OUSD Board Of Education

Mister Reichstera, can we have roll call to establish quorum, please? Calling to order the May 13 meeting of the Board of Education. Mister Registar, can we have roll call to establish quorum?

Yes.

On the roll call to establish quorum, student director Simmons, student director Smith, director Lauder?

Present.

Director Williams? Present, sir. Director Hutchinson? Director Barry? Director Thompson?

Present.

Vice president Bachelor? Here. And president Brohard? Here. Form present.

Thank you. And mister Sechow, can we have an interpretation check, please?

Yes. Moving to interpretation announcement. For tonight's meeting, we have three languages for live interpretation. They are Arabic, Spanish, and Cantonese. For in person, we have laptops for interpretation.

Please see us. We will start with Arabic. Please only raise your hand if you need Arabic interpretation. Miss Abdi, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Arabic, please.

Arabic instruction is done.

Great. Thank you, miss Abdi. Check attendees to see if any hands are raised for Arabic interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we will now start Arabic with Arabic interpretation. Next, we'll go to Cantonese.

Again, please only raise your hand if you need Cantonese interpretation. Mister Yunwen, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Cantonese, please.

Great.

Thank you, mister Yunwen. Check attendees to see if we need hands raised for Cantonese interpretation. Seeing no hands raised for Cantonese type interpretation, we will not start with any interpretation for Cantonese. Next, we'll go to Spanish. Again, only please please only raise your hand if you need Spanish interpretation.

Miss Vargas, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Spanish, please.

Of course.

Thank you. Announcement is done.

Great. Thank you, miss Vargas. Checking attendees to see any hands raised for our Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we'll not start with Spanish interpretation, and that concludes interpretation announcement, and we'll check again later during the meeting. Turning back to you, president Bruhard.

Thank you. Tonight, in closed session, we will discuss the following items. D one twenty five dash eighteen sixty four, conference with labor negotiators. D two, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. D three twenty six dash zero seven zero three conference with legal counsel, existing litigation.

D four twenty six dash zero nine two six conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. D five twenty six dash zero nine four six, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. D six, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation. D seven twenty six dash 11 o two, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation. D seven I'm sorry.

D eight twenty six dash 11 thirty eight, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation. D nine twenty six dash eleven forty seven, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation. D ten twenty four dash one nine six seven public employment superintendent of schools. Under pupil matters, d eleven twenty four dash three zero five nine readmission student k. D 1225Dash2515, readmission student x.

D thirteen, twenty five dash twenty six thirty six, readmission student z. D fourteen twenty five dash twenty six six zero, readmission student b b. D fifteen twenty five dash twenty nine twenty five, readmission student h h. D 1626 Dash ten twenty seven, expulsion student VV. We will reconvene to public session at 05:30.

Do we have public of ten minutes for public comment? Do we have public comment on non on closed, session items?

Yes, madam president. We have 16 speakers in total, seven students.

If the students would come up first.

So to call those seven students names.

K. There are seven students who've submitted cards.

Excuse me. First name, Carter.

K. If you're Carter, would you come up to the dais?

Next is Nicole Bogard.

Nicole, come up next.

Next is Lucia Gramagio. Lucia,

if you would come up. So it's Carter, Nicole, Lucia.

Next is Ariana Austin.

Next, Ariana.

We have, Gianni Patel.

Pattel. Gianni. Pattel. Okay.

Aaron Austin. Aaron. K. And Bella Gramaggio.

And Bella Gramaggio. If you did not hear your name called, please have a seat. Okay. Excuse me. You have one minute each.

You can see we have a lot of things to cover tonight, so I appreciate and I appreciate that you guys keep coming back in support of miss Donna. I don't wanna take your time. Go ahead.

Hi. My name is Carter, and I go to law school to elementary, and I'm here to talk about miss Donna. Miss Donna should not leave because y'all made some irresponsible decisions that you had to cut people all over the district. The people you have cut and taken out of their jobs did not deserve that. I really hope y'all make better decisions, and y'all still have time to make this first one.

Good afternoon. My

name is Nicolette, and I go to Law Escolyta Elementary. I'm here because I want miss Donna to stay because every time we get hurt, miss Donna is always there for for us. And every time I need things for recess, she always gets it for me. Miss Donna is my favorite supervisor, and she is always there when trouble is there. Thank you for your time.

My name's Lisa, and I go to LaScalita Elementary. I'm here because I wanna speak out for miss Donna because she is a wonderful person, and I mean wonderful. She keeps ordering recess, and she actually cares. And the fact that you wanna take her away from us is not okay. You need to put a stop to this.

My name is Arianna. My name is Arianna. I go to La Escalita Elementary. I am here for miss Donna. She is a great person, and a lot of people love her like me and the other people in and the other people in here.

You should not do this. A lot of people will miss her if you don't make the right decisions. It's not fair. We love her.

If the adults could adjust the mic as the kids go up so we can hear them, that'd be great.

Hi. My name is Gianni, and I'm here to talk about the events happening with Donna Jackson. Miss Donna is loved by many and is like a second mom to a lot of kids. She know she donates clothes and shoes to families without and keeps her smile for the kids. When I go when I feel sad, I go to her.

Like many kids, when I wake up, I know I will see her smile as the second son. She is my adoptive mother, and to hear that your mistakes are taking her from not only a school but her home, it pains me to see that your bad decisions are paying a bad price. You take good people. I wake up in fear she will not be there for us. Miss Donna will stay, and we will not let her go away.

My name is Erin, and I go to La Eskalita Elementary. I am here because I want to speak up for miss Donna because she helps us in a lot of different ways, and she give us sports equipment and whatever else we need or want. My name is Bella, and I go to Laska Lita Elementary. I am here because we want miss Donna to stay. Because every time we get hurt, miss Donna's always there for us, and every kid can agree with me that when there is a problem, miss Donna's there, and she always maintains taking care of us.

And you guys want to take away our pride and joy. And to be honest, she is always she's the one that makes me laugh the most. So don't take our, and when I mean our, I mean our pride and joy away. Hi. My name is Hi.

My name is Sofia. I go to La Esculita, and I'm here because miss Donna is an important part of La Esculita. If you take away miss Donna, nobody will forgive you. You can ask anybody here how much they love miss Donna, and they will all say that they love her more than anything. Miss Donna takes good care of us and will love to and we will love to be well, wait.

Oh my gosh. I'm really choosing. Okay. If you take away miss Donna, it's like taking away a part of the school. Thank you, miss Kelly.

Hi, my name is Maggie and I go to La Scalita Elementary. I am here because miss Donna deserves to stay. She's the one who helps all the kids, and she cares for us. She is the light to our school. She helped my siblings and still does.

Thank you.

We can do the next five speakers at one minute.

Yes. Next five speakers are Gabriel Khan, Tanya Kappner, Della Morris, Asada Olakbala, and Kimberly Mayfield.

And are those speakers online?

Point of clarification before you start the time. Is it legally required that counsel be present at this point? Okay. I wanna start off by saying, I don't know if it's legal to have on the consent agenda 141 items for you to approve at one time. I'm concerned about d two of Oakland Jewish Alliance suing you.

The state of California has found you guilty of discrimination against Jews in this community. You were instructed to deal with that in some form. I'm not sure. I think you need to go ahead and resolve that without this lawsuit. There are items on the consent agenda that I feel need at some point, legal concerns could be a result of these items.

O 71, identify and interrupt racism. If you have racism going on in this school, at some point, it can result in some legal action. O 60, FBI in cards fingerprint service for volunteer clearance. Now you have a system where you do not require background checks if the individual is volunteering with a teacher. You can't do that.

At some point, you're

gonna have to deal with it.

Can I finish or you want me to stop? I can. Okay. One more. The health issues that identified last time, you have many other you have on the agenda o, I think it's o 11 health issues, at the central kitchen.

That could potentially result in some lawsuits if we don't rectify that.

Thank you. Well, the next, public speaker who's present. Good

afternoon. I'm Doctor. Kimberly Mayfield, Education Policy Advisor for Black Women Organized for Political Action, incoming Dean of the School of Education at St. Mary's College, teacher educator and community activist. I'm here to urge you to confirm Doctor.

Denise Sadler as the superintendent for the Oakland Unified School District. This academic year, she has accomplished what many superintendents don't in years, kept every school open during a fiscal crisis, ratified agreements with OEA and SEIU, delivered the district's first enrollment increase in nearly a decade, and verified 50% of unverified absences in two months through working with the community based organization Oakland Natives Give Back, which directly strengthens ADA funding. With over fifty years in Bay Area education, including as OEA president, Doctor. Sattler brings institutional knowledge, strong relationships with Mayor Lee and Alameda County leadership, and deep community trust that no external hire can replicate. Please allow her to finish as superintendent, not interim.

Thank you.

Thank you. Can we have the first speaker online, please? On Zoom.

Yes. First hand raised is Tanya Kappner.

One minute.

Yes. I'm with the Equal Opportunity Now, By Any Means Necessary Teachers Caucus, and I wanna speak to two issues this evening. The first is I want to stand for the restitution of the full time job of Ms. Donna Jackson and oppose all the cuts and layoffs to our school sites. It must be reversed.

The second thing I want to speak to is around the right wing lawsuits against this district that are attempting to ban academic freedom, to speak the truth against injustice in all forms. And this school board needs to stand up against that. It's not surprising in the Trump era, with the attempts to rise fascism, to have these attempts at things like book banning and attacks on progressive curriculum. But Oakland teachers are committed to the right of quality education for all students to develop critical thinking skills to make up their own mind about the world. And that means we stand up and tell the truth as we understand it.

So stop attacking teachers who support equal rights for the Palestinian people, and stop conflatingwe do not conflatediscussion or critiques of the Israeli government's policies with any kind of antisemitism. Teachers in Oakland are opposed to antisemitism, opposed to Islamophobia for religious freedom, for the right to not be religious. And we know that genocide means the we look at the UN definition of genocide.

Thank That's your time, miss Kafner.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

There are no further hands raised on oh, there we go. Doctor De la. Oh, hold up. De la.

One minute please.

Good evening members of the board and superintendent Sadler. My name is Doctor. Dela Morris and I am speaking on behalf of the NAACP Oakland Branch Education Committee regarding the items D2 twenty five twenty six eighty two and D3 twenty six zero seven zero three. The NAACP has always opposed hate, discrimination, and inequality in all forms. Every student, regardless of their race, religion, ethnicity, identity, or background deserves access to a safe, inclusive, and academically supportive learning environment.

We are deeply concerned whenever allegations arise that students have been faced with hostility, exclusion, discrimination, or accountability issues within our public school system. Anti cynicism, racism, xenophobia, and all forms of bias have no place in Oakland Unified School District Schools. These issues highlight the urgent need for transparency, accountability, and real action. There should be no more delays, evasions, or excuses when addressing concerns that affect student safety, trust, and civil right protections. The N double A CP Oakland branch advocates for educational environments where every child can learn free from fear, discrimination, or unfair treatment while promoting respectful dialogue, healing, and unity across our school systems.

Thank you. That's your time.

Last speakers are Mark Ergood, Bedrudin Kukayevit, Mimi Stoll, and Fraser Scurry Scott.

One minute each.

Yeah. Mark Ergood, equal opportunity now by any means necessary. First off, I wanna say that EON BAM stands absolutely with the t the students and teachers fighting to bring miss Donna back full time. You can see from the number of students who've been coming out repeatedly to defend their education, their program, how much this means to the school. So do the right thing.

Keep miss Donna in place. Secondly, I'll just say on the other question, anti Zionism is not antisemitism. To oppose the Zionist policy of slaughter of Palestinians of genocide in Palestine and Iran, to oppose that is not antisemitism. So we stand for the freedom of speech and right to academic freedom.

Thank you. Next speaker. Good

afternoon, board. Great to see you again. I wanna talk a little bit about same the prevalent people mentioned. We need to reverse cut cuts to and layouts to those stuff that we have through OEA, SCIO apps, maybe BCTC, Teamsters, UAOS, and everybody else. That inflect actually our district really badly in every way possible that we can.

So we need to talk about and do something about that. I also wanna bring up the BTC bargaining that is happening right now. We've been presented to the labor relations engineer one year extension because we see the district is kind of in a deficit, in need of the maybe restructuring. So we're thinking that one year extension for our contract in cost cost of living assessments of 14%, so we can talk about our bargaining next time, next year. So we present that two months ago.

We're still waiting for an answer. Hopefully, tomorrow we have a bargaining date that that's gonna happen. I wanna also talk about about safety throughout the district, and we also have a new speeding cameras throughout that we need to talk about a little bit more with everybody else because we need to talk to city about it somehow because most of my members and everybody through OESD keep getting these speeding tickets. So who's paying for it? Is it me that's driving the OESD vehicle because that's not mine?

Or is somebody we need to figure that out somehow altogether. I also wanna give support to our Dennis, Doctor. Dennis Sadler, about the work that she's been doing. With BCTC definitely supports her greatly. I see somebody that taking the risk that nobody else did it before.

With you guys bored and asking the questions, right questions, we can make this district better than how was it before. We can't blame you can't be blamed for everything that you guys inherit for all these here people didn't do their jobs. So please look to extension or even make it permanently. I greatly support that. And as well, you guys are doing a great job for whatever you've been doing right now.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Good evening, board. Or good afternoon. Thank you so much for all your care and consideration of students and families. My name is Mimi Stoll, and I'm a fourth grade teacher here at La Escua Lita. I'm super grateful to work in such a strong community of families and educators.

Our noon supervisor, Ms. Donna, is a very important part of our community here at La Escualita. We count on her for six hours a day, every day. Her devotion goes way beyond lunch supervision as students can attest to.

Miss Donna. Miss Donna. Miss Donna. Miss Donna. Miss Donna.

Miss Donna. Miss Donna. Donna.

She is a super vital part of the fabric of our community. Forcing her to move to another site to keep her full hours in health care does not make sense. Students need stability, not a constant reinventing of the wheel, not a constant rebuilding of relationships. If you are not responding favorably to the advice of adults in this matter. Please respect and recognize the tremendous love and advocacy of students and the incredible negative aspect that losing Ms.

Donna will have at our school. Positive impacts of keeping miss Donna here at La Escua Lita include an important adult on the yard that students have learned to trust through experience over time, resulting in less conflict between students, less suspensions, higher academic engagements due to the social emotional support between classes and between teachers and what's happening outside of class. The way I see it is that the choice is yours to vote to allow miss Donna to stay at La Esqualeita full time or allow a tearing of a very loving fabric of supervision that has been built carefully over time. Thank you so much for your consideration.

And with that, we will end the closed session and repeating at at 05:30.

Gate Bridge.

Excuse me. Since you recess the meeting, madam president, we have to take a roll call.

We take a roll call to establish quorum.

Okay. On the roll call to establish quorum, for reconvened.

Is the microphone coming on? It's on? Thank you.

Not yet.

Not yet.

They're not recording it. Okay.

On the roll call to reestablish quorum, director Lauder. She's absent. Okay. Director Williams? Present, sir.

Director Hutchinson? Absent. Director Barry? Present. Okay.

Director Thompson? Present. Vice President Bachelor?

Yes.

And the two student board members are noted as absent. President Brahar? Yes.

Quorum's present? Go ahead, miss Fraser Scott.

Good evening. I'm Fraser Scurry Scott. I've been a citizen of the city of Oakland for over fifty years. I have a 35 of business experience. So when I heard that you were out looking for a new superintendent, which is costly, and that you also you're having a budget problem.

It didn't make business sense to me. You have someone on board, doctor Sadler, who has done a great job with Oakland Unified School District. Anyone who can make a could avert a union strike has saved you a tremendous amount of money. That's number one. You're gonna go out and look for someone who may or may not know the city the Oakland Public School System, you already have someone who knows the Oakland Public School System.

So why are you looking for another person? Extend her contract for two years so that she can continue to do what she's doing. She has local, state, and national contacts which bring resources to our school system. She's also has a family who has had a viable business in the city for over two generations. So she brings to you not only her expertise, but she brings to you contacts and resources.

I suggest you keep her on for as long as you possibly can as she continues to make Oakland Unified School District a positive place for our students. Thank you.

Thank you. And with that, we will go into closed session and reconvene at 05:30. Mister Reichstag, can we have roll call to establish quorum, please?

Yes. On the second roll call to establish quorum, director Simmons. Here. Director Smith?

Here.

Director Ladder? Director, Williams? Okay. Director Hutchinson. Director Barry.

Present.

Director Thompson.

Present.

Vice President Bachelor.

Here.

And president ProHeart?

Here.

Form present. Director Williams is now on the diocese.

Mister Sechow, can we have an interpretation check, please?

Yes. Moving to to interpretation check. For tonight's we have three languages for life interpretation. They are Arabic, Spanish, and Cantonese. For in person, we have laptops in the back of the room for interpretation.

There's auto translation closed captioning feature available on Zoom that you can use by clicking the closed caption icon on your Zoom taskbar. We will start with Arabic. Our low our lower alt in his hands. Please only raise your hand if you need Arabic interpretation. Mister Turek, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Arabic, please.

Thank you.

Great. Thank you, mister Turek. Check attendees to see if any hands are raised for Arabic interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we'll now start Arabic interpretation. We'll next go to Cantonese.

Again, please don't raise your hand if you need Cantonese interpretation. Mister Yuan, if you can come off mute and make the interpretation announcement for Cantonese, please.

Can this announcement is done, mister Sei Chao?

Great. Thank you, mister Yunwen. Check attendees to see if any hands raised for Cantonese interpretation. Seeing no hands raised, we will now start with Cantonese interpretation. Next, we'll go to Spanish.

Again, please only raise your hand if you need Spanish interpretation. Miss Vargas, if you can come on mute and make the interpretation announcement for Spanish, please.

Of course. The Spanish announcement is done. Thank you.

Great. Thank you, miss Vargas. Checking attendees, any hands are raised for Spanish interpretation. Seeing no hands raised for Spanish, we will not start with any interpretation, and we'll check again later in the meeting. I'll turn it to you, mister Richteron.

Madam president, all of the, the the announcements for the availability of translation services at tonight's meeting has been completed.

Thank you. Tonight in in closed session, we discuss the following items. Item d one, number 25 dash eighteen sixty four, conference with labor negotiators. The the board discussed this matter. Under legal matters, under item d two, number 25 dash two six eight two, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, the board discussed this matter.

Under item d three, number 26 dash zero seven zero three, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, the board discussed this matter. On item d four, number 28 dash zero nine two six, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation. The board approved a settlement in this matter. Motion by president Burhard, seconded by director Thompson. Vote six to zero.

President Burhard, yes. Vice president Bachelor, yes. Director Barry, yes. Director Hutchinson, absent. Director Lotta, yes.

Director Thompson, yes. And director Williams, yes. On item d five, number 26 dash zero nine four six, conference with legal counsel, existing litigation, the board gave direction on this matter. Motion by president Brohard, second by director Lada. The yeses were president Brohard, director Berry, director Lotta, director Thompson, director Williams, and vice president Batchelor voted no.

On item d six, number 26 dash eleven zero one, conference with litigation, with legal counsel, excuse me, anticipated litigation, the board approved a settlement in this matter. Motion by president Brohard, second by director Thompson. The yeses were president Brohard, vice president Batchelor, director Barry, director Lotta, director Thompson, director Williams, and director Hutchinson was absent. On item d seven, number 28 dash 11 o two, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, motion by president Brohard, second by director Lotta. The yeses, president Brohard, vice president Bachelor, director Barry, director Lotta, director Thompson, and director Williams, director Hutchinson was absent.

On item d eight, number 26 dash eleven thirty eight, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, The board approved the settlement in this matter. Motion by president Brohard, seconded by vice president Bachelor. The yeses were president Brohard, vice president Bachelor, director Barry, director Lada, director Thompson, director Williams, and director Hutchinson was absent. On item d nine, number 26 dash eleven forty seven, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, The board approved a settlement in this matter. Motion by president Brohard, second by vice president Bachelor, was passed six to nothing.

With the yeses, president Brohard, vice president Bachelor, director Barry, director Lada, director Thompson, director Williams, and director Hutchinson was absent. On item d 10 number 26 dash nineteen sixty seven, superintendent of schools, the board did not take up this matter. On items d 11 through d 16, pupil matters, the board heard these matters and will vote on the matters in public in section one on the agenda. Okay. We will now begin.

Are there any, modifications to the agenda?

I would like to pull item o one twenty two.

Are there any other?

Can I also poll o, one twenty one and o one twenty three, please?

Tonight, we will hear, I'm going to alter the order of this a bit, so that we can hear. I'm going to move, item s, unfinished business to, after the superintendent's report. So we'll go, n, superintendent's report, and then, items s one. And we will then have our public hearing, and then we'll move into items o, p, q, t, and the rest of the agenda. Alright.

With that, we will celebrate our special orders of the day. We have several. I'm going to hear we're going to, hear the, tributes to Maria and director Smith and director Simmons together. So there'll be a presentation. We'll have twenty minutes of public comment, and then there'll be board comment.

K? So with that, do we have the plaques for the directors?

Yes.

I had motion to approve. Second.

Alright. Okay. Alright. Okay. This is a tribute to Maximus Simmons, student board director, 07/01/2024 through 06/30/2026.

Whereas for the second year in a row, Maximus Simmons has served as student board director, this time as a senior at Oakland High School in the law and social justice pathway. And whereas director Simmons has been a delegate to all City Council since middle school and joined the ACC lead leadership team as a culture and climate director as a high school sophomore to help establish community within ACC. And whereas director Simmons has devoted much of his spare time over the last four years in service of others by volunteering and teaching restorative justice, holding circles at two national restorative justice conferences while also helping set up RJ at Oakland High. And whereas director Simmons is also dedicated to helping lead mayor Barbara Lee's youth advisory council and the work it does in the community, including taking direct action to support OUSD educators by holding regular fundraisers and school supply donation drives in the successful help a teacher out campaign, and whereas director Simmons has dedicated himself to representing Oakland students and amplifying every student's experience, ensuring that the district provides the resources and support needed to drive all students to graduate prepared for success. And whereas director Simmons takes pride in his work with the board of education and especially in having secured superintendent biweekly memos for student directors, holding fellow board directors accountable and keeping our community updated throughout the year, and whereas director Simmons will graduate from Oakland High and leave his position as student director on the board of education this spring.

Now, therefore, be it resolved that the board of education of the Oakland Unified School District thanks director Simmons for his dedicated service to the students, staff, and families of Oakland and commends him for the passion and commitment with which he gave a powerful voice to the 34,000 students of the district. Given under our hand in in the district seal this May 2026 in Oakland, California. We're gonna do a big picture. We we do have time for we're gonna do big pictures at the end here. Oakland, Board of Education of the Oakland Unified School District resolution number 2526Dash0248.

Tribute to Mariana Smith, student board director, 07/01/2025 through 06/30/2026. Whereas Mariana Smith has served as student board director for her senior year at Oakland Technical High School and whereas director Smith has served on the All City Council Student Union team for all four years of high school after becoming culture and climate director, a post she was elected to at the end of middle school. During her sophomore year and junior years, she served as ACC president. And whereas director Smith is a passionate advocate for the power of restorative justice and the importance of listening to all sides of an issue to understand the different perspectives. And whereas director Smith is proud to have helped increase participation in ACC high school meetings and events by creating more engaging agendas and actively creating a welcoming space for all students, especially those from underrepresented school sites.

And whereas director Smith has regularly updated ACC delegates and its governing board with clear and accessible information about ongoing policy discussions on topics such as choosing a firm to recruit a new superintendent, union negotiations, and sanctuary protocols. And whereas director Smith takes pride in her work with the board of education, especially her communication of questions and concerns of students to the board when students believe the board failed to prioritize student participation and engagement processes, input on school safety, and concerns around staffing cuts. And whereas director Smith will graduate from Oakland Technical High and leave her position as student director on the board of education this spring. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the board of education of the Oakland Unified School District thanks director Smith for her dedicated service to students, staff, and families of Oakland and commends her for her passionate commitment with which she gave a powerful voice to the 34,000 students of Oakland. Given under our hand and the district seal this May 2026 in Oakland, California.

Having a parliamentary conversation there. Are there any public comments? Come on up.

Sorry.

Yes, madam president. So we have one Sheila Haynes. If you can raise your hand to be recognized on Zoom.

If students wanted to speak and didn't come up, fill out a card. Go ahead and fill one out and I'll take it.

Madam president, how much time would you like to allot for public comment?

Two minutes. We can do it, and we'll we'll take board comments first and then student comments. But go ahead, miss Haynes. Is she there?

I see your hand.

Hi. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hello?

Yeah. We can we can hear you, miss Haynes.

Hi. So I just, I wanted to appreciate both of you student directors just being the people that you are, the leading voices that our students need. You give us hope that the next generation of our youth can continue with the love and respect that you guys give yourself and each other. I'm proud of you both for first, just having that character of respect for yourselves and others. And more and more, I mean, it really starts with the character of a person like the characters that you guys possess.

I appreciate you both for just being the leading example, you know, of what it means to have respect for yourself and each other. I mean, this truly uplifts our students, especially those who may have like an environment at home where they're not felt encouraged or maybe in an abusive environment. They look to the schools to be an uplifting place for them. So again, I'm proud of the leaders you have been. I urge all students and families who may be listening to have that same character of respect because more and more, it really starts with having the respect for yourself and each other.

It's so much negativity that even happens with our music and the negative language too, continue to speak on. So thank you guys both so much. I am hopeful and I hope the best for you guys in your future and just continue on being the great people that you are and the great adults that you are. And, I know your parents are proud, proud of you guys both. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any other speakers in public on this item?

I have no, registered speakers for this item.

If students want to speak, do you wanna fill out a card? Okay. Oh, is it over here? It's come. Thank you.

Yes, we have two speakers. Inara, last name starts with an s, and Sofia, last name starts with an m.

Two minutes, please.

ACC with Mariana and Maximus. And I just wanted to come and speak to how much I've learned from these two, not just as student leaders and engaged community members, but as people. I don't think I've ever, I mean this about my whole board and all of the people that are graduating, but I've never met two more or 11 more dedicated people that have so much sincerity and wanting to make a difference in their community. And I'm so lucky to have gotten to be on a board with you guys for multiple years, not just one. And I just, I don't, it's hard to imagine it without you, but you set such an amazing foundation for student engagement in this district.

And I'm very proud to have known you, and thank you so much for everything.

Hi everyone. I just wanted to come up to express how proud I am of both Mariana and Maximus. I have had the pleasure of working and knowing and being friends with these two since the sixth grade and I am just so proud of how much we have all grown as a little trio and how we have just come and been able to express our passion through the work we do and I am so excited to see what you guys have for the next chapter. To Mariana, I can't wait to see you be such a strong advocate in whatever school you go to and to really just be able to showcase your passion in the way that I know you love to do, which is by speaking up. To Max, I can't wait to see you create more and just be the dedicated and heartful leader that you are.

I love you both. Thank you.

And are there any other speakers?

All public commenters' names have been called.

Okay. All students have spoken who want to speak. Board comments? Raise your hand if you have a comment. Director Barry.

