{"date":"2020-09-09","type":"Board Meeting","videoId":"JXT4UVeAZw8","audioDuration":10189,"speakers":{"A":{"name":"Janet Lawson","role":"Board President"},"B":{"name":"Dennis McBride","role":"Board Vice President (per ASR confusion; actually listed as President, but acting as participant here)"},"C":{"name":"Alisa MacAvoy","role":"Board Clerk"},"D":{"name":"Superintendent (John Baker)","role":"Superintendent"}},"utterances":[{"start":160,"end":560,"speaker":"A","text":"Bride."},{"start":4160,"end":4560,"speaker":"B","text":"Here."},{"start":5840,"end":12560,"speaker":"A","text":"Jesse Marquez. Here. Trustee Diaz Lilcombe. Vice President McAvoy."},{"start":13520,"end":13920,"speaker":"C","text":"Present."},{"start":14480,"end":77690,"speaker":"A","text":"President Lawson. I'm here. And, yeah, Maria will be joining us shortly, so welcome, everybody. This is now our September 9th meeting of the Road City School Board. Day one of the apocalypse. We hope you all survived. I posted a couple links in the chat box for the agenda and the speaker's card, and I'll go ahead and post those again as more people roll in. So if you would like to speak to the board, please fill out the Google Doc and make sure to include your name so that we know who to unmute when the time comes. And if the item you wish to address is not on the agenda, you'll be called during oral communication. And due to the Brown act, the board is not allowed. The board is allowed to hear your comments, but we cannot have a discussion on that item. If the item you wish to address is on the agenda, you'll be called on during that when that item is being addressed. Public comments are limited to three minutes per person. And just a reminder that because we are meeting via teleconference, all votes are going to be by roll call. So are there any changes to the agenda?"},{"start":80480,"end":93920,"speaker":"B","text":"I'd like to suggest we move agenda item eight into seven, and we make all the action items go to consent."},{"start":95520,"end":96640,"speaker":"C","text":"I'd agree with that."},{"start":100080,"end":112520,"speaker":"A","text":"I'm just going to post this link one more time so people can follow along. Okay. So the bond action items go to bond consent, and all of the items under 11 Action items to consent."},{"start":113080,"end":113640,"speaker":"B","text":"Correct."},{"start":114040,"end":129080,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay. Is everybody okay with that? I think I see nodding. Okay. Any other changes? I think that's probably all we can do. Okay. So is there a motion to approve?"},{"start":130360,"end":131240,"speaker":"B","text":"So approved."},{"start":133000,"end":134520,"speaker":"C","text":"Second, Dennis."},{"start":134520,"end":140240,"speaker":"A","text":"And that was Elisa. Okay, can we have a roll call vote, please? McBride."},{"start":140560,"end":141040,"speaker":"B","text":"Aye."},{"start":141520,"end":259370,"speaker":"A","text":"Trustee Marquez. Aye. Trustee Diaz Locum. Vice President Maccavor. Aye. President Lawson. Aye. So, thank you. We have. Let's see, under oral communications, it looks like we might have one, but I just want. We have. We do have speaker cards. They're all for the COVID 19 discussion and distance learning. So I just wanted to double check with Maria Stockton whether or not your item was about the distance learning or if it was something not on the agenda. Thank you. No, I sent in another speaker card and asked if I could just speak at the beginning and to disregard the COVID 19 card. Okay. So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen with our countdown timer, but go ahead. Oh, go now. Okay. All right. I just wanted. Last board meeting I attended, I talked about a barrier that we did not have here at Clifford School. I just wanted to thank Jude, the principal, for putting in a work order and the young man who came the very next day and measured for the barrier. And the barrier now is in the office as of that Friday. So I just wanted to thank those people for doing that. I feel so much safer from anything that I can be expected to and much happier at work. So thank you. Great. Thank you, Maria, for that feedback. That's all we have under oral communication. The rest are under the item 9.1. So that brings us to item 6, the Sobrato organization report."},{"start":260970,"end":444890,"speaker":"D","text":"Perfect. Thank you, Janet. So what I wanted to do this evening is, is bring the board's attention to something that's exciting that we are embarking upon. And many of you as board members do know that we have been working with the Sobrato Organization prior to Covid, several months prior to Covid. And we've been working with Peter Tsai, who is the vice president of real estate, and Sierra Sousa, who is the development associate for the Sobrato Organization. During our meetings, we had come together in noticing, organizing that the property that is on Jefferson that butts up to our property, the district office, is owned by the Sobrato Organization. Peter came to us months ago to see if we'd be interested in going into a joint venture together with the Sobrato Organization, using their land and our land to develop not only office buildings that they were going to an office building that they were going to develop, but also help us with our workforce housing that we want to develop on our site in those talks that we have had. And Dennis McBride and Elisa McAvoy are on that committee with me. It has come to the attention that Peter has been working and communicating with city council of Redwood City to determine if this project could move forward. And tonight, Peter is going to give an overview of our project, the exploration of our project, this joint project, and how it can move forward in a priority situation where with the city of Redwood City. And during his presentation, please feel free to ask Peter or Sarah any questions you so desire. Because Alisa, Dennis and myself have had many times of meeting with the Sobrato organization where you as a board have not had that chance. So this is your opportunity to ask questions. Peter is also going to give some information regarding the Gatekeeper concept that the city council is moving forward with to determine which projects are going to move forward in a certain priority. And during that time, he will give information on city council meetings that are coming up this month and Then another one coming up in October. So at this point in time, I'd like to introduce you to Peter Tsai and to Sierra Sousa. So, Peter and Sierra, it's yours."},{"start":445850,"end":447850,"speaker":"B","text":"Hi everybody. Can everyone hear me?"},{"start":448890,"end":450250,"speaker":"A","text":"Yes. Great."},{"start":450650,"end":488910,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you. Thank you, Superintendent Baker, for the introduction. You did a great job of introducing kind of the situation we're in. We did a quick kind of slide deck for everyone. If you don't mind me sharing the screen. Let me do that right now. Give me one sec. Let me adjust my screen so everyone can see what's going on. Can everyone see the screen? Yes."},{"start":491870,"end":492270,"speaker":"D","text":"Great."},{"start":492510,"end":701160,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you. Well, good evening everyone. Thank you, Superintendent Baker, board members and families of the Redwood City School District, with everything going on, we hope you and your loved ones are staying safe. And we want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to provide a progress update on the mixed use project. 750Bradford and 603Jefferson. Like John said, you know, the school district is excited about the opportunity and Sobrato is equally as excited about the opportunity to partner together on this project. For those of you unfamiliar with the Silverado organization, we are a local organization that have been part of the Bay area since the 1950s. The ethos of the company is making the Bay Area place of opportunity for all its residents by promoting access to high quality education, career pathways and human services. This is shown through the sobriety of philanthropies that has given over $500 million to local charities since the 1996. This also influences our approach towards real estate. You know, we're long term holders of real estate and so we develop, own and manage our assets for generations. So with that approach, our goal is to strive to become part of the communities we operate in. And so with that, you know, I want to give everyone kind of a, you know, everyone here knows the Redwood City School District. But some important stats to note. You know, the school district educates 7,500 children in Redwood City and neighboring cities. It also employs 750, you know, staff and teachers. So a great reach within the peninsula. The Sobrato organization and the school district have partnered in the past through the SEAL program, which stands for the Sobrato Early Academic Language Program. It was piloted at Hoover in 2008. The basis of the program is to help children from non English speaking households improve their English language ability so they're on par with their peers by the third grade. If this happens, evidence has shown that children are much more likely to succeed academically. The Steel program has been highly successful and has Been implemented throughout California. So with one successful partnership under our belt, the school district and sort of decided why not try for another challenge. And so we're looking to co develop a mixed use project in downtown Redwood City. The site is located in the heart of downtown. It's walkable to the downtown amenities such as restaurants and retail, as well as the Redwood City Caltrain station. Kind of zooming out from the site, you can see that the site is in close proximity to the Redwood City schools, making it an ideal location for workforce housing. Kind of zooming in on the site and to orient you, the site is located at the corner of Bradford and Jefferson. The blue building right here that represents the site that the school board built. School board office building currently sits on the yellow site is the Sobrato site. What you're seeing in front of you is a developed site. So the undeveloped site here you've got, you know, a three story building for the office and you've got kind of"},{"start":701160,"end":701440,"speaker":"D","text":"a"},{"start":703360,"end":948060,"speaker":"B","text":"one story flex office space. On the, on the Sobrato site. What the project would consist of, as you see it is 68 workforce housing units. And it would stay within the envelope of the previously entitled residential project back in 2017. The office would consist of 170,000 square feet and seven stories. And then there would be about 11,000 square feet of flex office space. The school district and Sobrato would be soliciting feedback from the community to engage with the highest and best uses for that site. The project also succeeds in meeting the goals of the Redwood City City Council, which are housing children and youth and transportation. The project provides much needed workforce housing and also improves the quality of life for students, teachers and staff. It also reduces teacher and staff commute times to their schools. Other reasons to partner together are by combining the sites. It allows for a shared parking podium which leads to an efficient parking layout. It also lends itself to shared parking. It also mitigates the impact of the 51 foot culvert that runs through the school district site as kind of depicted here in red. Also, by working together and sharing resources, it allows for economies of scale on the development side. So where are we now in the process? As Superintendent Baker had stated, we started this conversation back in late 2019. Pre Covid we also went to the board in March of 2020 to gain approval to submit a preliminary application for the Redwood City gatekeeper process. And to back up a bit on the gatekeeper process, you know, Redwood City has a downtown precise plan that was put in place years ago. They are in the process of developing a second downtown precise plan. However, there are a lot of projects that are under consideration currently. And Redwood City has basically put together a process in which they want to ask all applicants to submit their project, as well as kind of the community benefits that each project would provide. And they were able to get 10 applications. Out of those 10 applications, the city, the Redwood City City Council, will select about five or so to move forward in the project in the process so that those handful of projects will be allowed to submit a formal application and go through the entitlement process at Redwood City. So the next event, you know, in front of us are the September 21st date. We will be presenting this project to Redwood City city Council. After that, on October 12th, Redwood City City Council will vote on the 10 Gatekeeper projects. As I mentioned, a handful will be allowed to move forward. And if we are selected to move forward, we do think we can put together a formal application by April 2021. This is after the school district has been given time to perform a survey to assess their. To assess its housing needs. And I'm open to take any questions about the project or process now. But with that, I will turn the presentation over to Sierra Sosa, who will go over the design of the project."},{"start":950770,"end":1226940,"speaker":"A","text":"Hey, everyone, I think you can all hear me. Just someone just give me a quick nod. Perfect. Thank you. So when we were thinking about the architecture for the potential project, we wanted to pay homage to Redwood City's history. So the top three pictures are of historic Redwood City, and you can see that the building materials were mainly of brick and wood. And the bottom three pictures are modern interpretations of these elements. So instead of that classic red brick, we're looking at using a white brick while incorporating wood to keep some warmth in the project and go ahead to the next slide. And so when we were thinking about the design with our architects, we wanted it to be obvious that there were two uses for the building, both the office and residential. And so even though this project will only consist of one building, we wanted it to be clear that there were two uses. And so this is a view as if you're looking from Bradford. And the green indents, which will be private, cascading patios for the office, act as a natural separator, splitting the office use from the residential use, while also creating a break in the facade of the front of the building. The residential project will also have its own private side yard, which will be more visible on the next slide. And so these are the massing axons, and they do not show the cascading patios as I just described on the earlier side, but they are being incorporated. So again, the blue portion of the project is the office which fronts Bradford where the current district office is located. And the yellow portion is the residential which is on the corner of Jefferson and Bradford where Sobrato's current building is located. And on the right hand side of the screen you can now see that private residential side yard that we hinted to before. And underneath both the office and residential portions of the project, you can see the shared podium in gray. And so as Peter stated earlier, there are synergies created with a shared podium not only from a cost perspective, but also from a use perspective. Next slide. And so this is a view straight on from the project as if you're looking from Bradford. Again, the office will be seven stories high and the residential portion will be six stories high with approximately 68 units. The rectangular cutout on the bottom left of the office building is due to the building being cantilevered over the culvert which Peter was talking about earlier. And this way the city will have access to that culvert should it need to maintain it in the future. And as mentioned earlier, there was a residential project that was previously entitled at the 603Jefferson site. And so the number of stories and units that currently falls within the previous projects constructs are met within our project as well. But like Peter mentioned, there is a plan to survey district staff and teachers. And so once the survey is completed, we'll have a better idea of the number of units needed as well as what that unit mix is going to look like. Next slide please. And this is the list of Redwood City's downtown precise park plan project compliance checklist. And essentially what this list boils down to is that as designed today, our potential project complies with requirements that Redwood City has set forth within their downtown area. From landscaping requirements to building height to parking. Next slide. I think this is the most exciting slide of our presentation. This is a preliminary conceptual rendering of what the project could look like. So this is as if you're standing from the corner of Jefferson and Bradford. So what you see in front of you is that warm wood that we were talking about with the residential portion. Underneath the residential portion of the project is a flex space which the actual use is tbd. And then behind the residential portion you kind of see a hint of the white brick. And so that is what the office will be. And just on a closing note, we want our potential project to give a nod to Redwood City's historic past, while also looking forward to the future. And thank you all for your time. And like Peter said, we're happy to answer any questions that you guys have. This is really exciting to see some of these projects in the. In the pictures that you've brought forward. So does anybody on the board have any questions or comments? I can't see anybody right now, so"},{"start":1226940,"end":1230500,"speaker":"B","text":"you'll have to speak up before we begin. Go ahead, John."},{"start":1230980,"end":1275390,"speaker":"D","text":"I just wanted to thank both Elisa and Dennis for being on this committee with me, because once we went into the mode of COVID and we went in that direction of all students learning from home in March, they really attended a lot of the meetings with Peter and Sierra and moved the project more forward in a stance to where we are today. So thank you both for doing that. And the other piece is that I know Alisa has been working with the Hart, if I'm not mistaken, to talk about to get us the survey that we can actually share with our staff and our teachers. I don't know if you want to say a little bit about that."