a concern about what you have decided is the appropriate age that you allow students to ride on AC Transit. We have TK through high school. Are you saying every child or are you taking safety precautions where you realize in order for a child to be on a bus, they have to be at least this age. Because there are some parents who were given that decision making process, I don't think would make some wise decisions. You have to be able to say, what is the age that a child should be on a bus unsupervised, unprotected, exposed to all kind of elements except for the supplemental buses?
And I I've never heard that discussion, but that has to be somewhere in the consideration. Now when you have these supplemental buses, every child that rides a supplemental bus has one opportunity to get on the bus to get to school. That bus doesn't circulate. That bus passes one time. What happens if the child misses the bus?
What happens if a child is involved in after school programs? Because you did it from Skyline, created bus 31 so that they could have the opportunity to stay for after school, to stay for athletics, to stay for programs, whatever. But what is the system that allows children to have transportation other than when this bell rings, that supplemental bus leaves and it doesn't come back? What is the fairness and the equity where some children have an elitist way of going to school and that means a bus just for them, and other children have to ride a bus that may not be appropriate. We don't know what's going on.
But anyway, the the cost I'm not clear how much you'd contribute to this. Is it just $5,000? I mean, billion dollars. And where is the source of the funding for this? So, my most important point is do you have a policy that says beginning at this age children can ride AC Transit busing.
Thank you. Next speaker.
Next speaker is Cal Dellen. If you could unmute yourself to speak.
Good evening again. I read this this presentation very closely, and I have several questions. So I'm really sorry that Director Rady is not here to answer them. But I will put them out now. So one of them is that the OUSD makes a $500,000 payment annually to AC Transit.
To the best of my knowledge, OUSD is the only school district, and I don't know how to phrase it, but there are also private schools to which AC Transit provides transportation, and none of those other entities are charged. Is this still the case? Second thing, there was a remark in one of the slides about opportunities to save cost with students who live less than a mile from their site and also students who are passing several sites in the bus. And primarily, these are the specialized special education buses. My understanding was that the policy was supposed to be that OUSD provides transportation to the nearest site which has the program the child requires.
And then finally, there was a remark, and I understand that approving and submitting this report tonight is part of recouping these funds, but there was a remark about, investments in both one time and ongoing investments that weren't previously able to be made, that would be made with that funding, but they're not specified. So I hope I would hope that those would be specified. Lastly, I'd like to say that as part of
the
outsourcing task force, I have been looking at a variety of different costs to the district. And transportation has actually pretty much increased over the past five years with the cost of inflation, at the rate of inflation. There are some other areas that have increased much more. So I do commend the Director Rainey and Director Blake on their holding the cost in that way, although it's still something, of course, we wish we didn't have to pay and, would look forward to having an NPS in district that re would reduce some of those long 67 mile, commutes. Thank you so much.
Thank you. Are there any other speakers?
Yes. Misty Cross, go ahead and unmute yourself to speak.
So for this item, we need to have transportation for kids home to school, but we need to have it to where it's safe. I remember at one point, the district was having sped kids put in Ubers with adults when adults didn't even know that it was happening. We need to think about what we're doing and we need to think about if it was our own child, will we do something in this capacity? Is this something that we would do? Does this feel safe?
I mean, it it's not that hard to do do something that would make sense. We had no bus granted to the parents when schools were closed, when OUSD had closed schools, parents were given the option to schools that were considered the next school that was closed, which was actually like 30 blocks away on 96th Avenue when Parker Elementary was closed. We just got to do better.
Thank you. Are there any other speakers?
No, President Blum. All name has been called.
Okay. Are there board comments? Mister Rakeshtar, can we have a roll call on the vote, please?
Yes. On the motion to adopt the transportation plan as stated item t dot dash two. Student directors are absent. Director Lotta?
Yes.
Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? Director, Barry?
Yes.
K. Director Thompson? Yes. Vice President Bachelor?
Yes.
And President Brohard? Yes. Motion's adopted.
Thank you. On item t three, I'd like to take items t three and t five together and reported separately.