Hi. I just wanted to use my time just to say thank you. Growing up, my father talked a lot about servant leadership. People who lead to serve. Right?

It's that is your contribution to community as the leadership and how you show up in community. And you all embody all the things I've aspired to be, and then I'm aspiring to be even as an adult. And I have asked my daughter to watch you all do the work that you do because I hope that I'm raising kids who show up the way that you do. I think you're amazing, and I too am excited to see all that you will do.

Director Lana? I just wanted to also appreciate you all for the work you've done. I have been had the opportunity to see you all in not just here at the board and also kind of advocating behind the scenes, but also in ACC spaces and whether it's the middle school convenings or the high school convenings. And I think you have left an amazing imprint on the culture of this district. And I'm excited that you're on to your next chapter.

We will really miss you. So thank you both.

I just wanna say thank you. You guys are amazing. I think at times you ask questions that were hard, and they were questions I think that made all of us think and reflect on our actions. So I've appreciated that. I've appreciated just seeing, you know, going to the mostly middle school.

I think it's I remember seeing Maximus at a middle school. But I think the work that you've done with students, the work that it's across the district, it's it's been amazing. So I really I would say I would miss you guys except that would be a little selfish. And I really look forward to hearing great things about you in your future and continuing whatever colleges you're going to, whatever you're gonna study, Maybe you'll come back and be a history teacher in Oakland. Who knows?

But you guys are amazing, and I have really appreciated your work and working alongside you. Director Thompson.

Like, my colleagues have mentioned, we appreciate really immensely what both of you have brought and what both of you had given to the Oakland Unified School District and especially sitting here on the board. I'm an individual that believes in allow me to just say it the way I feel it. The hermeneutic expression of how one actually does things. My expertise is in hermeneutics, actually. And when I listen to what you guys say and how you say what you say, I interpret it based on what I call my prefiguration.

And my prefiguration tells me that I'm working with two individuals who really believe in what they're doing, two individuals who would like to promulgate what they're doing so that others can embrace it and then make this world a parenthetic better place. So I appreciate the work of both of you. I appreciate what you have brought to the board. I appreciate what you have brought to all of us so that we can be introspective, take a look at ourselves, and see if we are actually doing what we think is gonna be most advantageous for those who are listening. So thank you very kindly.

I wish you the best. As you whatever your dream is for the future, I wish you the best in attaining that dream. Thank you very much.

Director Hutchinson.

Yes. Thank you. And, I'm not gonna try to compete with director Thompson's vocabulary there. That was that was impressive. So for for both director Smith and director Simmons, thank you.

I I hope you realize and then can internalize how you are now a part of the legacy of student directors that we've had here at OUSD, which is really an amazing legacy, especially over the last decade. You know, and I'm really excited for you two both very soon now to be joining another family of OUSD graduates. And, I really hope that you're gonna carry these experiences that you've had here with you for the rest of your life. Hopefully, your journey will bring you back to Oakland at some point if you are going to leave because we really need more people to come back home and really invest in our community and take everything that we've learned over the years and really put it back into our our family here that helped grow us. I also hope, especially over the summer and as you get a little separation, you'll be able to reflect on, director Smith the last year and director Simmons the last two years of what's really happened here in an OUSD.

It's been some crazy times, and I hope really that you can draw lessons from that that'll set you up and prepare you for wherever you're going to go. Because remember, if you can handle business in Oakland, if you can handle business up on this dais, you can handle business any place that you go. So congratulations. Thank you. And, I look forward to welcoming welcoming you to the family of OUSD alumni going forward.

Thanks.

Director Williams.

Yeah. Yo. Just really wanna say congratulations for reals. I mean, it's a big accomplishment, you know, the twelve years here, you know, and as you are maturing into your next phase of life, right, you look back on elementary, middle, high school, all the relationships, and it is really big. Like, going forth now, you have some core beliefs, core principles that you're stand by.

And not only just being a a leader at your whatever next school you are, but you really are like an activist. You really are you can identify identify what needs to be changed, what needs to be lifted up, what needs to be supported, and I think that's really what makes, you know, Oakland really special. Like, we have a a long history of folks fighting for the right thing, a social change, And, you know, it goes back to the Black Panthers all the way back. But in between that, there's just been so many activists. You can go through the streets of Oakland and and run into some folks who've been doing work.

It's good to see that you represent that. The that you got it from the soil of Oakland. So I only wish you the best as you move forward. You take these lessons. My mom used to tell me, you know, if you want friends, you gotta be a friend to somebody.

If you, you know, want a relationship, you gotta give that. You gotta give what you want from people. You know, you gotta show people what it is. And I think throughout this year, you've shown everybody that, you know, you stand firm for righteousness, you stand firm for inclusion, and I think that anyone who comes and rocks with you will understand that, that that's what they need to be as well. So, you know, do the best you can, travel as much as you can, get those opportunities, get out there and see the world.

That will really help your perspective as you come back to Oakland. When you come back to Oakland, you see how things are done elsewhere and you can continue to lift up the work that needs to be done because it's a lot of young folks doing a lot of great things and I'm glad that you're gonna join that that class of young folks for this particular year and do something. I only wish you the best. So, you know, keep it up and, send you much love, much support, much activism, much energy, and just go conquer the world. Be fearless as you move forth in the world.

Go for it. So wish you all the best. Thank you.

With that, we'll move on for your last meeting and oh, we have to have a vote. I'm sorry.

On the motion to formally adopt the resolutions recognized and attribute to the two students. Student directors, I'm gonna assume that you're gonna recuse yourself on your own vote, but vote for your colleague. Is that correct?

Yes.

Okay. On the roll call, it will be so recorded. The two students voted for each other but not for themselves. Director Lada?

Yes.

Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? Yes. Director Barry?

Yes. Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president Bashler?

Yes.

And president Pearlhart?

Yes.

Unanimously adopted. Yes. Yes. This was a concurrent motion. Is the board member, concur that this was a concurrent motion?

Directors, I'm sorry. Superintendent Sadler.

I just wanted to just make a comment. It has just been a gift to be able to sit next to the two of you. I think it's really special. You have the same initials so that you are destined, to be leaders and be together in this work. I also wanna acknowledge something that was not mentioned, your work on youth vote.

And just you've just been present everywhere in the community as an advocate for you, an advocate for the schools, and patient. I also want you to carry with you that you have people here who know you and who are here for you. So when there are times when you have questions or you need help and support, please reach out because life has a lot of twists and turns. Sometimes you just need to reach out to talk to someone. You have people who will answer your call at any time, and I'm one of them.

So I'm just really feel privileged to sit next to you and get to know you as wonderful people. Congratulations, and I'm excited about your next step.

Man, I've actually been waiting for this, like, the past two years. I really just I wanna say that I wanna take this time to highlight Mariana just because it's been a lot. It's it's definitely been a lot. It has definitely been a lot. And I wanna apologize because I could have been there I could have been there better for my second year.

Just the the glamour of student director and the the wow factor wasn't there for me no more the second year. And I had got a lot of lot more responsibility on my back I wasn't able to let it be fun for you as it was for me my first year, and it was it was just serious. But but we did it, and and we did it together. And a lot of and none of y'all know. Sophie might know.

Sophie might know. But me and Mariana said that we were gonna be student directors together in a in eighth grade. And see we was really supposed to be student directors together for junior year and senior year, but some but somebody backed out on me at the last minute. But but so this is something that that was planned and this was something that we thought about and we made the decision not not individually but together to make sure that this came into fruition at some point in time before we left here. And it was all and and every single battle that we fought, and every single piece of change that I've made over these past five years, Mariana has literally been there for every single one of them.

She has literally, significantly been an ear and has lended advice and has lended a lot of unwarranted and unwanted opinions to a lot of stuff that that I got going on, and I appreciate every single one of those words. And, you know, if one if one thing isn't if nothing is true and everything is a lie, the one truth is that we have shown up for each other despite the the feelings or despite the angst or anger or anything like that, we continue to show up, and I appreciate you. So thank you.

Next, we wanna honor the classified employees of the year. And is there a motion to adopt this resolution?

So moved. Second. Thank you.

Tara Gard, I believe, has the presentation correct.

Thank you. Just waiting for Good evening, community board superintendent. Thank you, for having me here tonight. And I wanna also thank Jeff Dillon. He's actually now the chief talent officer, but he's allowing me because I love this award particularly to do this tonight.

Tonight we are here, uh-oh, thank you, to present the classified employees of the year and we have categories of which people are honored, The paraprofessional, clerical and administrative services, food service, custodial and maintenance, security services, health and student services, technical services, and skilled trades. And we are honoring each person tonight. Everyone is not here tonight, but for those that are, we'll come up. And I'm gonna first start with Pampali Thai. I'm not I don't think that she is here tonight, but I just wanna make sure.

Okay. So we're gonna just I wanna excuse me. Name Pampali as in the paraprofessional category. She's been with the district for thirty one years as a library tech at Markham. And we honored her at honoring our own.

And she is just a wonderful employee and you can see that she is known for building strong relationships at the school and fostering love of reading for our students. So we thank her and we will move to Milagros Rodriguez. I know that she is here. If you can come up, please.

Thank you.

She is Milagros is the, she's been here for five years as the attendance specialist and working at Esperanza. Thank you. And I wanna read oh, no. Don't don't go. Don't go.

When miss Milagres Milley, they call you Milley at school, okay, demonstrates excellence in work performance through her unwavering dedication to students, families, and staff serving as a trusted attendant specialist who builds strong relationships, removes barriers to student success, and consistently goes beyond her role to support the school community. Miss Rodriguez exemplifies leadership, commitment, and community connection through her bilingual support, deep relationships with families, and ongoing contributions as a mentor, problem solver, and advocate fostering a culture of belonging and ensuring that all members of the school community feel welcome, supported, and valued. And we thank you for your work every day. Thank you. Okay.

I Cynthia Johnson from food service. She is not here tonight, but Cynthia has been with us for eleven years as a food service assistant three at Ruddsdale. So we will shout her out as well. Thank you, Cynthia. You Yufi Lai is also not here.

Correct. Okay. And he has been a custodian for eight years at Skyline. So if we could shout him out as well. And we'll move to mister Garrett, Humphrey Garrett.

He's been with us for nineteen years, I know he's here. Central Culture Ambassador at Marcus Foster building. Okay. Mister Humphrey Garrett demonstrates excellence in his work performance through his professionalism, reliability, and commitment to maintaining a safe and welcoming environment, consistently going above and beyond to support colleagues and the broader school community. Mister Garrett exemplifies leadership and community engagement through his proactive approach to safety, willingness to support school events beyond his assigned duties, and positive attitude that fosters trust, collaboration, and a strong sense of security and belonging for staff, students, and families.

And we thank you, and he is gonna say a few words.

Well, let's bring you one hand.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. First, give an honor to god, the leader of my life, to my wife, to my pastor, to doctor Sadler, to miss Card, to mister Dillon, to the board, to the student board, to all my coworkers, to students, staff, parents, care providers, and outside professionals, and a special shout out to my children and my church family. You know, I'm truly grateful and full of gratitude. You know, I pray daily to keep my patience and confidence in who I am and remember my integrity and stability so that I do not let people's first energy in their heart if his anger fester in me. I bring positivity every day knowing what the chances are for people to show up with things going on in their own space.

My wisdom and knowledge of people and my ability to deescalate does not allow any angry energy to transfer into my spirit. I've done this for twenty one years on campus with our students, and it's rewarding. The rewards is when students come back after graduating and going on to college and come back and they remember some of the positivity that you shared with them to assist them in navigating themselves in the directions of their achievements? So that that is some of the, positivity. I have done I've been at Marcus Foster Leadership Center with the adults for the last fourteen months, and I'm sharing that same energy with them.

And I am very proud of what I do, and I love what I do. Ultimately, keeping the main thing the main thing with joy, passion, commitment, and with gratitude while keeping a safe, welcoming, professional, engaging environment for everyone. Thank you to everyone under the sound of my voice. Much love and much respect. And a special thank you to the people or the person who selected me for this recognition.

God bless. Thank you.

Adrienne, ma miss Mondi is here. Miss Mondi. Yes.

Okay.

Miss Mondi has been with us for forty four years and is a special education instructional aid at Prescott.

Yes. Thank you. And

I'm gonna, yeah. Let's honor that time with us. Thank you. And so miss Mondi demonstrates exceptional dedication, professionalism, and compassion through her decades of service, serving as a trusted and welcoming presence at Prescott Elementary School, where she builds meaningful relationships with students, families, and staff, and ensures that all who enter the school feel seen, supported, and valued. Miss Mondi exemplifies leadership and commitment through her unwavering reliability, strong advocacy for colleagues, and ability to foster positive and inclusive school culture, using her deep knowledge and experience to support the school community, strengthen relationships, and ensure a welcoming and supportive environment for all.

And we thank you.

First

of all, I wanna say thank you to my Prescott family and thank you to uh-oh. Okay. I wanna say thank you to my Prescott family for nominating me, and I wanna say thank you to our children at Prescott. I consider them my children. When they come through the gate in the morning, I'm the one who opened the gate and greet each child by their first name.

We have 150 students present there, plus our preschool. I know all their names. I let the kids know that I care about them. I work real hard with them. I mean, I'm engaged with all the students, and the students know that I love them.

And I wish them nothing but the best. Thank you all.

Thank you. Our next, classified employee under technical services, Sabrina, can you come up? Thank you. Hey.

Hi. Sabrina

and I worked together in IT for a little bit and she is wonderful. Thank you. And has been with us now thirty five?

Thirty five.

Thirty five years and is retiring. Yes. Yes. And thank you. Thank you so much.

Sabrina demonstrates excellence in work performance through her dedication as the primary point of contact for technology services support, providing responsive, thoughtful, and solutions oriented assistance that ensures staff and students can effectively access critical systems and tools. Sabrina exemplifies leadership and commitment through her ability to build strong relationships, improve systems and processes, and consistently go above and beyond to support colleagues across the district, fostering efficiency, collaboration, and a positive experience for all of those she serves. And we thank you.

Thank you. Do you wanna turn?

Okay. I'll start turning. Thank you, sir.

And thank you, Serena. And our last, Siggy. I'm not sure. I don't think that yep. He is our, Siggy is our roofer at B and G, and he's been with us for thirteen years.

He's not here tonight, but we will shout him out as well. And so that is the end of our classified employees of the year. Thank you board for allowing us to bring them forward and honoring them tonight.

Let's start. Do you wanna call them back up so we can give them their

Oh, yes. We got the picture. Did you wanna talk first or do you want them

to okay. Yep. We can talk first.

Okay. It's

yeah.

Are there public comments on this item?

Public comment. We have one, Kim Davis. Online has a hand raised. I will allow them to speak.

Good evening, board. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on this wonderful honor and want to congratulate all of the winners but and I'm sorry I'm not there because I I intended to be excuse me but I just want to give a particular gratitude and love and shout out to miss Mundy from Prescott who is absolutely the heart of of Prescott for forty four years or actually I guess she hasn't been in Prescott forty four years. She's either related or believe she's related to every child that's there. They get hugs in the morning. She is the the center, the rock.

The kids look for her if they're, you know, having a moment and they need a little bit of of love and attention and a big hug. So well deserved to all of you, but miss Mundy, we love you. I love you, and congratulations. Thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any other public comments?

There are no further public comments Okay. Commenters for this item. Okay.

Director Lotta?

I mean, so at first, I just wanna start by thanking and appreciating all of the classified staff who are honored. We have Sometimes the things in the district can feel, especially if you're on the board, a little bit intense and we're talking about very high level things. But the people who are working every day in our district, whether it's with staff or with our buildings and grounds or with our students, do are one of the highlights for, I think, many of us who have our children here or who work here. I do wanna take a minute though to particularly appreciate Ms. Mundy.

I have had the privilege of of having three kids. Now know Ms. Mundy like an aunt, like part of their family who and I can say that not just them, but all of the students at Prescott really, really are You hold the heart of the whole school. When you're gone, which you deserve days off and you're sick and that's fine, but it is striking how many students are like, where is miss Mundy? Is she coming back?

Is she okay? Should we call her? Should we bring her something? And when you're there, you can, you know, to have the you know, to see the light in students' eyes running for you for their morning hug. Students who come in crying, and they they know that they can turn to you.

We have, I think, we have a very, very wide open yard area, and somehow your ability to hold that all of those students safe and having fun is is, I think, such a I'm just so glad that you're getting honored, and I hope that you feel honored by all of us who get to see you every day. And I think on behalf of my three kids who love you so much, but all of their friends and classmates and the staff at Prescott, I just thank you so much.

Director Smith. I

just want to congratulate everyone that's being recognized tonight. You clearly are making a really, really big impact on OUSD, not just the students, but the staff as well. I just hope that you continue to grow and, you know, contribute to the students, and I really hope that OUSD contributes to you right back.

Director Simmons.

Congratulations to everybody who won. And I wanna I wanna shout out my OG right here. My OG right here, Humphrey. I mean, he let me tell you. Every time I walk in the office, every single time I walk in the office, I'm greeted with a smile.

I'm greeted I'm greeted with a with a warm hug, and I'm greeted as a king, and I appreciate that. And it it goes a long way, and it means a lot. To come from a to come from a black man, it means a lot, specifically. So I appreciate you, and I thank you. And congratulations.

Director Williams?

Yes, miss Mondi. It just it's always a blessing to see you on Wednesdays when I show up. But the community that's created with you coming out in front of the school and talking to each and every student. I I'm a witness to that. That is so beautiful.

I've never seen it before and I go to a lot of schools but your love for our young folks and greeting them with love and care and nurturing even when it's raining, you, it is amazing and so, I feel so honored to be in your presence because I know the work that you have done all these years. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And mister Garrett, yo, man.

From the McClimate days. Whoo. I appreciate you helping me figure out what's going on there as well. I mean, you're you're nurturing, your guidance, your patience, and just acceptance. Who's this new guy walking around that's willing to help me through the process and just be a guiding light for McClybots.

I mean, we miss your energy there. Trust me. Time and time again because you're an angel. You are an angel. When you walk into space, you radiate, love, you radiate you radiate like you like you said patience, and you are a a god servant 100%.

So I am always blessed to be in your presence. Thank you, sir, for the work you've done, for the years you've done. Thank you, my man.

I also wanna give a shout out to mister Humphrey. I when you I walk in and the other day, was exhausted and I was in a bad mood. I walked in and you were just like it was amazing. So I think for, you know, people coming into the the Foster Center that you're the first person they see that just puts people at it was amazing. So I really appreciate the the warmth and the, grace.

Showing me how to use the card thing was very I wouldn't have knock on the door anymore, but I just appreciate the warmth of it. It's it's just an amazing way to enter into that building. And then I also want to give a shout out to Milagros Ramirez because any school that has pictures of you on their sign, that's a place I wanna work. That is awesome. So congratulations to all our our honorees tonight.

And with that, if they would all come up to the stage with your certificate your your, plaques, we will we have some gifts and, of course, pictures. Vote first? Okay. On the roll call, mister Regstra.

On the roll call honoring, the certificated employees of the year. Senior director Simmons. Yes. Senior director Smith. Yes.

Director Lada.

Yes.

Director Williams. Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson. Yes. Director Barry?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Yes. Vice President Bachelor?

Yes.

President Brohart?

Yes.

Motion is not up to me adopted.

Alright.

If board directors could return to the dais, please. Yeah. No. I appreciate it. Alright.

Moving on to item I, which we're going back to actually, which is pupil consent. Do we have a motion to adopt the pupil consent?

So moved.

I'll second it. And mister Reichstera, can we have a roll call and vote, please? Public comment. We have public comment on this?

Yes, madam president. We have one, Asada Olugbawa.

Miss Olavam, do you wanna come up in, public comment on k, which is pupil consent? Aye.

I I continue to advocate for the students who have been in the expulsion process in this district. Right now, you are going to approve, I think, five students to return and one student that will go into expulsion. I don't know how that works over the summer when school is out. Does Alameda County still have opportunity for education opportunities during the summer? I don't know.

I do know this, that the most children or young people would need have to be put at the top. I did find out that you have a lady named miss Tate who deals with suspension students so they get support. That needs to be broadened to include the expelled students. And during the time that they have behavior issues, there needs to be an assessment process to help them return to the normalcy of behavior that they can achieve. So I do not think we are there.

So I will continue to say students who are being expelled need support. And if we we should have kept our community school open to give them our support. I don't know what's going on at Alameda County. But I do know we knew we can do better than what we're having as far as how we handle our students who are being expelled. They have tremendous behavior needs.

They might have personal needs. Their parents need to be involved in this process to help them get where they need to go in terms of knowing that they can do better. Who's given in that opportunity to say I will now return given my best to graduate from this district. I hope you will take it under serious consideration, and I'll be back to keep saying it.

Thank you. Are there any other public speakers?

There are no further speakers for this item, madam president.

Mister Rakestar, can we have a roll call on the vote, please?

Yes. On the motion to adopt the people with discipline consent report, student directors are recused. Director Lauder?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Yes. Director Barry?

Yes.

Director Hutchinson? Okay. Director, Lada I mean, sorry. Director Williams? Yes, sir.

Vice president Bachelor? Yes. And president Burhaar? Yes. Motion's adopted.

K. The next item on the agenda is item k, which is our student report.

Good evening, board members, superintendent, students, parents, and community. Welcome to our last board report for the school year. We will invite our governing board members to join us and give the end of the year report. We will have an overview of All City Council, talk about key accomplishments for the school year, general updates around our priorities, and we will be announcing our new governing board for the 2627 school year. Before we get started with our report, I would like to invite our All City Council governing board members to an I would I would like to announce I would like to invite our All City Council governing board members to come up and introduce themselves.

Do we have the oh, we don't. Yeah. We don't.

Hello, everyone. My name is Ashley Chanyam. I'm a senior at Oakland Tech, and I am the series president. Hello,

everyone. My name is Anara Shafiq. I'm a junior at Skyline and I'm ACC's Vice President. Hello

everybody, my name is Lewis Allen. I'm a senior at Oakland Tech and I'm ACC's historian. Hi,

everyone. My name is Nala Kaplan Rashid. I'm a junior at Skyline High School, and I'm ACC's secretary.

Hi. I'm Eman, and I go to Met West High School, and I'm a senior.

Hello, everyone. My name is Sophie Mowellet. I'm a bulldog at Oakland Tech, and I am a senior.

Good evening, My name is Amita Tongwun, and I'm ACC's media director and eleventh grader at Oakland Tech.

Hi, everyone. I'm Lina. I'm a senior at Skyline, and I'm ACC's L CAP director.

Hello, everybody. Next slide, please. For those who don't know what ACC is, ACC, which stands for All City Council, is a student union that represents 30,000 plus students in the district. We are a bridge between students and adult decision makers, and the governing board is an elected student body that comes from different schools across the district, and we are a team that represents the voices of students in our district. Next slide, please.

We organized together to address the needs of the students and encourage them to participate in leadership at their school sites and district levels. And in the presentation, you can see some of our visions points. And one of them is a strong unified All City Council ACC student union with open and constant communication with the student body that functions as a powerful student union. And, we envision a district that leadership has a formal place during the school day as well as a multitude of quality after school and community based programs where many students participate in improving their schools and communities.

As for some of our key accomplishments this year, we've met with 11 OUSD departments over the year. Some being the health and wellness, academics and innovation, and special education. We've collectively committed hundreds of hours within our roles as all city council governing board members. And we also have several members a part of committees and partnerships outside of ACC such as OFCY, CLC, OIC, the Student Safety and Violence Prevention Committee, and Barbara Lee's Youth Advisory Council.

This year our high school meet our high school committee has had four general high school meetings with 13 high schools and 59 students in attendance.

Some of the activities at these high school meetings included opportunities for student leaders to get to know other student leaders across OUSD, engagement with students around OUSD's initiatives and student priorities such as career exploration, inclusion, and nutrition, as well as leadership skill building training, public speaking, flip, smart goals, understanding the budget deficit, student power, etcetera. Along with that, we also had our sixteenth annual Youth Action Summit held this year, which included nine schools and a total of 55 students engaged. And, yeah, on the next slide, we'll see the students from all the following schools that were represented at this youth summit. Yeah.

Much like the high school committee, we also have a middle school committee which focuses on the middle school students in our district, which I am a part of. This year, we had four general middle school meetings with 15 middle schools being engaged with and 80 students in total. We basically follow the same idea of the high school committee, and we end off our year with the middle school ethnic studies conference, peer resource and ethnic study conference. And this year, we had two and thirty nine middle school students and participants from 12 schools, 73 youth, and student workshop facilitators, and 50 middle school RJ circle keepers from Brewer, Roosevelt, Urban Promise. And on the next two slides, you'll see middle schools that we have collaborated with.

We had three priorities this year. Our first one was career exploration. We chose career exploration because we found that at our high school retreat, many of the high schoolers that we engage with spoke about how they didn't feel like they had the resources or the support within their schools to kind of, actualize or realize or, reach the goals and dreams that they had for themselves after they graduated high school. And so within our priority this year, we did a lot of research surrounding the different resources and support and just to kind of, in reviewing a lot of surveys about how students felt like they were really being uplifted by their schools. And through all of that, we found that there's a big disconnect between the amount of students who say that they want to graduate and actually do, and the amount of students who say that they want to pursue a career or go to college after high school, but actually have the support to do that.

And so we do recommend that the school board looks into that and make ensures that there's a college and career center at every OUSD high school.

Another issue that OUSD students that we worked with this year identified when we were choosing our priorities was both a lack of students that spend most of their time in special education classes and spaces in leadership spaces and boards like ACC, as well as just on varying school sites, like a bit of a divide between students that spend most of their time in general education and students that spend most of their classes and students that spend most of their time in special education classes. So we launched a couple different things in collaboration with other student leadership this year at Skyline particularly, in order to address and bridge the gap between students. One thing that was the idea of Skyline leadership students was to have they started a chapter of an organization called Best Buddies that helps foster meaningful friendship and connection between all kinds of different students on campus. And that's been very effective at getting students that spend most of their time in special education involved in our student leadership at Skyline. And I've seen it happen and it's amazing.

And also, we worked very closely with Aruna and Amanda on the disability access team in central office. And they've given various different trainings to people at our general high school and middle school meetings about just disability access education.

In the nutrition committee, our assessment has revealed significant concerns within our current school meal services, including age appropriate food portions, delayed scheduling, food waste, and meals that don't reflect our community's culture, all of which contribute to student hunger and missed classroom time. In response, we posed a survey to students. We engaged over 30 students. We also recommend that the nutrition team, adopt a student led task force so students can inform the meals that they're seeing on their plate, equitable portion sizes, local food sourcing, and dedicated funding to improve the overall meal experience. The nutrition committee has partnered with the nutrition department, and they have been very open and willing to adopt these things, especially local food sourcing.

I know that they already have done this thing, have already done this and they are excited to learn more about it. Through collaboration with the nutrition services department, we hope to ensure that every student feels nourished, represented, and ready to learn.

So another one of our accomplishments this year was getting the state seal of civic engagement out to a lot of different students this year. If you don't know what the state seal of civic engagement is, it's just a recognition from the government that goes on your diploma that shows that you have had some sort of impact on your community. This information on the slide is wrong actually, it's been updated since we made the slides. 117 students received the seal of civic engagement from the following schools. CCPA, Fremont, Madison Park Academy, MetWest, Oakland High School, Oakland Tech, and Skyline.