},{"start":1276760,"end":1352680,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah, good idea. So the heart survey. So one of the reasons we haven't surveyed staff yet in terms of the need and what people would want and all of that sort of thing is that heart, which I don't know what. I can't remember what that stands for, but I think that most people are familiar with Hart. They do a lot of stuff around helping people get into homes, basically. Anyway, they're designing a survey right now that will be much better than the tools that are available that other school districts have used in the last couple of years. So we decided that it made more sense to wait because we had the time to do that, because one of the things in talking to Hart and others is that we were told that you really want to make sure you have very good data from your own district and community and workforce in terms of what you want to design. Because when Peter and Sierra talk about 68 units, that's a little bit flexible. So those could go up, those could go down depending upon the size of the units that we need to create and the numbers of units we need to create. So in terms of whether they're one bedroom or studios or three bedrooms, the number that 68 is sort of an example, I think, of what we could do."},{"start":1353850,"end":1354250,"speaker":"B","text":"Perfect."},{"start":1354650,"end":1355290,"speaker":"D","text":"Thank you."},{"start":1358250,"end":1360010,"speaker":"A","text":"Dennis, you want to say something?"},{"start":1360570,"end":1363050,"speaker":"B","text":"No. Elisa said what I was going to say about the units."},{"start":1366650,"end":1398710,"speaker":"A","text":"Bennett, can I? Go ahead. Yes. Thank you very much to Dr. Baker and to Dennis and Elisa for all their work. This is really exciting news as we've been talking about it for so long, and it's really needed. I love the design. I just have one question about the materials. The. You said it was going to be wood. So is that harder to maintain or just, you know, thinking of the future cost?"},{"start":1399430,"end":1424720,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah, I'll take that. It's going to be a wood veneer, and so there's different products that are. That can accomplish that. It could actually be wood itself. It could be a product that makes it look like wood. And so we haven't gone into the details yet of what that material is, but we want to give it a certain warmth, and we think that having that kind of wood grain allows for that."},{"start":1426320,"end":1441880,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay. And then my other question has to do with the roof part. Are we able to put solar panels up there, or is it going to be like a garden or what have you got planned for up there?"},{"start":1443960,"end":1499610,"speaker":"B","text":"Nothing planned for the roof right now. Solar panels would probably work. There is a agreement with a previous neighbor about the height limits. But the solar panels, if they are put in a certain location, it will be set back from the street, so that should be okay. But it's something that we want to incorporate as much kind of green into this project as possible. I don't know, for those of you who aren't aware, Redwood City is kind of moving towards an all electric building. And so when in designing this building, in our thought process is to make this as carbon neutral as possible. So things like solar panels, things like all electric, you know, boilers, moving gas, those are things that we're looking at and studying, you know, as an organization, as a whole. And this would be one project in which we would implement that."},{"start":1500490,"end":1547880,"speaker":"A","text":"Great. You just answered my next question. So that's all I have. I really like the green spaces, too, in the trees. Thank you. Thank you. Cecilia, did you want to. Do you have any questions? Sure. Same here. Thank you. To everybody that has participated in all this development. It does look beautiful. The question that I have is based on the number of units, whether it's 68 more, you know, give or take, are all those units going to be strictly for Redwood City teachers and staff, or is this going to be split between city employees? How is that going to work?"},{"start":1550680,"end":1553480,"speaker":"B","text":"I'll leave that to Elisa and Dennis. Do you want to answer that?"},{"start":1558360,"end":1621170,"speaker":"C","text":"Yes. So I think our intention would be that it would be for our own workforce, because at approximately 68 units, we believe we'll have that demand. Just anecdotally from conversations with our workforce and how much they need housing and would like to live in Redwood City. So I think there, you know, that will come up as we do the survey, as we get further along in the planning process. There are ways for you to design the project where you could allow for other, you know, employees to live there or something like that. But I think our intention at least was with our consultation is that it would just be for our employees and we think we could house them. I mean the other thing with that, that's a really good question because the other question is, you know, what's the priority system for who gets housing? How long do they get to stay in the house, what are the rents? Right. All that kind of stuff. So a lot of that will still be designed and we'll be looking to Hart and some other experts who can help us kind of design that once we have the survey from our staff. And I don't know, Dennis, if you wanted."},{"start":1621330,"end":1627210,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah, so I'm sorry, Dr. Egger, can"},{"start":1627210,"end":1635010,"speaker":"D","text":"you talk about, you know, what you sit on at the count at the county colleges, at the city college level about how they went about there?"},{"start":1635890,"end":1756400,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah, so the reason why I don't think there'll be any additional space is the community college. First off, I'm the president of the housing authority for the San Mateo Community College District. And they have 104 units that are one, two and three bedroom. And they have a wait list of two hundred and eighty nine tenured staff and what we would call classified. And we have roughly about the same population of teachers and staff. So I just would be stunned if we have any excess capacity. But the things that we're going to have to work out, which we could start on in kind of a parallel path, is what's going to be the percent that will be for teachers and what will be the percent for staff. And we could work on, you know, how long could each. Not each, but have the groups live in them. So the community college district started out at five years and then they went to seven years and then they had some excess units so they went to nine years and now they have 289 units of backlog. So going from seven to nine probably wasn't a good idea. We're using the county low income housing, I think it's called census, that each year they go out and they come up with the rate that rent should be. And currently originally when it started was supposed to be 60% of market value and we didn't raise the rents for so long, it ended up being like 36% of market value, which is still lower than the county low income housing rates. And so we're raising the rents each year to try to gradually get it up to that county level. But the nice thing about using that county survey is it comes out automatically and you're not having to figure it out. But again, we have, we have the flexibility, whatever we want."},{"start":1759520,"end":1787170,"speaker":"C","text":"And Dennis, maybe you could talk about one of the services that the colleges provided to the, to the staff who were living in the units around finances. So the idea was you would go in there for five years and try to save some money that then you could come out and purchase something. It didn't work out that well because of course, home prices were raising so much. But I don't know if you want to talk about that, that. That's also something that could be provided as a part of this."},{"start":1788210,"end":1805570,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah. So the community College District provides $150,000 interest free loan. When you, when you save up enough money and you, you buy a house. I, I don't know where we would come up with that cash. They, they have a lot more cash than we do, but that's what they do."},{"start":1809680,"end":1854890,"speaker":"C","text":"And then finally, I think just mostly for the audience, because I think the board and district staff know this, but this would be a separate pot of money from general fund money. So it's, it's, it wouldn't be money that would be taken from any of our salaries or classroom activities or, you know, any of the operational sorts of monies that we know are tight. So I think that just needs to be clear that we would be going out and getting a loan for this and then working with partners to basically come up with some funds as well. So it should be an added benefit and not really cost the district extra in terms of coming out of our general fund. And I don't know, Janet, if you want to add to that, or. Dr. Baker."},{"start":1855370,"end":1880050,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah. If you look at the community college district as a model or Jefferson Union High School District, one huge advantage you have is you own the land. So that reduces your cost and you can go out and do certificates of participation. And the goal is to have the rents be below market for your employees, but be high enough that they can fund the loan debt payment."},{"start":1883570,"end":1886850,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah. So then it's basically a neutral cost to us in the end."},{"start":1887560,"end":1887800,"speaker":"A","text":"Right?"},{"start":1888040,"end":1929160,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah. And then the other thing, Peter, I don't know if you covered this or not, that we'll have a lot of things that we'll need to talk about in terms of as we move forward. And the MOU tonight Is basically that we're agreeing to work together for the next couple of years, but either party can leave if, for whatever reason we decide to. But one of the things, if it's not obvious, is that we'll need to find a space for our district office. And so a part of our conversation with sobrado would be housing that district office over in the office space and coming up with terms that could work with. For us, basically, anyway. So I don't know if you mentioned that or not, but I think that's important."},{"start":1930120,"end":1930520,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah."},{"start":1930520,"end":1950530,"speaker":"C","text":"Because people are going to wonder, where's the district office going? And I think our intention would be to work out something where it could be over in that. In the office building. And we would need to have some financial measures that would make it good for the district in terms of making the whole package work. But we'll have conversations about that, correct?"},{"start":1950530,"end":1951090,"speaker":"B","text":"Yep."},{"start":1954130,"end":1965260,"speaker":"A","text":"And then, Peter, I'm not sure if you talked about this, but. Or maybe Sierra wants to. But was there. What's the parking situation involved with Sierra?"},{"start":1965260,"end":1966020,"speaker":"B","text":"Do you want to take that?"},{"start":1966820,"end":1989180,"speaker":"A","text":"Sure. So, yeah, I saw that question in the comment. So we have two. We kind of spoke to this earlier, but we have a shared podium. And so that was that gray portion underneath the blue and yellow blocks. Peter, if you can go back a couple of slides, that might be helpful as a visual going back too far."},{"start":1989180,"end":1990020,"speaker":"B","text":"Can you second?"},{"start":1990910,"end":2040830,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah. Perfect. Yes. Thank you. So that gray section is a shared parking podium, and there's actually two more floors that go underground, and so two below grade parking levels, as well as one at grade parking level for a collective count of 313 parking stalls. And so we kind of talked about this or hinted to it, is that the nice thing about having the shared podium, not only from a cost perspective does it help both parties, but also you have these synergies where when. During the nighttime, when the office parking isn't being utilized by employees, the residents will be able to use the employee parking and then vice versa during the day. So when residents are off at work, the office employees will be able to utilize the residential parking. Great. Thank you."},{"start":2041710,"end":2092970,"speaker":"B","text":"I'd just like to add that park underground parking is extremely expensive. So by sharing it, it reduces the construction cost. I read something recently says it's like $650,000 a stall. Does that sound right, Peter? That's a little bit high. It's not that high, but this location will also be challenged because of the water table that's there because of the culvert and the water table. What we call De watering the site. When you dig the bathtub where the garage will go, water will start pouring into and so you have to pump all that water out. And so we will have that kind of construction issue to deal with on this site. But it does add to cost each. It is a six figure number for underground parking stalls and it's extremely expensive."},{"start":2096170,"end":2103500,"speaker":"C","text":"And we also talked about having bicycle stalls down there as well. So for people who want to bicycle and not drive a car,"},{"start":2106940,"end":2117660,"speaker":"A","text":"that's great. This is very exciting. Is there anything that Sobrato needs from the board before you go to the city council with this?"},{"start":2118940,"end":2141940,"speaker":"B","text":"No. You know, Dr. Baker, Dennis and Elisa have been great. You know, we've been working on the MoU. So if the board is agreeable to it, to, you know, sign the MoU, that would, you know, show that, you know, there is documentation between the school board and us and, you know, further our case as to why we should be selected in this gatekeeper process."},{"start":2143300,"end":2155540,"speaker":"A","text":"Great. Dennis And Elisa and Dr. Baker, thank you guys so much for all your work on this. I know it's been a big project and it's going to continue to be a big project, but it's really exciting. It is, yeah."},{"start":2155540,"end":2176720,"speaker":"C","text":"You know, so one, one question in the chat box that actually probably would be worth Peter or Sierra, if you could speak to this briefly is you mentioned the water table. So when you go down into the parking area, what kind of environmental impact will this have? Could you talk about how that's reviewed and what happens around that?"},{"start":2177200,"end":2257510,"speaker":"B","text":"Oh, yeah, there'll be a full EIR being done on this project. Actually, the water table and the water coming in, that won't be an issue actually environmentally, unless there's pollution, we don't think that there's pollution in the area, but that'll all be studied when we do kind of a site assessment. But the EIR process can take anywhere from 12 to 24 months. And that studies the archaeological impacts, traffic impacts, noise impacts, pollution impacts. So it kind of runs the gamut and that's why the process takes such a long time. But again, allowing us to go through the gatekeeper process allows us to submit an application and then begin the EIR process. If we are not selected to go through the gatekeeper process, then the city council will advise staff to kind of hold the projects until a downtown precise point to is adopted before moving forward. So it adds quite a bit of time in that process because a new downtown plan will take its own EIR and will take its own, you know, 12 to 24 most likely longer because it's a large outreach and community event. So,"},{"start":2261670,"end":2272960,"speaker":"A","text":"Great. Thank you. Were there any other comments or questions? Great. Well, thank you, Peter and Sierra, for being here with us tonight."},{"start":2273440,"end":2274400,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you very much."},{"start":2274560,"end":2275080,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you."},{"start":2275080,"end":2276480,"speaker":"D","text":"Peter, Sierra, thank you."},{"start":2276880,"end":2277440,"speaker":"B","text":"Thank you."},{"start":2281520,"end":2304090,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, so that brings us to where are we? Item we're on the bond consent items, which also includes item 8.1. Do we have a motion to approve? So moved. Maria. Second. Cecilia, can we have a roll call vote, please? Aye."},{"start":2304810,"end":2305290,"speaker":"B","text":"Aye."},{"start":2305610,"end":2312010,"speaker":"A","text":"Trustee Marquez? Aye. Trusty Diaz? Locum? Aye. Vice President McAvoy."},{"start":2313290,"end":2313850,"speaker":"C","text":"Aye."},{"start":2314330,"end":2321570,"speaker":"A","text":"President Lawson. Okay, so now we are on item 9.1. Discussion on COVID 19."