I move that we motion adoption of t three and t five and record them separately.
I'll second that.
Madam president, it'll be for you to is the board willing to take t four? These are all related.
Do you want to amend that to t four?
Yeah. I will amend that to also add t four.
Alright. So
we will take items t three, t four, and t five together and report it out separate separately. Excuse me. Are there any board comments? I mean public comments.
Yes, we have Asah Alubala, Misty Cross, Pam Tapscott. Yeah, those are the speakers. Okay.
Miss Asada, did you want to speak on this item? And t five. Yeah. It's okay. I'm gonna call on Misty Cross first and give you time to find your okay.
Misty Cross, if you see online, can you please raise your hand? Yeah. I see you now. Okay. Give me one second.
I'm sorry. Which item is this?
T3, T 4, and T 5.
Oh, yes. So this is, I had mine spoken for, T four, the need for fully qualified educators. Parents need to know when teachers are not fully qualified in the beginning of the school year. Basically, have been getting letters towards the report card period of teachers not being fully qualified. So, I'm now thinking that some teachers are just there just to babysit in the classrooms.
If kids are gonna have teachers that aren't fully qualified, they aren't gonna get the full credit. And that's what's been happening. It really affects the students that are in high school when they are getting ready to go to a college and they are not prepared to get there based on that this teacher wasn't really getting them prepared for the next step in their life. So, it's very important that we have that. It's very important that we have teachers that are able to teach, having a syllabus, some type of structure so that kids can follow and it could be done with the next grade that's moving forward.
Thank you.
According to the document you shared on this, I'm very concerned about the number of non certified individuals who are 150 teaching multiple subjects. If I was a lawmaker and I was in a position to do something, if you're not certified, you can only teach one subject. And so a 150 individuals are not certified in more than one subject and when you say multiple you're talking about two or possibly three. What does multiple mean? The other thing is we have a total of 525 student I'm sorry, teachers who don't have, the qualification to be in the classroom, saying that nicely, because of their lack of certification.
And then we have, if you take out the 420 twos I'm I'm I'm gonna leave that alone because I'm not don't know I'm not sure about that. But my concern is I've heard that people agree to get certified and the time that they're supposed to do it, they're not doing it, but they're in the classroom even though they haven't met the timeline for becoming certified. And if that is a true statement, how can we stop this if it's happening to have teachers follow the directive within a certain time span you're supposed to become certified. And I know it because it's happened at McClymonds. We had people there that for years, but they never got went back and got truly certified.
So, I hope somebody's in the role of looking at that so that we can at some point get these teachers certified. Okay? And, do you have a number for the number of Teach for America teachers? You have
that I can get that.
No. I don't want you to say nothing, sister. You just call you just sit there. You have been through a lot tonight. Just sit there and breathe.
Thank
you. Are there any board comments? Mister Rakeshtar, can we have a roll call on the vote, please?
On the roll call to adopt t three, t four, t five, Actually, a dot before the number. Student directors are absent. Director Thompson. Yes. Director Barry.
Yes.
Director Hutchinson? Director Lotta?
Yes.
Director Williams? Yes, sir. Vice president Bachelor?
Yes.
President Brahard?
Yes.
Motion's adopted. Thank you.
I'm going to forego president's report tonight. I know we have some other items on here. I don't know if there are any other board comments. Board I'm sorry. Board reports.
I just wanna oh. Director Barry. I
just because this I think, the event I wanna talk about, I won't have a chance to unless I say something tonight. So on April 14, I will be going to Sacramento to attend a lunch and a hearing to advocate for a budget request to reduce youth homelessness, and there's an opportunity for youth to go to Sacramento as a part of this larger group travel will be reimbursed. And so if anyone is interested in attending that, if you run an organization and you work with young people or if you're at one of the high schools, please let me know so that I can work with you to get some students to show up and support.
Director Thompson?