And 52 per there has been a 52% increase in students receiving their seal this school year from last school year. So, yeah, it was awesome.

Next, we have our work within Oakland Youth Vote. Within Oakland Youth Vote is the core leaders committee, which is made up of about 20 different high schoolers across the Bay Area. And we've basically worked well, we worked on Oakland Youth Vote, right now, and we also gave you a presentation the other month. And we're recommending a voter education week to, for the last two weeks of September 2026, as well as, reminding you guys that school board elections are in November 2026 for all even districts. And so we wanna really make sure that we're spreading the word out about youth vote and institutionalizing it within our school district.

Here are some highlights of what CLC has accomplished this year. As you guys were all here for, we finished and presented our evaluation report of our key takeaways of how the twenty twenty four election went pertaining to youth vote. We helped develop youth vote strategies for the November in partnership with the registrar's office and Alameda County Office of Education and OUSD. We had a media committee training in media literacy and analytics. And the Civic Engagement Committee is currently working on reviewing the OYV curriculum so that it can be distributed to schools during voter education weeks.

Here are some highlight that I have done in my role as the health and wellness director. At Oakland Technical High School, me alongside a lot of student leaders on tech's campus have launched it's our very first wellness center and peer wellness ambassadors program. We have trained 10 12 peer leaders in topics like mental health first aid, crisis response, cycles of abuse, restorative justice, addiction response, and many more. The wellness center has provided support to over a 100 students weekly. This support looks like one on one wellness counseling, referrals coming through the cost team, and self referral forms.

Weekly affinity restorative justice circles such as black men's group and black girls circles, and LGBTQ plus, circles. We have done a lot of tier two, restorative justice circles, that is harm and conflict, and we have done academic tutoring and many more services.

This year LCAP directors attended nine PSAC meetings. During those meetings, we presented updates from both our high school and middle school engagements. We shared data collected from students and made sure student voices were represented in conversations surrounding the district budget. We hope to work with PSAC to make their meetings more student friendly. This year, we encouraged some of our GB members to join the PSAC meetings and give us feedback for what PSAC can look like next year.

Next slide. Future LCAP directors should plan to conduct classroom visits alongside high school leadership teams to help students better understand the LCAP process, the LCFF funding, and how this district budget directly impacts their schools and daily experiences. Through these classroom visits, they should collect more student feedback to bring back to PSAC meetings and encourage greater student participation in district decision making processes.

So how can the OUSD district support All City Council? First, share more about what All City Council is across the OUSD. I think that what we have here is a great board of students, a great collection of students, but it's not totally representative of the entire OUSD. Part of that has to do with outreach and how OUSD markets boards like these or groups like these. Next, you could provide more funding for student leadership and improvement projects, and specifically for the school board.

Be present at our engagement, especially with schools in your district. Reach out to us, be proactive. We wanna hear from you, so please make sure to reach out to us.

Thank you to our All City Council governing board for serving your full term and representing your peers in OUSD. This year, we say see you soon to our graduating seniors, Ashley, Iman, Lina, Lewis, Mariana, Maximus, and Sophie. We also get to officially welcome the governing board for the twenty six-twenty seven school year.

Now before I allow the new governing board of the twenty twenty six to twenty twenty seven school year come up and introduce themselves, I would like to let it be known that we have two LCAP positions that are not filled up. So students in the fall when they have their retreat, that's where special elections will be held. So, again, LCAP, both of the positions are are vacant, so please look into that. And now can we please have our new GB step up and introduce themselves?

Hi again. My name is Amina Tongwoon. I'm an eleventh grader at Oakland Tech, and I will be one of next year's student directors.

Hello. My name is Andrew Block, but you can call me Drew, and I'm gonna be a freshman at Oakland High School next year, and I'm gonna be, one of the student directors next year.

Hello. My name is Anar Shafiq. I'm an eleventh grader at Skyline High School, and I'm going to be the president for the twenty twenty six, twenty twenty seven Youth School.

Again, everyone. My name is Nala Kaplan Rashid, and I'm gonna be the vice president for the twenty twenty six, twenty seven school year. Thank you. Hello

everyone, my name is Maria and I will be your ACC secretary for the twenty twenty six to twenty twenty seven school year. I'm currently a junior and was recently elected as ASB president for Fremont High School.

Hi. My name is Quidir. I'm gonna be the historian for next year's school year.

Hi. My name is Tiffany Bouscos. I'm gonna be

the health and wellness director for next school year.

Thank you so much, everyone. Before we conclude our report, me and Max would like to reflect on our experience in governance and talk about what being student directors has taught us. So over the years, I have networked with people from OUSD central office to the local and national government because of my OUSD education and personal experiences. I'm so grateful to look in my wallet every day and see all of the business cards from people all over the world. And something that I can say confidently is that a lot of them looked like me, and they looked like my classmates and people I saw walking down the street.

I have learned that in this line of work, which is human services and helping people excel, we must not be afraid to listen to our hearts and allow empathy to be expressed not only in our words, but may it reflect in our work as well. I have seen this board, political leaders, and even online personalities ignore the sole purpose of their positions. And may I remind you that you are here to help people excel by giving your furthest extension of power and influence to make sure our community stands strong and informed. As student director, I communicated the questions and concerns of students to the board members when they have failed to prioritize student participation and engagement processes, like the superintendent search committee that I was a part of and didn't really get any updates on. But along with that, I also made sure to retain all student facing challenges and experience to guide my advocacy efforts throughout the year.

I have time and time again communicated the questions and concerns of student board members, but as much as it hurts to say, none of it matters without your vote because student votes are not counted. The same people who decide how our school systems runs are the same people who have our district in shambles. The very people who say they do it for their community, but yet we sit here in debt with no plan and no unity to move us forward. I can sit up here and scold everyone, but I'd rather give a list of improvements. Number one, the board needs to be more proactive in face in student facing information and meetings that benefit us all.

An example of this is the teaching and learning committee. We need to advertise these meetings across OUSD platforms and increase the number of times the committee meets each school semester. Number two, the board should maintain a consistent and inclusive system that ensures students, families, and staff have a clear understanding of what adult decision makers are doing in our district to improve our sites and why these decisions are being made. Number three, I expect the board to take consideration take careful consideration of all the possible options and solutions for our budget to keep the cuts as far away from our students as possible. And lastly, I expect updates about ongoing policy discussions such as the process for selecting a superintendent, further union negotiations, and safety protocols.

I expect real transparency with every single one of you because this year, you have failed and every year before that. I can say confidently that the majority of the information and resources that I have is because I'm a student director. And even when I was a ACC governing board member, I was never this informed on what was going on in the district. And I can confirm that many of our students have no idea the district is struggling this hard to communicate with one another and make the necessary adjustments to adhere to all demographics. But, also, as a student, it's very important to learn and ask questions, especially when it's things that affect our community.

I definitely love being student director, not because of the attention or even because of the networking I'm so thankful to have experienced, but because it allows me to advocate for a large body of people who deserve a chance to dream big and have the available resources to support that dream. I appreciate my time on this dais and as student board member, and I will be sure to continue to live my life as an advocate for my community. Thank you.

Alright. So I was told not to ramble because I have a tendency to do that. But I also just before I get started saying my little spill, I also wanna say that every single position of leadership that youth holds, wherever wherever it is in this in this city and the city over and the state over and the country over, it the definition of what it means to be a youth leader is defined by those youth leaders. We are set up in parameters, we're set up in a box and we're try we're we're trying to be controlled and it's hard to show up as a youth leader in a lot of spaces because you're shot down and you're undermined and you're overlooked and you're young, and you don't have the experiences that those around you have, so you're put into a box. But as student director over these past two years, and even more now as I, you know, as I represent not only the youth in OUSD, but all the youth in Oakland 25.

I've learned unchecked and undefined resilience. I've learned what it means to chase for something that you've yet to fully understand but feel the uncontrollable and immense importance of. I've learned what it means to swim even if you're in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight. These past two years have been hard and if I said anything else, I'd be fibbing. Consistency, consideration, and confidence has been what I have attempted to define myself by during my during my time served in this seat.

I have learned how damaging expectations can be to oneself, seeing the effect of what thousands of expectations can do to someone who is yet to define themselves and who they are. In contrast to these hard lessons learned, I have learned how to practice peace, understanding emotions, and controlling my own emotions. I have learned what unwavering support can mean to one person. And finally, have learned what it means to love something so much and so intensely that you're willing to give your entire self sacrificing everything you want and even some things you need to search for an achievement of one goal that you will never benefit from, but many will prosper because. I understand what it means to journey through life with thousands, millions of people knowing that we are all here with one another at this unique time laying down those tiny pieces in a puzzle that we'll never see completed.

Roles like these, roles that we sit in up here, they don't come with flowers, they don't come with pats on the back, neither do they come with grace or understanding. Roles such as these come with expectations, criticism at every level of what you do, and many long nights where you feel your work isn't helping anyone. These roles are given to you, already defined by countless people who has held them before you. These roles can make you feel like you're in a box to speak a certain way and to change up your way of communication, alter your style, and even the people you associate with. I've tried my hardest over these years to burst this bubble or break the box that many people have tried to trap me in.

But the truth is that as a leader, you are defined by those who you by those who you represent. A mere vessel of the thousands or millions of people, you are the leader of this journey that I'm speaking about. Your actions define those expectations. Every action in every moment defines your style of leadership. Every single one of these moments, if you truly believe in the battle in which you're fighting for, define who you are and define the type of leader that you will be and that you will grow into.

And so lastly, I have learned that I did define those expectations that were endowed to me. And to my future student directors who are out there, I ask you, will you allow them to define you? Wait, I'm not done. We would also like to thank everyone who has made our year in ACC successful. Throughout the year, we collaborate with OUSD student groups and many community based organizations that specifically work with our OUSD youth.

Through our various collaborations, we're able to mobilize more students and find areas to really uplift student voices and and perspectives. We're housed under the office of equity, so we wanna thank Rachael, Jaimez, Jerome Gordine, Jamal Mohammed, Phyllis? That is Phyllis. Phyllis delivers our food. I cannot forget Phyllis.

I'm sorry. Phyllis Copes, Arceela Gonzalez, Sabria Hassan, Eve Eve Delfin, and the rest of the equity team for continuously showing up for OUSD students and taking the time to support to support all of our events. Without all of our students and their adult allies, none

of

our events will be possible. These adult allies not only make sure that students are brought to our events, but also make the time during their classes to continue working on projects related to our work. And so we wanna thank everybody who has helped All City Council be successful in this year and in the year to come because as I said, unwavering support can make a true difference. And we would specifically wait. Wait one second.

And specifically and especially, we would like to thank our adult ally, Adriana.

I

don't know where she went, but she hears she oh, there's stand up. Stand up for him. Stand up for him. There you go.

Adriana has been with us less than two years, and she has so showed so much love and support to all of the students that she's worked with, not just with ACC, but all of OUSD students. And a lot of us wouldn't even be here without her. So thank you, Adriana, truly. And

thank you. That concludes our report.

Public comment on the sign?

Yes, madam president. We have a total of four speakers with two student speakers.

Okay. We'll take the two student speakers first and two minutes.

Yes. Two student speakers are, Bella Richards and Kaia Richards.

And the others There's two students here.

Bella and Kaya, was there the other one? Okay. Okay. And if you could make sure to pull the mic down low enough so we can hear the speakers.

Thank you for letting them speak. They're speaking about the school stability.

Okay. So, name is Bella Reichert. I am a junior at Oakland High School and I have special education in elementary school. I didn't have special education and no one understood me and I didn't know what was going on and it was like hard and scary and confusing. And then I joined an SDC and my life really changed.

And my teachers understood that too. And supported me and they still do. And I don't think that I'm the only one who wouldn't feel happy about if special education was taken away. Thank you.

Say your name and then read your paper. This is Kaya Reichert. She's in second grade at Joaquin Miller. Go ahead. You can read it.

We're taking a lot of time, so go ahead and read exactly what it says. You do this. You have you're just annoying. Would you stop speaking of the play? Like, that's different.

Oh, no. It's exactly the same. No. It's not. Go.

Read it. It's so much more powerful if you read it.

Go for it. Should I lift you up?

Okay, we're gonna let the board move on. Okay, they have lots of important work to do tonight. All you have to do is read the words.

Go. My best friend isn't learning well enough in our school, and she needs to be in a special classroom. But right before I started, you closed our special classroom at Joaquin Miller. So now she has to leave our school. That's scary for her.

She and her mom have to start all over. But what if she does that, and next year you decide to take away special classes too? Then she has to move again. How will she trust learning and making friends? My first two years in school, no one helped me learn well, but I got behind.

I got in trouble a lot for just being me. It was awful. But we got a new principal and a new teacher, and now I'm ahead of my class, and I have friends. I'm finally safe. You wouldn't come tell just us autistic kids that we have to leave our school with you.

So why would you if we were in a special class? Please let all of us feel safe where we are with friends and people who understand us.

Madam president, the other two speakers are Sheila Haynes and Asada Olukbala.

We'll take miss Asada in person and then we'll take miss Haynes.

Constantly taking clothes on and off with that thing. I will continue to challenge these young people to do more and do better. And I've come to you many times to say this is something you can take up. This is something you can help make a difference with. So I'm a give you some more today.

At City Hall on Tuesday, Carol Fife was asking me could I identify some young people to work with her because we had an incident at first after first Friday where many young people engaged in a lot of violent activity and as a result of it, first Friday might be cancelled and several business individuals in Downtown Oakland say they're thinking about leaving. So they want to organize with the youth included of how we can dispense with a lot of the violence that's happening in the city of Oakland with our young people. So take that on. Get in touch with Carol Fife and see if you can resolve that. The second thing is the city council allocates money for summer youth employment.

It's insulting because most of it is they have these young people picking up trash. You want more substantive youth employment and they can do that by outreaching to some of these businesses to have that happen. So take that on and make your youth employment significant, not just going out there and picking up trash and getting paid for it.

Thank you. Next up, we'll have mister Haynes.

Yes. Vice president, I will allow them to speak.

Hello again. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay. Thank you. So, just as I said, earlier, student directors, once again, I do appreciate your ongoing strong leadership and with the priorities you have continued to advocate for, I'm hopeful that this work will continue especially around student safety and more inclusive activities for our disabled students. I wish there was a way our online students that's been the most impacted with loss of services. I would really love to see like all services outlined in their IEP's to be fulfilled.

There should be designated school sites where students who have been the most impacted through harm with lack of services. They should be able to receive consistency. I've spoke out ever since my resolution was introduced about the arts and there's been music cuts and more funding cuts and staffing, but for our students who have disabilities, a lot of them. That's their only outlet to try to get better, So I'm not sure where we are with the finances. That's a whole another story, but the arts support our students with disability and language is also very critical in keeping our students in a loving and respectable space with helping to reduce violence, so I can just only hope that with the uncertainty of the budget that more harm won't be caused.

I'm praying that the ongoing priority, you know, despite funding cuts to programs will continue to be student safety and I just also want to just appreciate you guys both again for just having that positive light. I mean if only all students had the positivity and character that you both possess, there wouldn't be no violence. We have to get back to the culture of respect. So thanks for being a shining light for our youths and just continue doing great things. Thank you guys.

Thank you. Board colleagues, any comments? Director Barry?

Sorry. I'm gonna steal director Barry's comment. Actually, no. Please go first. Please go first.

I we're still on the student report. Correct. Okay. I just wanted to at some point and part of me wants to have this discussion in public, but I think we should talk about the specific things that this board should do today to fully create the conditions necessary for the next two student board directors to be successful. And that's not just what the board should do, but also just do do right now, but what we should do on an ongoing basis.

And you I outlined or I took notes on all the things that you said in your reflections, but I know there's a lot more and I wanna operationalize that. And we have a board retreat coming up on June 15, and I feel like having them present for some or all of that should be one way that we should get this off to a good start, even if you all aren't available to participate in that, knowing what's on the agenda and having all the materials for that and then be included in the briefing and the debriefing. But I feel like there's things that we need to do today to make sure you all have a good experience moving forward.

Director Smith. I just wanted to speak directly to the two students who just came up here and were vulnerable with us. And not only vulnerable, but they came up here and advocated for their needs and the things that they they deserve. They deserve these things. I can definitely say in elementary school, you know, I have seen students who have got in trouble because they were, quote, unquote, seen as different or they were just too hard to handle.

But in reality, it was just the lack of understanding. And I really, really am proud to see how the district has, you know, helped them, but I hope that the services continue and, you know, they're advanced for our students because nobody's different. We're all students, and we all deserve the same level of education to help us thrive and achieve the dreams that we wanna achieve. So thank you to you two for advocating for everyone.

Directors director Simmons, do you wanna go next?

So since I'm about to get out of here, I think this is this is our last official report of the year. Do we do it's do we still present at other board meetings? I've not. We do. I've been here before.

I know how this works. I've been here I just wanna say, you know, I've been I've been through a lot of ups and downs with y'all over these past two years. I've I've been, yeah, I've been through a lot of ups and downs over the past two years. I've I've been here for a completely different board, Not completely different, but for a different board majority. I've seen two separate sides of the same coin.

And, you know, for for all of the crazy and uncomfortable and damning things that have happened over these past two years, I appreciate and I love all of you guys dearly because you guys have taught me an immense amount. And you guys have deepened my understanding of what it means to lead directly or indirectly. So I appreciate, and I love you all dearly.

So thank you. Thank you. Director Barry, did you wanna finish your thoughts? Director Williams? Microphone.

Yeah. Thank you. In my mind, I've been thinking about this communication gap that we had this year and just the relationship that needs to be built, you know. I think yes. I think we all can do better for sure.

We all can do better. And I and I wanna just piggyback off of director Barry's idea. I've just been talking to my colleagues and saying what we should have at the beginning of the year is orientation so all of us can get grounded. Right? Because I think there's an opportunity.

There's a a real good opportunity which we didn't get at the beginning of this year is actually to get to understand what what is driving us and what our expectations are. You know, from the beginning of the year, the get go, you start up, we come together, all of us, and we talk about how we can work together. I think what we've noticed is that there's been a separation. You folks ain't doing right, and you're not communicating with us. I think we could've knocked that out at the beginning of the year.

Just really work on it each and every month, you know, about how we can actually bring you into the meetings. Right? Like all of those conversations should happen at the beginning. And hopefully, as the new board directors come in, that's a great opportunity to kinda get started to begin the year off so, we can align where our expectations are. I was really, really excited for you to, Max, to bring in the restorative justice.

Really wanna see that continue to grow, you know, as you move forth because that is oh, yeah. Well, you know, we go we go find a way to get it funded and continue to support the program, right? But that essence of like all of us practicing it on a regular, Right? And that's how we try to intercede these feelings that we're not being listened to is have an opportunity to come together and work on a communication portal that we all can say, okay, let's reset and see where we need to be. So I've learned a lot from both of you and, really appreciate and seen seen your growth as well.

It hasn't been as easy as you like, but, I mean, the experience in itself only builds you up for the next one. So just really appreciate all that you all that you, have brought to this conversation. Let's take it, capture it, bring the new folks in, create a space so they can actually learn from it, and build off that. Thank you.

Director Lada? Director Thompson?

Yes. Just quickly and it won't take very much time at all. But I wanna thank both of you for what you've brought to the board. And I just wanna build on something that was stated earlier and an individual talked and I won't say the individual but an individual talked about character that he or she might have. I think understanding that character and accepting that character is one thing but understanding that your character doesn't have to alter but you can embrace the bigness of the newness that you've received, that you've learned in order to make whatever organization you're working in more effective.

So I appreciate that concept. And along with that, I appreciate the fact that you're both of you are very vocal and you will actually state your opinion and you don't regress from it. I appreciate that. Someone alluded to something earlier this evening and that was how your example of your being will help others when someone talked about the crisis that we're having on Friday nights. And they talked about how your examples and your positiveness would help others to see how things could be done and perhaps alter that negativity.

So, thank you very kindly for everything that you guys, both of you have offered to the board and to the entire school community of over 34, zero kids. Thank you very much.

Director Hutchinson.

Yes, thank you. I also don't want to say too much at this point. I I really appreciate the comments that both of you just made in framing up kind of what you've learned and what your experiences have been as student directors. I think it's really important that at the youngest age possible, everyone learns how to speak up and advocate. Everyone learns how to speak up and speak truth.

Not even truth to power, but speak truth. And, you know, director Simmons, in in your first year as a student director, I will never forget when you and your fellow director, directly called out board leadership because they were lying to you. I'll never forget that. I've seen a lot of board meetings. I've never seen that before.

You know, just like, director Smith even tonight. Again, referencing how you all were asked to be a part of the superintendent search committee, and then not once did anyone reach out to you, talk to you, and here we are going to be tonight extending the superintendent's contract when there wasn't even a search and not one meeting happened. And so I'm really kind of disappointed that I didn't have more opportunities to meet with the All City Council this year. Hopefully, one of the things you can spread to the All City Council and to your adult allies is especially when we're talking about communication. You know, for me as a school board director, I don't have any staff.

It is really hard for me to proactively set up those meetings. And so I think one of the ways that we can build this in going forward is to have the all city council be a little bit more aggressive in seeking meetings with school board directors. But I appreciate you both. I look forward to running into you both in the next few months when we're away from here where we can all be a little bit freer with the language that we use to describe what's happened over the last year and the last two years. But it's really, I think, empowering for the community, and it makes me feel good to see that as you are exiting out of this position, you're making sure that you are speaking the full truth and leaving no rocks unturned.

So thank you again, and I'm gonna be sharing your speeches around later afterwards. Thank you.

Yeah. I wanna start off by thanking the young people that spoke today about the stability resolution. As a student who early in my career in my school career had a teacher identify that I needed glasses, that I needed something to support me. I really appreciate that folks are speaking up for themselves, but also seeking to continue the resources that we have for our disabled students. And so I will be supporting the stabilization resolution that's coming up on the agenda later on today.

I also wanna uplift two of the priorities that you all mentioned. I think inclusion is key to student experience at our school sites, and I just really wanna appreciate the students from Skyline for continuing to uplift that as a goal, as a priority. I was able to attend a graduation ceremony last year that the student leadership had at Skyline for disabled students who were graduating, and it was just such a wonderful experience to see students celebrating other students and putting the whole event together. We were able to get those students some certificates to recognize their achievement, but I think that those are kind of ongoing things that I wanna see, and I wanna figure out how we could do that across the district because it should be a practice that we have of inclusion everywhere. And then recently, as of yesterday, doctor Sadler, yes, last night, I attended the Oaktown Leaders Youth Apprenticeship graduation at Berkeley City College where our young people who are graduating this year who also now have they're either on the path to or currently will have as as graduating their associate's degrees in early childhood education.

And I wanna give a shout out to the 18 Skyline students and the 36 CCPA students who are part of that program. They're already gonna have the credentials that they need to to start their education career. And one of those speakers already talked about how she's gonna come back to OUSD to be a kindergarten teacher. And that just warms my heart because I'm like, yes, we need you. Yes, come back.

And yes, doctor Sadler and others specifically mentioned all of the openings that we have in early childhood education. So really wanna make sure the career exploration is not only sought at specific school sites or around specific programs, but just as a really holistic way that we're supporting our students throughout the district. And wanna continue to strengthen programs like that in other school sites as well. And thank you again for your service. It's been a pleasure getting to know all of you all.

Max for two years, director Smith for this year. And again, I really wanna commend you all on the work that you've done, and I can't wait to see where you all go from here. So thanks again. Director Burhard, I will hand it back over to you.

Thank you both. I know you're heading out to study for finals. Good luck on your finals, and look forward to hearing good things from you. I also wanna give a shout out to the two students who spoke, but also to their mom who stood by them. And I think, again, for our students, it's having our families and moms and dads and aunties and uncles and grandmas beside us, and I think that makes all the difference in the world.

So a shout out to a very lovely family moment there. We can applaud for them. Oops. That's okay. Next on the agenda, we do have our active parents.

We have the PSAC report. But continuing our supportive families and parents and activists.

Yeah.

Alright. Good evening. Thank you all for, allowing us to present. Representing the parent student advisory committee. I am Damani Jackson.

And my son goes to Reach Academy. He's first grader.

Right there.

Yeah. He's in the back. So first of all, we wanna start off by introducing a a new group, the o s the OUSD multi stakeholder engagement group. It's a group of volunteers representing the various stakeholder groups of OUSD with leadership from our advisory committees, including PSAC. In collaboration with the OUSD community, our goal is to help shape how engagement and decision making should look to inform the future of our district.

There's been three meetings so far. One was in person and two were Zoom. The last meeting was based upon, multilingual participants and, trying to get everyone's voice. And our next meeting is coming up, would be June 1. Everyone's welcome to come and join.

The meeting's from 05:30 to eight. There's also a, QR code if anyone wants to stay informed and get involved. Go ahead and snap that QR code and get involved. Also, we wanna invite everyone to come out to our next PSAC meeting, which would be next Wednesday, May 20. The public is welcome.

We we love having our school board members attend. Superintendent Sadler has been there a lot, and we appreciate it. Our next meeting will review planned revisions to the 2526 LCAP for student year 2627. We will understand which actions will stay the same, change, end, or be added to the LCAP. And you can find the link at ousd.org.

And, thank you. Oh, I'm sorry. Next up is the, Foster Youth Advisory Committee.

Thank you so much. I don't know if we've been able to locate, Patty Jorgens in the participants. So if she's not able to be, promoted, I will fill in for her. She was the person you saw with the triple stroller last time. So she was having a hard time connecting.

So I will just not read this, but basically say what's included. Oh, yes. And Tara usually steps in, but I can keep going. She is a member of the committee and a foster mother. So you see the enrollment of foster youth from September till now and the end of year last year, and it gives you a sense of the numbers.

And we always provide suspension data because that is the focus of the foster youth advisory's work this year. So that shows you where we were last year and where we are now comparatively. Then, there was a very special meeting on the twenty eighth. The committee met with Oak principal Nikki Williams and Misha Karigasha to discuss implementation of the foster youth suspension policy. And if people are interested in the policy, there it is.

And this conversation was very interactive and really gave insight into elementary level experience implementing this. And there were many specific, asks of the principal and everybody in collaboration. So it's for you to review. These are very specific actions that most happen to, interrupt the suspension of foster youth. Some related to how notifications work on the ARIES system, what RJ supports there can be in an elementary with that level of funding, a protected section in ARIES that needs to exist, a site based foster youth liaison at every school, and some very specific requests for presentations at the start of this school year.

There is some outreach actions that are very specific related to coordination of services teams, and continuing the special education IEP review meetings, expanding them beyond high school, which is their current focus. Be aware that, from 40% foster youth having IEPs, now we're about 50%. So that's becoming a more, a larger area of work. So appreciation to the two staff, and that was the Foster Youth Advisory's report.