},{"start":2323090,"end":2622770,"speaker":"D","text":"So, again, good evening to everyone and to those in the audience. So this is day 15 of distance learning. We've just ended day 15. And during that time and the experiences that we've had over these 15 days, we understand there's been a lot of work by our teachers and by staff to make it as successful as it has been. I want to acknowledge that right up front. It also has created anxiety and stress among all of our teachers and staff to move in this direction. As we all know, none of us were ever trained to go in this direction or to teach children in this manner. We're accustomed to being person to person with kids and to giving them the greatest education that we can, and that we always do. So right now, as staff, we are studying and reviewing instructional days, listening to teachers, listening to parents in regard to synchronous, asynchronous learning. We know that many of our teachers are working over the amount of time that they normally would in distance learning because it's new. It's brand new. Even though they have the Wednesday prep day, when that's their day to prep for, what's going to happen during those four days that they're going to be synchronous and asynchronous with our students. As I said previously, teachers have written and talked and stated that they're working longer hours and spending a lot more time developing their lessons so it can be engaging and provoking to students. I'm very grateful for everything they've done, for the planning for the training they've been through. But I just need to keep reminding myself we can't let this be a gap year for any of our kids. And as we move forward, there are more mandates on us by the state of California where we have to take attendance and that students are definitely doing work and it's work in that academic arena of their grade level. And then we have to show proof to our auditors. So with that being said, we know that we need to review what is being done. We need to make some adjustments and we understand we have to do this together so that we can do it right and make sure that our students are always at the front forefront and also considering the amount of time and energy that it takes teachers to do what needs to be done. So tonight what you're going to hear is from Liz Wolf in the manner of attendance keeping and let me remind you, when we went into it was not distance learning. It was kind of we shared shifted and went into crisis teaching. And there were a lot of concerns that were brought before the state department of Education where community members, parents didn't feel that their students got the right education that they should have received. With all that being said, the state did determine that we had to prove to our auditors when they audit us that we are providing synchronous and asynchronous teaching and instruction and what that means. And so they gave us a plethora of what to do and then for us to determine how to narrow it down to meet our needs. So we're in the process of doing that right now. It's not just like you can just to take attendance like we normally would at the beginning of the day for an elementary school teacher take it and that's it. Now it's taking attendance and determining asynchronous synchronous and then what are you doing, what's being done. So it's a bit more, I will not say complicated but more energy involved on the instructor, the teachers. So we need to work through a manner in which we can get it to where it will be really not as taxing on the teachers and taking away from instructional time that is needed with our students during this distance learning piece. So Liz will provide you an update on that piece and then we will take I believe there are quite a few, if I'm not mistaken, quite a few comment cards from teachers in regard to the workload issue that maybe this is even creating more so on top of what they're doing right now. So Alisa, Yeah."},{"start":2622770,"end":2685000,"speaker":"C","text":"Can I on the mandates are those coming from the state? I know the state legislature had some mandates for us, but how many of it comes from legislature versus the feds versus Department of Ed? And you don't necessarily have to answer it now, but what I'm wondering is that there are opportunities for us as elected school board members to contact our co elected officials and have a conversation about what's Realistic and not realistic or contact the Department of Ed or, you know, whoever. So we don't necessarily have to spend time now. But I'm just, you know, I think we've done this before, right. Where we see onerous mandates coming out of whomever and we could help. Right. Maybe give some phone calls or talk to their staff or whatever. So I don't know if you want to speak to that now or just think about it and get back to us. But I do think there may be an opportunity for some pushback a little bit from us. Like what's realistic."},{"start":2685000,"end":2735810,"speaker":"D","text":"Right, Right, exactly. It started with the state legislature, then it went to the state Board of Education, then it went to superintendent at schools. And so we can talk about that as we go through this. And I know there was a letter that was just sent out today from the state superintendent. And I know superintendents up and down the county have been trying to determine how to best do this with the least amount of additional time and energy spent on it. And it varies from district to district. And no one has it done right yet as of yesterday's superintendent's meeting, because it was a toss. It was a topic. So I'll turn this portion over to Liz, and then I know there are several teachers that want to speak to the workload issue."},{"start":2736930,"end":3875660,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, thank you. Good evening, board members, Dr. Baker and all the teachers and everybody who's out there listening. I'm going to share my screen and hope that this goes better than it did last time. And what I have here. I will put the link to this in the chat when I'm through. I'm not going to go over all of the great detail that's in here, but I wanted to show you some of the backup documentation for kind of where we are right now. I first want to say sincere thank you to all the teachers who have been struggling through this right now and have been jumping right in because they just found out either Friday or yesterday that this was a new report that they were going to need to keep and that we were trying some of our best guidance that we have gotten from either the state or from the county office as to how to make this manageable. And they're trying really hard. And I'm really looking forward to the feedback that we get from them in the next couple of weeks after they've sort of settled into this record keeping to see how we can improve this process. So this, again, this is just a whole bunch of information that will be available for you if you want to click on any of these links. Again, I'll put it in the chat in just a few minutes. But Elissa, to get to your question, this really is based on that Senate Bill 98 that came out over the summer that had a lot of requirements for the minimum number of minutes, outreach, recording, engagement, all sorts of stuff. And so this was a component of that. But what wasn't developed back two months ago and only just developed a couple weeks ago is what the recommendation of what this kind of engagement and attendance accounting should look like. And the start date for it. It came out in the middle of August and the start date for it was September 1st. So we had very little turnaround time. But this kind of gives that information and it's access the websites. And then this is a few slides from Santa Clara County Office of Education, the department where I used to work before I came back to Rowan City, who has been trying very diligently to provide guidance and again, more information probably than you want. But these are the components that need to be in this new requirement, right? So we need to give information about the number of instructional minutes and days that we are documenting the daily participation for each student, which basically is the attendance. And so we've been doing that. But then we're also keeping this weekly engagement record that shows how each student is participating in synchronous or asynchronous instruction. We're documenting the absences. And then as Dr. Baker said, we need to be developing that tiered approach to re engagement as we see that students are not engaged or absent for longer than two or three days. So these, these components will be audited. As Dr. Baker said, what we don't know exactly is what the auditor guidance is yet, because of course that wasn't developed simultaneously with this other guidance that is going to be presented, I guess to the auditors in December. And so what we may find out then is that the pathway that we're on needs to be once again modified in some way because it is important that we do meet the expectations of the auditors because those have to do with our funding. And so mostly, again, what we're looking for is synchronous or asynchronous instruction. And then how much of the day that that takes up verifying the daily participation and then tracking of the assignments. And this is the component that's probably a little bit more than what anyone expected that they were going to have to do in terms of providing this kind of information to the auditors. So again, a whole bunch of stuff here, and I'm not going to go through all of that. So there are a number of ways that we can keep track of all of this information. The CDE and I'll show this to you in just a minute. Put out an optional format to use that had all of the components in it. And so that was one option. Another option is to figure out how to use our student information system. That is something that we have worked on. And so we'll be talking about that how we're using PowerSchool in the upper grades to connect all this information into one report and then using a combination of the PowerSchool or our student information system with a weekly engagement record or to come up with our own template. So the other component is that this needs to be a weekly engagement record and that the teachers are expected. Excuse me, to certify the weekly record. Right. So this is another component that is new. And we'll show you again how we have figured this out. And so we're looking at right now asking the teachers to sign their weekly engagement record with cursive font. But we are probably going to have to look to see if we can find a way for digital signatures to be added to these reports because we're not in person to be able to just sign them and turn them into the office. Right. That's not an option for us right now. Okay. Does it have to be done each day? And then the question is we have to take that attendance and that accounting for engagement each day. But the verification can be done on a daily basis. But the recommendation, it's done once a week or it can be done every other week. So this is the CDE template that came out that we didn't like. But it has all the components on it. It has the information for each day of the week. It has a spot for what are the summary of the assignments for each day of the week. And then a place where a teacher would mark was this. Right now there's no in person instruction. So they would mark that. It would be a partial day of synchronous and most likely a partial day of asynchronous except for Wednesdays which would be a full day of asynchronous activity in some cases. In other cases and in some schools there's there's some partial interaction also with some of the additional people on site and PE plus and that kind of thing is going to be coming up on Wednesdays. But so this is page one of the CDE template and page two is that for each student they would need to mark one of these codes every day. Right. And the code 100 means that there's no participation. Basically, the student was absent. Code 200 was the in person instruction, which we're not doing at this time. 0300 would be if the student was absent and there was outreach to the family and they, the office manager or the teacher, whoever is doing this outreach, spoke with either the student or the parent and guardian to find out where the student was, why the student wasn't connecting with, was the student actually sick? Was the student not able to connect? What were the reasons? They could mark 300 that there had been that contact, and then 400 would be the assigned work submitted, and then 500 would be something other, like independent study. So in looking at the CDE template, we realized if we wanted to do something on our own, there were some things that we could put pull off this to create our own format. And so we would need to look at identifying the occasional educational program and making sure that we include the delivery method, the synchronous and asynchronous partial day connections, and that we would need to put in the summary of the assignments that happened on those days and that the student participation is linked to the totality of the day rather than the individual parts of the day. So that's something that we understood too, that there may be students who are showing up in the morning and then not showing up in the afternoon, but that still counts as daily participation. Right. We would need to be paying attention to the students who are not showing up all day long and keeping track of that. But that's not what this format is for. Right. So that kind of record keeping doesn't have to happen in this format. And really, as Dr. Baker said, the primary purse purpose of this is to ensure that students aren't falling through the cracks, that we are paying attention to what the program is that we're offering, that we are supplying the minimum number of minutes of educational instruction with synchronous, asynchronous, and potentially in person in the future. And that we're keeping track of all of that. So what we are using at this time for the elementary grades and in some schools the upper grades are using, this is a format that was designed by the Santa Clara County Office of Education to pull all these pieces together where they populate themselves. Right. So that there's a little less clicking that the teachers need to do. So this page here is the final page. And what we have done is we populated this information for each teacher with every student in their classroom. So these pages are coming to them, populated with student names, and they will make a copy of it each week. Right. And keep it in a folder. But what this does, and I can't do it for you on here, but you'll be able to see it when you open up the link on this is that it will automatically fill some of the boxes, depending on what you click. And so for Monday, for example, the teacher would need to put in the day of the week here. And then again, there's no in person instruction. So this is at this time. So this is blank. And the teacher can click partial day, partial day for synchronous and asynchronous instruction, because that's basically what every day is. The part here that's I'm sure feeling like it's the straw that's breaking this camel's back is that they need to write in a little summary of their assignments for the week. Right. Or for this day. And so what we've done is we've given them some examples of what that might look like. It doesn't have to be a lot, right? It just needs to be something that gives an update about what the students are learning in class on that day. We gave some examples around subject areas, right? And so that basically they could say in reading, they're working on chapter one of benchmark book one, or they're reading level A, excuse me, it's terrible. And then in math, maybe they're working on sums up to 10. In social studies and science, they're working on SEAL Unit 1 and ELD, they're working on nouns, right. So they would just put like a little synopsis in of their elementary classroom. If teachers are sharing students, then they would collaborate on what this was. If one teacher was just teaching language arts and social studies, they could write a sentence or two and then they would borrow a sentence from the teacher who was teaching math and science and write that in there. Right. It does not have to be real specific. The auditors are not going to be looking to say, see what exactly we were teaching every day, but they are going to be looking to see that what's in this box changes over time. So this, and this could be something that's filled out for the week. Right. Again, exit Wednesday would be different, but Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday could look very similar. And so student, what the teachers are doing is marking again, the names are filled in. If the student is absent and does not show up whenever the attendance is taken, they're marking no participation. And what you can't see right now is that when that happens over in this category over here, absent shows up, right? So it automatically populates that the child is absent. If the child is there, then they're marked for daily instruction because they are there. And that this will then mark the child as present. If the child is absent and there is a contact with the student or the parent, then that also will change the fact that the student there is not no participation, but we have an excuse about why that student was absent. So this, this is populating on this page. And then we'll go back to that page that we looked at previously. Here it is where this entire page gets populated, right? So as they fill out the daily spreadsheet and it is filling out this overall weekly spreadsheet, which is what they will need to certify at the end of the week. So those daily week, those daily pages populate this page. And again, I know one of our teachers has had a little trouble with that. And so we're still working on making sure that this happens so that at the end of the week all of this is populated for them. And then they need to write their name in here and sign it and date it. And then these are kept in the folders that the teachers have. And what we will are figuring out to do again, because we just started this this week, is what to do with all of this information. Are we keeping it? How is it at a school site level? How often will this be sent to us? And so some of that will be information that as we hear more clearly from the auditors about how they will look at that information if they want it kept district wide, if they want it kept it school sites, you know, we can figure that out. So this is an example of what one of those pages might look like in terms of it also records the weekly attendance and not an Academy Award appearance. But I did make a video that I know people have watched over and over again where I explained just what I just told you to give that to the teachers. And so far no one has complained too much about having to watch because it's long. It's like 18 minutes long. It's different now in the middle schools because PowerSchool will do a lot of this record keeping for the teachers who are using the PowerSchool gradebook feature. So teachers in the middle school. So I know that MIT and Kennedy are using the PowerSchool option. The teachers who are in the K8s or the 38 have this as a possibility if they prefer to use this, or if they prefer to use the format that the lower grades are using, they both give the same information. And I really want to thank Sabrina Adler, who piloted this quickly at her site with a couple teachers for a couple of days and was able to come up with some ways to make this work. Well, teachers who are using PowerSchool for power grade are already submitting their daily assignments because this is how they're grading their students and they put in an amount of either points or time that they want the students to be spending on the assignment. So as they keep attendance in PowerSchool and they keep using their gradebook, their gradebook pro for assignments, we are able to connect that information into one spreadsheet for the teachers so that the teachers have all that information already in place for them, extracting it from PowerSchool. If teachers in the middle school are not putting their assignments in PowerSchool and they're keeping them, in fact, in Google Classroom, we've also found that there is an add on into Google Classroom that for a small amount of money will extract the information out of their Google Classroom assignments and populate it in PowerSchool in the PowerSchool Assignment section. So the teachers in the middle school have that option. They can either put their assignments directly into PowerSchool and many of them do, or they can have this plugin or add on that takes the information out of their Google Classroom assignments and adds it to their PowerSchool record. So there's information in here about that. And again, thank you to Sabrina and to the teachers at Kennedy who tried this out for us. And again, these are early days in the implementation. This is the first week. And so as we go through this, we're looking forward to finding out again more clearly what the expectation of this is. And that won't be for another couple of months. But in the meantime, are there additional ways that we can streamline this process, knowing that these are still components that must be made available for our auditors in terms of, of attendance and engagement and participation. And that's it for me. And I'm going to go ahead and put the URL in the chat. I'd be happy to answer any questions. Go ahead. So just kind of a question and perhaps clarification. When teachers are taking attendance, attendance is one thing and participation is another. So if they're there present but they're not participating, they're still going to be marked there, but just no participation or is there going to be. You're going to be marked absent if you don't participate. So the assumption is if you're in the room, if you're there, that you're participating in some way. Right. And so this was one of the questions that one of the schools had in terms of how are we defining participation? How are we defining assignments turned in? Do they need to be completed? Do they need to be graded? And so we've said that the default click for them is that they're there for daily instruction. Right. That they're there. And that may not mean that they're there all day, but at this point in time, that isn't the expectation that we're keeping track of that on this format. So we know that many schools are keeping track of that in another way in terms of who's there part time, who's there, you know, who doesn't come back in after lunch, and all those kinds of things. That is very important information that people are keeping and recording and are going to be using as they think about scheduling and many modifications moving forward. But that isn't required on this particular format. We're going for the minimalist approach on this format. If they're there at all, they're counting for being there. Just as right now in attendance. If you're there for just a few minutes, you're counted as being present for the whole day. Right. That's how California defines attendance. And so we're using that same definition. If you're there at all, then you're also participating. It's if you're not there at all that we need to make that contact. Anybody else? Yeah."