[00:01] Speaker 1: I call the meeting to order. It is now 5 4pm welcome to the Contra Costa County Board of Education meeting. And this is January 21st, our regular board meeting. Thank you, everyone, for being here. And the next item is General Information, item 2 on the agenda. Any disclosable public records related to an open session item on an agenda and distributed by the county superintendent to a majority of the members of the county Board of education less than 72 hours before the public hearing are available for public inspection at the Contra Costa County Board of Education. They will be made available at the regular meeting. The Board of education will provide reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities planning to attend the meeting, who contact the county superintendent's office less than 20, at least 24 hours before the meeting. Okay, so we'll go on to opening procedures and the first thing is roll call. Ms. Ciccone, would you call the roll, please? Panda.
[01:16] Speaker 2: Here. Iranian.
[01:18] Speaker 1: Here. Butler.
[01:20] Speaker 2: Here.
[01:20] Speaker 1: Yamas.
[01:21] Speaker 2: Here.
[01:22] Speaker 1: Lewis.
[01:22] Speaker 2: Here.
[01:23] Speaker 1: Maxwell. Here.
[01:24] Speaker 2: Nathan Heiss.
[01:25] Speaker 3: Hello.
[01:29] Speaker 1: Okay, now we have a land Acknowledgement, Item 2.3.2. Would one of the my colleagues like to read the land acknowledgment?
[01:47] Speaker 3: We would like to acknowledge that tonight's event is being held on the traditional lands of the Yokuts, Karkin and Confederated villages of Lijian, Ohlone, Miwok and Muwekma peoples.
[02:00] Speaker 1: Thank you, Trustee. Nice. Now we'll go on to item three, the Pledge of Allegiance. Would everyone please stand and we'll recite the Pledge of Allegiance. States of America to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible liberty and justice for all. Okay, thank you. Now we are on item four, agenda review and adoption.
[02:52] Speaker 3: Move to approve the agenda as presented.
[02:54] Speaker 1: Okay, we have a motion.
[02:56] Speaker 3: Second.
[02:58] Speaker 1: Motion by Daniel Nathan Heiss. And a second by. Which one of you? Trustee Panda. Okay, we have a motion and a second to approve the agenda. Do we have any public comment on that?
[03:20] Speaker 2: If you would like to make a public comment, please use the raise hand feature. If you would like to make a public comment in person, please fill out a comment card in the back of the room and bring it to the front.
[03:32] Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. So we could take the vote. Anda?
[03:40] Speaker 2: Yes. Iranian?
[03:41] Speaker 1: Yes. Butler. Yes. Yamis.
[03:44] Speaker 2: Yes.
[03:44] Speaker 1: Lewis. Yes. Maxwell.
[03:46] Speaker 3: Yes.
[03:47] Speaker 2: Nathan Heiss.
[03:47] Speaker 3: Yes.
[03:50] Speaker 1: Thank you. That is unanimous. The motion passed. So we will go on to Item 5. Board meeting minutes. This is from December 17th.
[03:59] Speaker 3: Move to approve the meeting minutes as presented.
[04:03] Speaker 2: Second.
[04:06] Speaker 1: Okay, we have a motion and a second for the minutes. Motion by Daniel Nathan Heights. Second by our student trustee. Do we have Any public comment on this?
[04:26] Speaker 2: If you would like to make a.
[04:27] Speaker 1: Public comment, please use the Raise hand feature.
[04:29] Speaker 2: Or please fill out a comment card in the back of the room. Seeing none.
[04:34] Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. So we will now take the vote, please.
[04:39] Speaker 2: Iranian? Yes.
[04:41] Speaker 1: Panda.
[04:42] Speaker 2: Yes.
[04:42] Speaker 1: Butler. Yes. Giammas.
[04:44] Speaker 2: Yes.
[04:45] Speaker 1: Lewis. Yes. Maxwell.
[04:47] Speaker 3: Yes.
[04:52] Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. That passed unanimously. The minutes from December 17th. So we will go to. Well, item four is closed session. There is no closed session. So item five is recognitions. We have a board resolution number 1525 26. Black History Month. Would one of the trustees like to read the resolution? I'll read it. Thank you.