Good evening, I am JD Wallachian, I am the co chair of the CAC, the Community Advisory Committee for Special Education. And I'm gonna go off script a little bit from the slides. I'll start with legislative day. A couple members went to Sacramento last week to discuss legislative priorities to improve how school districts serve disabled students. At the end of the slides, it covers some shout outs from our last couple meetings, where we heard about encouraging efforts that have been made towards increased inclusion of disabled students in both sports and school communities that have been purposefully making changes for greater inclusivity.

And now, I want to talk about the belonging resolution, because if we are ever going to achieve full inclusion of disabled students, we need to ensure their basic rights. For anyone who wants a more in-depth background, there's a tiny URL on the previous slide introducing this topic. But what I'll say about the history, is that three years ago, the school district chose to save some money by closing and consolidating special education classrooms, and moving the students still in those classrooms to different schools. And you heard the impact of that earlier from Kaia. And children and youth experienced these removals as outright exclusion and expulsion.

And back then, the staff that wanted these changes, justified these changes by saying special education is a placement, not a place. And this is language taken from the Individuals with Disabilities and Education Act, and is meant to protect students from segregation, not to be used as an excuse to rip them away from their current communities. And this is a practice that is not allowed for non disabled students. If there's an under enrolled classroom of 20 non disabled students, and four other schools had classrooms with rooms, the district would not take five and put them here, and five there, and five there, and five there. It's not allowed.

But the district has, and will do this again to disabled students if we don't stop it. And that is the very basic definition of discrimination. We in the CAC have worked very hard over the last three years, and especially the three months, trying to create a resolution that will protect disabled students from this ableist practice. And I appreciate the staff who have helped us with this, and also our board liaison, Rachel Lada, who met with me and Cynthia on Saturday morning to craft a final version that incorporated the concerns of the CAC in time for posting on the agenda, but what was posted is not what we agreed on. The posted version still includes the words, a special education program may not be relocated or closed in such a way that prevents students currently enrolled in the program from the choice of continuing to attend that school for their entirety of its grade span, prior to the process requirements in this resolution being fulfilled.

Prior to the process requirements, this resolution would actively give formal permission and a process to the school district to discriminate. This is the opposite of what we've been working towards.

The district English Language Learner Subcommittee did not submit a report for tonight.

Thank you. Are there any board comments?

Director Barry? I just have a question to clarify what we just heard because I'm just talking to director Lotta here on the dais, so I'll just ask it. Are were are you saying that the resolution that's on the agenda in the form that we downloaded to prepare for tonight's meeting is not the resolution that you all collaborated on?

It's a version that we collaborated on, but it's not the final version that would protect disabled students.

I'm sorry.

I I assume that we would I've, you know, just for the record, had assumed we might have this discussion when we got to the items. But I will just say that, there have been many attempts over the last couple of months and even over the last few days to try to find a way to achieve or to end the practice of removing students with very little notice just because they're in self contained programs without incurring a fiscal impact. Because I think we all agree that we don't want to enact something right now that would have a fiscal impact. And the issue that we have continued to run up against is finding a compromise amongst staff that is also acceptable to CAC.

And I'll just say it's never okay to discriminate even if it's gonna save money. That's what I'll say.

Just have a question, Director Lotta. Is what we're seeing tonight We'll discuss it later. Thanks, J. D. Any board comments on the PSA?

Alright. There are no public comments. Do we have public comment on PC?

Yes. We have two. That's, Sada Olukwala and Matt Glaser.

If, those two speakers would come to the dais.

Thank

you for taking, taking the time here. So, we heard about the multi stakeholder engagement group, MSEG, during the PSAC report. We've had a few meetings, and I've just been reflecting, especially after hearing that very inspirational, those very inspirational comments by the student directors. I've been reflecting on some of the feedback we've been getting at those meetings. They've been very constructive because we're hearing a lot of the same thing, which is there's a ton of skepticism that anything is gonna come out of it.

There's a ton of that. I've had people tell me very respectfully that, we're being pretty naive here, and that this is something that has been tried many times, here in OUSD. And yet, some of the people involved in this group have been in this district for decades, and they see a real chance for the community to step up in a way that it needs to. The problems that we have here at OUSD, or in OUSD, have been experienced by other school districts right here in this state with many of the same demographics, many

of

the same issues, many of the same restrictions that we find ourselves, dealing with today, and we've seen a few instances where they've made it right over the years. They made it better. Nothing's perfect, it's public education. The one common thread is community engagement in those places. And so to the people who think that this isn't going to work or that it isn't worth doing and we should tear everything down instead, I will say that that is absolutely true if nobody shows up.

If you don't show up, you know what's gonna happen? Absolutely nothing, and we're gonna be right here every year doing the same thing. So please join me. The URL got obfuscated. It was ousd-mseg.org, and I hope to see you at our next meeting.

Thank

you. Thank you. Missus Sanna?

I respect that there are many issues in this district that get a lot of attention and they deserve the attention that they're getting, particularly related to our special education students and our foster students. But I'm here to advocate for African American students and, I don't see outreach to deal with their needs. I know a large percentage of our special education students the state has mandated that you look at the disproportionately high number of African American boys who are in special education that are getting suspended. That issue has been here a long time. It is still unresolved.

I also know that we have a high number of foster students who are African Americans. High number of, students who are homeless are African Americans. I I have come to the conclusion that this district is not a safe space for African American students and parents. I will continue to pursue the language that deals with that, but the actions to make change is not going to be happening. So I know that you understand this.

I'm not giving you anything that you haven't heard before. At another time, I'm gonna talk about McClymans. That's I'm gonna give that address. But I under I have know fully well, and it's not just this district, it's all across this country. African American children are not getting the same level of attention and that's been a historical piece.

But we we will we will rise to do what we have to do. We come from a long line of people. We are progressing. I have two sons that have master's degrees. And we have in our household a dedication to education, and that's a lot of African American people.

The highest amount of degrees in this country come from black women. So you do what you do, and we're gonna still be here. You're gonna gonna get rid of us no matter we get the attention we need.

Thank you. Are there any other public speakers?

I signed up to speak during the SELPA, but I'm speaking about SELPA report. May I Thank do that now you. So I had the opportunity to attend the SELPA legislative day last week with Rain Johnson and Cynthia, and it was really extraordinary. We I found the legislator shockingly receptive to discussing changes to how funding is done, for education, as well as just general interest in special education. I'm following up with all of them, and I just wanted to say if any of you are interested in participating in those meetings or hearing more specifics about the nuances of the questions that they asked, which is particularly interesting as we need more money from the state, talk to me.

We're doing that. Also, I feel like I must say thank you for having my kids speak here tonight. It's really odd, I guess outrageous would be the word, that we're even discussing whether or not to ensure school stability for disabled students. We are in a budget crisis. This is not the area to act out of fear of costs related to keeping our children safely in their cohorts, in their classrooms, in their schools with their siblings.

I think Kaya said, you wouldn't walk into a Gen Ed classroom and take all the autistic kids out and say, sorry, you have to leave this school. So why would you do that if they're in a special day class? It's the same thing. It's horrible, it's bizarre, it's traumatic. And it's like an affront to our students, to us as parents, to their teachers, and to the advisory board who's been working so hard on this.

So this feels like a really easy one. We've worked so closely with our director of special ed on this for so many years. Theoretically, in practice, it's actually already been going for three years. So it's very doable. And it's incredibly bizarre and heinous.

Is that a word we use in this world right now? Not to. I can't figure it out. Anyway, thank you for all you do. Thank you for hearing my kids.

Thank you. And that concludes public comment.

All public speakers' names for this item have been called.

Thank you. Next on the agenda are labor partners. I don't know if they're labor partners present. Looks like UAOS is coming up. You have five minutes.

Thank you, board. Carrie Kaufman, president of the United Administrators of Oakland Schools. I am coming you just to, talk about the March 15 and May 15 process. There's been a lot of concerns brought to us by our members, both who have been noticed and who are supporting the process of notifying members. There are concerns that, around possible OEA contract issues because the May 15 hasn't been updated in a timely manner.

So some of the positions that need to be there, our administrators are having a hard time communicating with employees around that. We have also had around four or five of our members who were inappropriately noticed and did not follow the law. We have still not gotten a response on that, and we are very concerned about that. So those were the concerns that I did wanna raise up. I'm I'm hoping to speak and work to resolve them soon, and I thank you for your

time.

Thank you. Are there any labor partners online?

Currently, see no hands raised for collective bargaining units Thank

you. Next on the agenda, we have the superintendent's report.

Good evening, president Bruhard, members of the board, staff, students, families, and members of our Oakland community. As we move toward the close of the twenty twenty five, twenty twenty six school year, I am pleased to share updates this evening in three important areas that reflect both the heart and the responsibility of our work in the Oakland Unified School District. First, I'll have highlights from across our schools and community. And second, a preview of our end of the year report on suspensions, expulsions, and the systems of support we continue to strengthen for our students, miss Sesaba. And third, an update regarding the OUSD's fiscal solvency and our accountability roadmap moving forward.

Before turning to those reports, I wanna take a moment to acknowledge the incredible spirit, partnership, and pride that continues to define Oakland Unified. On April 29, I had the privilege of attending the official ribbon cutting for the new FIFA soccer pitch at Monterra Middle School. This beautiful new field represents what is possible when schools, community organizations, and partners come together on behalf of young people. The project was made possible through a partnership between Monterra Middle School, FIFA, US Soccer, Oakland United, and Oakland Genesis as part of the celebration leading up to the upcoming World Cup. I also had a chance to see one of my former students, from Montclair, as a part of the team that afternoon.

It was truly an honor to stand alongside principal Latoya Williams and o Oakland native Olympic civil medalist and Bay FC cofounder Danielle Slaton to cut the ribbon. I also wanna recognize Monterra's three time OAL champion girls soccer team whose presence and pride made the event even more special. Moments like these remind us that our schools are not only places of learning, but centers of opportunity, wellness, teamwork, and community connection. In addition, on April 23, thousands of students and families and educators and community members came together for our third annual lit fest right here. It was a powerful celebration of literacy and the joy of reading.

We launched the event with a news conference alongside president Bruhard, Meir Lee, the Oakland Literacy Coalition, the Eat, Learn, Play Foundation, many educators, families, and students, all united around a shared commitment to literacy and academic achievement. The event culminated in our end of the year reading challenge encouraging students across Oakland to read at least twenty minutes each day through May 15, that's this Friday, as a part of our ongoing effort to reinforce the message that Oakland is truly a reading town. I really wanna sincerely thank our dedicated staff and partners for organizing such a well attended and an inspiring event. From book giveaways to literacy activities, student exhibits, family engagement opportunities that day reflected the very best of Oakland Unified and our unwavering commitment to supporting every child as a reader, thinker, and learner. These celebrations are important because they reflect the broader story of who we are as a district, resilient and innovative, student centered, and deeply connected to community.

Tonight's reports were continued to that story as we discuss both our progress and responsibility to ensure safe, supported schools, and a fiscally stable future for the students and families we proudly serve. I next wanna highlight Oakland Goes Outdoors is celebrating their one thousandth trip. This is a phenomenal program which takes students outdoors, Most recently, Frick United, Academy of Language was the a thou had the thousandth student trip that went outdoors, which would this program was launched in 2018. The students went to the Ride Hard Redwood Regional Park in the Oakland Hills. They hiked around a natural space.

They were able to experience what it was like to deal with the gear, hiking gear, and just experience the beauty of the community at large. Many of our students have not been in our Oakland Hills to see some of our beautiful parks. Many of the students have never camped overnight. This is a phenomenal program. I, I had a chance to visit students, when UPO was out, on a a trip.

So I'm really excited to acknowledge that particular program. Then another highlight I wanna mention is that we had a chance, the senior leadership team, to visit, and it's a part of a program I have now. The whole team goes out to schools to, visit sites, and we were, able to visit our outstanding educators. One at Castlemont High School, they were who was receiving teacher of the year acknowledgement. We were able to visit her classroom and observe her work with newcomer students.

We also visited another engineering teacher where they were going over their capstones and explaining. It was incredible. Their knowledge, their vocabulary, the the understanding of many many issues and challenges that we're facing in the city. And I can't wait to get our city administrator to come and see some of the ideas that our students have. So that those are some of the highlights and there are many, many more that I'll be bringing to our next meeting.

And now I'd like to move into the second area of my report, which has to do with expulsions, suspensions, and our systems of support. And this is something that I know miss Asada has brought this up almost at every meeting, and I wanna make sure everybody's real clear about the work that we do in this area. I'm gonna ask Misha to join me, and I'll make this part of the presentation.

Good evening, everyone. Oh, yes. If I can control it. Good evening, board directors, superintendent Sadler. My name is Misha Katigasha, and I'm the director student support and safety.

This presentation today will be specifically around the expulsion and suspended expulsions process and the data, along with systems of support that we are implementing as well. And for your preview on that slide. So the DHP process and how which is the disciplinary hearing panel, which is the referral for expulsion process. First, a site administrator determines if the incident meets expulsion criteria that's based on the OUSD discipline and intervention matrix. If according to our board approved discipline and intervention matrix that the incident or the situation or behavior meets the criteria for an expulsion referral, then the suit then the principal will notify our office and then also contact their network superintendent.

No referral can be directly submitted to our office unless it is unless it is signed off by the network superintendent. So the network superintendent must also review it, agree that this is something that meets the criteria of our discipline and intervention matrix, and the network superintendent signs off on it or approves it, then it can go to the next step. There is one there's a couple protections that are also there, particularly for students with IEPs. So, if a student is suspended and going to have a referral for expulsion, a manifestation determination must be held or sixty ten for any student with an IEP or a five zero four. In that meeting, it is determined by the group of teams that includes staff, that includes parents.

It is determined that the behavior is a result of the student's disability and or a failure by the district or site to implement the IEP, then it is stopped at that moment and does not move forward. If all those things pass, then it comes to an expulsion hearing. An expulsion hearing is held by an OUSD facilitator, either myself or mostly Renee Garcia, who you all see a lot, and along with two other panel members. We have a group of about six or seven panel members that are retired OUSD administrators who always sit on the panel as well. And after the hearing is presented, the three people, the two panel members and the facilitator will make a determination as to whether or not the student is reinstated back to the school because it didn't meet the requirements of an expulsion, or whether or not we recommend to the board for an expulsion or suspended expulsion to the school board.

And so that is the process of how that the situation plays out. This slide is the current data numbers that we have for this school year. Up until I think about what do have it? Till May 7. That there were initial of 76 referrals that were communicated to us of possible expulsions that were gonna be from the school site.

23 of those 76 were stopped at the manifestation determination meeting, and or was withdrawn from the school site based on other reasons. Out of those the remaining ones, there were 18 of the the cases, of the hearings, were found the student was not expelled or referred for expulsion, was either reinstated back to the school site, or the parent chose to go to a different school. Five of those cases were were voted on to be a suspended expulsion, which means the student is can is on basically a probation contract, and is reinstated either back to their original school site, or placed at a different school site. And 19 of the total 76 ended in the actual expulsion, where the student was assigned to Alameda County Office Education's Quest program, either in Oakland or in Hayward. This is the same data over the last years.

Again, the total number of referrals on the left. The blues are ones that were dismissed or withdrawn due to either manifestation meeting and or withdrawn by the site. And then those that were resulted in a suspended expulsion and or expulsion along with readmissions and admissions. And so this data is over the last five years. This number is based on kids who on suspended expulsion.

Again, these are kids that are kind of put on a behavior contract. We are still allowing them to attend our OUSD schools, either at their original school site or at another one. And this basically is to look at the repeat, looking at disciplinary actions. Are they showing an increase in disciplinary actions when we do these suspended expulsions? And for the most part, they are not.

Students are being either back to their school site or to another one, and very few are continuing to repeat behaviors at their new sites. About a year or in the middle of last year, we did finally get a case manager that was specifically we could use for supporting students in this process, especially if transitioning from one school to another, whether they were expelled to the county school or they were being on a suspended expulsion in place at a different school. In the past, a lot of these students would just show up the next day at their placement place. They'll show up in the office. I'm here.

The school's looking at them like, I'm not ready for you. The parents are mad because there wasn't any, what we like to believe, in the best practice of reentry, welcome circles. And so our case manager has been heavily focused on this, that any student through the disciplinary process, if they are changing schools either to the county, or from the county coming back to us, or going to a different school, our case manager is facilitating and organizing a reentry circle at the new place. And what this instills is that she is meeting and coordinating with the family first to see who do they need at the school site to be at this meeting. Is the kid interested in sports, music, therapist?

And making sure that who the family needs to be at this initial meeting, then she organizes for the staff, an administrator, whoever the other folks that community school managers that might need to be there. And so, it's a place, if it's an organized welcome place where a plan can be put in place from day one and it's not a kid just happened to, I was struggling at this school and I'm showing up here and the new staff is like, I'm not even sure what I need to have and information for that. And so, that has been in place over the last school year, which has been very helpful. And it also helps, this process should actually be done for any new kid, whether it's foster youth, whether it's McKinney Vento, any student moving from place to place. And so, ideas to help grow this, and I know the work that Hattie Tate does with JJC students as well as doing this.

But how do we incorporate these reentry circles for all of our students who are really also struggling and moving from place to place? And then, again students, these are kind of the supports that they receive through the reentry circle and what things are determined. The different types of tier one services, type tier two services, or type three. Not every student needs all of these or at these levels, but at the reentry circle when you have all the right people there, including the family, these things can be discussed and serviced and assigned or supported for those students. And, that is it for me.

You very much, Misha. I really wanted to make sure the community and the board had the latest information. I know that you normally have a final report at the end of the year culminating all the data for this the total school year, But I appreciate you bringing this, information to the community so we're aware of what happens. And when we take these actions, what actually happens and what's behind the work. I believe Hattie Tate is in the audience, and I wanna acknowledge her service continued service.

And, she is retiring this year, but she has been one of the people who has been in the forefront fighting to make sure that our students receive the appropriate supports when they return. Thank you very much.

Thank you all very much. Appreciate it.

Can you leave it there? So

so now I'm gonna ask, Tara Gard to come forward to give an update, to the board and the community on our fiscal solvency accountability road map. Thank you. Tara?

Yes.

Thank you. Good evening. Superintendent, board, appreciate you. And I am here tonight in Terragard, deputy superintendent business and operations and I am here with our Chief Financial Officer and is he pulled up on the Ryan Nguyen. He's on the Zoom and then also we have our support from HYA so Doctor.

Ruben Frutos. Each of us will take a minute or two to walk through where we are today. I wanted to just start off with the context and and just name that we have since December 2025, we've been talking and working through a structural deficit of over 100,000,000 And we have done our best as a team. We have a a great team of people who are behind the scenes that are working to help us through the deficit that we were facing as a district. We focused on fiscal stabilization and long term sustainability.

That's been our focus. We've worked to improve our cash flow and we are going to talk about the implementation progress that we've made so far. And just to talk back again about December and you know as we talk as a team where we saw, there was a choice that we had to make. We had two two roads we can go down. One was the first to take another loan and the other was to work towards a different plan because at the time our previous staff had recommended that we certify negative.

Had we certified negative I'm sorry. I am presenting, I'm not sure. Director Hutchison, were were you talking to me? Okay. Well, you're talking, so I wasn't quite sure.

No. You were just you were interrupting my presentation. I'm sorry. I didn't know. Okay.

I I hear you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Nobody had chatted and I was just

I'm sorry.

Okay. No. It's okay. It's okay. I asked a question because you seemed like you were had something to say to me and I I will hear it.

Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much. So we had two paths to go. One was a state loan or the other was to work through a plan.

And, what the board enacted and approved was to move forward with a plan. And so that's what we've been doing. Talking about plans, there's been a lot of, information going around about do we have a plan, do we not have a plan? One thing that I do I would hope that the community can hear, we're not the only district that is struggling. There are a lot of districts in California and surrounding us that are struggling with their budgets.

If you go and you look at what are the things that they're trying to do to solve it, Mostly it's all the things that we're talking about and it's it's actually been what's been in many of our plans in the last I would say eight years. We've had the blueprint plan, we've had the three r's, we've had the fiscal sustainability plan, we've had the fiscal vitality plan, we've had attachment A, we've had attachment B, we've had attachment C. And I'm not saying that to minimize the need of a plan but we've got to be real with ourselves that we keep coming forward with plans and we're still pretty much in the same place. So for our team we're talking about the plan that we're working through but also the execution and then the follow-up and then continuing to bring things forward to the board. That's what we're working towards.

So progress to date, since this time and you can see here we've reduced the structural deficit by more than 65,000,000, and we've implemented expenditure controls which have come to the board already and you are aware about. We've worked through workforce so you've already voted and approved reductions to our workforce which is what has helped with our progress for our budget and we've also looked at how we're spending our restricted dollars and we are doing that compliantly. We're working with our auditor. We're going through what can we and how can we use our restricted dollars so that we're not just going to general funds first because we have to really be careful with our general funds.

And

so here we are talking about our qualified certification. On our second interim and many people already know our we certified qualified. One thing that I'm not sure if our community knows, and I was looking back at the last twenty five years, and in our last twenty years, our second interim, we've certified qualified. In the last twenty years except for one year, I believe it was 2015, it was positive. So again, it's how are we going to bring ourselves out of the repeat and the repeat and the repeat.

What does it mean to have a qualified budget? Qualified means that we're we believe we're going to remain solvent but there is concern and and so we're working through that. And our county office has named it. We understand. We've heard it, but we're working through our budget every day and that's what it's gonna take us, the discipline to do that.

And so now I am going to turn it over to Doctor. Frutos and I'll be back.

Thank you, Teric. Good evening, board directors. I'm very pleased to bring to you some new work that the district is doing. So as we do budget development, and and you know that we finished second interim, we're working on third interim, we're also working on the AB 1,200 for our OEA settlement. But budget development is very important because it's going to take us through the next three years.

So budget development will be focused on four major areas. We wanna ground ourselves in reality. I'm a little bit sad that we're presenting to you today because tomorrow is the May revision. So if we had this meeting tomorrow night, you would have different numbers, which is the premise of this presentation. We it's okay.

It's okay. You're you're right. It would be it would be hopefully better. But one of the reasons why why it's good that we present today is that today you will see a new format for how we're doing budget development. So grounded in reality, definitely multi year focus because we wanna make sure that the decisions have an impact that the board decides for multiple years.

Cash flow driven, you'll you'll hear us talk a lot about cash flows today, and there's a reason. We wanna make sure that we can meet our obligations now and in the subsequent two years. And that separation between restricted and unrestricted that we've been telling the board about since January, where we noticed that the unrestricted side of our budget was depleted and the restricted side was not. So what does that mean? As we present this series of slides today, you will see us ask you, what do you think about this concept?

And there are two concepts that we're bringing forward to you today. When our CFO presents, you will see a chart that shows cash flows over time. Now this is the beginning of what we hope to present to the board all the time, beginning ideas. This is where you can say, that makes absolutely no sense. It looks erroneous.

It's a beginning idea. What we notice is a sequence that at certain times of the year, almost every year, we are in a difficult situation cash flow. You need to see that because that will allow us to better manage our cash through the year. And whether it's a little bit more or a little bit less, it'll change as of tomorrow. You need to see that there are times of the year when we have a challenge.

So it's it allows us to begin to think. There's another slide where you will see ranges. Some points when we were talking to you in the past, said, well, sometimes you come at the very end with numbers, and these numbers, we didn't know where they're coming from. Well, now you get to see where they're coming from. As we are doing budget development, you get to see a range and you get to say and criticize and shake your head that perhaps the number is is is wrong.

It's an estimate. But you are seeing budget development weeks before we come to you with our report. And as we mentioned, that range will change even tomorrow. So this is something where you can begin to see what the district is thinking about for budget development, and you get to see numbers that eventually will turn into the budget. Next slide, please.

So what is the criteria for budget development? Oh, so I wanted to mention there is a slide there. One of the things that you notice is what are the major impacts in the budget? And there are four categories that we will be focusing on as we do budget development and financial reporting for you on a regular basis. Staffing costs, of course, we're a staffing type of entity, our contracts.

And I wanna thank our labor partners when we have been working with them, and I've had the pleasure of being at some of the meetings when they're talking about the budget. Contracts is something that they have brought to our attention. Attendance, obviously, we've discussed that, the difference between attendance and enrollment, and operational costs. So what is our strategy that we will be recommending to the board, especially after tomorrow, that if there is a settle up delay, that 5 point x, 5,600,000,000 that the governor might be delaying, that we wait to see when they'll repay it. And you see that in our charts.

You'll see that when we were doing a cash flow analysis presented to the county office before we had information, it was a very steady amount. When you see our line charts, you see that there's the potential if that money is held that at the beginning of the year will be depleted and second semester it'll come up. So we want you to see the thinking that we have as we do budget development. We wanna treat discretionary grants as one time money. One of the challenges is when a discretionary comes, it won't necessarily come in the future.

Any, solvency plans, require that we show you the information well in advance and no speculation. For our budget solutions for next year, we believe that there's an up side to the budget depending on again what the news are tomorrow of around $30,000,000, which is good news for us. One of the messages that is very important is although we think the budget as as presented tomorrow and as adopted at the state level will be good for us, it is not the complete solution for our structural deficits. We need to continue the rigorous plan that the board has had since December, and I will echo what the deputy superintendent said. There is a plan, and you've been directing us to do it, and that it continues.

That we look at the COLA as a benefit, that we look at the grants as benefits, but that we continue looking at our budget on a regular basis to make sure that we are addressing all the concerns. And that stems from the fact, again, that the board has said we we don't want to see numbers just at the end. We want to see numbers as things are being developed. And that's what we're bringing to you for the for the first time today. Why is cash flow so important?

Well, there's a little box on the right side. As we were looking at how our cash flow has been for many years in the past and how it is right now, at times of the year, even in between the time when we come to you, let's say, with an interim report and we come with an adoption, there can be a fluctuation of millions of dollars. Why is that? Well, I was talking to our fiscal team and we all agreed there's no way for any of you or any of us to predict exactly when the state is gonna send us the money. And you know that the property taxes come around December, but notice we always say around.

So for us, if we have a circumstance where we are having a cash flow issue, being precise is almost impossible because we are, you know, depending on on the revenue. But we can manage when we pay, how we do contracts, how we manage our expenditures, how we obligate ourselves. That takes us to where we are today. One of the challenges that we have had, and I know doctor Sadler has been guiding us very well through this because she even told you at one meeting that she's been watching our expenditures, and for a while it was being done on a daily basis, is that we sometimes spend even near the end of the year, which creates that potential situation of of our money. So you are hearing what we're thinking about.

That's something that we need to correct. We need to begin to pare down the expenditures a bit earlier in the year so that when year end comes, we we are better prepared for budget development and for cash flow analysis. So again, giving you a preview of what will happen throughout the budget development in next year. And now I'm we're gonna turn it over, Tara, to our CFO, who will

Hi there. I'm on Zoom. Okay thank you. Good evening board directors and superintendent. I'll be speaking about the fiscal solvency of our district.

This question if it will be insolvent in '25, '26, '26, '27, and 2728. As as mister Ruben as I mentioned, historically, seasonality is clear. OUSD experiences large negative cash movement early in the year, strong revenue receipts around December, January and spring property tax periods and heavy June disbursement and approval activities. The 2627 state budget assumptions improve the outlook especially the 2.4% COLA and the proposed one time discretionary block grant but these do not eliminate the structural deficit or the need for reductions. The projection shows no total general fund cash insolvency under the known conditions but projected usable liquidity can become constrained if the ongoing fiscal stability plan does not continue to improve district solvency.