},{"start":3875660,"end":3895770,"speaker":"B","text":"I had a couple questions first. Thank you, Liz. The first is we've received some emails from teachers, and I'm curious, is attendance the biggest issue now, or is there two or three other big ones that are creating all the overburdened teachers?"},{"start":3895850,"end":3916570,"speaker":"A","text":"Well, I think there's a lot of things that our people are feeling overburdened. Right. And this format was just one of those things, I think, just in terms of just the. Just the planning and all of that is much huger, I think, than we thought it would be. So they're all taking attendance already. Right. And so attendance isn't the."},{"start":3916960,"end":3917480,"speaker":"B","text":"The burden."},{"start":3917480,"end":3977400,"speaker":"A","text":"And I think what is a burden is that if they're taking attendance in Power School for the middle school teachers, that's counting. But if for the elementary teachers, PowerSchool in this format don't talk to each other. So basically, they're having to click twice. So they're clicking in PowerSchool and they're clicking on the Attendance in this particular format. Now, it's possible they could just click on attendance in this particular format, and then if it's shared with the office manager or someone else, they go through and click PowerSchool. I mean, that would be something that I know that they're talking about at the school sites. I think it's the component of needing to say a little something about what their daily lesson plans are. And again, it's not a complete lesson planning format, but they have to write something in there about what it is that the kids are participating in when they are participating. So it is an extra click for daily participation. Right. But I don't know if that's what feels overwhelming or if it's the fact that they have to do also a little bit of recording of what they're doing on that day."},{"start":3979240,"end":3987240,"speaker":"B","text":"So if. If you were to go back a year, how long did it take a teacher to do attendance and how long does it take now in the new system?"},{"start":3989560,"end":4041430,"speaker":"D","text":"But previously, it was really easy, Dennis. I mean, when we were in person learning, it was. It was not. Not an issue. The. The attendance. Don't forget now the teachers are planning for synchronous asynchronous teaching. And I think I told you, you know, as I meet with you individually and I know I spoke to you yesterday, but. No, I learned this yesterday. Someone who is very. I'm very close to, has three grandchildren, and she sat with a granddaughter and who was a second grader. Teacher was doing a phenomenal job, and she was with groups of 10, a group of 10 children. But she said within that time, the poor teacher, she said there were 10 second graders and they were all over the map."},{"start":4041750,"end":4042790,"speaker":"B","text":"All over the map."},{"start":4043509,"end":4146200,"speaker":"D","text":"Teacher kept saying, look at my face. Look at my face. And then showing me, look at my face. You're not. Turn around. Turn around. So it is a different ball game for our teachers. And I will say, especially for those teachers who have. Have the tk, the K, the first, the second. As this acquaintance, more than acquaintance, very good friend, said to me, I give hats off to that teacher. Hats off to that teacher. I was with my grandchild for that period of time, and then she went on to the next group. And then my grandchild had asynchronous work to do. So she got busy and did it. But the teacher was coming back, you know, so it is. It is really, really so different now compared to what we were all trained to do and work with students in person, make sure that they understood just by looking at what they were doing. And walking around, you could tell if the child didn't get it. Get that child and let's, you know, let's do it something. Let's do something. Let's do it a different way. Let's try it like this. Do you. And work on. On it. It's more. It definitely is more. That's why it was very important for them to have the Wednesday prep day. So to answer your question, I think attendance as it was previously before this, I think piece of cake. Now it's now with the added work that needs to occur, the added time. And then you want to make sure that you have your. You're prepared and ready to move forward with your synchronous and then your asynchronous. It's a different ball game. It really is."},{"start":4148120,"end":4149080,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay, thank you."},{"start":4153160,"end":4199300,"speaker":"A","text":"So we do have a number of comment cards on this unless there were other comments or questions from the board. But this point I see none. Okay, so Dr. Baker, do we want to take the comment cards next? Okay, so I will share my screen with my timer countdown. We'll have three minutes per person and I am going to take the names in order that I received them. And so that's actually going back to September 5th. So if you filled out a comment card tonight will get to you. But there are a number of people ahead of you, so we'll get there. So our first speaker is Michelle Torito and there's a number of Michelle's but I'm not sure if Michelle Torrido is here."},{"start":4204100,"end":4205700,"speaker":"B","text":"There's a Michelle that's a guest."},{"start":4208180,"end":4211060,"speaker":"A","text":"Michelle, is that you? Michelle Torrido,"},{"start":4214190,"end":4214990,"speaker":"D","text":"she's a guest."},{"start":4217390,"end":4221470,"speaker":"B","text":"Just, just says Michelle and I've unmuted."},{"start":4224830,"end":5106430,"speaker":"A","text":"She still looks like she's still muted. Let me. Yeah. Is that Michelle Trita? Yes. Hi. Hi. Go ahead. Okay, hang on because now my screen just took my. Okay. Good evening. My name is Michelle and This is my 21st year teaching. It's my 15th year in Redwood City School District and I'm currently a middle school teacher teaching science at Clifford School. I also currently serve as the RCTA grievance chair and I am a member of the RCTA bargaining team. My purpose tonight is to share the concerns of so many of our districts teachers and to support their challenges and to work to find a solution for all. I first want to acknowledge that we as teachers knew that distance learning would be a challenge. Yet we knew for the safety of all students and staff it was the best choice for all. We knew that there would be a learning curve bumps in the road, a few long days and lots of training. With that being said, what we didn't know is what was to come. Excessive planning, hours upon hours of grading, dozens of daily emails, meetings after meetings, IEPs, special ed reports, weekly newsletters required weekly website updates, required daily parent phone calls, daily Google Meets for extra help with students, especially sped students. State paperwork mandates teacher check ins, dozens of educational platforms to learn and implement weekly and the list goes on and on. These are just a few examples. This is in addition to the five to six hours a day of on screen live teaching. How does this fit in a teacher's seven hour workday? The amount of screen time students and teachers are spending is six hours a day in most cases, which can be seen in my opinion as unhealthy for both children and adults. The amount of time teachers are spending online working most 10 to 12 hours a day including Saturdays and Sundays is also unhealthy. A typical schedule in the elementary school ranges from 8:30am to 2:30pm with only a 30 minute lunch and a 10 minute break. The state mandate in the middle school is 240 minutes a day. Synchronous and asynchronous learning. Why are we killing the teachers and our students with 280 to 300 minutes a day online? Something has to give. Something needs to change. We need a break. The kids need a break. We don't want yoga classes. We don't want therapy sessions. We want to do our jobs and do it well for the kids. Because at this rate we are going to burn out at a rapid rate. All of us, the kids included. Thank you. Thank you Michelle. Next we have Christina Granado. Hi Christina. Go ahead. Oh, looks like you're muted again. Hello. Hi. Hi. I'm Christina granado. I'm a 15 year veteran teacher and this is my first year being an online teacher. I love teaching, working and creating. My workload this year has increased so much more than ever. Even though my third grade team and I work very well together and we have broken up all of our lessons so that each teacher's in charge of one subject is the workload still is incredible. This past weekend alone I worked Sunday and Monday, allowing myself Saturday off. I don't understand why we would have to fill out an I mean I do understand by law why we have to fill out an additional form. However, couldn't this data be managed by collecting some of those pieces of information that we are already providing to our students, such as newsletters and daily schedules that are provided to students? Something needs to be done. Because like Michelle said, we're approaching burnout at this point, and we need the support of the board and we need the support of the board to help us do our job well. And that's. I think that's what most teachers want to do, is do our job really well. So I appreciate the board for listening to me. Thank you very much. Thank you, christina. Next is vanessa sanchez. Hi, Vanessa. Go ahead. Hi. I'm a second grade teacher in the district. I want to start by saying how proud I am of my students and their families. Their perseverance has been very inspirational. Unfortunately for me, inspiration alone has not been enough to keep me going. Each week, I'm contracted to work 32.5 hours, if you don't count lunch. It's the 15th day of school and I'm currently averaging an 82.5 hour work week. I couldn't believe it myself. This means that I'm working an added 50 hours a week unpaid. My administration has been trying their best to help with some of the workload, but it's just not enough. Recently, teachers asked the administration to give guidance on allocation of time for all of the tasks assigned to us. Their response was that the majority of tasks could be completed in the 6.5 hours that we get on Wednesdays. I'm very grateful for this planning day, but it's taking me 50 hours to complete the tasks that they think that they claim can be done in 6.5. This blatant disregard for our collective cry for help is frightening. I look to you for guidance because these expectations are not sustainable. Thank you. Thanks, Vanessa. I think next we have Rita Melton. Hi, Rita. Go ahead. Hi. Thank you. So I wanted to address teacher workload. I have been a teacher for many years and I have never felt this level of challenge as a teacher. And this is not news. First and foremost, I would like to say that I deeply appreciate that we are able to work from home. The community that we serve is much safer for it. At my site at Avalante Selby, I have felt that our administration have been listening with compassion. Yet last Friday, RCTA sent a letter addressing the untenable nature of teacher workload to all principals. And the letter sent in response from the DO was devoid of compassion. RCTA has reached out in good faith, but this was not shown in return. I became a teacher to help students learn and grow. This is a job that I undertake with a deep level of compassion for my students so that you can understand what I mean when I say this is untenable and unsustainable. An in person lesson may have taken me anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to prepare. This is now taking me four to five times as long. Teachers are at a breaking point trying to meet the needs of our students. The letter we received in response shows a complete lack of humanity and understanding. I think that we can all agree that we would never treat our students with a lack of empathy, but why is it okay to respond to teachers in this manner? The letter was sent to state that we are asking for direction to prioritize our duties as we cannot do it all. What we heard back shows that the question was not heard. Thank you for the time. Thank you rita. Where are we? Michelle ban. Hi. Hi Michelle. Hi. You want to reset your timer? Great. I am Michelle Bond and I teach at northstore. Before I begin, let me just say that I do appreciate the fact that the district was given directives from the state and I realized that you're trying to comply with them. Let me also just say in yesterday's paper it was reported that dentists are seeing an unprecedented increase of patients with cracked teeth, yet another consequence of the increased stress loads we're all laboring under. Our physical as well as mental health continues to deteriorate Since Back to school Virtual learning began this school year, I, like many of my colleagues, have been voluntarily working upwards of 12 hours a day plus weekends. I am working way above my pay scale and I am fast approaching my load bearing capacity. I have bought the ergonomic chair, upgraded my Internet capacity, attended more PD and watched more YouTube tutorials in the past six months than in the past six six years. Why? Because I too believe in our North Star mantra Do what's best for kids. The September 4 response to the RCTA the teachers reflects a growing gap between administrative expectations and on the ground troop reality. In addition to spending hour upon hour developing lessons, learning platforms and building relationships, we're now expected to take attendance in every class, which is time consuming, especially when I don't even know all my students yet, especially those who don't keep their cameras on, and to enter an assignment and a grade for every student in every period of every day. I am actively synchronously teaching from 8:30 till 3pm four days a week. For the fifth day you've provided a list of tasks which we should be attending that runs longer than June 21. My eyes hurt, my back hurts, I'm grinding my teeth and I have whiplash from closing virtual windows, opening virtual windows, taking a breath and joining the Next, meet with a smile on my face to greet each incoming class. And I am committed to this process. But every minute I'm required to perform clerical tasks is a minute you take away from not only my ability to create and deliver quality instruction, but it is a minute you take away from my students. Right to receive the high quality instruction we have promised them. And in the end, we are judged for our response to teaching in the time of COVID This admission will not be forgiven. Ultimately, the directive may be not only the straw that breaks this teacher's back, but the grind that breaks this teacher's teeth. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. Next up is Sharon Tsuchiyama. Hi, Sharon. Go ahead. Hi. You said that very well. By the way, I'm Sherry Tucciamo. Good evening. First, I'd like to thank the school board, trustees, Dr. Baker and the district. I've heard some of the acknowledgments they had today of the teacher's workload. I know that you also have had your share of workload overload too, and I appreciate your time and effort. What I'd like to talk about is our teaching schedules. While I'm glad we're distance learning, I do miss my kiddos terribly. And like Vanessa, I'm really proud of them because they have been logging on and they have been doing work and so that part of the job has been really good. Unfortunately, like other teachers, I know my lessons are taking conservatively four hours to plan out, prepare all the materials, record and upload all the lessons. And I'm trying very hard not to create busy work, but really engaging in rigorous assignments which take time and research to find the right things to to post. Like most teachers, I've always happily put in many more hours than are required. But right now I think I also am working 10 plus hours a day, seven days a week. And the schedule that I've been told you must follow consists about five and a half hours of live lessons from 8:30 to 2:00'. Clock. While I'm teaching, I'm fielding students tech questions, troubleshooting and answering text from parents. I know the district has said we should address these during office hours, but parents are understandably concerned about their child missing a live lesson. And we the teachers are the ones they go to. This is about equity. I need to make sure all my students have access to the live lessons as they are happening. I understand that. My understanding right now is that we have little flexibility with our schedule. And what I really would like most is, is flexibility. The flexibility to create a schedule that works for my families and me and not one that aligns with every other grade level. The flexibility to hold more small groups and less large cohorts. The flexibility to utilize office hours differently. The flexibility to build strong relationships with my students instead of having mountains of paperwork. Though we are distance learning, I am still the one who understands my students and I need to do what's best for them. Thank you for listening. Thank you. Thanks, sharon. Next is megan blackburn."