[05:27] Speaker 2: Whereas American history testifies and reflects upon the cultural pride, perseverance, struggle, determination and challenges in which black people fought to share in equal opportunities founded in our nation's principles of life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness. And whereas black men and women have participated in every American's responsibility to protect the United States Constitution and advance the cost of freedom and civil rights. And whereas these individuals and their accomplishments inspire all citizens by telling the stories of overcoming evil and hatred. They remind each of us of ordinary people rising above insurmountable circumstances and the prejudices of others to change the lives of all Americans for the greater good. Whereas California history and social science content standards stresses the importance of our history curriculum of community, state, region, nation and the world must reflect the experiences of men and women of different racial, religious and ethnic groups. Whereas all students and teachers need an opportunity to better understand the common threads of black people's faith, family and freedom to develop pride in their own identity and heritage, and to respect and accept the identity, diversity and heritage of others. Now, therefore, be it resolved that Contra Costa County Board of education hereby proclaims February 2026 as Black History Month in our county and encourages all educational communities to commemorate this time with appropriate instructional activities and cultural events.
[07:10] Speaker 1: Thank you. I'd like to move that we adopt the Black history month resolution second 2526. So we have a motion by Trustee Lewis and a second by Trustee Nathan Heiss. Do we have any public comment?
[07:30] Speaker 2: If you would like to make a.
[07:31] Speaker 4: Public comment, please use a raise hand feature.
[07:34] Speaker 2: Please fill out a comment card in the back of the room. Seeing none.
[07:40] Speaker 1: Okay, let's move to the vote.
[07:42] Speaker 2: Iranian?
[07:44] Speaker 1: Yes and yes. Butler? Yes. Thomas? Yes. Lewis? Yes. Maxwell?
[07:50] Speaker 3: Yes.
[07:50] Speaker 2: Nathan. Heist?
[07:51] Speaker 3: Yes.
[07:53] Speaker 1: Okay, I just want to ask. Are we going slow enough for the translator? Did we need the translator to have a minute? I don't think they need a minute. I think that consistently throughout the meeting, if you all could speak slowly. That would be great. Okay, thank you. Okay, So now I lost track. Did we vote on that one? We voted on that one. Okay, so now we'll go ahead to the consent calendar. Item six, Consent agenda, item six. So I'll read number one. Items listed under the consent agenda are considered routine and will be approved by a single motion. There will be no separate discussion of these items.
[08:43] Speaker 3: I move that we approve the consent agenda.
[08:46] Speaker 1: Okay. We have a motion.
[08:50] Speaker 3: Well, I'll wait for a second. I just want to make one quick discussion statement and then we can. We can vote if that's okay. But all it has to do.
[08:58] Speaker 1: Should we discuss. I'll second the consent. The consent agenda approval. So now we're going to have discussion.
[09:07] Speaker 3: I'll be very brief. President Butler. I just want to. I think with. With items 6.9, 10, and 11, we are acknowledging the acceptance of public gifts. And I do think it's important that we thank you, the Transfer Inc. The Dean and Margaret Lesher foundation, and all the community members who contributed to these gifts. It's just important that we acknowledge philanthropy wherever and whenever possible. So that's all I wanted to say.
[09:33] Speaker 1: Yes. And we could have pulled those off the consent calendar, but. Okay, you're saying you don't need for that to happen. Okay. Do we have any public. Com. Any other comments or public comment?
[09:48] Speaker 2: If you would like to make a public comment, please use the raise hand feature or please fill out a comment card in the back of the room. Seeing none.
[09:56] Speaker 1: Okay. And I just want to add a comment here that I agree with what my colleague just said that we need to be sure to acknowledge gifts and that it was. This was an especially special one. Number 11, because it was for the teacher of the year program. All gifts, any amount, is fantastic and wonderful and greatly appreciated.
[10:21] Speaker 2: Okay.
[10:21] Speaker 1: With that, let's vote on this item. If you want to call the vote. Iranian. Yes.
[10:29] Speaker 5: Yes.
[10:29] Speaker 2: Butler.
[10:30] Speaker 1: Yes.
[10:31] Speaker 2: Yes.
[10:32] Speaker 1: Louis? Yes. Maxwell.
[10:33] Speaker 3: Yes.
[10:33] Speaker 2: Nathan Heiss.
[10:34] Speaker 3: Yes.