I've been managing cash flow for our district for the last I would say ten, fifteen years and so we manage it on a on a monthly basis and we work closely with the the the the county as well. With that, we'll go to the next slide. Can someone forward the next slide?

I'll turn it for you. Thanks.

Okay. Budget cost criteria. OUSD OEA settlement cost analysis. We completed this and we're finalizing and we're getting ready to report to the county. With that settlement with OEA, the board accomplished the continuing of instructional programs by averting a strike and a two year contract that will preserve academic stability until the 2627.

The costs were significant, a part of the board directed plan for fiscal actions that seek to protect programs through budget reductions enabling deficit containment. The current district fiscal projections allow for the payment of the settlement obligations assuming that the established fiscal solvency measure continue in the outgoing years. So we have twenty five-twenty six which is in the current year, then we have '26, '27 next year, and then '27, '28. 13,000,000 that were projected to be paid out this year or next year, but definitely recorded to expenditure. And then next year about 32,800,000 and then in the final year about 62,200,000.

With that I return back to Tara.

Thank you Ryan. Just need our slide back up. We just need the slide back up. Thank you. Wanted to just make note and reiterate that we're going to have to need an ongoing fiscal discipline.

So we just we are in a place that is difficult and no one has said anything other than that. We are on the edge and we have been working hard to make sure that this district remains solvent. And so we have to prioritize some of the things that we are doing. We're looking at enrollment, enrollment based staffing alignment or central office overhead. So we've already done central office, reductions, but we'll continue to have to look at that going forward.

There's a district wide right size right sizing analysis, so we know what that is, and we've talked about it. We have to look also at our special education program and the, cost that has increased. And that's not to say that we shouldn't invest in in special education. It's being disciplined about looking at why the costs are increasing the way they are. And also to our labor negotiations to just be really grounded in where we're at when we're at the table and to make, the right decisions and work with our unions on that.

So we'll continue to prioritize the work that we're doing. And all we could do at this point is to show you. And what I mean by that is we're getting close to the third interim. Getting close to closing our our books. You'll see the a b 1,200 that will go to the county, and you'll see where we're at.

We again, we qualified we certified qualified for first interim and second interim, and that was accepted both times by the county. But in that second interim, there was not the OEA agreement, and that was because of the dates of which you do the second interim. It wasn't because we were holding anything back. It's because those are the dates that you do it and it will be in the third. Here is just very quickly, just what we wanted to say here is we're ahead of the May revise.

So what we're trying to do is give ranges of where we're planning, just like if you're planning your own budgets and you're trying to see what we think could have. So this is the numbers that we've had from projected for 2526 in the next two years. And we need to work on our path forward. So, again, that structural alignment, cost containment, revenue, integrity, cash, and fiscal discipline. And I'll say it again, these items that I've talked about, if you go back and you look at other districts that are facing the same issues, you're going to see the same strategies.

It's just a matter of doing it, being disciplined, being honest, working through it together at and looking at every single dollar that we have and how we're using it. And I wanted to end here where we are, and I'm gonna read these because for us as a team, it's important and we've been, talking about it a lot. And that this district is not ignoring its fiscal challenges. We are not ignoring our fiscal challenges. We're not trying to make anyone believe that we don't have a challenge.

We've said it clearly that we do, and we're working through them. We are actively addressing them. We're meeting its we as a district are meeting its financial obligations. We are protecting student programs and we were able to avert a strike, and that does mean something and it is important for our students to avert strikes. We'll continue our plan of implementation.

We as a district will maintain its fiscal solvency efforts, and we are on a path towards long term solvency because that's where we have to be. There's no other option for us because the other options would mean that we're not making our own decisions. And everything that as long as I've been working in Oakland and everything that we are about should be that we're working together, board, community, students, employees, all of us working together, even if we disagree talking about it. And one other thing that I wanna name that, we as a team in our budget and and operations team, we're talking about is that we have to improve our communication. There's been a lot of communication that goes out about our budget, and we're working really hard to get in the numbers, to get things closed out, to to do the work, and we have not been well and good at communicating ourselves so that people really understand where we see ourselves at.

So you will see some improvements. We're gonna hold ourselves accountable to putting our budget reports up on our website, to providing more, financial information, and we'll do that as soon as we have the May revise, which hopefully tomorrow, and we can be able to come back here to the board and give you an update of where we are once we have those new May revise numbers. So I thank you for your time. This was our calendar.

Just lastly, the calendar Mhmm. Just kinda just walk through what's

Oh, sure.

You're gonna want to raise?

Yes. This is the calendar coming forward. Again, May revise is we're hoping we should hear it tomorrow. In May, that will help us to finish out our multi year budgeting planning. We will be doing providing the a b 1,200 and the third interim to the county coming up here in May.

In June, we will have the board approve third interim, which is due. We'll reconcile our cash flow, and we will adopt our budget June by June 30. You'll also be looking at the LCAP which actually will be in our next board meeting coming up in May. We'll close out the books July and August. We're gonna be doing the unaudited actuals.

We'll be monitoring our payroll cost, and we'll be back at it again in September. And when we come back in September, we're gonna be hitting our budgets hard and working with our sites and principals on information that they should get earlier in the year so that they can do their planning as well.

Welcome

you want listen This work will require continued discipline. I wanna underscore that. Partnership, transparency, and we will continue to seek support and work with ACOE. We have been all along. We will provide regular updates regarding fiscal efforts and results and make the decisions necessary to ensure long term stability.

I wanna thank, our staff for their, ongoing work and dedication in this area and for other partners around their oversight and collaboration. And I wanna thank the board for your leadership in this area. We're not finished, but we're making real measurable pro progress, and we are moving in the right direction. And it's gonna take everybody focused in order to accomplish that goal. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We'll take board comments first and then public comments after that. Director Lotta? Director Hutchinson.

Yes. Thank you. So I'm actually surprised that there's any mention of the finances and budget on the agenda tonight because this is the first time that it's happened since March. And it's really disappointing that instead of the board president agendizing a business item so we can have a full discussion that this was buried in the superintendent's report. Now I have a real problem seeing the community get lied to.

So the description of this December meeting that I read in here is not accurate at all. When the first interim came forward with a recommendation of a negative certification, that recommendation came through from the superintendent whose staff helped develop it. So to say that other staff recommended it is just not true. Also in December, we were not presented with a choice of take out a loan and go into receivership or do something else. That wasn't what the presentation was.

And lastly, when scenario three was adopted by the board, superintendent Sadler said more than once, a scenario is not a plan. This is not a plan. Now all of a sudden, they wanna call it a plan. Unfortunately, though, that's not the worst part here. Also, I hope people were listening as we hear language about we're still working on costing out the OEA tentative agreement, and we are still planning on sending it to the county, means that in two and a half months, that work hasn't been done.

Two and a half months. But more than anything else, the issue I have and what I want clarification on are these numbers in here about our cash flow and the projected budget are different than the numbers that were just submitted to the county on April 30 in response to our notice of going concern. On that document that was submitted to the county on the thirtieth, it said our ending cash fund balance in June '27 would be $16,000,000. That's what the document shows. I have the photo of it right here in my phone.

On this document, it says the ending cash balance is a range of 150 to 180,000,000. Where did that number come from? Because it's not the same that was just submitted to the county. And I sent this question out to everyone and got no answer. Then the other thing is what was submitted to the county on that same cash flow analysis, projected expenditures for next year at a billion dollars.

On here, it says a range of 900 to 940,000,000. How did these numbers change? Why is there a discrepancy between numbers that are only weeks apart? Why did you submit realer numbers to the county than you're presenting here to the community? Now, I think we should really have another round because this is the most important thing that we need to talk about, but the numbers don't add up to the numbers that were just submitted by miss Gard to the county on April 30.

So what changed these numbers? What are the real numbers? And if our cash flow balance is really going to end next year at 16,000,000, that shows we will not be able to make it through the next school year. Lastly, when we are operating the right way as a district, in May, we get a draft budget for the following year. That's the timeline that we used to always work on.

Now we hear people talking about they're still working on developing it. This is scandalous, and I want an explanation about how the numbers changed. Because I can show you the numbers that were submitted to the county, and they're not the same as these numbers. So what happened? And what happened to the non compensation items that we agreed to in OEA's tentative agreement that are not accounted for here at all?

What is going on? Because this isn't a small difference. We're talking about a difference of tens of millions of dollars, and in the ending cash balance, we're talking about a difference of almost a $150,000,000. This is not small, and so I want an explanation from somebody because as a board, we're supposed to be in charge of the finances. We're supposed to vote to direct these things.

So what's happening? Or is this this a result of forcing out our CBO, hiring outside consultants instead of taking free help from the county, and rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic by appointing somebody else in charge of the financial department internally. So what are the real numbers, and who can certify those for me? Please.

Miss Garr, do you wanna answer that, mister or doctor Frutos?

Thank you, board president. I'm I'm happy to answer it. You know, it is it is I think it is useful to us for, board directors to challenge what we are presenting to you. And one of the reasons is that a range is something very clear that everyone can understand. This is our thinking.

We believe our balance will start at 250 to 270,000,000. I couldn't find a May budget development document from last year, so I will look for it because that will be something that I'm sure you're used to. And and and what we were trying to do is actually give you something similar to say, this is where we are today prior to May revision. This is what we're thinking. The numbers have to be different.

We presented numbers in January, and now we're presenting numbers from April.

Excuse me. Point of clarification. I'm speaking specifically about the numbers that were submitted to the county on April 30 on a document by miss Gard. So I don't know why you're presenting and talking about January. That wasn't my question, and I don't wanna go back and forth like the last time that he tried to do.

So I would like an answer from miss Gard, who's supposed to be in charge and who signed her name to the other numbers and now made the presentation on these numbers. Why are they different?

So I think I'm answering that, director Hutchinson. We had a series of numbers that we presented in January as of January without some of the settlements. Then in April, we presented numbers that were current then. We are bringing now numbers that are going to be current as of of a b twelve hundred and third interim.

So why did the cash flow amount ending balance go up by a $150,000,000 in two weeks? And it's not true. If you added in contracts, that doesn't make the cash flow and ending balance go up. That would make it decrease. And again, I don't want a consultant who has an awful reputation answering these questions when we have district staff here, superintendent Sadler, And I would like the staff whose name was on the documents I'm referring to to answer the question because what he just said is just not true at all.

That's just not accurate.

I'm I'm gonna remind us. I think it's one thing to ask critical questions. I think it's one thing to ask them, you know, in in a heated way. I think it is not okay to insult people.

Well, I would like an answer to the question. We have responsibility over a billion dollars a year. So if I can't get an answer to a question to be able to solidly fulfill my fiduciary responsibility, that's a real problem. And what I was asking is not crazy. I sent it to miss Gar ahead of time.

People were aware that I was going to be asking this. I've been asking it. So I explanation of the difference between those numbers. Why did the cash flow balance go from 16,000,000 on what was submitted on the thirtieth to now this range of a 150 to a 180,000,000? That's not a small change.

Can you can you let the two representatives answer the question, please?

So as I said, the cash flow that we are presenting is the latest information we have from the financial system. Now, before we get into an argument, board members, we are getting close to having unaudited actuals. That will be the number that's audited. So there will be no back and forth or challenges.

Unaudited actuals don't come out until the fall, and that's not the question that I'm asking. No. I I've asked a real specific question. Okay. But let me answer the question.

People are avoiding it is really, really a problem. Because the cash flow balance, the cash fund is the combination between our restricted and unrestricted dollars. There is nothing that's happened in the district, nothing explained here to say why it's gone up now in a positive of a 150,000,000 in two weeks.

Director Hutchinson, I'm gonna let him answer the question so that others can also excuse me. Let others ask ask their questions as well, but let doctor Frutos finish his answer, please.

So the cash flow report that we will continue to provide, and there'll be an update, is based on the latest information we have from the financial system, period.

Director Williams. I'm sorry, director Thompson.

Thank you very much. I wanna go back to the beginning of your report because it really meant a lot to be. You can see there, sir. But you talked about the lit fest and what means a lot to me is, excuse me, the reading of children and research has proven that if children read for twenty minutes a day only, and if they do that for the entire year, they're exposed to 1,800,000 words. And so I want to appreciate you for actually helping to promote the idea that children are supposed to read, and you, you specifically identified twenty minutes a day.

So I really, really appreciate that. Thank you very kindly. But I I wanted to ask a question now going to the budget side. Okay. I wanna ask a question.

But I think director Hutchinson was alluding to what I was gonna ask, and then I think you responded. So I'm gonna just say it anyway. You don't have to respond to it, but I'm really wondering about the specific items that we're going to actually include in our a b 1,200 because I know that's something that I'm sure most of us, if not all of us, are really concerned about when we're looking at this looming deficit that we have and then we have this possible TA that that's it's supposed to take place but we wanna make sure that we have adequate funds and so I but I totally understand the idea of if your bank, you know, your bank book is not balancing, you have to figure out things so that next month, you can meet the obligations. I'm speaking of our personal accounts now but I know we're looking at a big account here because we're looking at almost a billion dollars and so we wanna make certain that we are actually we're able to pay for the things that we're we've sort of signed on the contract to do. So, I'm not sure if you want to deal with that now.

You don't have to if you don't want to because I think that's gonna that, like I said, it has come up tangentially in what director Hutchinson presented, and I'm kind of concerned about it. I'm sure others are concerned about it also.

You know, director Thompson, the the questions that director Hutchinson asked are very similar. So let me answer it in the way we have been working in our process. A few weeks ago, as we were looking at the contract, there were some particulars that were difficult to calculate. The contract includes some elements that were approved where certain positions, if they have specializations, for example, will get an additional compensation. The challenge is to look at every individual and see if they qualify or not.

So what we did, and I wanna thank Janine and Tara and everyone that part we went line by line through the contract to see what impact does it have, who does it impact, and try to figure out will this person qualify. It it was it was a task, but I I can tell you that allowed the team to feel comfortable with the amount that they presented today. It was a little more, more work than when you say when you have a percentage increase for a particular number of people, let's say. So what you will see in the AB 1,200 is the actual number that adds every component that was approved in the TA with OEA. And they're aware that that was done, that it was it was to that level.

Now, just a word of caution. As we go into next year, if we hire individuals that fit into that criteria, that have those specializations and come onto the district, those numbers will continue to fluctuate because every individual that comes in or that goes and gets that certification and gets hired into a position that qualifies will have an increased cost. So as we all look at things, one of the things to remember is that we have a live document that will continue to evolve. But what is real right now is that we believe we have a costing item that allows us to pay it this year and keep moving forward with the increases for the subsequent years. Does does that answer it?

That it oh, okay. Okay.

You. Director Lotta?

Yeah. I mean, I, so I I appreciate this presentation, and I think for me the thing that I would also like to appreciate is that I've often You know, I do think that there is concern in the community because people you know, there was talk of taking a loan in the fall, and whether we would be insolvent, and whether we would run out of money. And so I just wanna appreciate Ryan Wynn for putting up that cash flow graph, but then also being transparent about the times of the year. We know that this is something that has come up for years and years that I think even, I don't even know how recently we would take like a bridge loan from the county when we would have these cash flow crunches. And so I appreciate that there is transparency around when times are lean, and what are the proactive things that we're doing to address that.

Because I do think that, the dedication that I have seen to maintaining local control, even when it has meant that we've made some pretty difficult decisions, I think I just want to commend the people up here who have made some of those very hard votes, and the things that I think a lot of people have sacrificed. And I do want to kind of ask though, you mentioned executing on things that we have agreed to because we have seen many concepts come up over and over and over again in our district. Can you explain what are the Can you give an example of some of the practices that you're putting in place now, and this is probably to you, Ms. Gard, to ensure that we are implementing these components with fidelity and that we're not backsliding. Or, you know, letting things you know, kind of the I always use the copier contract.

It's like been on the thing for a million years and we never do it. I think that would be helpful.

Sure. Along the lines of contracts, we do have the outsourcing committee. I did meet with them and heard their recommendations and there are there's work in the procurement office that they've been doing. We've been looking at we have so many contracts, but we're looking at aligning those, reducing down the number of contracts that companies may have with different schools, different departments. Maybe they have 20 different contracts you'll find where we need a master contract.

So we're trying to address that. We're looking at we're looking at our position control again. We did when our former CBO was here, she did great work. She and I did together on systems for the position control. But what's happened after we've gotten our position control together, meaning everybody who is an employee has a number, their position is following them.

But after we do

budget development, what we see is sites and departments changing positions quickly right after we do our budget development process and it does cause some fluctuations that we weren't expecting, some some changes to the budget that we're having to work through. It shouldn't be that way. We've gone through our budget process. It shouldn't be then a month later or less you're having to change many different roles. And So that actually wasn't coming to board as much as it really should have.

So we're gonna be bringing that to the board so that you're more made aware and are ratifying or approving some of those changes that it hadn't been coming in the past. Right now what I'm saying might seem like what? But it is something that we need to address. So those are some things I can keep talking about them,

but Yeah. No. No. I think I think

that's helpful as examples. Thank you.

Director Williams.

Just wanna thank you for coming up and being transparent about the budget. I think that it's easy to, you know, always move this this fear, uncertainty, doubt, this level of of dread or financial collapse. But what actually you've done is, you know, had a straightforward conversation. You talked about financial controls in place. Those controls weren't in place previously or we wouldn't be in this position.

There were if they were actually in place previously, we wouldn't even be talking about this. We actually this board actually came in and inherited a bad budget previously. So I think we kinda it's easy to deflect. Let me deflect what has happened in the past and talk about today and then say how y'all are not doing the job. But if the job was done properly before, we would not actually be in this position right now.

Thank you. Thank you. Also, I wanna appreciate you for implementing structural, corrective actions. It shows that we, are taking this serious. We've made it very clear that things need to change.

A culture of accountability needs to be implemented, and we're doing that moving it forward. Wanna thank you again for being a full compliance with the state. Thank you very much. We hit our deadlines, and we don't know with more conversation will happen tomorrow after the revised budget, but also what we know that in OUSD, every single year, our unaudited actuals are way higher than the projections. Let's be really clear.

We're talking about projections. We're projecting. We're not that is not the actual actuals. The actuals come this summer. And the actuals actually and will show where the revenue is.

So folks are arguing back and forth over projections, and those projections have ranges and they're up and down. We don't get them right every single time, but they're projections. And now as we're moving towards the end, if you if you happen to look at our budget, every single year, we've had an actual revenue revenue that comes in at higher than projections. So let's let's work through this process. We're open to work through with the community, and I just appreciate that, you know, you are making and and I see that your your projections are conservative as well.

So, I really wanna thank you for bringing that experience in and having a conversation with us. Thank you.

Director Barry.

So first, I do wanna appreciate that I did ask for budget to be on the agenda, and it is on the agenda. I didn't expect it to be folded into the superintendent's report, which is not a problem inherently. I think it's relevant for you to put it on the agenda from your perch. But I do think it's hard for a community to detect that it's on the agenda when it's in a deck labeled superintendent's reports. I think that's the only thing.

So when we talk about this next week, it would be nice if it was its own. I don't think it would be nice. I'm asking for it to be as a separate agenda item because I think it'll allow community to prepare more fully. I do wanna go back to the cash flow question because I had it as well. And the question is really about what's because I hear you.

Things changing. That's a message that you've you've you've been communicating constantly. So my question is what did change? If the situation upon which the numbers are based today is different, What is the situation? Describe that.

And then I do have more, but you can take that.

So let me give you an example of something that just happened this morning, that really describes what changes in our in our in our financial system. This morning, we were trying to capture everything that we could in anticipation of the May revision. And as I communicated with Tara after meeting with the financial team, we had looked at a couple of accounts that we thought we were gonna be very helpful for our end balance. And the team took them back. And they revised them and they noticed that the way they had been posted months ago didn't allow us to save as much as we we thought.

And it was a few million dollars. I got very frustrated and I said, how how can that be? But once I looked at the documentation, we began to think that in the future, we are going to be a little biz a little bit less data driven and a little bit more fiscal driven. A lot of our information comes from a lot of our different programs and it's spreadsheets. And that's fine.

But we need to make sure that we are looking at accounting information that is real, like our our actuals. I I really appreciate what you said because it's the reality of a budget and then what gets audited is the actual number. We need to get closer to reviewing actuals on a more regular basis, director. And that change today happens regularly. The second piece is even more important.

In in my my recommendation to the team is that a little bit earlier in the year, we sunset most of the procurement so that the balances that we bring to you are more realistic. We bring you a balance in March or April, and then there's a slew of expenditures and the number is depleted. And you say, how how come these change? Well, because a lot went through. So we did we do need to change our practices, and that is part of how the fiscal team, as miss Garro was was mentioning, we we need to improve some of our practice.

But that is something that we we just need to work on for next year. For this year, our hope is to finish as quickly as possible, make sure that these are numbers that we can come and defend to you. That's why we presented to you ideas as to how we're looking at ranges and to bring you an update after May revision.

And so just to make sure I heard you correctly, it sounds like it's one thing that has changed. This is probably a longer list than two things. It's accounting and then also sunsetting procurement.

Those are two of the important ones.

And then next question. So to director Lada's question about your implementing what we agreed to, is that what we should interpret to be the plan? So like the set of strategies that was voted on in December that you've been implementing, is that the plan? And does that, for example, is that what you're referring to when you say the fiscal solvency measures on slide 28 when you're talking about we have what we need in resources to finance the OEATA assuming that fiscal solvency measure measures are continued to be implemented. Is that the plan?

I'll start and and I'll turn it over. But I I came to you in January. That was my first session where I came to you and said, we think we can do some some work and and these are some of our ideas. At the time, nobody gave me a label. What I was told is that the board had identified a deficiency of up to a $104,000,000 and that you had all agreed that this was a problem and that it needed to be addressed.

I don't mean to be offensive, but I didn't have a label for it, a strategy, a plan, an idea. All I knew is that the board had identified a number, and there was an interest from the board to take action. That stops being a plan, starts becoming action. What do you do? If you remember the first thing that we brought to your attention is that we saw a discrepancy between unrestricted and restricted.

That was the first notion. That has become the cornerstone of almost every solution because that discrepancy, as we're finding, has multiple legs. One of them is the use of the unrestricted fund to make expenditures that should have been done through other funds. And we're talking to the auditor about that right now. So in a way, there's been not only a plan, but there's been one big solution that has morphed into us trying to bring you a positive budget.

One of you, I I I think I think it was director said, if you had done this before, you wouldn't be in this situation today. In a way, it's it's a little bit bigger than that, but I think ultimately as we go into next year and you have a budget that's a little more stable, it will be that simple had we looked at the budget differently and it's not the blame of the board or the administration. It's it's a holistic approach where we were trying to protect all these mini budgets throughout the district and therefore the programs they represent, But I think we forgot that the general fund unrestricted, if it's depleted, we lose control. So now the question is, how much do we take from all these mini budgets to make sure that the unrestricted side of the budget remains solvent? We cannot take it all because you want to protect programs, you want to avert strikes, you want to continue providing wonderful services.

But the fact of the matter is that that that one budget, if it goes under, then all these other controls also go away. So in a way, my job has been fairly simplistic because we go back to the original thing that we identified. The challenge has been implementation. Because I told you one of the recommendations that I wouldn't bring to you is to do a wholesale cut. That would have been very easy.

Let's just cut 11% from every budget. We're done. Thank you very much, and and goodbye. Instead, we've looked at a lot of budgets. The board gave us also this notion of averting a strike.

Well, that was costly, and we told you it was. We we we presented plans that were less costly, but but the board so now it it bifurcated our interest into stabilization and deficit reduction and the payable of the obligation that was created. It has been an evolving plan. Back in January and February, we had one goal, stabilize the budget, do deficit reduction. Now we have two goals, stabilize the budget, deficit reduction, and make sure that we pay the obligation that we have by June 30 with a stable budget.

So I'm sorry if we sound simplistic sometimes. The detail is less simple simple, but the idea has been there since the board directed us to look for a way to get us out of that large deficit that we were on. And we haven't finished because by creating the obligation, as we mentioned to you, we stopped for a little while focusing exclusively on the deficit, which we need to continue in the budget year and the subsequent year. But I think for this year, what we are looking at right now is being able to finish the year, pay the obligation, continue with a budget that's stable, and continue working in future years to make sure that we have a a solvent plan. Whatever label you put on it, it is a plan and it's being implemented through a lot of actions behind the scenes while trying to protect all our programs.

Fully knowing that you know that some programs are heavily impacting the budget. We need to we don't even need to mention them. You already know we've talked about it. So I I hope that answers

Kind of. I have three things. So I'm just and I feel like if you timed my questions, I'm still not at two minutes, but I'm allowing the questions to be answered individually. On the plan, I I'm not trying to play I'm not trying to be nitpicky or to play a game of semantics. It is if we are measuring and tracking a plan, and that is part of our accountability system and part of our way of ensuring transparency and communication.

I just think that the plan, whatever it is, should be clear even if it is evolving. If it changes, then those updates are presented and we had an opportunity to discuss it. I just want to make sure that when you say plan and there is a plan, that we're talking about the same thing.

Yes. Excuse me. Yes. Are you asking would it be supportive of us to bring back the what we're working from?

Yeah. Is that what is that what's needed? There's a slide. I don't know who created it, but there's a slide in this presentation that says a plan has at least four components. And I think the three main ones is that it measures gaps in expend you know, the gap.

Right? And then it has a plan of action. Yep. Right? The different tactics.

Mhmm.

And then who's responsible for what. Like, even that, if we just use the model you presented, I think would be helpful for the board and for community.

If you bring that forward, director Lada, she's not on here. She had asked if we could also look back at the multitudes of plans that we've said we're doing over these course of the year so that we can see where they line up to what we're doing now and are we missing anything? So working on that as well. So we could bring that all forward.

Thank you. And then these should be quicker, but on and it's a structural deficit vision and the next steps. Those are the the areas. So on the structural piece, it's unclear to me what we're doing, what among what implementing today is helping us address the structural deficit, And it would be helpful to see that clearly because there is the way that I read what's in the presentation is that there's language that suggests that the a lot of the structural work, particularly around redesign won't is being pushed to twenty six twenty seven.

Mhmm.

And that concerns me for a few reasons, but just on process, I do believe that there are things that we could be doing and should be doing at this moment, community engagement and other things that could plant the seeds and prepare us for the deeper structural work that needs to happen, but I don't we shouldn't be waiting to do that. And I think it's disruptive to the system at every level programmatically staffing if we're not considering which of these practices are practices we we intend to maintain like this shift to pushing things into supplemental and concentration and which are things we're just implementing because we need to balance today's budget. Does that make sense?

It does make sense. Thank you.

Yes. And related, there are like, I'm looking at slide 29, these priority actions and the structural reform, one big question I have is aligned to what vision are we implementing it. Because, again, if it's just about the budget, I feel like the afterthought is teaching and learning and what we're what we're trying to do for students. And I think that should actually be in the driver's seat of some of these decisions as opposed to an afterthought. I don't wanna make an assumption that it is, but it's not clear here how Right.