},{"start":5110990,"end":5117390,"speaker":"B","text":"There's a call in listener, but there's. When I try to search for Megan, there's nothing there."},{"start":5118430,"end":5126600,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay. I cannot see the participant list right now, so if maybe. Megan, if you're here, you can raise your hand."},{"start":5129400,"end":5131480,"speaker":"B","text":"Oh, there we go. She popped up. Okay."},{"start":5135080,"end":5650130,"speaker":"A","text":"Hi, Megan. Go ahead. Good evening. My name is Megan Blackburn and I am a 5th grade teacher at Roosevelt. I would like to start by saying thank you to the school board and Dr. Baker for taking the time to hear our concerns and suggestions. I would also like to say that my passion for teaching has always been based on doing what is best for kids. My concerns tonight are twofold. One, our schedules need to change and two, teachers are drowning with our current workload. To my first point, our schedules need to change. I teach fifth grade. They are 10 years old. I can tell you that staring at computer screens from 8:30am to 2:30pm Every day is not good for my kids. I can tell you that having to try to follow a schedule where a new cohort or small group begins every 30 minutes is not good for my kids. They feel rushed, they have unanswered questions. They simply have comments and connections that they want to share with their teacher and their classmates. And they can't. I constantly have to tell them that I don't have time. Instead of rigid schedules, we need flexible schedules that allow us to adjust teaching on the fly to meet the needs of our students. To my second point, while doing what is best for kids has always been my main focus, I have realized that I cannot be the teacher they deserve due to the unrealistic expectations that have been placed on us. When I speak to people who are not teachers, I explain it like I present all day. I give a day long presentation. So when do I prepare for these presentations? If I am live from 8:30 to 2:30, I am never not live with kids. Except for my break and lunch. We have been told to complete this on Wednesdays during our 6 1/2 hour prep. I cannot plan 5 math lessons, 5 ELA lessons, 5 science lessons, 5 ELD lessons plus SEL activities in 6 1/2 hours. In fact I have to plan 10 of each, not 5 because I have to plan for synchronous and asynchronous lessons for the same time block. This cannot be done well in six and a half hours. And on top of that we have been told we also need to assess student work, enter grades, communicate with parents, modify for RSP students and newcomers, answer emails, maintain attendance logs in addition to many other tasks all on the same day. This is not possible. My contract is based on a seven hour workday. I started working at 5am today, not waking up working. It is now 8, 30, 10, 11, 12 hour days are the norm right now. Working weekends is the norm right now. I find myself on the verge of tears daily, oftentimes during my lunch as I struggle to find the time to do what is best for my kids while also meeting the demands that have been unfairly placed on us. This is simply not sustainable. Thank you for your time. Thank you Megan. See next is Monica Voltz. Hi Monica, go ahead. Awesome. Dear RCSD family, I first would like to say that there's no other school I would ever rather work for than Roosevelt School. I adore my co workers, my students and the entire RCSD family. It comes with every single year thus far I have been proven time and time again that RCSD has the sweetest, kindest students ever. I'm speaking today on behalf of our workload concerns. I'm concerned for the teachers whom I care so deeply for and myself. We normally work outside of contract hours, however now since distance learning we have been working a minimum of 10 hour days 7 days a week just to make it by. We care so much for our students and each other that we never want to disappoint and we keep pushing ourselves. However, I see that working these many hours is impacting our personal lives heavily. Not only does this impact our personal lives but the added stress impacts our students and their families. I think very highly of our CSD and now it is essential for teachers to be heard. I'm a teacher and a person that believes in anything is possible. However, if we want this heavy loaded schedule to be possible in our classrooms that requires a ton of outside contract hour work. As for the students, it is not in their best interest to be clicking on multiple links and constantly looking at a screen all day long. Teachers have become Google Meet robots that are constantly just pushing out link after link and assignment after assignment. Students need to feel nurtured and cared for by their teachers just as teachers need to feel nurtured and cared for by their administration and their district. We are grateful for our Wednesday prep days, but even this six and a half hour workday is not enough to juggle lessons. Planning, reading and responding to emails, contacting parents with their questions and concerns, filling out daily attendance sheets, grading all the assignments from each week, and so much more. Distance learning has had some perks though. I see some students taking initiative and becoming proactive with their own learning. They are determined to finish their work independently, view comments we make on their assignments and visit in on office hours with any questions that they have. In order for this to operate smoothly, we need to be able to have time to do so. With our current workload and schedule, it is difficult to view student work in each day, comment on their tasks and answer their office hour questions. For every single student, I'm speaking to you in need of support and help. Just like my students would reach out to me, they need my support just as much as teachers need your support. I have my students best interests in mind 100% of the time and I don't believe the schedule has their best interests in mind. I've never seen another district that puts in so much heart, time and energy back into their work like our district does. But in order to continue to do so, we absolutely need support and a lighter workload. Respectfully yours Monica. Thank you Monica. Next is Heather Irani. Hi Heather. Go ahead. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay. Good evening everyone. My name is Heather Irani Farah And I teach first grade bilingual at Hoover. I've been in education 31 years and in Redwood City School District for 18. I've been to board meetings but this is the first time I'm speaking. I was compelled to speak tonight because I'm so concerned about teachers massive workload. And massive is not an exaggeration. When I started at RCSD my daughter was a baby and now she's in college and as I spent all day Monday this week, Labor Day, working at school, she too was there several hours helping me again. Today I was in my classroom all day and again she was also there. The work is just too much for one person. I thought it was just me and my grade level partner working around the clock. But then I started talking to colleagues all over the district and realized they too are working a ridiculous number of hours each day. Tonight I will be working until about 11 o' clock as I do every night to finish all the tasks required for my students. And please believe me when I tell you this level of work is Simply not sustainable. Thank you so much. Thank you, heather. Next is chelsea williams. Hi, Chelsea. Hi. Hi. Board Trustees. My name is Chelsea Williams and I have been a middle school district math teacher in the Redwood City school district for 15 years. I first want to thank you for your decision in starting this year in 100% distance learning and allowing us the opportunity to teach either from home or the classroom. I teach three different math curriculums, a homeroom class and an enrichment class. On synchronous learning days, I spend from 8:15 to 2:00 clock instructing my students or monitoring their virtual teamwork. The remaining 60 minutes are dedicated to office hours in which I am expected to dedicate time to students who need extra help, respond to the 40 plus emails I get a day, respond to the 50 plus comments and questions from students on Google Classroom, troubleshoot tech issues with parents, students and myself, and attend grade level meetings and check ins with admin."},{"start":5651170,"end":5653210,"speaker":"C","text":"On the Wednesday prep day, I am"},{"start":5653210,"end":5700610,"speaker":"A","text":"expected to plan a week of rigorous and engaging lessons for each of my three different math curriculums and one enrichment class. Modify lessons for SPED students, work with this RSP teacher to provide support to those RSP students, assess student work, provide feedback and enter grades. Update Google Classroom with weekly and daily agendas, posts and assignments and create student engagement records for my classes that include a description of the entire day and a record of student involvement. In order to comply with the state mandates. If I were to accomplish all these tasks on my Wednesday workday, my day would be closer to a 12 hour day. Lessons easily take four to five times longer to create than when we were in the physical classroom. And I'm spending at least eight hours a week creating lessons for the four synchronous teaching days. The time to assess student work, provide"},{"start":5700610,"end":5703450,"speaker":"C","text":"meaningful feedback and grade virtual assignments is"},{"start":5703450,"end":5729270,"speaker":"A","text":"much more time consuming than if I are grading physical papers in my classroom. I love teaching math, I love my job and I love my students. But working an average of 30 plus hours a week beyond my contracted hours is sustainable. I'm concerned for the well being of all the teachers, support staff and ultimately the students if work if this workload continues at this rate. Thank you for your time. Thanks, Chelsea. Next is Sandy Hoover."},{"start":5737270,"end":5738390,"speaker":"B","text":"Don't see her."},{"start":5738870,"end":5742960,"speaker":"A","text":"I think I was under S. Hoover when I checked earlier."},{"start":5746880,"end":5747440,"speaker":"B","text":"Okay."},{"start":5751840,"end":6678480,"speaker":"A","text":"Hi Sandy, go ahead. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Okay, thank you. Good evening to all of you members of the board. I'm Sandy and I'm the TK teacher at Clifford. I've been lucky enough to teach there for seven years and Once again, I've started the school year with another fabulous group of children and patient, supportive parents. This is always a very busy time of the year, but this year has created a new level of stress and anxiety. My workload has doubled. Teaching synchronously and providing asynchronous lessons involves planning, prepping and delivering twice the work. If I were teaching in person, I put in 12 hour days, five days a week so I can have time to spend the weekend with my family. And even that is not enough time to finish all of my duties that I need to perform at school. Helping students and parents navigate tech issues, checking lessons on seesaw, teaching lessons, creating packets, filming videos, answering emails from staff and parents. That's impossible to do in a seven hour day. Even while working through my lunch period and my break. Not only am I working too many hours, but I'm not sleeping well. The increase in screen time coupled with the anxiety often wakes me up in a panic in the middle of the night and I can't get back to sleep. At this rate, I'm not sure how long I'm going to be able to continue at this intense level. I see no let up in the workload in the near future and for me this is absolutely not sustainable in the long term. Thank you very much. Thank you, Sandy. Let's see. Next we have Christy Herrera. Hi Christy, go ahead. Hi, good evening. My name is Christy Herrera. I'm a kindergarten teacher at Hoover and this is my 20th year teaching. Kindergarten is not an easy grade to teach, but it's one that I love and enjoy immensely. I have an amazing class with supportive parents, but I'm here to talk about the workload. Enter COVID 19 in this reality of remote teaching. Thank you, John, for acknowledging earlier how challenging it is right now. It's week four of the school year and I'm already on the verge of burnout. This huge increase in screen time is affecting my eyesight and my sleep patterns. I'm constantly red eyed and blurry, despite purchasing blue light glasses to help. My eyes and brain are simply tired all the time. The beginning of the year requires that teachers put in extra time to get their classes up and running and we expect that. This year though, every task, lesson, interaction with staff, students and parents is requiring more of my time and energy than ever before. And as a result, I am working on a minimum of 12 hours a day every day, and on the weekends, at least a few hours each day. I don't really feel that anyone at the district level really fully comprehends the Stress that the day to day pressures and demands this way of teaching is causing classroom teachers. I'm spending most of my day trying to deal with and solve various tech issues for students, parents and myself in order to deliver content online and it easily adds a couple of hours daily to my current workload. It should not take 15 emails back and forth to resolve just one issue. This is not a good use of my time. The tech department is understaffed and as hard as they are working and we are grateful for it, they're unable to support us quickly so we can do our jobs effectively. The workload has doubled, literally doubled for teachers. We meet with students in groups all day long. We spend hours after school and on Wednesdays researching, planning, preparing, creating and copying packets, filming videos, creating four days of synchronous live lessons and five days of asynchronous lessons for multiple content areas, even in kindergarten. Our day includes supporting students and parents, staff interactions, emails, texts, training, troubleshooting tech issues, searching for online content to use in our lessons, checking and responding to the many lessons students are completing and turning in. At this moment I have 67 notifications on SeeSaw, which means my students are getting the work done. But that's what I have to do tonight and I probably we won't finish until 11 or later regarding this new Student Engagement Participation form that we have to complete. I really urge you to look into accessing our Google Classrooms, Seesaw and Clever pages to get those assignment summaries so that we don't have to spend even more time detailing that on the forms. And also, how am I supposed to print these when I'm working from home and I have no printer access? This adds even more time and stress onto our plates. I love my job. I'm good at my job. I love my school, my students and my families. But if I continue working the amount of hours with this current workload, I really worry about the state of my physical and mental health. What will it be like by December? I try to find time for self care but it's not happening because the workload is simply unsustainable. Something really has to change. Thank you. Thank you Christy. Next we have Stephanie Pappalardo. Hi Stephanie, go ahead. Hey, thank you for hearing me. My name is Stephanie Pappalardo and I am the middle school teacher for RSP at Roy Cloud and I am actually coming really to talk about advocating for my students who all have IEPs and I do appreciate the board for listening to our concerns. What I want to say to you is that the workload of my students and possibly all students as we're hearing from all these teachers is just simply too much. The amount of stress, anxiety, sadness and frustration that I am seeing every day is just absolutely heartbreaking. We're putting our students in a situation where they are supposed to have the executive function of much older people, college age or even adults. We have asked students to navigate digital platforms like Google Classroom, FlipGrid, Amplify, NearPod, CPM, TCI could go on. All of these digital learning platforms were not designed to be their instruction. Even though the teachers are teaching a lot, we're also expecting kids to do so much on their own. So many of my students parents work full time and they are latchkey kids at home on computers with six hours of screen time a day and they're literally crying. So I really would love our board to think rethink the Wednesday requirement for having kids do more work. That is the day they really could use to catch up on their work, contact teachers for help and to just possibly read a book, get off the computers. Instead we're asking them to sit stay on the computer all day. Because I'm a resource teacher, I push into classes. So I'm watching teachers do an amazing job. Our teachers are excellent and they have met this challenge to the fullest extent of their abilities. What's happening though is I watch these classes. I can't really push in and help the kids. I have to wait until they're done with school. So I also work very late hours every day helping kids after school from my so called office hours around 1:30 all the way till 7, 8 o' clock at night trying to get to all my kids. So this situation is not sustainable. This is my 10th year teaching. I really want to stay in this profession for another 10 years. I want to be there to serve my kids I care so much about. So I just want to advocate for all of our kids. This is a situation none of us asked for, but we can certainly get smarter and try to do a little bit more things with books and paper versus all of this screen time and all of this constant content and very high workload. It's really not something our kids should be expected to do as long as as much as we're asking them to do. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you, Stephanie. Let's see. Next we have Erin Washburn. Hi Erin. Go ahead. All right. Good evening, Board of Trustees. I'm Erin Washburn. My pronouns are they, them, theirs and I'm the president of the Redwood City Teachers Association. I'd like to acknowledge Dr. Baker's compassion and knowledge of the situation right now and also Vice President McAvoy's recognition that we can contact the legislature and tell them what is and what what is impossible. In fact, Tony Thurman just sent out a letter today to Toby Boyd, the president of the California Teachers association, saying that his team was willing to explore and craft solutions because he's hearing that teachers are having such a difficult time with this new time accounting form. But anyways, I've received numerous letters from teachers describing an insurmountable amount of work. So we surveyed our members over the weekend to get some data. And 75% are reporting working more than nine hours above and beyond their contracted work hours. And 43% of our members are reporting working more than 16 hours above and beyond their contracted work hours. In essence, almost half of our staff working over seven days a week right now. We haven't even started the attendance and time accounting piece yet. And many K8 schools haven't added electives and TIG classes yet either. This level of work simply is not sustainable, as so many teachers have already said. Teachers need breaks in between synchronous classes and ample time in the afternoons to address issues with individual students and parents. Most of all, we need to be taken seriously when we say we're drowning. This is not just beginning of the year stress and nerves, as some administrators would surmise. This is a grievable violation of our contract when we ask for guidance district wide. And not one principal can answer the question, how do we prioritize all of these things? And how much time do you expect us to spend on each? We have a problem. Schedules can be reworked and simplified. Administration can figure out a way to use what teachers are already using to take attendance and track grades. And teachers will continue to prioritize the success of their students. Thank you. Thanks. Sorry, I couldn't find my cursor on that one. Thank you, Erin. We are on to Angie Tuple. Hi, good evening. Thank you, Dr. Baker, for acknowledging our struggles. I'm Angie Teeple, a fifth grade teacher at Henry Ford. This is my 20th year with the district. I'm coming to you with 28 years of fifth grade teaching experience. Never have I worked this hard. I am speaking to you tonight for the very first time to advocate for my colleagues and I who are putting in six to seven days a week, many times 12 hour days for our students during distance learning. Obviously much more than the 35 allocated hours per week. These are uncharted times and as teachers, we are expected to teach on an infrastructure that has not been established. During this time, teachers have been given minimal support and additional tasks to do. Our jobs primarily include the burden of tech support for our students as well as the daily issues we encounter with the platforms that we are using. An example being a simple lesson involving exponents taking an hour and a half to create online because never have I used technology to teach this topic. Do any of you know how to write 10 to the power of 5 on a Google form? After an hour of searching the web for someone who might know how, I still didn't get the answer I wanted for this lesson. Something so simple, taking up so much of our valuable time is just one example of many of our daily struggles. We emphasize social emotional learning for our students. What about our social emotional needs? We cannot keep this pace up any longer. It is not realistic. We cannot do it all. We need the Board's support to focus on acknowledging that our work and our well being is valued. Please do not take our dedication and our big hearts as an opportunity to overwork, overload and diminish our passion. Thank you for your time. Thanks, Angie. Let's see, we have Catherine Rivera. Hi Katherine. Hi. This is Catherine Rivera and I'm the principal of Orion Alternative, home to two unique and innovative programs. And I wanted to share a little bit of silver lining because by far, hands down, this is definitely the hardest year I've ever experienced in my 27 years of Redwood City School District. But I do want to share that our teachers are amazing teachers. I know it's not limited just to Orion Alternative. With many speakers who've been on tonight at multiple school sites, our teachers are doing amazing things and are working incredibly hard. And I also want to acknowledge something that I've seen at my school site this year, which is our amazing parent community because we have two very passionate parent groups, wonderful Mandarin immersion parents, and our Orion Alternative parent groups with very strong opinions and support of each program. They have become united this year in their shared passion of the best education possible for all of our students. So I want to just really acknowledge that I'm so proud of the community coming together and really supporting all of the students and also acknowledging the hard work of the. Of the. And some flowers and have some other surprises in store for this week because our parents do recognize the tremendous amount of work that our staff is doing and they really are appreciative. So just a little silver lining that I know our parents are out there and they are advocating for you teachers, and they're advocating for their children, that they really are the best thing for all of our students. So just an acknowledgement that all the hard work everybody's doing, and under these hard times, our community is continuing coming together. Thank you, Katherine. Let's see. We have Mohammed Tabrizi. Hi. Go ahead, Mohammad."},{"start":6681360,"end":6682240,"speaker":"B","text":"Can you hear me?"},{"start":6682400,"end":6683280,"speaker":"A","text":"Yes, go ahead."},{"start":6683360,"end":6776090,"speaker":"B","text":"Great. Thank you for taking the time. First, I would like to thank our faculty and school staff for their heroic efforts with distance learning. I know that parents, teachers, students, and school staff have been working very hard to make the best of distance learning. All of this hard work, however, has been hampered by the district's poor choice of technology. We started distance learning last year on Zoom and then switched to the inferior Google Meets platform. At a board meeting last spring, we asked the district to switch back to Zoom as Google Meets has many shortcomings that cause very frequent disruptions for students, parents, and teachers. It is therefore very disappointing that the district did not do anything on this matter during the summer and only now, more than three weeks into the school year, has initiated a slow migration to Zoom. This unnecessary and, frankly, inexcusable delay has caused much frustration for families and made an already difficult learning environment worse for our students and teachers. Crises reveal mediocrity. This board and district leadership need to not only strive for excellence, but also deliver it for our teachers and for our students. Thank you."},{"start":6781610,"end":6861960,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you, Mohammed. And we will go back and clarify a few things, but I do want to point out that actually, the process for Zoom was actually in place. We've been working on it since before the school year started, but maybe Kyle can address that one once we finish getting through a couple more speaker cards. We have Tracy Tyler. I see. Tracy, are you able to unmute? So, actually, sorry, I'm not even sure Kyle, if that's the right Tracy, because this one is Tracy with an I. Yeah, you don't have the right Tracy. Okay, Tracy Tyler, if you can raise your hand, maybe. Kyle, I don't see the participant list, do you? Are you finding her?"},{"start":6872130,"end":6875170,"speaker":"D","text":"I just see the Tracy with a Y. I don't see Tracy with an I."},{"start":6875330,"end":6900700,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, we'll move on to Tia Noodler, and then if Tracy with an I is here, we can look her up. So, Tia Noodler, Do we have Kyle with us? Is he. Kyle, are you there?"},{"start":6903100,"end":6909500,"speaker":"B","text":"I have myself muted. I'm sorry. Next speaker is Who? I didn't catch who the next speaker was."},{"start":6909580,"end":7190230,"speaker":"A","text":"Tia Knoedler. There's Tia. Hi. Go ahead, Tia. Hi, I'm A special education instructional assistant who is in my eighth year at Roosevelt. I was a parent in the district for nine years and I am speaking in support of all the teachers speaking this evening. The workload is oppressive. We have been in school three weeks and it feels like six months. This is unsustainable, demoralizing and as you are hearing in the teachers voices, borderline persecutory. I think you need to start listening to the teachers. And if in fact parents are driving this agenda, I think we need to really put the teachers needs first here. This, this district has had an Achilles heel of letting parents drive in the agenda. And if that's happening in this case, I think this is really a time to stop. So thank you. Thank you. Tia Marlena Goanna Mendoza. Hello. Hi. Go ahead. Yes. So let me see. First of all, I am so glad to hear that other teachers are going through the same thing. I am going. I love to teach my special ed kids and I try my very best. I always go for the extra mile. I never cut corners. But this school year my family and I have been noticing that I'm spending a lot more hours working. And this is. I do it because in order to teach my kids properly, I told my kids maybe it's because I'm getting old and I'm working slower. I have noticed it too. I have to stay at work a lot longer and besides preparing synchronous and asynchronous lessons, I have to meet the parents after they get out of their work to help them with troubleshooting with their iPads or Chromebooks. Today for example, I have. It is a Wednesday when I had to prepare and I had to go to a house to my students house to teach him how to navigate the iPad because he, I found out that he doesn't know how to tell time. Remember these are special kids. He's second graders but he doesn't know how to read. He doesn't know the abc. He's new to me. So I have to go show him. At this time you have to go to this session. At this time you have to go to that one. And he goes like how do I know that? And I go oh my God, this is a lot worse than I thought. So what I'm going to do tomorrow I'm going to have to tell them that, send them a text, tell them right now is the time you go. So those little things. And I have to do that so my kid doesn't stay behind. I couldn't just say, you know, they don't know it. You know, it's their fault. They get behind. I'm doing my job. I have to do it. He didn't have clients after work right now. I just came back taking clients for him because he needed them. He was so happy that he's now gonna be able to go in. And the parents were very grateful. So all those little things like that. I cannot wait for somebody else at the district to take over because by the time they get to him, it's going to be too late. He's already way behind. I had to teach my aides with technology. Yes, they got training, but it was about their heads. They said it was too fast, they couldn't understand how to do it. So I was teaching at home and I had to teach at school in order to help them turn the computers on, logging into the Google Meets, all those little things. And then sometimes they go like, oh, one of them is getting it a lot more faster. But the other one, I am teaching my own session and she can. I don't know how I got out of there. I have to go help it again. Tell my parents, can you wait? I have to help this other person. Luckily, the parents are very understandable, but all of this is putting a lot of more stress and I just have to help it because there is nobody else who can do it. And they're good people. I want to help them, but I'm out of time. That's the problem. So I go to. I have to prepare for IEPs. I have to go to the parents homes to get wet signatures so we can test the students. Now I have to do testing that were overdue from the spring and at the beginning. Thank you, Marlene. I'm sorry. Your three minutes are paid. You're out of time. Kyle, do we have Tracy Tyler? Tracy with an I?"},{"start":7194470,"end":7194870,"speaker":"C","text":"No."},{"start":7195270,"end":7207670,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay. Shannon cody. Hi, Shannon. Hello. Can you hear me?"},{"start":7208150,"end":7208710,"speaker":"B","text":"Yep."},{"start":7208870,"end":7557460,"speaker":"A","text":"Cool. Hi, my name is Shannon Cody and I've been teaching in our district for over 20 years. I can tell you that I love our district. I love our community. I love who Redwood City is. I love my school, like many of the people who spoke tonight. And I think we have amazing kids and parents. I love our staff and my colleagues. And I'm super lucky because I work with some of my closest friends. I feel lucky because our administrators, Jude and Tiffany, are incredibly organized, hardworking, and go to the ends of the earth for our kids. I will also tell you I feel lucky to have our leadership not just at the site level, but at the district level. We from all Staff to admin to the board are a district of incredibly hardworking people who I believe do strive for excellence and keep students success and interest at the heart of everything we do. I love being a teacher, and I'm not going to lie, this is hard. And as you've heard, the amount of work to plan and prep for lessons is truly something else. Like Dr. Baker mentioned his friend noticed with the grandchildren, keeping kids focused and engaged while online and navigating distractions and technical difficulties is beyond challenging. Managing and trying to catch kids up who are absent miss lessons, miss assignments, come late, leave lessons that can feel insurmountable. Learning and implementing new programs. Yes, it's a lot. And that's just part of managing the classroom piece. I think like Liz said, this is all so much more than any of us realized it was. I feel fortunate as my families have been incredibly patient and kind and gracious. And those kind words go so incredibly far. Because as educators and on all levels of staff, to administration, to the board, we're being scrutinized and judged and drugged through the Facebook and online mud. And whether it's your name or a colleague's name or someone you've never met, it weighs heavily. We are all working hard. And I know, I know this is hard for everyone. What I also know we all want the same thing. We all want this to work for the kids. We all want it to work for the kids. And the bottom line is it has to. None of us can do this alone. Fortunately, we as a district, we as a community, the Redwood City School District leaders, the administration, the staff, the families, the kids, we will all work together. We can look at what's working, what's not. And we can go back to our fundamental belief in what is best for our students. Success. And we can evolve. We are a great district. We are great at what we do. We will make this work together because we have to. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Shannon. So I'm going to stop sharing my screen. That brings us to the end of our comment cards. Okay. I think before we go forward, I just. I want as the board president to just recognize and tell all of you that I do hear you and I hear that you're tired. I can hear it in your voices. I also hear a lot of passion in your voices. And that's one of the things that I love the most about this district. Like Monica said, she's never seen a district with more heart, time and energy puts in more hard time and energy. And I totally agree with that. Talking with, you know, my board colleagues up and down the county and around the state, I think that we are just very blessed to have the teachers and the staff that we have here in our district. I also want to recognize that you guys have families and you have lives, hopefully outside of teaching. I'm definitely concerned about mental health and anxiety and lack of sleep. You know, as a parent, I experience that, too. But I also don't have to sit in front of a computer and teach kids all day long. I just make sure that mine get to class, hopefully on time, which is hard to do. So I think, you know, before, when the board approved going to distance learning, we also recognized that it wasn't going to be perfect, that we were going to have to make changes as things go along. We were going to find out what works and what doesn't work. And I think we've come to a point where we recognize that there are some things that aren't working, and this is an opportunity for some improvement and some change. And so I would really like to hear what the district can do to help simplify schedules and allow our teachers time to breathe and time to do what's best for their classrooms. Because every classroom I know is different. I have three kids. I have two middle schoolers. So, you know, I know they're in multiple classes with multiple teachers, and every single class is gonna have different needs or, you know, whoever's in that class and whatever's being taught. So. And I do want also, Shannon, to your point that we want to do what works for the kids. We want to do what works for the staff. Also what works for the teachers. It's not just about the students. And I also want to recognize that this hasn't come to the board. We haven't heard from teachers about this into week four. So I'm sorry to hear that people have been having such a hard time for so long, but hopefully in the future, the union can come and speak with the staff sooner so that we can hopefully smooth things out before people are really falling apart with that. I would like to open up to my colleagues and see if there's anything else that you guys would like to say or questions you might have. Dr. Baker, go ahead."},{"start":7557620,"end":7558980,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah, Janet."