Yeah. Just a quick announcement. I had the opportunity to visit the California Alliance of African American Superintendents and School Administrators. It's a direct link between the Oakland East Bay Alliance of African American Educators, the California Alliance of or Affiliates Alliance of African American Educators, and the National Alliance of African American Educators, which I'm a member of all three. Actually, the president of the California Alliance, And it is an opportunity for us to actually showcase what we do and get black teachers in the Oakland School District.
Thank you. Director Lotta.
Yeah. I just wanted to just highlight that on the second, so next Thursday, we'll be having our next budget and finance meeting and the topic will be on attendance. So we'll have a presentation from staff about our current strategies, investments, and best practices. And then two board policies to update. One is updating what's currently called our truancy policy to replace with chronic absenteeism and also our absences and excuses to more align with the current law and and also best practice.
So I hope people can join us even though it's the day before spring break starts.
Thank you. Director Williams?
Yeah. I just want to lift up, McClybet's girls softball. First time we've had that and since I've been on the board, I'm so excited to see participation of the girls softball team. We're working on a swimming team as well of a boys baseball team. So I'm really ecstatic, you know, to see the young folks continue to, develop themselves in a competitive way.
And, on our board agenda, I'm so excited to see our young folks taking HBCU trip. You know, I think we just need to lift up more of the good things that are happening at McClime. There's a lot of great things that are going on. And I'm just ecstatic. I wish I was 18 or 17 and took a trip to HBCU.
I mean, that wasn't in my reality. So I'm really jazzed and excited. I wanna lift that up. Working work working with the African American Black Chamber of Commerce, trying to get this connection to bring some, business owners into the climate so they can talk to the young ladies, young men about what entrepreneur skills and possibilities are. So I'm really excited.
There's a lot of good things going on, and maybe I need to start tooting the horn and putting it all over but don't count when climates out. They're doing some really great work. Thank you to principal Darren Advent. You have brought a great spirit. KT, both of you just really bring a great spirit to McClybden.
I'm so excited to see you two really engage the community. Thank you.
Thank you. That does sound really that's very cool. Director Bachelor. Vice President. Thank you.
So, yeah, I I'm excited to announce that I'll be taking a group of students to the No Kings rally on Saturday from Skyline. They're very excited to join us as a part of Youth versus Apocalypse and the actions that we'll be taking there. I will also be at CCPA on April 1 to lead a discussion around the housing crisis that we have here in Oakland as well as nationally and talk to students about what are some of the solutions as well as engage with them as to what are some of the things that they would wanna see, at our schools. And to be honest, that is through my day job. That is not as a school board director, but I think it'll inform the conversations that we have management moving forward.
But I hope to have many more conversations like that with our students throughout the district. Also happy to announce that our bond sale for the third draw of our measure y funds will be tomorrow. And so that means, by May, we should be receiving the third draw of our board funds Oh, to be able to, invest in, temperature controls in classroom, all of the different issues. So I wanna make sure that folks know that we have $8,000,000 set aside for a lot of these heat mitigation strategies, and we want to make sure that we are implementing that work and that we want to make sure that the strategies that we choose are bond eligible because not all strategies are going to be bond eligible. That does not mean that we can't use other dollars from other places to be able to support that work.
So again, we have that. That's happening tomorrow, so we will get that money in May. I will also be, bringing a resolution to the Facilities Committee meeting to support a b eighteen twenty two because, again, we cannot do this on our own. A b eighteen twenty two authorizes the state allocation board to consider extreme heat and climate change and its priorities around funding school facilities. And the for for those who may not know what the state allocation board does, the state of California state allocation board is an agency that manages the allocation of state resources, primarily voter approved bonds for the construction and modernization of school facilities.
So, again, this bill hopes to change the way in which we support every single school in California in allocating resources to extreme heat. Because as some of the public comments were mentioning, this is not going away, and it is a huge problem throughout the state of California. So we need a solution for here in Oakland for every single school, but we also need to make sure that we're working across districts to make sure solutions are happening across the state. Thank you.