The visioning part

is

being is playing into this.

I mean, thank you for that because that also goes along with our LCAP right and so we're working on and I don't the immediate what I consider immediate crisis right What are we doing right now to stay solvent this year? And then how are we what are we gonna be doing to plan around what is working for our students? What isn't working? What are those measurable goals and outcomes that we need to know because we cannot continue to do everything. We just cannot continue to do everything.

But what is working? That we are going to have to do together. And some of that I believe was coming through the teaching and learning committee from what I understand. I mean, I could be corrected, but in looking for as far as the academics, I believe you're looking at what's working. That's also looking at the measures in the LCAP and it all ties back together to what we're prioritizing in our budgets.

And this is the last thing I promise. This is it. What you just said also speaks to the other things that I think should be part of the plan, which is like how these budget decisions trickle down to the programmatic changes, the experience that educators may have in their classroom, those the the culture of the organization as a system. And so it would be good to hear how you all are tackling some of those, you know, inevitable challenges that you're experiencing today and anticipate later on, so that even the board can be helpful in managing some of the change that we're experiencing today.

Thank you.

Thank you. Director Pat. Vice President Hatcher.

Thank you and thank you all for your presentation. I'm proud of my board colleagues who have voted to shift our budget to support fully funded schools and stabilize our district to ensure that our communities have education hubs that they can rely on. As a school board candidate and then as a school board director, I heard time and time again from families how instability in our budget and school closures harmed our students and families. So I'm glad that as a board leader, I've helped us move towards investing in fully funded schools and through a historic investment in our staff with the latest contracts with SCIU and OEA. And I'm excited to move forward in this commitment to support our students.

Last week, I was proud to stand alongside our labor partners from across OUSD, superintendent Sadler, board president Brohard, and our colleagues in Los Angeles to advocate in Sacramento for fully funding proposition 98 and protecting the promise of stable, reliable funding for public education. As vice president, I also spoke about the investment that we can make when we stabilize our schools instead of destabilizing them. I spoke of the groundbreaking program that we have at Oakland International where students from around the world are supported, welcomed, and prepared to thrive. I spoke about the urgency that we need to that we have around paying educators and school staff a dignified wage so that we can recruit and retain incredible people to support our students. I also shared how OUSD has increased enrollment for the first time in years and proof that a district that when a district stops closing schools and starts investing in communities, families respond.

This week, I was reminded once again why this fight matters and why this is so important. It's really about our brilliant scholars. I had the honor of attending multiple honor rolls, celebrations, as well as the Oakland Leaders Graduation where I saw firsthand the brilliance, leadership, and resilience of our young people. With stable, fully funded schools, we can create more opportunities for our students to be successful, to lead, and feel connected to our school communities. Our students are worth the investment.

Our staff are worth the investment. Oakland is worth the investment. I am confident in the direction of our district is headed and of the leadership of the superintendent, our deputy superintendent, our CFO, and our h y a team. I look forward to seeing the governor's revised tomorrow, and we'll keep on fighting if needed to make sure that we get every cent we are owed from prop ninety eight funds. Thank you.

I do wanna thank our staff, board colleagues, our labor partners, our families, students, and our community for engaging with us through a very difficult process, and for the opportunity to continue the fiscal work together. I appreciate the presentations, I appreciate the nuances of the budget that have been explained to us, I appreciate the work that's been done. I had a whole lot of other stuff I was gonna say, but I think really what strikes me the most about our budget is that most importantly, every single number that we discuss ultimately comes back to the 34,000 OUSD students who deserve a stable and well governed school district. That fiscal stability, sustainability is not the goal itself, but it is what allows us to provide students with the quality they deserve. In that line, I am extremely proud of the fact that we have maintained local control, that we did not go down that path.

I know that's been a lot of talk in the community about it, but I really wanna respect our superintendent, our deputy superintendent, Ryan Wynn, our CFO, for honoring the direction of the board. I think that we made that very clear that we did not want to go down the road of of of local of losing local control. I think like our director said next a minute ago that, you know, there's been a lot of of stability and progress in our district. Our enrollment has increased for the first time in eight years, and it is huge that we successfully reached labor agreements with OEA and SEIU without a strike. It's also just as huge that we worked with our unions to negotiate fair contracts that result again in a stable workforce and is essential to student success.

And I think all of these things go back to what our 34,000 OUSD students deserve. They deserve a teacher in every classroom. That teacher deserves to be fairly compensated. They deserve a library tech. In every school library, that library tech deserves to be fairly compensated.

They deserve food services, the nutrition services workers who who serve them every day. These are the people our kids know, and they deserve to be fairly compensated. So I feel that in looking at changing the direction of our budget, while it feels a little nuanced, I'll say right now, I feel that we are moving in the right direction to compensate the people who directly serve our students every single day so that our 34,000 students can be successful. And like you talked about, miss Gard, we are looking at teaching and learning at every single program we have. We know that there are many programs in our district.

We know that many of them are not used. We know that there are lots of discussions. I mean, I've heard a lot about I Ready. There's been a lot that that teachers are raising. And again, as a district leadership, we need to look at these programs.

Do they serve our 34,000 students, and are they fiscally sustainable? But I just wanna go back to every single number in our budget is what allows us to provide our students with the quality education they deserve. Are there any public comments on this issue?

Excuse me. Yes, madam president. There are a total of 18 speakers with one student speaker.

If we could have the student speaker first.

Still two minutes?

Yeah.

Yes. That student speaker is Rosa Fernandez Parker.

That's me. Hello. My name is Rosa Fernandez Parker, and I'm a tenth grade student at Skyline High School. Both my parents are public school teachers, and my dad's side of my family is Jewish. As an Oakland student, I have been taught to recognize apartheid and genocide, and what Israel is doing is both.

The the false conflation of Judaism with Israel is a dangerous inaccuracy that pushes students to wreck that recognize Israel's disgusting genocide to misdirect their blame. When OUSD interrogates its teachers on false and bad faith claims of anti Semitism, all it all it accomplishes is intimidating teachers that have proven their determination in educating and defending their students, and showing students what the censorship that we see in our books looks like in real time. With the Internet and social media, students are more and more exposed to global conflict. However, this also means dangerous levels of misinformation. Leaving students out of these conversations is no longer an option, but educating them is sorry.

But educating them on these topics but banning these topics in schools leads does not protect students from these conversations and instead leads to uneducated discussion and heightens the risk of actual anti Semitism. Stop attacking our teachers and stop under educating our students.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Yes. First five speakers are Gabriel Khan, Jonathan Mates Mutchen Mutchen, Sheila Haynes, Musa Tarek, and Susan Shaw.

If you heard your name called, could you please come to the diocese?

Most people have left. Just so you know, we had a very big group here and most people have left.

Yeah.

Maybe you could wait till we're done and you could be at the very end. That would be fine.

His name was called.

That'd be a good idea. Don't you think?

How about the people get to talk to you?

Can you turn the camera? K. Mister Munchen, can you go ahead.

I don't wanna be on your camera. You

Yeah. You need to turn

off his camera. You can't you can't video him.

I mean, this is, like, ridiculous. Every meeting.

Alright. Continue, please. First

of all, my name is JT Meets Mushin. I don't appreciate that all these people are standing here talking on an item for the superintendent's report that I would like to speak about the superintendent's report, about what she talked about about the budget, about what doctor Fructos talked about and Tara Garde, and this is not, an item for that topic. That's number one. And then if you could ask these people to sit down, otherwise, I'll just end my comment right there. Thank you.

I should be able to speak now.

Next speaker, please. I think that you should not interact with the person in the the audience.

I think you should ask these people They're to sit

not standing in line.

Thank you for letting me speak. I appreciate your statements, doctor Sadler, but I think it's clear from what other people have said that I I just don't have a lot of faith that where this budget is going is, like, student centered and that we're doing what's best for our kids. I have talked I read the slides. I've looked at the the information, and, you know, you've said many times that there's a plan, but I really don't see the plan. I don't get the plan.

And I think that the students would be better served by really looking into what a smaller district would look like. And I know we've talked about it before that, you know, maybe my school that I love and my kids went to might be the one that's the appropriate one to get closed. And I and I know that if we do the appropriate process that that will happen, but we're not even doing the process. And I don't understand. We've been like, I've been coming to these meetings for, I think, about two years now.

And there was a process, and then the process was gone, and now we've been talking about a process, and it's not coming. And just when is it gonna come? Because we need to figure out it it's structural. Like, the I'm not believing data when it goes from, you know, that, you know, we have money in the at the we don't have money at the beginning the year. We have money at the end of the year.

It feels more like a a Ponzi scheme. I don't mean any offense by saying that, but, like, I get it. Sometimes we have money, sometimes we don't. But seeing it go throughout the year, ultimately, we need to have money at the beginning of the year, and we need to have money at the end of the year, and that's not what we're seeing right now.

Thank you. Next speaker, please. Can you call the names again? I'm sorry, mister Hollis.

Yes. I'll call the next five speakers. Judy Greenspan, Asada Olugbala, Julia Fernandez, Cynthia Kaufman, and first name M, last name Shane.

Go ahead please.

Okay.

Hi, my name is Judy Greenspan. I use theythem pronouns, and I'm speaking today as a proud Jewish educator, retired from OUSD and now a substitute teacher. I chair the OEA substitute caucus, and I am on the OEA executive board. I and many other Jews do not accept the criticism of US Israeli genocide as being antisemitic. We do not accept the phony conflation of anti Zionism with antisemitism.

As a Jew, I will not be quiet about the holocaust suffered by the Palestinian people. I was surprised by doctor Denise Sadler's announcement, on Parent Square claiming that anti Semitism is one of the biggest problems in OUSD, and that's why we're presenting this now in the in the superintendent's report. As an OUSD Jewish teacher who has fought injustice my entire life in all forms, what I see on the rise is Islamophobia and attacks on our Muslim and Arab American students, an increase of anti black racism against both African American students and teachers, the growing fear of our immigrant families faced with ICE raids and possible deportation, and the continued gentrification of our city leading to the homelessness of our OUSD families. OUSD is now being sued by the Brandeis center, a Zionist institution, and the California department of education, but we don't think you need to react the way you are reacting. I challenge the board and the district to stand up for what is right.

I and other teachers are currently under investigation for antisemitism based on teaching and speaking out against The US backed Israeli war against Palestine. As a Jew, I am both angered and offended by all of these investigations, and I demand that you drop them now. It is time for OUSD to embrace its historical mission of fighting for justice and disrupting inequities for all.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hello. I'm Julia Fernandez. I'm a parent in Skyline. So I wanna start by thanking educators who teach about what's happening in Palestine. To me, they are the conscious voice of OUSD, and they are the ones carrying the legacy of people like Martin Luther King.

The genocide that is being carried out by the Israeli government is being financed by the US government. This means that all of us who pay taxes are paying for this genocide. This is soul crushing. This means that people that live in this country have more of a responsibility to oppose this genocide. So, I don't want the schools to pretend the genocide is not happening.

Teachers have a huge responsibility to give formation to the new generations. How can they be intimidated to stay quiet about this atrocity? Also, these same teachers that are being persecuted are the same who bring Black Lives Matter to the into their classrooms and who are now actively resisting ICE raids. And I'm sure that if somehow they were transported through time to World War two, they would also be denouncing and fighting the Holocaust. Thank you, teachers, for making your classrooms a place where fascism does not go unchallenged.

Okay. Next speaker, please.

Hi, my name is Cynthia Kaufman, and I am an active member of Jewish Voice for Peace, retired community college faculty, and an Oakland community member. I want to just thank you all for the work that you do for our students. I know that it may seem, you know, you're all up where you are because you care about the children of Oakland and you're dedicating your time, and I really appreciate the work that you do. And unfortunately, you're also in the crosshairs of history. You know, that right now, we are in a really difficult situation in this country where, the country is supporting a massacre and a genocide in Gaza, and there's a a tremendous amount of political pressure being given to to silence people who are opposed to that genocide.

And I think it's I'm so sorry that you're being sued by the Brandeis institution and by the Department of Education. I think that's horrific that they're doing that to you. And then the question is what are you gonna do about that situation? Are you gonna stand up for the teachers or are you going to bow to that pressure? One of my favorite books right now is by Timothy Snyder, who's a, a scholar of the holocaust.

He has a great book called On Tyranny, 20 lessons from, the twentieth century. And the first thing he says the first lesson he has from the the horrific things that happened in the twentieth century is that we need to not obey in advance. In other words, we see it all over this country that people are institutions are either buckling to the pressure or they're standing up to the pressure. And I just wanna encourage each of you to take your historic responsibility at this moment to stand strongly, to stand firmly on the side of justice and what's right, and not to give in to the pressure. Thank you.

Madam president, if I may, Sheila Haynes is online to speak.

Okay. Do I go ahead with Sheila Haynes. Up. Is it okay. Alright.

Hi, can you hear me okay?

Yes, we can hear you.

Okay, thank you. Thank you Superintendent Sadler for the report and just for your ongoing commitment to trying to piece everything together. I know it's a huge task that you're dealing with and with the uncertainty of the finances is concerning of course, but I have hope that despite the issues that you will continue to prioritize student safety. Although I had hoped that there would be more movement towards music, part of my resolution also is around mandating love and respect. And so I'm hoping that the district is moving closer to a culture of practice district wide.

We need that daily reinforcement that our students have to be in a loving space. And I hope that the district will continue to expand violence prevention in ways that will truly change the culture of our youth to be in the most loving space. These violent attacks and fatalities are being triggered by verbal altercations. So I just hope that we can continue on with finding a way to help with violence prevention. And I'm not really sure about the city's funding.

I heard that there was some violence prevention money, but it had ran out. So I just hope that you can find a way to move forward with everything and not cause more harm with these cuts that are gonna happen but to keep our students in a respectable place. Thank you.

Thank you. Mrs. Sada.

I want to thank you for the opportunity to address something that's very important to me with the expulsions. I I just asked on page 12 if you could break down the race demographics of the numbers that are on that page. I am trying to pursue if what I don't really know about the impact of expulsions on our African American community. I am very pleased to have the honor of being in the room with Ms. Hattie Tate.

Somebody, I don't know where it came from, sent me a description of her work in the district and I'm sorry she's retiring but I hope she will be replaced with someone who can continue her work. As you were talking on the budget, I'm taking notes because you're helping me to understand the budget. Unfortunately, what I I just took notes from Hutchinson and Ms. Berry because I'll be at the meeting tomorrow to try to understand the budget from your perspective because you're the one to be making those decisions. Okay?

And lastly, I have the honor of being able to observe other people's struggles. As an African American sometimes I become so consumed what's happening with me and my people and I don't take the time to realize that other people are dealing with things similar to what I'm dealing with. And I want to be respectful of not taking a position because that's not my place to do it. But it is good that we as a a whole people realize that it's not always about you. And so that's what I'm observing tonight and trying to be respectful and to all sides because it's not my place to to judge what's going on.

But to respect it is something I need to do because I be everything is black, black, black, black. And that's not the real world. You have to learn how to understand other people's struggles and what they are going through as well. And if you don't become involved, at least understand it. That's what I'm doing.

I'm listening and trying to understand what's going on with this situation.

Thank you, missus Hanna. Next five speakers?

Yes, madam president. Next five speakers are Sarah Koch, Allison Grill, Mark Dudley, Nate Landry, and Paulina. Paulina, last name starts with a S.

Thank you. Teacher Shane.

Michael Shane. I'm a district parent as well as a social studies and ethnic studies teacher. I think, you know, like as kind of seeing, you know, everything that's happened with this district and this board since 10/07/2023, it was very disappointing to come to the meeting that was shut down by director Hutchinson because of some disruptions. I was here. It did not seem like there were many disruptions.

In fact, director Hutchinson used to disrupt these meetings by yourself sometimes much more than the Arab Muslim community did. They came here to address the heinous attacks against Arab Palestinians. And we're looking for you all to make a motion that suggests you are supportive of your Arab Muslim community, of which at my side, we have, you know, it may even be a plurality of Arab families. So it was again, and then obviously I heard Sam Davis prevented a motion that was to be brought, but obviously that motion has not been brought back since as far as I understand it, but it's not too late. Obviously you can still pass a motion in support of people whose lives are being torn apart with the help of our tax dollars because that's my thing is like, where do we go to prevent our tax dollars if your school board doesn't do it?

And the last thing I'll say is, now we have teachers being investigated by Zionist attorneys. So, is there ever gonna be a time when you support us as teachers to teach about these important topics to our students? Because just to kind of comment on, Ms. Olak Bala, this year, recently we did a lesson about solidarity between black people and Palestinians. And then we looked at parallels between Zionist apartheid and Jim Crow apartheid.

And many of the students appreciated those lessons and it'd be a real shame not to continue teaching those lessons in the future because again, you also didn't take a stand against AB seven fifteen and now the you know, designers are you know like being allowed to investigate our teachers, what's next? You gonna allow MAGA attorneys in here to prevent us from teaching about Jim Crow and all the heinous atrocities committed against black people in this country and the heinous atrocities being committed right now in The Caribbean, it's just wanton murder. So this is the thing. And the last thing I'll say, sorry to take up too much time, but I recently read a book called Someday Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar Akkad. And I really hope that you guys aren't part of those someone someday, everyone.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Hello, I'm Sarah Koch. A teacher at Bridges. I teach resource to our wonderful students. I'm actually gonna read a comment on behalf of a parent who wasn't able to be here tonight and I'm also Jewish as is this parent my name is Sarah Noor I'm the mom of Rowan a third grader at Manzanita Seed our family is Jewish and every year since Rowan was in kindergarten I've shared Hanukkah or Passover with her classes. I make the kids special foods, teach them songs, read stories, and light candles.

There are very few Jewish families at our school, but we've always been warmly received. Kids come up to me on the playground and ask when I'm making them latkes again. I want all children to feel as welcomed as we have. I want Palestinian and Middle Eastern kids to see their cultures celebrated and their histories and perspectives taught. I don't want teachers punished for sharing Palestinian voices.

Teaching about Palestine is not a threat to me or my child. It is a way to build a more inclusive community that benefits us all. So that was Sarah Nora's comment. Now I want to speak a little bit to the impact of seeing the way that anti Semitism has been defined in our district on many Jewish faculty been, it's been really frustrating. It's been, to hear that there are trainings being done with our school leaders, with our secondary teachers, that are really confusing antisemitism and criticism of Israel.

And our students do not need that, nor do our teachers. I think it's a lack of respect of our students' ability to discern and learn about the true history and the true current events to oversimplify in a really hateful way. So thanks for all you do and the opportunity to speak.

Thank you.

Are there okay. Sorry.

Hello? Hey. I'll be quick. Hello, Oakland Oakland School Board District. My name is Mark Dudley.

I'm here as a tech worker and as a member of Bay Area Labor for Palestine. I'm here to speak out against the targeting of OUSD teachers with lawsuits that wrongfully complain anti Zionism with anti Semitism. Not only is calling the teachers in question anti Semitic absurd, but I'm worried about the knock on effects of teaching such lazy conflation. Do we really want our students to think in terms of such broad generalization? By conflating anti Zionism with anti Semitism, you are necessarily shrinking the rich fabric of all Jews into the smaller box that is Zionism.

Not to mention the message that this sends to your Muslim students. Is this the kind of thinking that we should be encouraging in our students? I should hope not and call upon the board to resist the framing presented by the Brandeis Center and stand with your teachers instead. Thank you.

Thank you.

Hi everybody. Nate Landry, middle school parent here in OUSD. Continuing on this theme, I've been thinking about the things ever since this lawsuit investigations were announced, what they're asking us to do. I know what they're asking OUSD to do, but what are

they

asking those of us who are here speaking now to do? And are those things should those things be possible for us to do? It ought to be impossible for us to ignore the tens of thousands of dead in Palestine, in Lebanon, and in Iran as a result of US backed Israeli attacks, but this is what the California Department of Education, Brandeis Center, recent communication from superintendent Sadler and school site leadership are demanding that we do. It ought to be impossible for us to ignore the insistence of our Jewish friends, family, and neighbors that anti Zionism is not anti Semitism and that the two must not be conflated in order to stifle criticism of a nation state engaged in genocide, but this is what is demanded of us. It ought to be impossible for us to ignore the McCarthyist attacks on educators for their teaching and their consciences.

It ought to be impossible to ignore how this serves a de facto censorship regime regime when it comes to discussions of Israel and American society. It ought to be impossible to ignore how OUSD is undermining academic freedom and thrall to political actors making excuses for genocide, but this is what is being demanded of us. We reject statements and press releases from district leadership that elaborately avoid engagement with reality in favor of propaganda. We reject again the conflation of anti Zionism with anti Semitism, and we reject the district's complicity in all but criminalizing the teaching of Palestine at the behests of Israel's apologists. And we invite the leadership of this district to correct course, and as has been said, to it need it need not be this way, and we would ask you to strongly consider the type of district we will have at the end of this process if it continues the way that it has.

Thank you.

We are going to end public comment on this issue. We do have to we I'm sorry.

One more. We have one more person.

One more person? Alright. One more per well, I mean, we we have a number of things we have to address today.

Thank you.

One minute.

Yes. Thank you. Appreciate that. My name is Craig Gordon. I've been a substitute teacher in this district, for some years, but I was a retired, secondary, high school, middle school teacher, social studies for for many years since been in the district for thirty five years.

And and I you know, as we're listening to the budget discussion, it does I do wonder, and if I had a question, it'd be how much are we spending? How much is district spending on investigating educators for, you know, teaching about Palestine, teaching honestly and critically about Palestine? Before I was a Jewish teacher, I was a Jewish student in the nineteen fifties and mostly sixties. And there are very few Jews in my community. Lots of antisemitism in the community.

I was called a dirty Jew. I killed Jesus. But my public, you know, at my public elementary school and and junior high, any mention of Israel was all positive. It was a mighty little nation standing up for Jewish people and everywhere and fighting for democracy just as The US was fighting for democracy in Vietnam and Southeast Asia as we were slaughtering, you know, 2,000,000 human beings there, that we were the benevolent policeman of the world. In my Saturday school, in my reform synagogue, we learned the racist myth that its settlers had made the desert bloom.

I had no clue because I was never told about the Nakba, violent expulsion of 700,000 Palestinians from their land, homes, and communities. And now we're witnessing an ongoing genocide, a new ethnic cleansing of Palestine by The United States and Israel. And I cannot believe that a school district in Oakland with its proud radical tradition of fighting for social justice and against oppression and racism isn't gonna knuckle under to pressure from Zionists, Republicans, and Democrats, and the who demand that we, educators, remain silent and keep our students ignorant as we were in my school decades ago. So I'm calling on OUSD leaders to find the courage to stand up with the support of so many people in our community, including the many Jewish educators and students and family members who've signed a letter that you've received now a few weeks ago asking you to meet with us. And we still would like to meet with you.

We're calling on you to we believe that teaching about Palestine and opposing genocide is not antisemitism. We all know this. So we're just calling on you to stand up for that truth and for our students' right to critical, honest education that they need and deserve. Thank you.

Thank you. Next on the agenda is item s one, which is the stable stability and belonging for a disabled students resolution. I'm not sure how I think

A motion to approve it.

Which item are you moving to?

We are on item a. S one.

Oh, okay.

I'll second.

A public comment on this?

S one.

Can I can I make a a request? Can we take public speakers for s one and s two? And and maybe we need to make a motion to consider them together but they're related and I I guess this is where

I do want some clarity on this director Lana is I is there a new resolution coming forward? Are are there amendments to No. So s one is standing

What I well, I mean, what I would say is that people have would like to I assume speak on both s one and s two because it's related. I I also understand from my communications with members of the CAC right before this meeting started that they're not in support of s two. And but I think because they are the same topic that if we take them up together so the people can comment on both.

Madam president, if there's a second to the the motion that's been made, that's s two. It's real and and director lot is contending that there's a a related subject matter. People can when they speak on the item just before the board, they can express their opinion one way or the other, either in favor of the other item or not in favor of the item. And, you don't have to do two, three rounds of, comments here.

So we can do them together.

So so so at this point, we're not taking them you're not taking them together. The only item that's on the floor is the motion that's moved. People may say what they please about the item.

I think director Lotta may be amending that motion.

Yeah. I'd like to But make that

there's no amendment on the floor at the moment.

Well, no. I'm I'm good. I would like to change the motion if it's friendly to consider items s one and s two together.

That does not work.

Okay. Well,

I suppose we can just stick with s one and and then Yeah.

If you are going if you

are going to do s one and you want to amend s one, you put s one on the floor and then somebody makes a motion to amend s one.

I'm not making just for for point of clarification, mister Rickshaw. I am not planning to make amendments to either s one or s two. I simply would like to allow the people who have signed up for s one and s two to speak on the school stability resolution.

People are free to speak, madam president, on the item that's on the floor.

K. I I have a procedural question. I'm not sure, general counsel, if this is you as well. If we vote on s one and we approve s one and then we vote on s two

You could nullify.

They conflict each other. Is that what you're getting

at? Yes.

Yeah. Because I think the intent of having them both on the agenda was that one would be a substitute for the other. S two, namely, being a substitute for s one was the intent.

So if we're looking at s two, which is not really written as a result in in a resolution format, it's it's a list of things. It's got a

But if you make a motion on s two, that is only that is the only item that's on the floor for you to consider at that particular point. If it gets amended in some manner, it might alter the original

Okay.

So so, director Lada, what was the intent? Was it s one you were moving?

I'm I my main intent was that people have signed up for s one and s two, and I would to make sure that everyone who signed up for s one and s two can speak. And I in one

go. Okay.

Thank you. President Brewhart, you can, move forward with s one and take speakers.

Okay. I'll move forward with s one. If people are speaking to to s one in support of it, you could include your position to s two. I don't know. Do we have public comment on this issue?

On this item?

K. So public comment on s one. That's, one is Carol Delton, Jonathan Mates Munchen, Alan Pursell, JD Walloshin, Matt Glaser, and Asada Olukbala.

Can we take the online speakers first? I believe that's, Alan Pursell, Carol Delton.

Currently, with their hands raised, I see Carol Delton. I will allow them to speak.

And all these speakers signed up. Yeah. Online. Right?

Hello? I do not see a clock. If you're hearing me, how long do I have? Hello?

You have two minutes.

Thank you. I am very concerned because I actually wanted to address the fiscal items in the superintendent's report, and I was not called on, although I had my hand up. So I will stick to the agenda item now, and I hope that I'll have additional time at non agenda speaking to address my concerns. Regarding this particular agenda item, I am utterly confused because the list of various fiscal impacts seems to conflate a number of things that were never called for by the original stability and belonging resolution and say that those were fiscal impacts. And those include things like maintaining empty classrooms, like reducing number of classrooms when there are students for one classroom.

And the idea was not stability of program, but stability of students. I don't know why after two years of being told this would not have a fiscal impact because essentially it codifies what is current district practice. These concerns were brought up, but I'm hoping that the superintendent can look at the actual intent of the resolution and find that it can be implemented and students can stay at their sites. They can no longer be moved wholesale as was done several years ago with minimal or no fiscal impact. Thank you.