},{"start":7559300,"end":7810180,"speaker":"D","text":"Yes, and it's. Sorry it's come to this point where membership had to come to the board, but those of you teachers who spoke tonight that know me for many years understand that you can always come to myself or to any of my staff members and say, this is going on. We need to do something about it we heard about this. No, I did not hear about this letter. But principals got the letter from RCTA Friday afternoon between some got it between 4 and 4:30 and then we didn't see the letter until after it was given. To myself and to Wendy Kelly, with that being said, there has always been a time when this district has met in consultation. Way back before I was even in HR as the assistant superintendent, we always met together to see if we could problem solve together before even bringing it to the situation that it's in right now. And if you feel things have changed and you can't go in that direction, I apologize if I did anything wrong to make you feel that way because you can always pick up the phone and say we need to get together. This is what's happening. This is what's happening at the school sites. I did not know there was a survey going out. If Erin could have picked up the phone and just called John, there's a problem out here. We're sending out a survey because we're hearing about these workload issues. We're hearing about this, we're hearing about that. Wednesday is not enough time. We could have gotten together before it got to this point and came together as a group to determine what steps should be taken next. It would have been myself with Wendy Kelly, along with some principals, along with some teachers, Liz Wolf to see how these schedules can be adjusted. Because remember when these schedules were made, we allowed the schedules to be made with the teachers and the principals. And I know they, Liz and Linda both worked with all the different school sites. But we want to make sure that it was kind of put on the teachers of how they wanted to teachers and the principals at each site, how they wanted to move, how they wanted this to move forward. I just, I guess maybe I have not been clear as a superintendent and if I haven't, I apologize. But at this point in time you need to let me know, Erin. And I'm saying Erin, because you are the RCTA president, you need to let me know when things are not working well and you're hearing all this rumbling out at the district sites because I'm sure it's not just today is day. This is Wednesday 15 something. It was 10 or 11 and you already had this letter ready to go that you sent to the principal between 4 and 4:30 on Friday. I'm sure there was all this rumbling happening throughout last week prior to that. And we should have been able to come together before coming to a boiling point where it is right now. So if you don't. I hope that you still have trust in the district and the district being myself and my staff and the administrators, that we can work things out. Pick up the phone that you know you can. I'm at the. I'm in the district office. If I'm not there, I'll give you my cell number. It's my personal cell. You can have it call me. But let me know when things are going awry so that we can sit down as a group and come up with solutions. I don't know what else to say. Like I said Friday between 4 and 4:30, when the principals all started sending us these letters and they didn't know which what to do. I just wish that Aaron would have picked up the phone and called us and said, there's a problem here, we need to meet. And we would have. And we would have. We would have dropped everything and met with them."},{"start":7813380,"end":8002610,"speaker":"A","text":"Thanks, Dr. Baker. Does the board have any other comments or questions? Go ahead, Maria. So first of all, thank you to all the speakers. I know that it's not easy to take time out, out of your busy schedule, especially after hearing all of your experiences. I guess the one thing I would say is that we're not the only district that's experiencing this. There are other districts who have similar issues. I would like to see if we could come up with trying to solve some of the issues. Like one of the speakers mentioned the technology piece. I know that Kyle and his staff have a lot of new devices coming in, so perhaps Dr. Baker and his staff could look into, see if they need additional staff. Do we need additional videos for the parents or support or something there that we can do with that and then see what other districts are doing to try and help their teachers as well. I want to say thank you to all the teachers. I know that you're welcome. Working incredibly hard and as Dr. Baker said, I hope that you will come to him before things get this bad. I know that you know you have a lot to do, but you are important to us and to the district, to us students, to our families. So I hope that you can get together with Dr. Baker and his staff and see what else that the district can do, whether it's adjusting the schedules or helping you in some other way. I know that someone said they didn't need yoga or something else. I can't remember what. I was taking notes. But if that's the not what's needed, then please let us know what it is and remember that as much as we want to have. A program that works for everybody. We are also having to deal with the state and federal mandates and all of these other regulations, regulations that we really have no control over. So, again, thank you for coming forward, and I hope that we can make things easier for you and for your families as well. Thank you, Dennis."},{"start":8003330,"end":8085400,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah. First, I'd like to thank the teachers for coming and speaking up. I have to tell you, your comments made me really sad. I know in a normal year, all of you work incredibly hard, and I had no idea that the amount of work was so much more. So I'm sad, but I'm glad you told me. I think one of the issues is we have tension between the parents that want us to have school be as robust as in person. But I think from tonight, what I've heard is that's not achievable. And I clearly have heard that the effort is not sustainable, and I understand that. And I wonder if we couldn't go talk to some other districts and find out if they're doing it differently, that's allowing their teachers not to be so stressed. And then I really do think we have to have an action where we have a conscious effort to fix this going forward. Because this clearly is not something. I know Dr. Baker and I know Liz and Wendy. You guys aren't happy or staff and teachers aren't feeling valued. So I think we have to figure out how we're going to rejigger this so that we take some of the stress out of the system. Actually, not some. A lot of stress. Thank you,"},{"start":8091320,"end":8271550,"speaker":"A","text":"Cecilia or Lisa. Did you have any comments or questions? I also would like to give my sincere thanks to the teachers for working extra hard. And like Dennis said, it's hard when the parents are actually pushing. I understand some parents really want their students to thrive. But again, being that we are in this pandemic and it's very stressful and frustrating for a lot of people, I totally understand where they're coming from. As a parent, I am currently working from home and going into the office in the afternoons when I can and when my husband gets home from work. So even just today as Wednesday, it was a day to make up work. My son was really stressing and he's like, I don't understand this. He's also a very quiet kid. So that is the reason why I was asking, when it comes down to attendance, either present and are they participating, he's always been a quiet kid. So when he's not asking questions and his answer and his questions are not being answered because he's not asking the questions. A parent like myself would have to then step up and help. And so I totally understand because I have to get to my job duties, right? And then as a parent, you're actually stressing out, trying to help your son or daughter to do their work. So I totally understand that. This is times of frustration, and it really does hurt me to hear that teachers are actually being burned out. And again, it's only the 15th day, like Dr. Baker said. So I, too, would like to make sure everybody does communicate. And I know that Dr. Baker had mentioned at our last board meeting that there is, you know, a process where you go from, you know, you go to John Baker, Dr. Baker, before you go to the board. I understand that communication is key for everything when it comes down to, you know, be able to work things out. I would just like to say that I am very thankful for everyone. And I do know I do give credit to the administrators because we are one of the district that did work proactively. I mean, I do have a lot of friends in other districts, and they were not at all where. Where we were at even a month ago or, you know, before school started. So again, it's just one day at a time. Again, it's all a frustrating time for everyone. I do appreciate everybody coming forward. And again, if we could just keep the communication, you know, open and clean, that would be great. Again, I do appreciate everything that everyone is doing. So thank you. Elisa, Go ahead. Elisa. We can't hear you, but you're not. You're not muted, but I can't hear you."},{"start":8273790,"end":8275390,"speaker":"C","text":"How's this? Can you hear me now?"},{"start":8275390,"end":8275910,"speaker":"A","text":"Yep."},{"start":8275910,"end":8491510,"speaker":"C","text":"I think I had myself double muted. So I just wanted to say thank you very much to all the speakers, all the teachers. I'm with Dennis and I actually, I think all my colleagues and Dr. Baker and everyone. This is, you know, it's hard to hear. It's important for us to hear. It's the reality of what you're dealing with. And I just want to say I'm really sorry. And it was, you know, it's important for us to hear. So I think you've been heard, know that. So now what we need to do is come up with solutions. And Dr. Baker, I appreciate what you said. I think. And actually, Cecilia, you mentioned this in as well. You know, one of the things that I think we've been proud of and happy about is it does feel like through the summer, we've worked very cooperatively with our teachers and our staff to come up with plans that work for everybody. And it feels like that's broken down somewhere. So I think we just need to move forward, have better communication than we have. Let's work together to come up with plans that work for our students to make sure that they're learning what they need to learn. Learn, work with the mandates that are coming from the state. And if there's opportunities where we think the mandates are not working, if we can try to push back legislatively with legislative advocacy, let's do that. You know, we've been a district with a lot of creative, innovative ideas, so let's try to figure out if there's ways that we can help with efficiencies with our teachers. You know, banks have asynchronized lessons, so they're not having to do asynchronous lessons as well as synchronized lessons. You know, I'm sure we can come up with ideas and best practices. I have confidence in that. So I think what we need to do is as quickly as possible is to recognize the workload increases and try to figure out what we can to really help. Because as we've heard tonight, it's not sustainable. And yet we know that we need to do what's right for students. So how do we do all of that right with what we have? And Maria, I agree with you. I was thinking the same on the resources, Dr. Baker. Lots of ideas. I was typing away, and there was lots of good ideas in terms of what we could do to help. So if we could try to collect those ideas and figure out what to do, and one of them is maybe there's more, we need to invest in our tech department. So the tech department is fielding all the tech corporations calls versus teachers doing the tech calls and the curriculum. You know what I mean? So I think there may be some opportunities for us to think about, are there places we can take some of the workload off the teachers so they can do what they do best to teach? And I know that's not easy to do, but anyway, and if there's some ideas where we can, you know, through the platforms, get some of the data where we put in a bit little more money, you know, we do have that cares act money. So let's think about if there's ways we need to use it in the next couple months. So anyway, this was hard to hear, I have to say, and it makes me sad as well. And I just want to say that I really, really appreciate how hard all the teachers are working. And I also just want to say our district staff and our principals and administrators and classified and everybody. I know that everybody's the working really, really hard for the benefit of our students. So we can do better. We will do better. And I know that you were heard tonight. So I don't know, Dr. Baker, if you want to talk about next steps or if you'll circle back with Erin or how you want to do it. But anyway, thanks everybody."},{"start":8492710,"end":8549390,"speaker":"D","text":"So the next steps would be is that we will by we, Wendy, myself and Liz will definitely meet with Erin and some of the teachers that spoke this evening. I would like to see some of those teachers. I'd like to meet with some of them along with they're part of the rcta, so they should be part of coming to this meeting. So Wendy, hopefully Erin can, you know, you can sit the meeting up with some of these teachers that spoke tonight. I made sure that I wrote their names and their comments and so forth that we can meet really soon and see where we go from here to make it a more positive experience. So it'd be yourself, Liz, me, and then our CTA with these teachers that spoke tonight. With some of these teachers that spoke tonight."},{"start":8550430,"end":8552990,"speaker":"A","text":"And then Wendy, did you, I know you said you wanted to."},{"start":8553790,"end":8555070,"speaker":"D","text":"Wendy, did you want to say something?"},{"start":8555230,"end":8824960,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah, go ahead. Thank you. And thank you to everyone that spoke. We it's really nice to hear all different variety of voices even though it was hard to hear tonight. I've really been very proud of the relationship that we've had with our cta, you know, over the years. And one thing I really enjoy is my open door policy and our open communication. So I have to admit this past week was somewhat disheveling and unexpected to receive a vague letter that demanded a reply by today or by Tuesday. Excuse me. On Friday afternoon. I really wish, as John mentioned, that somebody picked up the phone and said, hey, we need to work out a problem about schedules and been very specific about what the issues were. Instead, the letter was more about, you know, how do we prioritize our instructional time, our planning time, etc. And so that was hard to grapple with. But the main reason why I wanted to speak is to acknowledge everyone tonight. I think the district office and site administrators in general are great listeners. We're all going through a crisis together, everybody, including the administrators. The letter received response was hard to write in the sense that everyone was struggling with what to say. And yet looking at the MOU and looking at what the obligations are for teacher in this very difficult time of distance learning. I really don't want blame to be put upon the site administrators. They're working really hard. They're trying to feed parents and students and teachers as well. So in hindsight, and I did mention this to Erin yesterday, it would have been really great to have that open dialogue that we and I have valued for so long working with rta. So I'm looking ahead. I think there is positive change to happen. I was texting union leadership during the meeting saying I'd really like to meet as soon as possible. Wish it was last week, but that's okay. I think I'm hopeful and I'm excited about what we can do together. So that's what I wanted to let RCTA know. Janet, can I say something? Go ahead. Yeah. So thinking about it, you know, this is a difficult time for everybody, not just the teachers and our students. Everybody's in the same boat. Dr. Baker, although it seems like he may not be us working as hard, he truly is. He has a lot of things that he is working on. There are many balls to juggle. And, you know, Wendy, I really like what you said. I think that we need to move forward without, you know, truly listening, without blaming anybody, because if we're gonna go to that area, then we're not gonna be hearing what needs to be said. We are human. We make mistakes. And because everyone's just so overworked and tired, I mean, those Zoom meetings, part of the thing that's so strange stressing is that when you're in front of the computer, you just have to pay attention, and it's really draining. So I'm hoping that you guys can work together with the union leadership and with their representatives and really start fresh. Don't, you know, just go forward, as you said, and see how we can make things better for everybody. And I'm hopeful that we will get to have a better schedule, a better environment, and that our teachers will not be as overworked and stressed as they currently are. And I hope that you all include the preschool ones because they also have little ones that if you've been in a Google Meet, you can see how hard it is to keep that attention of those little ones. Anyway, thanks to everybody that spoke tonight. Go ahead, Alisa."},{"start":8826000,"end":8895950,"speaker":"C","text":"I was going to say, you know, one other thought is maybe in addition to the groups that you talked about, about communicating with, is if we could get some feedback from some parents. You know, I don't know if it's through a formal survey to every parent or just do kind of a random sampling where we had kind of a diverse group Just to get a feedback of how it's going for them. Because I know I have seen on Facebook and Nextdoor a variety of opinions from parents, you know, some who have felt like the day is too long with the Zoom meetings. Right. Or the Google Meet meetings. And then for some who want more, that sort of thing. But if we could also get a sense from the parents in terms of kind of best practices, what's working, not working kind of thing as we feed into creating new schedule, you know, creating new schedules or what have you. So I'll just bring that up that we may want to try to get feedback from them and maybe the teachers can just provide that in their comments already. You know, it may not be that we have to do a formal survey right now, but we need to remember getting input from the students and parents, I think as well."},{"start":8899150,"end":8910510,"speaker":"A","text":"And then, Kyle, can I ask you to just address the Zoom thing real quick, just briefly where you're at and the delay that, you know, the previous Zoom Zoom accounts has caused in."},{"start":8910910,"end":8966760,"speaker":"B","text":"Yeah, so when we purchased our Zoom account approximately, I would say, four to five weeks ago, we came in and we found because several students, and right now that, well, initially the number was about 600 students had created accounts with their RCSD email accounts. We needed to have those students consolidate those accounts into our district account. We've actually been very successful in doing that over the last week or so. And we've taken that number. I believe it's down close to 100 right now. So that we have left. And we already have two schools that have already cleared all of their student accounts. So we're already moving forward with training those two schools. So we'll start with Kennedy first. They'll have. They're actually get. Their staff is going to get some training tomorrow afternoon on Zoom, and then we'll work with the other schools as they come online and clear their student accounts up."