And with that, we have one oh,
I just wanna
We have an introduction of legal, new legislative matters, and under this matter we have w one, which is 26 Dash0729 clarifying the financial implementation plan and the one pagers, and this is presented by director Hutchinson. I would like to recommend that this go to budget and finance for discussion and fiscal impact. Director Hutchinson.
Yes. Thank you. Hopefully, it's if it's going to go to budget and finance, it'll be going to budget and finance at the April meeting, so it can come back for a final vote here at the board on April 23. I think this is a really important resolution with what's been going on, and like it says, it's to provide clarity to some of the decisions and some of the proposals that have been put out there. And so I cited out five clauses in this resolution.
The first clause is there are a number of schools with over 400 students who have been told that they will have no TSA for next year. There's no policy that states that that decision should be made and, the board that voted to cut those positions, there was no vote that it had to be cut at those specific schools. This is a cost neutral proposal, and we should not leave schools of that size without any TSA. That's why one of my questions to the superintendent was, what is the cost of this, and what guided these decisions? Because it just doesn't make sense to me.
The second clause was community school managers, and as a district, our policy over the last three years has been to expand the community school model to every school in OUSD, and now some schools are being told they're not gonna have a community school manager, and I think when decisions like this are made, there needs to be a policy guiding it. So, the second clause was to ensure that every school over a certain enrollment level has a community school manager, unless the board passes a policy stating something different. The third clause addresses what middle schools have been told, and and what they've been told is they're losing half of their elective classes for next year. I know there's been no board vote on that. I've seen no costing out of that, and I don't understand if we have to still teach the same number of students in the same number of classes, how there could be any cost savings from cutting their electives in half.
So that needs to
be
restored. The fourth item is a much smaller item, but the OAL, which has seen a huge expansion in sports, especially middle school sports over the last three years, is losing one of its staff members. And for the I think for what we've received, for what the work that that staff does, we should definitely be restoring that position, and in the resolution that calls for the superintendent to engage our community partners in philanthropy to be able to fund those positions going forward. And the fifth clause is, based on the presentation that we saw at the last board meeting and the conversation of TK Hubs, was designating Kaiser and the Monk Campus as the sites for TK Hubs for District four schools, along with creating a policy that says if we are creating hubs for schools that can't accommodate enough cohorts of TK, that those hubs should be placed as close to the school that has the lack of space as possible. And so, I called out Monk and Kaiser for district four, and hopefully if that passes, it will open up the opportunity for other districts to be able to designate which schools for their TK hubs as well.
So, hopefully there can be a quick fiscal impact analysis done, even though I don't know who to send that to. Hopefully, if this is being sent to the Budget and Finance Committee, there's nothing to prevent it from being scheduled on the first Thursday in April to that committee, which will be plenty of time to bring it back for a final vote here on April 23. Thank you.
Thank you. And with that, we are going to take a break. We are going to go into closed session, and we will be back in thirty minutes with a special meeting where we will address items h one, California Multiple Awards Schedule, CMAS Design and Purchase Agreement, and h two, an amendment to the, services agreement with
Point of order, president Brohardt, since we're already here in open session and there's still some community here, could we hold the open session part of that special meeting first so we can continue it here when everyone's here, and then end the meeting with the closed session part so people don't have to sit around for thirty minutes or people don't miss out on the information?
Unfortunately, we can't because it's a special meeting, and KDOL needs to set up a separate link. So KDOL needs needs thirty minutes to be able to set that up.
Then I wish this would have been done a long time ago because it doesn't make sense that we knew this was happening and now we're being told it can't be done.
Thank you. Madam president, I have a question. Mhmm. Are you recessing this meeting or are you adjourning this meeting? I'm adjourning.
Okay. Alright. Okay.
So this meeting is adjourned, and we will report that we will open a special meeting in thirty minutes.
Point of clarification, there was a public commenter that mentioned if there's public comment on, closed session items now.
No. We're not in a special meeting. We're we're we're still in the regular meeting.
We are not currently in a special meeting, miss Asada. I'm
So we have to take If
if they don't adjourn,
you This meeting is adjourned. We will now go into Hold close
on. Don't adjourn.