[10:36] Speaker 1: Okay. We have unanimous vote in approval of the consent agenda. Now we will go on to item seven, public comment. So I'll read the explanation. Persons who wish to address the board during public comment may do so live in the meeting by using the raise hand feature or Star 9. If you are calling into the meeting, the public may address the board regarding any item within the jurisdiction of the Board of Education of the Contra Costa County Office of Education. For items on the agenda, the public may comment at the time the board considers the agenda item. These comments are limited to two minutes each. For items not on the agenda, the public may comment under public comment. These comments are limited to 2 minutes each. To comply with the Brown act, the Board may listen to comments from the speakers, but can neither discuss nor take action on the issues presented. Members of the Board are very limited in their response to statements or questions by persons commenting on items not on the agenda, Board members or staff number 1 ask clarifying questions 2 make a brief announcement 3 make a brief report on his or her own activities 4 refer a matter to staff or other resources for information 5. Request that staff report back on the matter at a subsequent meeting or six Direct staff to place the matter on a future agenda. And that's according to government code. So with that, just to summarize, this is public comment for anything that's not already on the agenda. And with that, I'll ask our staff to call for public comment. Anyone who would like to make a public comment, please. Please fill out a public comment card for items not on the agenda or.
[12:33] Speaker 2: Use the Raise hand feature if you're online. We have three comments online. Rosemary Lewis Saint if you would like.
[12:42] Speaker 1: To begin your public comment, your two.
[12:44] Speaker 2: Minutes will start when you begin speaking and we have translators.
[12:48] Speaker 1: Just keep that in mind.
[12:50] Speaker 4: Thank you.
[12:51] Speaker 2: Good evening everyone, Board members and Superintendent Lynn Mackey. I am Rosemary L. The union staff person assigned to The Educators Union CCC. SEA 2 years ago we were forced to go to fact finding to get a fair settlement. The offer we received in fact finding was the offer that we proposed in mediation, but the COE management refused to settle in mediation. We are now once again back in mediation and are expecting that possibly that same game may be played again by COE management. The COE is flush with money according to the ending balances that the COE.
[13:35] Speaker 4: Reported to the state.
[13:37] Speaker 2: 28 million in unrestricted balance and 40 million in restricted reserves. We believe the COE can afford our ask. Our ask is about attracting and retaining members to ensure no revolving doors for our students and and better support for our students. So what is the cost of our ask? Only $1.5 million which will give the members a 6% raise and move the salary schedule to 20 years. The CoE is sitting on ending balances that are almost more than $50 million. The COE is electing to hold a 14.25% reserve when the state only requires 2%. Why? Because the state actually wants you to use the money on your students and educators each year. That's why we get money every year. Despite the presentations about going into deficit spending by management, there's absolutely no proof of this. The CoE has generated so much in the ending balance because each year they refuse to spend those dollars on the.
[14:48] Speaker 4: Students that generate them. Let's do better by our students, let's.
[14:52] Speaker 2: Do better by our staff. Let's get this done in mediation. Thank you. Jill Steinworth. Can I get some test audio?
[15:03] Speaker 1: Yes, I hit the unmute button. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you.
[15:08] Speaker 2: When you begin speaking, your 2 minute timer will start.
[15:11] Speaker 1: Thank you very much. This is Jill Steinworth. I'm a speech language pathologist for the county. This is my 36th year for the county. I've loved it here. That's why I've been here so long. I must say, though, that we've had some culture changes in our county when it comes to attracting, entertaining the teachers and specialists that we have. I must say that for many years, and I have been bargaining for 15 years, that we had for many years a shared culture that because we serve the toughest students that the districts elect not to serve and they believe that we will do a better job for those students. They believe that because of those type of students that we must have higher training, higher levels of training beyond the special ed, let's say beyond the regular ed and beyond the special ed as well. And that. That we have to continue that training. Our students are very difficult to serve and that we do require lots of support to. We were once upon a time agreement. I think she muted herself, Jill. It came on as it asked me to unmute myself again. Can you hear me now?
[16:46] Speaker 2: Muted.
[16:47] Speaker 1: So I tried to unmute you, but I believe 45 seconds left.
[16:52] Speaker 5: Thank you so much. I'm almost done.
[16:54] Speaker 1: Anyway. I just want to talk about how that we do believe that we need to have a level of income to attract and to retain teachers at the level that's required for our type of teachers, the teachers who serve the toughest students in the county. And we see that there is a very large reserve, as you've heard, is 28 million. And we have been told that they must have that because they see deficit spending coming in the next three years. In my 15 years, I've heard the word deficit spending every year. And they must hang on to that money. But yet I have never seen that happen. Every year the economic reserve goes up. So no deficit spending. Thank you. Gina McLean. Can I get some test audio from you?
[17:48] Speaker 2: Testing. I'm here, yes. Can everybody hear? When you begin speaking, your 2 minute timer will start. Okay, thank you. Good evening, board members and Superintendent Lynn Mackey. Thank you so much for having me and Letting me speak at this time, and I am grateful for all of your service. I'm just letting you know that two years ago I was on the bargaining team and we, CCCOE requested that we don't bargain for last year.