},{"start":8967720,"end":8975080,"speaker":"A","text":"And then can you be more specific about, like, what sort of training that is? Because I think a lot of us think it's pretty easy to just hop on Zoom and we're there."},{"start":8975400,"end":9040060,"speaker":"B","text":"So we've put some things in place. We want to make sure that we have the security in place. We want to make sure that there was no authorized use or people coming into our Zoom meetings that weren't authorized. So we did that. But we also wanted to make sure that we taught teachers how to set up their rooms, how to set up reoccurring meetings so that they didn't have to create a new meeting for each day that they could just use the same meeting every day. How to set up the waiting rooms, how to set up the breakout rooms, if they want to use breakout rooms. So there are some additional features that we wanted to make sure that teachers were well aware of and knew how to set up prior to us just letting them go. But we've allowed teachers to access their Zoom accounts for approximately a week and a half now, and we've let them know, please go in, test and kind of learn how the settings work. You know, get into Zoom conferences with their colleagues and with their friends so that they can test out the system, so that they'll know how it works, so that when we're ready to move everybody across, they'll be ready to go."},{"start":9042140,"end":9046940,"speaker":"A","text":"Great. Thank you. Is there anything else?"},{"start":9047580,"end":9051100,"speaker":"D","text":"I think Wendy wanted to say something about the hotspots and some other pieces."},{"start":9052460,"end":9187460,"speaker":"A","text":"Yes, thank you. I do want to thank the tech team for this diligence during a very bumpy ride. We've had delays in delivery, we've had hotspots issues, and it's just been quite remarkable, I have to say. It's not smooth whatsoever. But we are at a point where we have available hotspots for families that have three or more children in our csd, and we're calling each of those families to ask if they would like to come down to the district office and pick up advice, if they would like a device delivered to their house via the bus drivers or picked up at the school sites. And so I'm pleased that we're able to offer more support for families and as well as staff. And so staff have been identified at sites. And if teachers or staff are on this call and hear this, please speak with your site administrator. If you would like a hotspot to help support you with working remotely, or an upgraded tech device that can assist you with more bandwidth and so forth when we have an opportunity to provide that right now. So I reached out to staff today that have already been identified and working, of course, with Kyle. Kyle's spearheading this, but this would be a time to really make sure that staff is properly equipped with some extra supports, including their device. And so between the families and the staff, I think we're in a pretty good place. The numbers of the district at the district office have reduced in terms of people coming in. The tech department has also offered hours Wednesday evenings till 7 o' clock for families to come in and pick up the needed equipment or ask questions and so forth. So I think things are starting to stabilize in week four. I Wish it was early, but some of these things were very much beyond Kyle's control as well. So it's been a little bumpy, I'm not going to lie. But I think we're seeing light at the end of the tunnel right now. Thanks. Anybody else? Dr. Baker, did you have more under the COVID 19 topic or was this."},{"start":9187620,"end":9321410,"speaker":"D","text":"No, this was the major piece and I just want to out point. We can see in the chat they believe I seems like I attacked their union president. I'm not attacking anyone. I just want to open up the lines of communication and for that for everyone to really understand that even though it is Covid time and this is a horrible phrase, say my door is open, I'll have my cell number to the union president and those union members are on the executive board so they can call me directly on the cell, personal cell phone that I, that I have, that's my own. But I'm not throwing anyone under the bus. I'm not attacking anyone. What we need to do is just start to communicate with one another in a better manner. And we need to get back to the meetings that we used to have at least once a month with. I don't think it was a total exec team, but it was a climate committee. And I think the meeting is not until September coming up in September, but you know, later on this month. But we need to have those probably more often than we've had in the past. But as I say, if you felt I was attacking someone, I apologize. I was not attacking anyone. I just want to make sure that we have the lines of communication open. If we do not communicate with one another, frustrations, anxiety, stress are going to just be held within us and it's just going to come out and for a better term, an ugly mess. And I think we can work well together this district always has and come up with solutions to make things work right for everyone. So again, I will apologize if that's how people who are listening to this meeting felt about my comments, but they were not meant to be attacking to anyone. I just want to make sure that Aaron, who is the RCTA president and myself, the superintendent and Wendy, who really works very closely with both unions, we have a really good communication relationship. So we know how to help one another out in times like these. That's it."},{"start":9322860,"end":9387330,"speaker":"A","text":"So I just want to thank everybody again that is here tonight. Whether you did speak or whether you are just here to listen. We appreciate you taking the time to be here and all the effort that's going in. We're all tired, we're all stressed out. And I think this, the pandemic with the apocalypse that's happening now is not helping anybody. So I am really hoping that we can move forward and make the changes that are needed for everybody to be able to work more smoothly and less with less stress and be able to work collaborately, collaboratively together like we've been able to in the past. So that's the end of our 9.1 discussion. We're 9:36 right now. We usually take a break at 9. I think there's not a whole lot left on the agenda. Or do you need a break or do you want to power through?"},{"start":9389410,"end":9390530,"speaker":"C","text":"I can power through."},{"start":9391490,"end":9411260,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay, let's do it. Power through. Let's see. So we are on item 10, consent, and that also includes all of the action items, 11 1, 112 and 11 3. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Maria?"},{"start":9413340,"end":9413740,"speaker":"C","text":"Second."},{"start":9414700,"end":9415740,"speaker":"A","text":"Is that Elisa?"},{"start":9416460,"end":9416940,"speaker":"C","text":"Yes."},{"start":9417020,"end":9421260,"speaker":"A","text":"Okay. And a roll call vote, please. McBride."},{"start":9421740,"end":9422220,"speaker":"B","text":"Aye."},{"start":9422780,"end":9430400,"speaker":"A","text":"Trustee Marquez. Aye. Trustee Dia Silocum. Aye. Vice President McAvoy."},{"start":9431360,"end":9431920,"speaker":"C","text":"Aye."},{"start":9432240,"end":9450240,"speaker":"A","text":"President Lawson. Aye. Okay, so that brings us to reports from board members and superintendents. Would anybody like to start? You can make me call on you, Alisa."},{"start":9451200,"end":9453680,"speaker":"C","text":"Oh, I just want. Did we also do the bond already?"},{"start":9455240,"end":9459400,"speaker":"A","text":"We did, yeah. That was okay prior to 9.1. Yeah."},{"start":9459560,"end":9508070,"speaker":"C","text":"Okay. Sorry, it's been a long night. Okay. Oh, that's funny. I was just mentioning that. But okay, real quick on board report. So we did have a Redwood City 2020 retreat that Dr. Baker, Janet and I attended, and it was sort of a looking forward retreat, talking about governance, some new ideas around dues and partners, and just sort of the direction we want to move in together. I thought it was a pretty good retreat. Janet and John, you can say more about it if you'd like, I think. Did I mention that we have a new. We did get a PACER for csba. I don't know if I mentioned that. That's the. Can you guys hear me? You're all frozen."},{"start":9508630,"end":9509350,"speaker":"D","text":"No, I can't."},{"start":9509350,"end":9561970,"speaker":"C","text":"Okay, you can hear me. Okay. Anyway, that's the political action person. So we do have someone now, Marty Farouk, who's actually been really great. So one thought I had is that if we do have some legislative action items or things we'd like for CSBA to follow up with, he's been excellent at communicating back to the leadership there. So I'm happy to carry that forward. And if you would like to meet with him, he's actually a pretty interesting guy, grew up in San Francisco. Mother was a police officer. He's been involved in local politics. So he just knows a lot about kind of the area and stuff. So I think he'll represent us well. What I want to say. And then today on the county call, I don't know. Was anyone else on that today? Today, Dennis? Janet, you were okay?"},{"start":9562130,"end":9564410,"speaker":"A","text":"I think a number of us, yeah."},{"start":9564410,"end":9687990,"speaker":"C","text":"I thought it was interesting. We've actually lost some of our teachers. I think they need to go do their work. But, you know, it was interesting. One of the things she said that stuck with me, that, you know, our children right now need a lot of reassurance. I think our students, I mean, with the weather, the fires, the distant learning and all of that. And she just mentioned, you know, nurture and comfort our children and give them scientific information about what's happening. So I really thought that was important. And I know the children who are in my life, I reached out to them today just to kind of check in and give that level of comfort. She also talked a little bit about, you know, the testing that they're trying to get together, looking forward to, to when we can get back in person, which I know everybody would love to do. We sort of heard that loud and clear tonight. And there was actually one comment that I thought was interesting, that I guess Abbott has produced this very fast test that you can test within, you get the results within five minutes. It's only $5 a test, and it looks like the federal government has bought up 150 million of the testing kits. So Jackie Spear was on the call, and she's going to be following up to see if we can get some of those for education. But the point is, I think there's some tests that are coming up, so that should be good news for us as we look forward to being in this arena for a while. So I'm sure that, Dr. Baker, you'll be hearing from Nancy McGhee just about different tests and things going on. And then, of course, of course, she did talk about the waiver process again. And the other thing I thought was interesting with the waivers that have been approved so far is out of the 20 schools in San Mateo County, 18 are private and two are charter schools. And if you look at those schools, they already have more resources per student than we do, I think, for the most part. So, anyway, we have some work to do. But, yeah, that was about it on that. Okay, that's it."},{"start":9691970,"end":9692770,"speaker":"A","text":"Anybody else?"},{"start":9695090,"end":9695730,"speaker":"D","text":"Dennis."},{"start":9696210,"end":9699410,"speaker":"A","text":"I think Dennis is raising his hand. Maybe"},{"start":9701170,"end":9701810,"speaker":"B","text":"mute it."},{"start":9701810,"end":9702290,"speaker":"A","text":"Dennis."},{"start":9706850,"end":9718140,"speaker":"B","text":"Sounds so much better. So I was going to Say first we should acknowledge Janet had her birthday yesterday. So happy birthday. Don't look shocked. You knew you had a birthday."},{"start":9718700,"end":9723180,"speaker":"A","text":"Thanks. It was kind of a big one. Yeah, you don't know the pandemic."},{"start":9724620,"end":9735660,"speaker":"B","text":"All right. Anyway, the other thing is Janet And I and Dr. Baker at the end of August, we're on a measure T bond construction oversight committee meeting. And that's all I have."},{"start":9744150,"end":9828220,"speaker":"A","text":"So all I've been doing is talking to families. And then the other thing I was trying to do is trying to connect the public libraries with our district to see how they can help us with our immersion programs, the Spanish and Mandarin immersion programs, not only with materials, but also with some of their programs. That's all I have. And Cecilia, did you have anything? I do not, no. Okay, so let's see. I have the measure to the oversight committee that Dennis mentioned. Elisa and I were at the. Sorry, Liz, I don't remember what this stands for. The LCP Steering Committee earlier, I think that was last week with the Redwood City 2020 retreat. Dr. Baker and I were at the Redwood City Chamber Education Committee meeting last week. Dennis and Dr. Baker and I had a bond team meeting. And Priscilla preparing for our meeting for next week on September 16th. And Elisa and Wendy and I met for the policy committee to go over one of our policies that will be coming forward. That's all I have."},{"start":9829020,"end":9850550,"speaker":"D","text":"Dr. Baker, a lot of the same that you. That many of you have mentioned. The only other item was the superintendent's meeting yesterday that I went to. And they. Nancy did mention about the testing, but she didn't go to any detail. And she's going to do it at our meeting that our superintendent's meeting that's coming up later on this month. And we talked a lot about the waiver process."},{"start":9853030,"end":9878320,"speaker":"A","text":"Great. Okay, so we're on to item 13.1, information from the San Mateo County Investment fund. Are there any comments or questions? None. Okay. Correspondence. Hearing? None. Okay, we'll move forward. We had emails from parents. Wasn't it?"},{"start":9878720,"end":9884080,"speaker":"B","text":"Some emails and emails from the adelante teacher."},{"start":9884720,"end":9889120,"speaker":"A","text":"Right. The teachers. Right. Also I got some. I think it was today."},{"start":9890960,"end":9902760,"speaker":"C","text":"Yeah. And I think from some parents, just some of them actually, you know, thanking us for the distant learning being a better experience this year. And then also questions about when we'll be going back in person."},{"start":9909560,"end":10015640,"speaker":"A","text":"Anything else? Okay, then we are on to other business suggested items for future agenda. Anybody have any they wanted to add? Oh, I have a suggestion. I know when we were deciding what we were going to do with the reboundary could we agendize for a future meeting, perhaps a process. There was a parent that mentioned that when we do the school of choice process, it's more of. I forget the word that he mentioned. I know I had it written down and I don't have it with me. But just basically, if we could talk about the process where it's not going to be, you know, when we talk about equity, it's going to be. I forget what he said. It was like a chance that it was, you know, equal for people to actually get into the school of choice. So that's what I mean. I mean, if we could agendize that for a future meeting, that would be great. Yeah, yeah, I know that's something that we had talked about. So we can put that down if it's not already. It might be anything else. Okay, so we are. Where are we? 161 Changes to the board agenda schedule. I don't know if this went to the whole board, but it looks like we need to have a special session on September 30th. I believe it's to approve the LCP plan. Right, Liz? Yeah. Okay, so if everybody can get that on their calendars, I hope that works for everybody. Maria, is that okay with you?"},{"start":10017560,"end":10020160,"speaker":"B","text":"Is that at 6, 6 o'?"},{"start":10020160,"end":10020760,"speaker":"A","text":"Clock? Yeah,"},{"start":10024280,"end":10026150,"speaker":"D","text":"it's on the agenda. Yeah, it's here."},{"start":10026310,"end":10050950,"speaker":"A","text":"Yeah. I wasn't sure if it was something that we had talked about as the board, but let's see. Anything else, other changes? Okay, we're moving on to adjournment 9:47. Is there a motion to adjourn? I would like to make one. Oh, Dennis, sorry I cut you off."},{"start":10051520,"end":10053600,"speaker":"B","text":"That's all right. You may be doing the same one, so go ahead."},{"start":10054160,"end":10086400,"speaker":"A","text":"I wanted to adjourn in the memory of our teacher, Lisa Bamberger, who worked at Roosevelt and who passed away over the weekend. She worked for us for a number of years. I think she was a teacher for 24 to 30 years. I can't remember exactly, but she was teacher at Rose, so it's a loss for her students, the family and the whole community. You can go ahead, Dennis."},{"start":10086640,"end":10097600,"speaker":"B","text":"No, that's what I was going to do. My understanding, John, you and Wendy probably know better, but she's been in a lot of schools. Like she was over at Taft and Roosevelt and trying to wear out."},{"start":10098400,"end":10139630,"speaker":"D","text":"It was Taft. She started at Taft. As a matter of fact, I hired her when I was in hr. Yes. So I will be sending something out to district staff by the end of the week because we get permission from her family to send something out to all about Lisa and then for board members or anybody who would like the address, just let me know and I, and I have it but I'll send something out district wide. Tina did get, Tina did speak with her father today and he did give permission for us to send something out to district staff to let everybody know."},{"start":10142830,"end":10144830,"speaker":"A","text":"So Dennis, did you want to second that motion?"},{"start":10146030,"end":10146670,"speaker":"B","text":"Yes, second."},{"start":10150030,"end":10152910,"speaker":"A","text":"We just all those in favor? Aye. Raise your hand."},{"start":10152910,"end":10153390,"speaker":"B","text":"Aye."},{"start":10153550,"end":10154030,"speaker":"C","text":"Aye."},{"start":10154830,"end":10169300,"speaker":"A","text":"Thank you everyone. Hopefully everybody can get some rest tonight, wake up to blue skies Tomorrow maybe on September 16th at 6:00pm Kyle, can"},{"start":10169300,"end":10180780,"speaker":"C","text":"you, can you copy the chat? I'm unable to do that as a panelist. If you copy the chat and send it to us because there's a lot of I think comments that might be helpful for us just moving forward."}]}