Thank you. If your name was called, if you can come up and speak on this item. There's no more. There's just one. So if your name was called, we can call those names again so that folks can hear them again.

And we're speaking on s one. It's the item on

the floor.

Vice president.

You can share any opinion you have, when you're in public comment. Give me one second. Can you just say those names again, Corey?

Right. It's, Jonathan Mates Must Jonathan Mates Muchen, Alan Pursell, JD Walloshen, Matt Glaser, and Asada Olugbala. Carol Dalton just spoke.

Okay, thank you. Go ahead.

Alright, so I'm JD Walloshen, and so okay. A little bit about the history of these newer resolutions. So the the s one was the one that came up that we really didn't like, and the s two is the one that we were working on, and we came up early Saturday morning with one that we liked. But that one wasn't the one the final that was like the draft version that got posted for tonight. The final version is not is not up.

So that's the one that needs to come at some time with the appropriate amendments. But okay. So the reasons, though, that the resolution had to be rewritten, Carol Denton Delton spoke to it, is because there was a fiscal impact statement that was made based on a misinterpretation of the original. We're trying to get rid of the misinterpretations. And I mean personally, I don't care how much fiscal impact it takes to not discriminate against students, you shouldn't discriminate against students, even if it saves you money.

But here's a fiscal impact statement of my own. $85,000 a year, not accounting for annual raises, add in full medical benefits for my family, for me and my family, and contributions to my pension plan, and that is the fiscal impact on my family. When I had to retire from my UPS driver job thirteen years before I had planned in order to become a full time caregiver to my disabled child. And after being asked to move schools a second time by third grade, he was so traumatized by all the changes, instability, and lack of relational safety that he no longer sees school as a

safe place to be.

He's in seventh grade now and still struggles to attend. We're just one of the many families that this happens to. I consider myself lucky because I have a wife that can still work, but there are single parents out here, full time caregiving, educating their kids, while piecing together an income to support their family. And so, the school district may be able to save some money by moving these classrooms, but the families you discriminate against have to pick up the bill. And so, we're never going to get to every student thrives, if we can't even come to an agreement that we're not going to actively traumatize our students.

Thank you. Next speaker.

Hi, JT Mates Mushin. I am in support of JD over there and I just wanna say that when I go to Skyland High School and I see the programs for children with special needs, I am I go to track meets and the kids are running with the kid the other kids. And if that just disappears, like sometimes other programs, they just disappear, I can't imagine what impact that would have on kids. So let's try to get this right. And I appreciate all the work that people have been doing for children that that deserve it.

Thank you.

Next speaker.

I think I stopped teaching twenty five years ago. The reason why I stopped because I had a lot of more energy to keep teaching but special education students weren't getting what they needed. And I worked with the severe profound children and people will come in and saying the same thing, parents advocating. And here it is almost twenty five years later and we still don't have special education students getting what they need in terms of resources and anything else. But I couldn't stand it.

I could I I did not like that this population was being ignored and not getting what they really needed and deserved and being respected. It just it almost felt like they had to have them in the school district. But there wasn't any passion for them being there and appreciation for them being there. So it would be nice before I take my final risk if I can see something happening for this group of individuals. And I love the way these parents and these advocates stay on board with this issue.

And I think based on what they are trying to do right now, they're saying that this is not the way they wanted it. They're saying they want more or it wasn't done the way and I think somebody needs to speak up and say look we need to readdress this so it's done right according to what the parents and the advocates have identified.

Thank you. Our last speaker.

Hi, everybody. I, had the good fortune of being present for some of the really constructive dialogue that happened around this resolution. And at that time, I learned that it had been tabled for several years, well I guess three years, two or three years, and just hasn't been agendized until recently. And I took a step back and thought how indicative it is of all the problems that we face that we are having this much trouble putting together a simple effort to stabilize the experience of our most vulnerable students. And that said, it was great to see the conversations happen.

I'm not sure what is up for a vote right now, but what I looked at originally actually was responsible in that it didn't forbid forbid ever saving money by making changes to these things. What it did was require planning in advance in a way that didn't disrupt the lives of these kids, which is what would be happening. And so I think, it's well past time to get this done. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Board colleagues? Director Thompson? Director Lotta?

What So I would say is that I think that having been a part of trying to support bringing this resolution forward with ultimately the goal of treating students in self contained programs and students with IEPs the same way we would treat general education students. That we would never move students because their classroom was not full, and scatter them to various schools if they were in second grade or third grade. We know, I think many of us parents have experienced combo classes. And we've also experienced classes where maybe the fifth grade has 33 students and the fourth grade has 22. And we don't ever close those programs with basically no notice.

Because I think the thing that it's We, of course, students moving every year is horribly traumatic. You would never want that for your own child. You would never pick it. But we, as a district, made decisions for students that it was more convenient for us to move them around like chess pieces, and that should never be okay. And the thing that I find really disappointing in all of this is that this isn't something that was just thrown together one night and like plopped on the agenda.

This is years worth of work. And I think the thing that I'm struggling with is that I don't understand why we don't and this is this is bigger than this resolution, but we don't have a culture of yes in this district. Right? We have a culture of not my problem, actually talk to somebody else. This is too complicated, and here's why it's gonna cost money.

And that should never be acceptable. Because what happens is that this resolution, which shouldn't be necessary because we should absolutely not be moving students around, particularly every year, particularly our most vulnerable students. But what we definitely shouldn't do is blame it on, oh, I can't figure out how to make it free, or we thought it was what we were doing, but we're actually I think what I have experienced, and I think the people in CAC and the parents of disabled students, I would think have a similar experience, is that there is not a culture of doing what's right for students and figuring out how to make it work. It's a culture of we make students and families fit into our system, and if you don't fit, then too bad. And so what I would just hope from, whether it's the leadership of the district, the leadership in special education, that I don't think we should pass either of these resolutions tonight.

I think we need to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to turn this resolution into a reality, and we should do it very quickly. Thank you.

Director Brohart.

I agree. I mean, I think this you know, director Batchelor and I started this resolution when we first joined the board. And, I've always been not confused, but really angry at why why this resolution has taken so much fine tuning. I mean, again, like people have said over and over again, we don't do this to students who are not disabled. You know, we consolidate a classroom, but the students stay at the same school.

We don't you know, again, I'm a former special education teacher, and I know there were years when I would have more students in my class, and there were years when I had less students in my class. And we the the the our students are not our disabled students are not numbers that we move around from classroom to classroom, where we move from program to you know, again, it takes it is a lot for our disabled students become part of the school community. It is a lot for their parents to become part of the school community. And every student deserves to be part of the school community. Every parent deserves to be able to go to school events and know the parents that are there.

These this is when we talk about school community, it it is the belonging of our students and our our our parents. Every teacher deserves our our our special education teachers are moved around. I was moved around one year, the last three weeks of school. I was moved from one school to another. I thought it was my assignment for the next year.

I moved that Monday to a different school. And, again, part a big part of school is belonging. And for all of the fiscal problems that have been brought up, they're they're resolvable, and they're not resolvable on the backs of students. They're resolvable at the site. And it it is a culture of saying, yeah.

We can do that. You know, it might take a little bit of thinking to do it, but we can do that because we do that for students who are not in special education. We do combination classes. We do all kinds of things to keep students at their school site with their friends as much as possible. Even when you, you know, consolidate a class, you think about the kids that are going to the two new classes.

I I'm really frustrated at how many obstacles have been thrown up in this resolution. Again, it's been four years. You know, I I I can't think of any other resolution that's taken four years to pass. And I feel like we're on the cusp of it, and now there are and and it's important to have these these issues resolved. I mean, parents have fought to to write this.

CAC has been, you know, the backbone of writing this, and I think, you know, I I would agree with director Lotta that we need to look at the the third version and really work through that now and get it post get it to our staff immediately, not not not just before the next meeting. But I think, again, we owe this to our students, our families, and to our educators who work with disabled students.

I'd like to call a question question on this item.

Except I have my opportunity to make a comment.

You were not here earlier. So, director Hutchinson,

still go ahead. Here right now. Thank you very much. So, you know, a lot of the things going on in this district really fall under kind of the same umbrellas, and it's really indicative of the major problems that we have. This is really the wrong approach to making policy in my opinion and it's why we've had so many problems.

This is one of the issues like many other issues that was supposed to be addressed under the three r's. When we are supposed to look at restructuring, redesigning our schools, and reenvisioning our footprint. And, of course, within that, we would have been discussing our special education programs along with other programs. But this board has dismissed that. And now things have gotten much more difficult because now we're in financial crisis.

So now everything that comes forward with a cost, it has a lot more impact and people need to think about it a lot more. But again, it's indicative of the dysfunction going on with this board. And so we have to remember, this is the same board that last year ignored the advice of general counsel on a number of issues, on a number of items, including their alternative budget solutions, which general counsel advised against, the CBO advised against, and they voted for it anyway. And so it's really interesting how at certain points, they claim, oh, we're being told we can't do this when that hasn't stopped them before. And again, as a unified school district, until we are to the point where as a community, we are sitting down and having a unified discussion that encompasses everything and move away from these random, one off, ad hoc decisions, we're not gonna get where we need to go.

Because this resolution has implications in a lot of other areas. And so we have to be able to address this altogether. This should have been addressed if this is what the president wanted. This should have been on the docket at the start of the school year. Then it could have been done in time before the options process, before there was any discussion for what changes might be happening next year.

But to throw this in now in May, and now it was just brought forward at the last board meeting. They had to pull it back because it wasn't a fiscal impact analysis. Now it's being brought forward again, and it's still not together. And it's really frustrating. It creates this hope in the community that then goes unfulfilled.

And again, as a unified school district, we have to make unified decisions. We have to have unified policies. We have to address the financial crisis in order to be able to fund whatever we wanna do, and we have to have real leadership in place with the superintendent and under the superintendent. Otherwise, nothing will be able to move be moved forward. I'm really disturbed with what I've seen tonight already and I think this just falls into that pattern.

It's really frustrating because again, we can't even discuss the issue that I know the community has been bringing forward over and over. And I hope people will start to realize some of the directors who have promised you these things obviously haven't been able to deliver.

With that comment, let's go ahead and take a roll call on this item.

On the motion on the the motion pending before the board, which is s dot dash one. The student directors are absent. Director Lada.

No.

Director Williams. Director Williams? Director Hutchinson? Abstain. Alright.

Director Williams? Director Thompson. Abstain. Gregory Barry? No.

Director Williams?

No.

Vice president Bachelor? No. President Burghard? No. Motion's not agreed to.

Next on the agenda is s two. Is there a motion to approve? Sorry. Pushed the wrong button. Seeing no motion, we will move on.

Right now, I'm going to recess this meeting. We have an open the public hearing for the SELPA plan. No recess?

No recess.

Oh, okay. I'm sorry. No recess. I'm going to open the public hearing for the self help plan. I believe Jen Blake Rain Wilson has a chair staying at?

Just a point of clarification before this starts. So when are we gonna go back to o, or or not o, public comment on non agenda items, and the items that were skipped over? Yes. So are we going back to those after s? Or because I thought you said we were just doing s one, and then going back to the order.

And there was no second on s two, so there was not it was not dealt with. Oh, we are going to, the public hearing right now, and then we'll go into o p q t and finishing up the agenda.

That was that was not the adjustment that you read out at the start of the meeting.

It was S and then OR. Yes, it was.

You have already opened the public hearing. We need to proceed with the public hearing. And then you can address any future issue after this.

Alright, good evening to our superintendent, board, community. Thank you for having us tonight. It is the season for us to bring the special education local plan area annual service and budget plan before you for approval. We also will share some updates about the district's special education program, some areas of growth, some areas for continued focus and improvement in the coming years. I'm Jen Blake, I am the executive director for special education and health services.

And I'm Rain Johnson, am the SELPA director in the special education department.

This was on me, yep. I thought it was down here. Apologies for that. There we go, okay. So our ask of the board is that you please approve our 2627 annual service and budget plan so we can move it to county approval and eventually state approval.

Alright, I will try and make this quick because I think most of you know this. What is a SELPA? A SELPA is an administrative unit set up by the state of California to help distribute special education funds and programming throughout the state of California. Oakland is large enough to be its own SELPA, so the only district in the SELPA is Oakland Unified. And what that means is that our school board, you guys are also our SELPA board leaders.

We are here to talk about our local plan. We go through a three year cycle for this plan. The first year is a bigger application and the following two years are just kind of recertifications. All we do during those last two years is submit our annual budget plan and our annual service plan. So that is what we're doing this year.

Next year we will submit the full plan. So our timeline is usually we bring this to you in April, this year we're here in May. Usually in May then we do have to turn it into the county office of education for approval, and then we submit it to the state of California. It must be in there before the June for their approval as well. Starting with the annual budget plan, this plan outlines a few different things.

It identifies our special education resources. It also delineates how we're going to be spending those resources across the year. It explains the process for allocating our funds across LEAs. In our situation it is just Oakland Unified, and it also sets forth the cost of our special education program. This is a quick overview of our resources.

So we have approximately $48,000,000 coming in. The largest bulk of our funding comes in through our six zero two grant, is about $28,000,000 We are hoping for a slight increase in that funding for next year, but this year it is about $28,000,000 Our other revenue is several smaller grants that are usually very program specific. For example, an early childhood training program that is a very small grant and other funding from grants. This is our expenses for this year, so about 56% of our expenses are for our salaries and our benefits for our staff. Our 5 thousand's cover a lot of our other expenses, which includes our contracted staff, as well as all of our professional services and work, such as the system we use to hold our IEPs and other department necessities.

Our staff year has, or our staff for next year is gonna remain fairly stable. There's only a few additions, one teacher as well as a few different related service providers, and a small handful of nine paraprofessionals. Then just looking at this slide, it delineates where our money is coming from. So we have a small percent, only about 4% of our funding comes from federal funding. This is very similar to what we see in our neighboring SELPAs, they're at around 5% as well.

And then we have state revenue of about 20% of our budget and our local contribution accounts for about 75% of that funding. We have a couple quick highlights. We have low incidence funding. We serve students who are blind, visually impaired, or who have orthopedic impairments, and so we have a little under $1,000,000 to provide specialized services for those students. We also are always very proud of our transition program.

We have a grant that's about $360,000 and we have increased the number of students we were able to serve with this grant this year to include a lot of middle school students and additional high school students. Our disability access funds are sunsetting this year with the end of the board resolution twenty twenty one-one 159. This program previously supported a lot of programs for our students with disabilities, such as expanding learning, Saturday inclusive play activities, our YES Sports program, some fun lunch programs. We will be continuing on with our staff who have been working on this program through our expanded learning program. So they will still be around helping out doing some of this work.

Our annual service plan. Our annual service plan, we are required to fill it out. It basically just lists all the services that we provide in Oakland Unified. It identifies which schools they're available at, and then provides the state applied definition for those services. This is a very tiny print of what it looks like when we submit it to the state.

It lists each campus in our district, and says, for example, is there an early childhood program in that school and are those services available? So we have services, our 200s are early childhood, our 300s are our academic programs, and our four through 600s are our other related services.

Alright, and so I'll be sharing a little bit of data about our enrollment and some of our areas of focus and initiatives as a department. The first thing that is important for us to touch on is our overall enrollment of students who receive special education services pursuant to an individualized education program or IEP. That number is continuing to climb. The numbers that we have submitted here for the board presentation are a few weeks old given the deadlines to submit. We have continued to increase our number of eligible students as we approach the end of the school year and are now just under 7,700 eligible students.

That is twenty percent of the OUSD population. Our enrollment trends are listed on this slide as well. The areas that we are monitoring in terms of particular eligibility areas are autism, which continues to climb. It is our highest incidence disability across the district. And OHI, which is largely but not exclusively due to ADHD.

That is another area where we are in disproportionality and are monitoring closely the annual increase in that particular eligibility area. In terms of services by incidence rate, one of the things that is something that's important for us to understand as a district is that as the population of our students changes, the services we offer and the incidence rate for those services are also changing. Students with autism spectrum disorders and other types of communication related disorders also need additional related services in order to complete their educational program. We're not able to just provide specialized academic instruction. We have to provide speech and language services, occupational therapy, behavioral support services, and so the numbers of students receiving each of those services is included on this slide, speech and language being our fastest growing related service.

In terms of looking at some areas where we have student level impact, we wanted to particularly highlight behavioral supports, which is an area where we've had increased investment over the last two years. And we have some good data in terms of impact showing that once a BCBA, or a board certified behavior analyst, is supporting a student that is at high risk for suspension and who has an IEP, in the ninety days after they become involved in the case, we see a significant decrease in their risk of future suspension. We also have a number of professional learning investments. We are particularly happy that we have continued our second year this year of being able to focus on training our newly hired support staff. We've received very positive responses from those folks.

We trained 105 support staff this year through a series of eight different monthly week long sessions. Our new teachers are also reporting high satisfaction, and the new teacher support and development survey showed that the vast majority of teachers who are new in special ed, all but two, had indicated their intent to return to OUSD. These are some other areas where we have shown some growth. More students participating in summer internships, more young adults receiving paid employment through our PIP with the regional center, and more students that are participating in work based learning activities embedded in their high schools, as well as an increase in A to G graduation rates. Our IEP quality investments, we'll just touch on briefly, given that we know we're short on time, but we have seen an increase in teacher use of the training and support that we are providing.

40% more folks came to our drop in hours this week, or this year, and our team has also audited every single IEP, or every single teacher's IEPs at least once this year. We'll skip over those and kinda move into some focal areas where we need to continue to improve as we wrap up the presentation. We are seeing increases in the number of past due IEPs and need to continue to focus on that. That is an Oakland specific challenge. Our neighbors are not experiencing the same challenges.

We will continue to provide updates to the board about our comprehensive coordinated early intervening services as necessary, because we are continuing to be in significant disproportionality, particularly due to discipline. And so in conclusion, our ask of the board is that you please approve our annual budget and service plan so we can submit it for county and state review, and we'd be happy to take any questions or comment.

Thank you. Are there any public comments on this issue?

Yes, madam president. We have two. Carol Delton and Anna Rilani. I do see Carol Delton online.

We're gonna give one minute each. We are on time right now. So one minute.

We'll allow Carol Delton to speak.

Thank you so much. I wanted to just quickly lift up some pieces of information that are perhaps implied but not explicit in this plan that I think the board in its role as a self, the board needs to recognize. So first of all, if special students with IEPs are 20% of the students in OUSD, they also generate 20% of the ADA and many of them also generate supplemental and concentration funding. And while we often lift up the contribution that is required for the extensive programming, we don't often lift up the contribution that these students make to the general fund. Second, I wanted to lift up the very broad and extensive list of services that the SELPA plan reviews.

I would like to note that none of the charter schools in our area provide this kind of differentiated support and these kinds of varied services. It's one of the reasons that OUSD has such a large population of students with IEPs and especially of students with more extensive needs. Thank you.

Thank you. Is there another speaker?

All public speakers have been called.

Are there any board comments? Director Hutchinson?

Yes, thank you. Thank you for the presentation. It would be helpful for me at least to have a document someplace that has more of of the year to year changes and maybe even going back a couple of years. So it's just easier to identify trends and kind of which direction things might be moving. And I would also request that there there could even be a narrative included in that to help explain the reasons why some of those changes are happening instead of just a one off.

It's just really hard to tell sometimes in isolation. The the other question I had is on here, it says, almost a $150,000,000 for a local contribution. Could you explain more what what actually is the local contribution? The the state and the federal, I think, is really clear, but, is that a a separate fund? Is that coming from the general fund?

What kind of makes up or or where where do we find the local contribution?

Sure. Yeah. Thank you for those, questions and comments. We do have more of a longitudinal look at, both the cost piece and, FTE or full time equivalents, that go into the program that we can share. And in the, two by two deck, we also had a little bit of historical information.

In terms of the question about the local contribution, some local municipalities have special education specific taxes or bond measures that go into local revenue. In our district, in our area, we do not. And so when we're talking about a local contribution, we're talking about the contribution from the district's general fund.

Great. And thank you. And thank you for declaring that also publicly. And and this also just ties into some of my concerns about the the budget at large. And so, I'm not gonna ask you the question directly.

I just wanna kinda put it out there. This is another one of the areas that I'm really concerned about as we have a projected budget deficit for next year. And for these programs in particular, we we have to provide these services. We are mandated by law. And how is this interplay going to happen if there still needs to be, reductions in spending?

And does that mean, are we not going to be able to touch this pot at all? Does that mean there's gonna be a proportional thrown in some place? And, again, I'm not asking you direct, but I I wanna put this out because this is, to me, one of the through lines for tonight as we're in real financial trouble, and we know we have this, $150,000,000 contribution that we need to make for special education. How does that interplay work when we, according to the numbers I've seen, we're looking at a $50,000,000 deficit for next year, which could grow to a 100,000,000 if the OEA contract is ratified. So, like I've been telling everyone, please, please be prepared and organized, and I'm gonna be I'm really curious curious isn't the right word.

It's late. But I I wanna know how these can can interplay with each other, and is this really a a lockbox that we need to know as a district that we can't touch going forward because these are mandated services. Thank you. Thank

you. Mister Ricksdraw, do you have a question? Yeah.

The only question I have is a okay. I'll ask it, you don't have to answer it. The question I have is around and I'm just thinking about the policy advocacy implications because I'm wondering, given the SELPA SELPA advocacy that we heard about earlier today, what the pattern or trend is across the state and how Oakland is comparing to that. And one question in particular I'm curious about is whether the proportion of the local contribution, the state contribution is changing over time? Like has it the has the state contribution shrink in proportion in particular?

It's actually really timely that you asked that question, Director Barry, because we just got some good information from the Coalition for Adequate Funding for Special Education, CAFCI, and they're one of the sources that provides us with good fiscal information about what's happening across the region and the state. Over the last ten years, districts have had an over 10 increase on average in the local contribution to special education. During that time, the federal contribution has shrunk from about 11% of the overall state budgets to 6.6% of the overall state budgets. And so even in lower cost of living areas, or areas that are considered small and sparse where there are fewer students with disabilities, we are still very closely aligned with the statewide averages in terms of the way our funding breaks down. Similarly, CAFCI looked at from 2004 to the present, so about a twenty year period of time, how are trends in the overall breakdown of funding and what's the rate of change year over year.

And we're seeing that while the per pupil spending across the board in California for all students is increasing, and part of that was by design with the local control funding formula, and after COVID-nineteen those one time investments, special education's graph is increasing at a faster rate, so it's now showing a gap between the rate of increase of the general population and the rate of increase of students with IEPs.

Thank you. I'm going to close the public hearing. Is there a motion to adopt the SELPA plan?

So moved.

I'll second it. Mister Rakeshtar, can we have a a roll call on the vote, please?

On the motion to adopt SELPA plans, service, and budget for next school year. The student directors are absent. Director Lada?

Yes.

Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? Yes. Director Perry?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Yes. Vice president Bachelor?

Stain.

President Brohard. Yes. Motion's adopted.

Thank you, Andy. With that, we're going to move on to.

No, ma'am. We had, we need a motion to extend.

Oh, yes. We have a motion to extend the.

Motion to extend the meeting to 11:45.

Second.

And can we have a roll call on the vote, please?

On the motion to extend the meeting to 11:45, student directors are absent. Director, Barry? Yes. Director, Thompson?

Yes.

Director Hutchinson? No. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Lotta?

Yes.

Vice president Bachelor?

Yes.

President Burghardt? Yes. Meetings extended to 11:45.

K. Next, we're going to take items, agenda items o and p together and wrote it out separately with the exception of items o one twenty one, one twenty two, and one twenty three. Is there a motion to adopt? So moved.

Second.

Do we have public comment on this? Either of these items.

Who seconded it?

Yes. For o, we have Carol Delton, Boykin Portia I'm sorry, Portia Boykin, Daniel Alvarado, Asada Olugbala, and for P, we have Asada Olubala.

We'll give each speaker one minute and, miss Asada, you can take two minutes, one on o and one on p. Go ahead, please.

Hello. I'm Daniel Alvarado. Good evening, president and members of the board. Again, my name is Daniel Alvarado, and I serve as a student assignment counselor at the student assignment center under Keelyan Balak. I am also a proud OUSD alum alumni and, and a graduate of Castlemount High School.

I'm here to speak on a position to board agenda item 26 dash eleven forty eight, governing board adoption, administrative law judge proposed decision classified layoff. I'm asking you tonight to reject the proposed decision of the office of administrative hearings and vote no in my individual layoff. For the first time in eight years, OU OUSD enrollment has increased. This growth is the direct result of the work I do in the Student Assignment Center. We are revenue generators for the district.

Every family we successfully enroll represents the vital ADA funding our schools depend on. We aren't just administrative costs. I am on the I am one of the frontline employees of the district's financial recovery. Okay. Just one thing.

I'm asking you tonight to reject the proposed decision of the office administrative hearings and vote no on this layoff. And I urge you to reverse this decision and maintain the my role, which is really vital for, revenue generating. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Just a point of clarify clarification. The speaker was speaking on item o one twenty one, is which one of the items that I pulled from the consent report. It will be voted on separately after this. Okay.

Thank you.

Okay. I'm gonna try to do this in one minute, a 141 items. So I tried to prioritize the ones that I wish more detailed discussion would be held on them. There are three items that deal with the disposal of asbestos in different schools. You have an item that is in that has to deal with improving the air quality at the central kitchen.

You do have summer academic and enrichment services at 15 schools. I I don't know if this is adequate enough because that summer enrichment is very important. You do have a important item on human trafficking prevention. You have an item that calls for the FBI background check for volunteers at schools, and I continue to remind you your volunteer background check is not sufficient. We have an item that principal a principal will be able to identify and interrupt racism.

That's important. You have a suspension and expulsion training. Very appreciative that you're doing that. That's important. Layoffs due to work, lack of funds.

Is that 01/21? I'm gonna hold up on that one. I'd like to come back and address it. District protective appeal to the state, is that your other item? I'm gonna hold up on that one.

And then lastly, district salary schedule tentative agreement. I wish I could have better understanding of that one. Okay, going to items on P. P2 door entry system. That's very important that we have that kind of security and for the entire year at McClymonds we had no entry system because you moved us children to the other side of the school where that system was not available.

Item P3 turf field at Cesar Chavez. You need additional geotechnical consulting services to deal with unforeseen site conditions and that's appropriate. You need to do the same thing at McClellan's. And lastly, Oakland High turf field replacement project, you're coming back to that, and that's good. Do whatever you have to do related to turf fields, but when are you gonna do McClyman's Field?

I I I overspent my three my two minutes. Sorry about that.

No. No. You're fine. You're fine. Thank you.

Matter of president, Carol Delton's online. I'll allow them

to speak. One minute.

I will, wait until item o 01:22.

Thank you. Are there any board comments? Director Hutchinson.

Yes. Thank you. I I could never have imagined when I stopped voting for consent reports in April '25 that over a year later, I'd still have the same concerns. And so as we've seen tonight, I don't think that most of the items on the consent report have been thoroughly vetted or have a thorough fiscal impact analysis. I don't think there's really policies in place anymore guiding most of these decisions.