[18:18] Speaker 1: And then this year we were told.
[18:22] Speaker 2: According to my bargaining members, that we were told that CCCOE wanted to change pronouns and gave us not very much in terms of raise. And I just think that one, we didn't negotiate last year. And then two, there's a huge amount of reserves. Three, you guys all know that a cost of living increase is not a raise. A cost of living increase is just that. It's just so that your educators can continuously pay for their life, for their groceries, for their rent. It's just, you know, I have heard numerous times that teachers get paid enough, yet so many of our educators are working two to three jobs just to make ends meet. And you guys all know Contra Costa is not cheap to live in. And our teachers are working with the population that is the most needy. They just are, you know, I mean, they. I love my students, do not get me wrong. But I know that we work very, very hard for them. And we, you know, do not. We want to make sure that they end up in a place that, you know, are. They can be the best person that they can be. And our educator educators deserve the best. And our students deserve the best. Our students deserve the best teachers who want to stay and work so hard for them. Thank you so much. Francisco Ortiz, can I get some test audio from you? Francisco ortiz?
[20:18] Speaker 6: Testing, testing.
[20:20] Speaker 1: Perfect.
[20:20] Speaker 2: When you begin speaking, your 2 minute timer will start.
[20:25] Speaker 6: Thank you very much. Good evening, board. Good evening, Superintendent Mackey. Good evening, community. My name is Francisco Ortiz. I am a West Contra Costa Unified School District parent, former graduate of our district, and currently serving as president of United Teachers of Richmond. And on behalf of the 1500 educators represented by United Teachers of Richmond, I want to express my unwavering solidarity with all of the educators in the Contra Costa County Office of Education who are fighting for a just contract. It's really a sad state of affairs when educators have to continuously fight, fight for what is promised to them by the state in terms of cost of living adjustments. As we know, inflation has been running rampant and we live in one of the most expensive areas in the entire world. And ensuring that our educators who support our most vulnerable students have the support that they need, that have the investment and the reciprocity that they bring to their students from their employer really shows the value that you place on your staff. And so we've seen in my own district what happens when tensions go unheard, when cries go ignored, and we see what solidarity looks like when we can achieve big wins for our students. And so I urge the board to direct the staff to settle a fair contract with your staff members so you can keep the most valued educators in our area. Thank you.
[22:38] Speaker 1: Okay, there's no more public comment. Okay, thank you for all the speakers we had. So now we will go on to the next item. So this is public hearing item number 8.8.1 is the Invictus Academy of Richmond public hearing. I'll turn it over to Mr. McChesney.
[23:07] Speaker 7: Oh, good evening, Board president Butler. You want to go ahead and open it? There we go.
[23:16] Speaker 1: I am opening the public hearing at 5:28.
[23:20] Speaker 7: Good evening again, Board President Butler, County Education Trustees, County Board of Education Trustees, Superintendent Mackey Community. It's my pleasure to introduce this agenda item. Invictus Academy of Richmond is a startup, direct funded charter school that began serving students in 2018. Located in El Cerrito, California within the boundaries of West Contra Costa Unified School District, Invictus was originally authorized by the Contra Costa County Board of Education on appeal in 2017. Invictus has been in continuous operation since opening. This is their first application for renewal. The current Invictus charter term was initially for a five year period, but was extended for three additional years due to post pandemic legislative action AB130 and SB140. And this term will conclude on June 30th of 2026. Based on the most recent California school dashboard results, Invictus Academy of Richmond has been determined to be in the middle performance category. This designation makes Invictus eligible for a five year charter renewal and should inform the chartering authority's renewal consideration. On December 4th of 2025, Invictus Academy of Richmond submitted to the Contra Costa County Office of Education a complete charter petition for renewal. Education code 47605B states that no later than 60 days after receiving a petition, the authorizing governing board shall hold a public hearing on the provisions of the charter, at which time the board shall consider the level of support for the petition. During tonight's applicable agenda item, the petitioners will be provided 15 minutes of speaking time which will be followed by an opportunity for public comment and questions or comments from county Board of Education trustees. Now that the board president has opened the public hearing, I recommend that you invite the petitioners to come forward and make their presentation.
[25:15] Speaker 1: Yes. So would the petitioner please come forward and make your Presentation. Thank you.
[25:34] Speaker 5: Good evening Board President Butler, members of the Board, Superintendent Mackey, county staff and members of the Invictus community that are here this tonight to show their support for Invictus, including staff, student families and board members. Thank you so much for having me tonight. My name is Sean Benjamin and I am the Executive Director of Invictus Academy of Richmond. I also want to recognize and appreciate Neil McChesney and county staff as we have been working closely over the past few years and will continue to do so into our new term and throughout the charter renewal process. I'm excited to be here this evening and share with you the amazing work that we are doing at Invictus. Jeff, I may need some help with the slides. Next slide please. Apologies for that. I want to quickly orient you to our presentation this evening. I will be sharing about our mission timeline and background and the students that we serve. I will be spending the majority of our time on the charter renewal criteria and the ways that we meet the criteria. As part of this, I will share our results and overview our educational model. We will close the evening with an invitation, a powerful video, a deep heartfelt thank you and I will be available for any questions from the board. I will start by grounding everyone in Invictus mission as as this drives our work and purpose each and every day. Our mission is to prepare 100% of our students to thrive in the colleges of their choice, solve relevant problems and communicate with confidence. Invictus is a mission driven school focused on serving students who have been historically underserved by the traditional public education system and we aim to put them on a path that that transforms their lives. I will now take a moment to orient us to Invictus timeline and how we got here today. Invictus was first approved by the Contra Costa County Board of education in 27 and 18 and we opened our doors the following year to a single class of seventh graders. We added a grade level of students until we had our first graduating class in the 2324 school year and and we are excited to celebrate our third graduating class this spring that leads us here to this moment. This is our first renewal as our original term was extended by three years because of COVID We serve students who predominantly reside within the West Contra Costa School District. Looking at the pie chart on the left, almost 87% of our middle school students would attend one of these three district middle schools according to their home address. Looking at the middle pie chart, almost 82% of our high school students would attend one of these three district high schools if they went to their locally assigned schools. Finally, looking at the graph on the right, even though we are located in EL Cerrito, almost 90% of our students are coming from Richmond and San Pablo. I will share some additional demographic data later on in this presentation. Education Code Outlines Criteria for the Renewal of a Charter School we believe Invictus meets the criteria and during the rest of the presentation I will be demonstrating how we do so for context. Education Code words these criteria in the negative, but for our purposes this evening I've reframed them to be in the positive Invictus satisfies the criteria for a presumptive five year renewal, demonstrates renewal is in the best interest of students, has presented a sound educational program, has shown it is demonstrably likely to successfully implement the proposed educational program, is serving all students who wish to attend, and has submitted a petition that is reasonably comprehensive. The first renewal criteria is how Invictus satisfies the academic requirements for a presumptive five year renewal term Invictus is in the middle performing category for charter renewal and renewals for middle performing charter schools are for five years. As you may know, on January 8th the CDE released its updated list of charter schools by performance category and Invictus was listed as a middle performing school. There are three things that make us middle performing. First on the 2025 dashboard, Invictus had six of the seven dashboard indicators Achieve Yellow in 2024 and 25, a majority of our significant student groups outperformed the state average in ELA on the dashboard and in 2025, Invictus was above the state average on the CCI indicator, both school wide and for our significant student groups. The second criteria for renewal is ensuring renewal of a charter school is in the best interest of students in service of this, Invictus looks at how it performs compared to schools our students would otherwise attend if they went to their local locally assigned school. Not only is Invictus a middle performing school, based on our dashboard results, you will see in a moment how Invictus outperformed all comparison middle schools for all but three of the data points listed and is above the West Contra Costa District average in five of the eight academic indicators. These first three represent the academic performance indicators on the dashboard. These next three are also academic indicators but are for informational purposes only and these last two represent the non academic indicators on the dashboard. Despite these strong results, I do want to focus in on chronic absenteeism and suspension rate for a moment. We have worked very hard over the last few years to reduce these numbers and we're proud of the work that we have done, but these numbers are not where we want them to be. We work hard each and every day to make sure our students are on campus and in class so that they can benefit from our academic program, and we're working very hard to continue to reduce these numbers. Similar to the prior slide, here we are comparing Invictus performance against the high schools where over 80% of our 9th through 12th graders would attend if they went to their locally assigned high school based on their home address. Similar to middle school, Invictus outperformed all comparison high schools for every data point except for one, and was above the West Contra Costa District average for six of the eight indicators. Overall, our middle school and high school data demonstrates it is in the best interest of students for Invictus to be renewed as we are providing a high quality program for our students, particularly when we compare to the middle school and high schools our students would otherwise attend. As we've shared on the last two.
[34:08] Speaker 7: Slides.