And when I've tried to ask questions of the superintendent and senior staff, I've received no answers. And so, for example, my list of 17 questions that I asked six weeks ago over, which was about some of the decisions going on, I've still received no response. And so, again, I'll be abstaining from these, and until I can feel secure that both the superintendent and the board president are asking are acting in a way where they're showing sound fiscal management and governance, I can't trust what's being put on the consent reports. Thank you.

Thank you. Mister Reichstraw, can we oh, go ahead, please.

One, I should have asked this in advance, so I apologize for not including this in my questions. But I'm just curious if we've encumbered expenses, why we have what? Oh, why we have a gen consent report of a 100 plus items related to spending.

We have to approve or ratify the contracts. And these are all the end of the year. That's what we're talking about. Yeah. Mister Rake Star, can we have a roll call and a vote, please?

Yes. On the motion to adopt the items under o and items under p, which are the general consent report minus the items that were pulled off, and p, which is a general, obligation facilities, bonds, measures. Student directors are absent. Director Williams? Yes.

K. Director, Thompson? Yes. Director Hutchinson?

Abstain.

Director Lada?

Yes.

Director Thompson? Yeah. You said yes? Okay.

Let's see. 123.

I'm just gonna say. Director Williams, did you vote? Okay. And direct vice president Bachelor?

Yes.

And president Brohard?

Yes.

Okay. Did I get everybody?

Yes. Okay.

Alright. It's Thank Barry?

Oh. Yes.

Well, I'm sorry. What'd you say? Yes. Okay. Alright.

So, Lewis, yes. I haven't heard yet. Okay. The motion's adopted.

Alright. The next item on the agenda that we will take up is item o one twenty one, which is the governing board adoption and administrative law judge proposed decision classified layouts twenty twenty six twenty seven. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. I'll second it.

And do we have public comment on this item?

Who moved and who seconded it? Hard to hear back here. Okay.

There's no pub.

Public comment is open to the public. Open to public members to speak.

Can I can I give my board comment first since I was the one who pulled it?

Sure. Why not?

Thank you. So, I pulled this item which we saw mister Alvarado speak on before. I pulled this item so I could vote no And I agree with much of mister Alvarado's comments that he made here tonight. This goes back to the layoff lists, the reduction in force list that this board voted on on February 22. At that vote, I voted against those layoffs because they weren't costed out.

We've had no description of what savings they would achieve or from what funds. There was no policy backing it, and I even went so far as to introduce a resolution to try to bring some clarity. And so many of the jobs that we voted on for that reduction in force are key jobs, at least they used to be, attendance specialists, literacy coaches, teachers on special assignment providing key roles, a number of jobs. And all of those jobs that weren't central jobs, I only saw that layoff list seventy two hours before the vote. So there was no board discussion.

We didn't weigh in at all. And I really wish more people would have taken the opportunity that mister Alvarado did and would have really pressed the cases more. Because it might be true that we need to make reductions in our staffing, and we couldn't afford all the positions, but it's never acceptable to just do it in a random ad hoc way without discussion and without a policy backing it. And so I will be voting no on this just like I voted no on February 22 on the original reduction in force. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there any public comments on this item?

Public comment is open to the public.

Since this was known as a a a pre pre pool, it's it's it's open.

I'm gonna be very brief. I think layoffs is a very heavy topic in terms of these are people's jobs. This is gonna have impact on their livelihoods to be able to take care of themselves and their families. And when you look at it from the perspective that the item is put in is item one twenty one of a 141 items with no discussion. We're just laying off due to a lack of work or lack of funds.

And maybe it might have been a little bit more appropriate to say this item needs to be explained in detail so we can respect people understanding why we have to be in this arena doing this. And and it it just doesn't seem the right way to do it. And I hope that at some point, whatever you do, when you're talking about your employees, the people who serve our children, we can do it in a better way than this way.

Thank you. Are there any more speakers on this side? Mister Registar, can we have a roll call on the vote, please?

Yes. On the motion to adopt o dot dot dash one twenty one. Student directors are absent. Director Lotta?

Yes.

Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? No. Director Barry?

Yes.

Sorry. I didn't hear you.

Yes.

Okay. Director Thompson? Yes. Director vice president Bachelor?

Yes.

And president Burhardt? Yes. Motion is adopted.

K. The next item on the agenda is item o, one two two, which is the district appeal, California superintendent of public Instruction, ACOE's 04/16/2026 designation of district as going concern. Director Hutchinson, would you like to speak to this?

Motion.

Oh, I have to do a motion. Sorry. So moved. Second. Director Hutchinson.

I actually pulled this item. Yeah. And I pulled it because I think we should discuss it. And I think I I would have appreciated, and I think this is my first concern, that it would have been on the agenda anyway. And even the conversation we were just having around the layoffs is, like, one of the reasons.

Like, we laid off hundreds of people, and so every decision related to our fiscal stabilization, I think we need to honor all the lives affected, the seriousness of the issue by seriously engaging with every decision, and this being one of them. So my own opinion about the appeal is I don't share sort of the the notion that ACOE's interpretation of our status is undue alarm. I think and we've heard it several times. You, you know, have mentioned it, our own staff that there is a cause for concern. And two things can be true, cause for concern and we feel confident about what's happening.

But I think when we're given an opportunity to level up by taking even more precaution, especially because of all the lives that have already been impacted, that we should take advantage of those. That's one of the reasons why I wanted to discuss it. I'm not necessarily saying I'm committed to opposing, but I do not understand the rationale right now. And then the one question that I have related to this is what we hope to accomplish in our relationship with ACOE by this appeal. Like, what is the outcome?

Is it just not having this documented or is there what am I missing?

Director Barry, I'm gonna ask, our chief counsel, Janine Lindsay, to respond to the question and give give you more detail.

Thank you, superintendent. So I think your questions are important and you are trying to understand what is the rationale. First, I just wanna share that we have, as was explained earlier today, we have had a qualified status in previous interim reports, and we have had a lack of going concern in 2017. And I think that was may have been right before we ended up doing mid year reductions. We have had a qualified budget, and we did, at the request of the county, provide our deputy superintendent, at the request of the county, provided additional information by April 30.

And, that additional information we believe materially alters and should be reviewed before issuing a loan, a going concern. So that's the reason why the appeal is, agendized here for your ratification.

One thing that I wanna flag is, like, inconsistency because I remember when second interim was submitted, the OEA TA had already been we we explored that and already had made a decision regarding that, but it wasn't that those actions took place after the second interim deadline. So similarly, there's a point in time here being applied, but we're not we're not applying that same approach in this instance.

Well, it was at the request of the county.

So what was it what's the

The county requested additional information by April 30. That was provided by April 30.

I think one other question that director Berry may be asking is, was there a specific timeline in which we need to respond to either to the entity around it? And is that potentially why it was sent

before Are we going under board comment now? Because that wasn't her question.

She's Right. If I could just finish speaking.

Well, but you were speaking out of order.

A a timeline.

You you can shrug me off all you want. It was out of order. So are we going to board comment now?

She is asking a clarifying question, so I'm gonna

That's not what she said. She said she was asking Excuse me.

I'm not wasting

I'm not wasting time either.

Continue your question. Thank you.

So I believe there was a potentially a timeline for when we needed to respond with such a letter?

Yes. The law says five days.

I believe she's asking the general counsel. We can move along and just ask the question.

Thank you.

Yes. I do believe you were asking me. So the deadline that the county provided was April 30 to supplement the the second interim.

But there was also a

deadline five days.

Mhmm. There was also a deadline, I believe, for a response around the growing concern that needed a response before this board meeting. So that's why it's on the board agenda for us to adopt it.

It's on the board's agenda for you to ratify it because we did already submit it to the state.

Mhmm. Is there a public comment on this?

Excuse me. I'd like my turn to speak then too since we moved on to board comments.

I just wanna make sure, you know, people in the audience, if people would like

to I would like the opportunity to speak before that, and if vice president Bachelor is allowed to just speak, then we're into board comment, and we all

have have right to until you speak. So I am now going to let you speak. You have now used the bully pulpit to get this done.

Thank you. So, we have a lot of problems here and just very quickly, I wanna bring everyone back to the last time we got a notice of going concern which was late in 2021 and what we did as a board, actually, Shaunte Gonzales was board president at that time. We had an emergency special meeting. So, the board could gather and the board voted to file an appeal. Then at the next board meeting, we all, as a board, discussed why we were follow filing that appeal.

So I don't know why this wasn't on the board agenda at the last meeting. This is the first public acknowledgement that we even received a notice of going concern. And I don't know how anyone superintendent general counsel could file an appeal on May 4 when the board didn't authorize it in the first place. You're not allowed to file an appeal unless the board votes for it. And the idea that this was to meet some deadline, no, we received a notice of going concern from the county on April 16.

So we were already past the deadline anyway. So why was an appeal filed without first having a board vote? Then if you actually read the appeal, to me, it read kind of whiny. Oh, we couldn't do our required work for the county and submit it by the thirtieth and do an appeal at the same time. So now we're doing an appeal.

That's just not how it works. There's a statutory deadline in the Ed Code of five days that you have to file an appeal. The board president could have scheduled a special meeting and met that five day requirement, then authorized general counsel to file an appeal. But the superintendent and the general counsel do not have the authority to file an appeal without their first being a school board vote. I find it really interesting when I hear superintendent Sadler talk about how she's working closely with the county.

This sure doesn't look like it. Especially if you look at the tone of this. So I really wanna know under what authority was an appeal filed without the board first voting. I wanna know why we didn't, file then that appeal within the five day statutory requirement and why we're doing it now. And lastly, what I really wanna know is why is this buried in the consent report?

All of those are very important things. If we don't follow the law, if we don't follow our own board bylaws, which require school board votes, then I don't know what we're doing. So again, how was this filed without a board vote? Why did we wait until after the five day deadline? And what is actually even happening now?

So I would really like, general counsel Lindsey, like I informed you. I would like a legal opinion on why you felt it was appropriate to file an appeal without a board vote and also ignore the five days statutory requirement. So I would like an answer Yes. And a ruling on

I got it.

I got it. Thank you for breaking that down, and repeating your your questions. So, just so that we're clear, the applicable echo does not explicitly require a pre submission vote, and that is four two one two seven dot nine. And generally and generally in California, a ratification of action taken on behalf of a board is is valid. So

But our board bylaws require a board vote. I'm not talking about Ed Code. Ed Code doesn't address where the

vote comes from.

The

answer. Excuse me.

You've asked a question.

Me. So I'm asking a clarifying question on the response that I'm receiving.

Let her finish.

So so the appeal is here before the board as a ratification. And if the board opts to not move forward with the ratification, The appeal can be withdrawn or in fact, it does not even need to be withdrawn. It's void because you have acted today through this ratification.

But it was submitted

May 4. Submitted. That's right.

So it's already been submitted.

Correct.

Without a board vote.

Correct. Okay. Correct. And it's here before you for ratification.

Is there any public No. Then we have to have public comment. Is there

any public Sorry. Just on process because I was able to explain why I put it I pulled it, and general counsel did respond to that. But I had a question that I do think is important because we're about to take a vote, which is like I'm trying to understand what we're hoping to accomplish here.

I I think I explained it earlier. I'll just repeat it one more time. I do believe that there was a request from the county, for a submission, which our deputy superintendent did provide by April 30. We believe that that materially changes and should be reviewed as a part of this discussion. So our appeal is either for the superintendent of public instruction to reverse the going concern or to remand back to the county to ask for reconsideration considering the material information that was provided.

And that's important because the interpretation of the going concern means what to us?

I'm not going into that piece on the dais because that would lead into some legal advice that should be attorney client privilege.

Mister Riekstra, can we have a roll call on the vote, please? Is there a public comment?

Yes, madam president. There is a Carol Delton has her hand raised for public comment.

One minute.

Lost Carol Dilton. Is

she there? No?

Cheryl Delton, are you there?

Thank you. Yes, I am here. I understand the procedural concerns, and I also very much appreciate overall the superintendent's responses to the county and to the narrative that the county has been promulgating and another narrative that takes into account ongoing changes and work on the OUSD budget. I think everyone knows that there are statutory deadlines that do not favor clear progress in the district budget and changing those would be hugely helpful. But it is important that the county acknowledge what the district is doing.

On the other hand, I would like to see much more explicit explanation to the community with more explicit numbers, with variance reports between numerical reporting and with a tracker for each budget item. Thank you.

Thank you. Missus Sonnen?

Miss Berry, I wanna thank you for pulling this item because when I read it, I did not understand what it was intended and even what it meant. And having said that, at some point, the structure of how you consider contracts or vote on items cannot continue to be the way it is now. The city of Oakland has two ways to deal with items, consent and non consent. Items that are considered of concern or controversy go on non consent. To have everything, no matter what it is, all voted on, all at once, and at least what they do is the clerk reads the item.

This process is not what I call the I'm gonna be fair, the best way to do it. And I appreciate that. I'm gonna say this again. When some of you take the time to pull the item to explore, not for yourself, for us. A part of your responsibility is that the community has to understand what is going on.

It's not that you just take a vote. We have to be able to understand that you are doing the job in the best interest of children and the staff that you also support.

Thank you. Mister Registrar, can we have a roll call on the vote, please?

Yes. On the motion to ratify the appeal filed by staff with the California SPI on the matter discussed. Director student directors are absent, director Lotta?

Yes.

Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? No. Director Barry?

No. Director Thompson?

Yes.

Vice President Bachelor?

Yes.

President Burlehart? Yes. Motion's adopted.

Thank you. Next item is item one twenty three. Which I believe miss director Hutchinson was one that you pulled. District salary schedules?

Move to adopt o dot dash one two three. Second.

You. I pulled this because I have just, again, questions about the numbers that are listed in this document. So we received a set of numbers through the a b 1,200 process that costed out the SEIU contract. And now there's different numbers in this document. So my question is, are these numbers in addition to what we thought the cost of the contract were?

Are these separate? How do these numbers that, if I remember off the top of my head, were a little bit more than a million dollars each year, how does that relate to what was already, approved in the SEIU contract? So are these additional dollars that we didn't cost out the right way, or where are these numbers coming from?

Without having the two sets of numbers that you're you're referencing, it's gonna be difficult to answer that question. So

I mean, I can read off one set and the other sets

email.

The other sets on there, but you have been non responsive to me. And so I can read off to what the old set of numbers were, and you can look in this you can look in this item o one twenty three and see what numbers are there. So the the idea of you don't know because you don't have the numbers, that's not good enough now. So or let everyone just go ahead and vote on it and they don't know what these numbers even are, and it's just more millions out the door.

Is there a public comment on this item?

I do see Carol Delton with her hand raised. Louder to go first.

Okay. So, I I did write down the numbers and the total cost for prior to the proposed agreement, you had a number. Then for 2526 the new number is 6,300,000. For 2627 4,300,000 and for 2728, 1,100,000. And the only question I have is what's the source of funding?

And if that I didn't know anything about that they were different numbers, but those are the numbers. And my question is, are these the correct numbers that's in the agenda tonight? Or were the other numbers and we're seeing different numbers according to what he's saying mister Hutchinson is saying. So where is this money source of funding coming from is is what I would be concerned about.

And general counsel Lindsey, I just sent you a text with the numbers that came from the county which showed year one was 9,917,000. Year two, 13,651,000, and year three, 15,343,000. So that was the costing out of the contract. Like miss Olabala just read off, these are very different numbers. So are these numbers in addition to what costed out in the AB 1,200, or what are these numbers representing?

I'm not sure, what you're referencing, but if you send that over to us.

And I just texted it to you, and I'm referencing the Alameda County Office of Education spreadsheet on the a b 1,200 for the recently ratified SEIU contract. Right. Because I keep screenshots in my phone just for these

moments. So just so we're clear, I don't check my phone on the dais. So but if you send those things over,

it's really important. I just read out the numbers. So how about this? That's just Can somebody data explain to the what numbers these are then in 01/23? What do these numbers represent?

That's a simple question or if there's not an answer, that also proves my point.

We'll send those to you. Are there any other public comments? Carol Dalton, I believe, is online. Right?

I'll allow them to speak.

One minute.

I'm I'm fine. I put my hand down. Thanks.

Thanks. Mister Regstar, can we have a roll call on the vote,

please? Yes. On the motion to adopt, o dot dash one twenty three. Director Lotta.

Yes.

Student board members are absent. Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? No.

Director Barry? Yes. Director Thompson? Abstain. Okay.

Director vice president Bachelor?

Yes.

And president Brohard?

Yes.

I miss anybody? No. Okay. Alright. The motion's adopted.

I'm going to move item t one, the superintendent's contract next, and then we'll follow that with public comment. Is there a motion to adopt the superintendent's contract? So moved. Second. Is there public comment?

One moment. Okay. We have for T1 Carol Delton, Jonathan Mates Mutchen, Avi Ringer, and Matt Glaser.

The, people who are in person first and then we'll take Carol.

If your name was called, please come on up.

One minute. We have a timeline that we have to end it by 11:45. One minute. One minute. You're using your time right now.

Use your one minute.

Requesting an extension of time.

I'm not going to extend that time. One minute. And the reason we have a statutory time that we must end by 11:45. One minute. Thank you.

The end of a six

hour Can you start the clock? Talk for one minute? That's correct. Thank you.

I would urge you to vote no on this contract extension. It saddens me to say so, but doctor Sadler is too compromised to stay in this job, frankly, for even one day longer. Unless I'm misrepresenting something, please let me know if I am. I'm gonna skip ahead here. Through the fall, we held out hope that she was a straight shooter.

We know she was working diligently with her senior staff to develop a plan for budget deficit reduction. But then the day came when she was to submit to the board the fruits of this effort on the night of December 7, the plan that became scenario three. And she'd worked with her most senior staff, her chief business officer, chief academic officer, chief of staff, pulling twelve hour days all weekend to finalize this. But once it was submitted on Sunday, in the dark of night, she switched it with another memo, developed with a whole different group. Okay?

And when the senior staff came to her and asked her about this, she said no one inside the district had helped her. Well, that lie came out a couple days later when those inside the district acknowledged their involvement. Then the public caught wind of all this when two senior staff quit, and we began asking questions. On two occasions, I asked who had helped her prepare this report, why had she gone against the recommendations of her most senior staff. Doctor Sadler sat up there in this dais stone faced, answering nothing.

Then came the second lie, this one in full view of the public.

Thank you. Your time is up.

Well, actually, earlier, a speaker spoke for forty seconds without you stopping them. So I would hope that I would have at least that amount

of time.

Forty seconds. Okay. So the second lie came in her April 28 letter to the county superintendent when she wrote in bold font, the district has operated with full transparency before its community and this board, after she had refused to acknowledge anything about that meeting. So that was a second lie. So if she'll lie to her senior staff and she'll lie to the county superintendent, would she lie to principals?

Would she lie to teachers, parents, students? We have to believe she would. You see you see on how untenable this is. You can't have someone who's lying as a superintendent.

Thank you.

That's your where you have doctor Aguilera perfectly capable you.

Superintendent. Is speaker. I mean, come on.

You're gonna speak for one minute.

Speaker, please. Who is the next speaker?

I just wanna tell a very short story that just happened tonight. There's a lot of people that wanna demonize folks who have spent their entire lives and and careers in public service. I've had the opportunity of working with doctor Sadler directly, and while there's plenty of room for critique on anybody who's doing a very, very difficult job under a difficult time, what I saw tonight was one of the members of the community shivering because these fans were on and the only person that noticed on the day the diets was superintendent Sadler and she asked somebody to go offer her a blanket. This is the person you're demonizing? She's kind.

She's a kind person. And kindness is what we need more than anything. So thank you. I support you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please. David

is gonna speak on my behalf. Jonathan Mates Mushin. Is that okay?

No, we don't do that. So but you can submit

evening. I'm speaking on behalf of doctor De La Moore. I'm speaking on behalf of the NAACP Oakland branch education committee. I wanna address item t one concerning the board's decision to end the search, for a permanent superintendent and potentially extend doctor Sadler's contract through '27. This is not personal towards doctor Sadler.

This is about governance, transparency, accountability, and rebuilding public trust in Oakland Unified. The community was originally promised an inclusive superintendent search process involving parents, educators, students, administrators, stakeholders. Instead, the public is now witnessing decisions that seem rushed, lack community engagement, and are inconsistent with the board's commitment previously made to this board. Additionally, changing from interim to superintendent while extending the contract through June 27 is misleading the public. One year extension does not significantly signify permanent leadership stability.

There's more that we'll submit in writing. That's the NAACP Oakland branch talking. So thank you.

Are there any other public speakers?

I see Carol Delton's hand raised.

Okay. One minute. To speak.

Hello. I was at several meetings back in December and I watched senior staff, the previous chief business officer come to meetings without submitting plans. I watched the superintendent of academics come to meetings without submitting plans. I'm grateful that Doctor. Sadler sought to put a plan together and work toward bringing the district into fiscal stability.

That said, I hope the district will have a robust search next year starting with community input for a long term superintendent after the 2027. Thank you.

Thank you. Are there board comments on this? Director Hutchinson.

Yes. Thank you. Like I let everyone know at the last board meeting, At the last board meeting, the board voted to suspend or pause the superintendent search and extend Denise Sadler's contract for one more year. Now that vote happened the day after the superintendent using her district email had had sent out an advocacy plan to all the board directors, a clear violation of the Brown Act. And then a few days after that, after I notified general counsel Lindsay of that email, the email has disappeared from my list of received emails.

But, thankfully, I learned a long time ago to always take screenshots and always save files. Now you can't really pause a superintendent search that you never really engaged in. And, I went back and looked at the original contract with the search firm. That said, they were owed a $50,000 payment upon approval of that contract. And then somebody had to tell them afterwards to stop doing the search, and we still don't know who that was.

Now there's been no board discussion over what the terms of the contract should be. So I don't know how we wound up with these terms, including a $10,000 raise, because there was no board discussion nor board vote. Superintendent Sadler never had a work plan this year and failed to deliver a fiscal solvency plan by February 22 like she publicly promised. But I have another real concern as well. I wanna know who negotiated this contract with superintendent Sadler because it would be illegal for general counsel Lindsey to engage in those negotiations since she reports directly to superintendent Sadler.

And as far as I know, there hasn't been an outside firm hired to engage in those negotiations over the last three weeks. So how did we get this here? What happened to the email that I was sent? Because I have the screenshots to prove it. Who negotiated this contract?

Who decided a $10,000 raise? And what's really going on here? Especially since the search firm that we hired now is the same firm that we're using to provide financial advice through mister Frutos who we saw here today. It sure doesn't pass the smell test, but I wanna know and I'd like an opinion on who engaged in negotiations for this contract on behalf of the school board, And where is the school board authorization for the terms that were going to be included?

I want to address something here, and I think there's a lot of innuendo.

Well, I kinda wanted

I

wanted

Excuse me.

Lindsey to provide a ruling on it because I wanna know who negotiated this. So I'm asking a direct Madam question of general counsel. You can try to talk over me all you want and go to the next thing. But when we have potentially illegal activity and collusion among the senior staff and the board in order to extend a contract that's valued just in compensation at $367,000, I think I have a right to have my questions answered.

I'm gonna go elementary teaching on here. One mic, one voice, and I'm gonna call on on general counsel Lindsay right now.

Thank you, president Brohard. So I just want in terms of answering the question as to who negotiated the contract with the superintendent, the board did. And the board discussed this matter via government code five four nine five seven in closed session, at which time the board discussed and decided upon terms, which the superintendent has accepted, and now is the time when the board will vote on that in open session so that it's a final agreement.

Hope there's a record of it.

Is. There is. You were there. You were there.

I was there. That's why I know terms were not discussed. It was just a vote to extend it for you. So I was shocked to see that there was a $10,000 raise.

And we won't violate the Brown Act any further.

I believe you'd like to hear from director Berry.

Yes. And I hate that I have to say say explain my vote, but I think the energy in the room is just a little whack for lack of a better word, and I think we all need to do better because I don't I don't even like the way I was treated tonight on the dais. Doctor Sadler, I've told you this directly, and I talk about this publicly and privately that I like what you contribute and I like what you're bringing to the table. This contract, my issue with it is that is the shift from interim superintendent to superintendent, which I do think is something we have to take seriously because of what it communicates to the public and how I do think it undermines the commitment that we made this time last year about process. And so, yes, the contract extension.

And I would like us to consider bringing this contract back so that at the very least, we're not in trying to engage community at 11:45PM around something that is it's not just a contract extension if we're changing the title. Not in what it means and not, you know, in what it signals. And so I think to honor the process and our own commitment, due diligence is to reconsider that particular aspect of the contract.

Question, mister Registar. Can we have a roll call and vote, please?

Not yet, madam president. Can you note for the record as required by the statute? The fringe benefit note that's under the item. It's to be verbally read into the record before a vote is taken. Can I do it on your behalf?

Can you delegate it to me? I'll read it. It's to be noted $13,800 in additional debt. The superintendent will receive the contractors approved $13,800 in additional pay. These are eligible stipends.

And $88,655.32 and Projected district paid benefits, including health, vision and dental insurance, long term disability insurance, life insurance, membership and professional associations, STRSS STRS, State Teachers Retirement, System, insurance, life insurance, membership and professional association. I I I read that. I'm sorry repeating. And, workers' compensation and Medicare. The foregoing disclosures made pursuant to government code section five four nine five three subsection d three capital a.

Thank you.

Can Yeah. We have a roll call on the vote, please?

Yes on the roll call. Student directors are absent. Director Lotta?

Yes.

Director Williams? Yes, sir. Director Hutchinson? No. Director Barry?

No. Director Thompson?

Yes.

Vice president Bachelor?

Yes.

And president Bruhard?

Yes.

Motion's adopted.

Thank you. We now have, public comment. We have, oh, three minutes for public comment.

Non agenda items.

Non agenda items.

Comment? Public comment? Yes. We have, I believe it's 18 speakers. Do just want me to read off the names?

All three.

Call the first three? Okay. Cynthia Kaufman, M Shane, and Michael Dwacha. What's that? Craig Gordon, Jack Nelson, Anna Rellini, David Bloom, Paulina's, last name starts with a s, Musa Tarik, Judy Greenspan, Ezra Barney, Asada Olukbala.

Go ahead, please.

Well, change in plan. That's all I need. Change in plans. Nothing but good news. I went to tech on the thirtieth to Radium Girls, the true story of women that died of a radio act.

And I will tell you, the two main actors, Sasha and Griffin, they're better than Tom Hanks right now. They're that good. I mean, you should be proud of it. Looking moving ahead to today, I ran at Skyline, and they had the special ed basketball game was gonna occur, some special ed kids are on the track team doing real well. And I ran around, and they ran by me, of course, because I'm a thousand years old.

But, you know, that's the way it goes. Next, I spoke to Valerie in the hallway, and tomorrow and Friday are the is the dance recital and Ms. James' last concerts. Ms. Jay oh, boy.

Give me ten more seconds. Ms. James is outstanding educator, and of course, she's your teacher of the year.

Okay. I'm sorry. We need to adjourn and feel free to email us if I do respond. I'm really sorry we had a packed agenda tonight.

I comment by email.

Okay. Thank you so much. I appreciate it.