[34:11] Speaker 5: Again, despite these results, I do want to hone in on our graduation rate for for a moment. This is the one indicator on the 2025 dashboard that declined from 2024 to 2025, whereas all the other six improved. Even though not every student graduated on time last year, which is our goal, we continue to work very closely with all of our students as we know that graduation is a transformational moment in their lives and we're committed to seeing that through with them. Of the nine students that did not graduate last year, six are intended to graduate in June and we're very excited to celebrate this massive accomplishment with them along with Our Class of 2026. The third renewal criteria Invictus has met is that we present a sound educational program. While we believe that our results on the previous slide really speak to our sound educational program, these six elements are really what help make us effective and set us apart. You will learn more about these aspects of our program later on this evening when you hear from members of the Invictus community speaking via public comment. In addition to offering a sound educational program, Invictus has shown that it is likely to succeed in implementing its program in other ways as well. As you will see on this slide, there are several highlights that reinforce that we are operationally sound. In addition to offering a strong academic program, we have earned a full six year WASC accreditation. We have had clean annual audits every year since we have opened. We have a multi year facility lease where we're the only school on its campus. We have had enrollment growth every year since we first opened and as you can see in the chart below, we have radically reduced our chronic absenteeism rate over the last three years. Moving on to the fifth renewal criteria, Invictus is serving all students who wish to attend Invictus is open to all students and accepts any student who applies and you can see this reflected in our 202425 demographic data. We are serving an incredibly diverse student body, especially when you compare us to the local district, county and state. To orient you to this graph, Invictus is the yellow bar on the left, West Contra Costa is the navy blue bar, Contra Costa county is the orange bar, and California is the light blue bar. As you can see here, Invictus serves a higher percentage of students in all four demographic groups, students who identify as African American students and Hispanic Latino students, students who are designated as English learners and reclassified Fluent English Proficient students, students identified as socioeconomically disadvantaged students and students with disabilities. As I shared in the opening, we aim to serve students who have been historically underserved in the traditional public education system and our results demonstrate that all of our students can meet high expectations when given the appropriate support and opportunities to do so. The last renewal criteria to highlight is our Charter renewal petition, which we believe is comprehensive and meets all of the renewal expectations as shown here. We have collaborated with the law firm Young, Mini and Core and we have lined our petition with the FIGMA rubric which is also used by the county staff. Before I close out, I want to extend an invitation to all board members, Superintendent Mackey county staff to come visit Invictus in person over the next month before our vote. While I believe I was able to overview a good view of Invictus, I do believe seeing us in person, in action, seeing the hard work that our students and teachers do each and every day really allows you to experience the amazing work that we are doing and I will follow up with an email invitation to all of you. As we end our presentation, I want to anchor us where we started, which is with our mission, our students and our families. They are our purpose, our focus and what continues to inspire us each day to do this incredibly important, hard and transformational work. Before ending, I'm going to share a powerful video and then I will extend some gratitude and be available for questions.
[39:13] Speaker 3: The school community is really really tight knit community. Students are coming here because they're looking for a school where people are kind and where people can focus on learning.
[39:23] Speaker 2: I want a school for my son.
[39:24] Speaker 4: Who he feels safe and welcoming, and.
[39:27] Speaker 2: That'S what Invictus is providing to him. We have families and students who are passionate about education and that they really value the community that we build here.
[39:39] Speaker 8: The teachers actually do care about your academics and who you are personally. At Invictus, we engage with our families.
[39:48] Speaker 2: By daily and weekly reports, which has a summary of a student's behavior data, academic data, overall experience for the day. There's a lot of communication with parents. If I need to know something, I.
[40:04] Speaker 4: Just come to school and they receive you. The doors are always open for you.
[40:07] Speaker 2: As a parent, we try to find.
[40:09] Speaker 9: Every avenue to communicate with the family.
[40:11] Speaker 7: So that we can partner to better support their student.
[40:15] Speaker 3: All around, it's all about college or career readiness. The vast majority of our students are on an A through G curriculum requirement, meaning just to get out of Invictus with a high school diploma means you are ready to apply to the University of California system.
[40:32] Speaker 2: They have the opportunity to achieve this mission through engaging in a rigorous course load that makes them college ready.
[40:40] Speaker 4: Invictus Academy of Richmond prepares me for.
[40:43] Speaker 1: College by educating us on how college.
[40:47] Speaker 4: Will be like and how it will feel.
[40:51] Speaker 1: So all seniors are enrolled in a.
[40:53] Speaker 6: Course where they are, day in and day out, completing applications, on the hunt for scholarships.
[40:58] Speaker 4: In 12th grade, they take a course.
[41:00] Speaker 8: College access class, where students learn what the college application process looks like. So even if one or two years from now, students know what that process.
[41:10] Speaker 2: Looks like and can confidently do it.
[41:12] Speaker 8: On their own, this school really teaches you discipline, and that helps you focus.
[41:17] Speaker 2: On what you need to focus on. If you are thinking about an education that combines both academics with character training, with high school accountability and expectations, Invictus is the place. We are giving our students an opportunity to access a meaningful education that has the power to transform their lives.
[41:56] Speaker 5: I want to thank you all again for having us this evening and for your time. We look forward to public comment and your questions.
[42:05] Speaker 1: Thank you. Let's see. Do any board members want to do questions now, or should we do public comment first? I have one quick question. Okay, go ahead. Trustee Lewis, I noticed when you were talking about enrollment, you say any student who wants to come to Invictus can. Do you have a lottery system, or is every student who applies accepted?
[42:33] Speaker 5: We have a lottery system.
[42:35] Speaker 1: Have you had. Have you had to turn away any students during that process?
[42:39] Speaker 5: Not yet.
[42:40] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[42:46] Speaker 1: Well, maybe we should do public funds. True. Okay. Well, that may take a while, but. All right. Trustee Lamas.
[43:01] Speaker 2: So I do have. I have questions, and they may Be a little bit hard. So I'm looking at the presentation. Looks like it's page. Page eight, where it shows that for the middle school comparison, math is negative 99.2. And then it shows all of the other schools that are also negative. Same thing for high school. Looks like the numbers are negative. In English, it's negative 18.3. And all of the other schools are also negative. So does that mean that currently scores for Invictus, although they are generally lower than the schools that would be respective schools for the students, the scores are still negative. Is that accurate?
[44:04] Speaker 5: Those numbers are measuring distance from standard, and so these numbers are below the distance from standard and how far away we are. So because they are negative, the smaller the number, the stronger the results. We do want our numbers to be as close to zero or above zero as possible.
[44:26] Speaker 2: What is Invictus staff doing to get those numbers above the standard threshold?
[44:34] Speaker 5: I appreciate your question. It's what we focus on each and every day at Invictus. We care deeply about our student learning and student results. We care about the CASP results, but we also care about our students being ready to thrive in college. We support our teachers. We have weekly professional development where we're focused on rich, meaningful curriculum and ways to provide supports to students so that they can access the curriculum. We're focusing on a framework this year called gleam, which is ensuring that our curriculum is on grade level so that students have the opportunity to to perform on grade level. And at the same time, we're always thinking about access and support for students so that they can access the rigorous material and do well on it. On the flip side, we also have a strong MTSS system where we're constantly looking at student data, looking at how students perform, and providing interventions and supports to individual students who might also meet it. You are pointing out our math data, which is an area of focus of ours and an area that we know we have a lot of improvement. Even though ELA is in the negative. The majority of our subgroups, almost 80%, outperform the state distance from standard.
[46:13] Speaker 2: Thank you. And then to add to that question, so you're meeting UC and CSU eligibility requirements, which is great. Do you have any information how well students are doing once they do transfer over to these four years?
[46:35] Speaker 5: Yeah, that's an excellent question. We do have an alumni here tonight who is speaking our students right now. Our graduates are only sophomores in college, so we're just beginning to track and monitor that information that will be incredibly important to us to know what freshman year Is like what four year, what the graduation through college is like. But we just have such a young alumni group that their majority are just entering their sophomore year.
[47:09] Speaker 2: Thank you. Just please track that for future renewals because I would like to see what those results are. Thank you.
[47:16] Speaker 5: Yes, absolutely. I was a high school principal for 16 years before this and we scrutinized our college level data to inform our high school practice. We're not quite there yet because our alumni are so new to college. But I'm definitely looking forward to being able to inform our high school program to best suit students for college.
[47:48] Speaker 1: Okay, go ahead. Trustee Nathan Heiss.
[47:51] Speaker 3: Thank you for your presentation. Really obviously enjoy Invictus Academy. I shared that before, but I do have a couple questions that have come up and just to quickly piggyback on what Just Ayamas had said earlier or had asked, she asked part of my question. With 100% eligibility rate for UCs and CSUs, of that 100% that are eligible, how many are actually attending college? And do you have any kind of trade or technical programs for students who decide that perhaps college isn't the option for them?
[48:30] Speaker 5: That's an excellent question. We do track that data. I'm going to turn to my team to make sure I quote that accurately. In our first graduating class we had around 85% but I'm not sure that that is graduating, pursuing some sort of post secondary work that did include some trade work. And then the students that did not attend either trade community college or a four year college entered into the workforce.
[49:01] Speaker 3: Wonderful. And then just kind of following up on that, 87% of your students are graduating, which is fantastic. But what about that other 13%? Do they stick around for another year or do they go somewhere else to the schools of record? What happens to that 13%?
[49:20] Speaker 5: So that 13% ends up being nine students. And six of those nine students are pursuing their fifth year and intend to graduate in June. And so we're very excited because it's still a massive accomplishment even on a five year time frame. And the other three students have pretty significant situations in their lives that they're attending to. We hope to stay connected and support those students.
[49:51] Speaker 3: Have no doubt you will and hope you continue to do that. Lastly, just looking at these numbers, the comparisons against high school and middle school were both the same. Your numbers Invictus Academy. So I was curious. Excuse me, if you've compared middle school to middle school and high school to high school.
[50:10] Speaker 5: Excellent question. Yes, we have and I've included it in the appendix of this presentation. So the last few slides, I just did not show them this evening.
[50:26] Speaker 3: Yes, you did. All right. Thank you, Sean. Thank you. Mine's going to be very easy. First of all, I think it's just phenomenal, phenomenally impressive how your dashboard has changed since it came out over last year. So congratulations to you and your staff.
[50:50] Speaker 2: That's a great. So let me, Let me die.
[50:56] Speaker 3: Let me dive in and get really deep here in your budget on Department 5601 is rent. And I won't get you so worked up. But according to your budget, have you really negotiated a three year lock on your rent? So your rent is not going to increase over the next three years?
[51:19] Speaker 5: The way that the budget is produced, it has the same. The accounting principle is you need to have the average of those three years, and so that is why it is static. Over three years, technically, our rate increases by 10 cents per square foot. And so it does increase year to year, pretty nominally. We were asked this question by the county staff and we have replied to that. Overall, it ends up being pretty minimal change. It's $0.10 per square foot, year over year.
[51:56] Speaker 3: So pretty nominal. Yes, still pretty nominal.
[51:59] Speaker 5: But the way it is represented in the budget, for accounting reasons, it's a static number.
[52:03] Speaker 3: You're averaging it up. Okay, that's great. Still very impressive. Thank you very much.
[52:13] Speaker 1: Okay. Trustee Lewis, did you have anything else? Okay, I. Well, so let me ask the students next and then I'll go last student. Trustees, do you have any. Okay, no questions. So I had a few questions. So one thing I keep looking at in this presentation, and this is just a quick question, but slide 12, where it's about demographics, and it's showing, you know, yellow, blue, orange, orange is for county. So I'm curious, are we talking about the entire county, including all charter schools, or what are we talking about there? When we say county in that slide number 12, does that make sense? I can't quite wrap my head around what.
[53:00] Speaker 2: What do you mean?
[53:01] Speaker 5: It's all the students in Contra Costa County.
[53:04] Speaker 1: Okay. Including all the charter schools. Okay. Okay. Thank you. And then let's see, I had a couple of. You know, I agree with my fellow colleagues that congratulated you on the increase in the dashboard, and that was very good work. And I believe you improve both chronic absenteeism and suspension rates, which I remember had been a concern a couple years ago. And they're improved. You know, those chronic absentee and suspension rates, I think still need further improvement. So I would love to hear. I know you Touched on it a little bit. But I'd love to hear more details about what you're going to do to further improve those. And I just want to highlight the areas that I'm, you know, would love to see more, more information on. And then also also math, because that's an area that, that I know you've done a lot of work, but. I'd love to hear what, what do you think you could do to improve that? And then lastly, the percent of teachers with a clear teaching credential, that was it said in the dashboard, 25.4%. So I, I would love to hear more now if you can, about that and what, how does that work and, you know, thank you.
[54:38] Speaker 5: Yeah, thank you, President Butler, for your questions. We are very focused on school culture which impacts our suspension rate. And it's something again, we think about every day from campus supervision and making sure that we have adults present to having a very joyful, positive community so that students feel like they belong and are part of Invictus. There's been some very specific actions we've taken this year to reduce suspensions. And as of right now, we are tracking to have around 6, our suspension rate be 6, so even decline from the previous year. So it's something we're very focused on. Probably the biggest change we've made is to think about what are alternative means of correction other than suspension and really reserving suspension for pretty severe infractions on campus. That and trying to use alternative means to support students and really having it be a learning opportunity versus a strictly disciplinary opportunity. We have seen that that has made an impact so far this year. We've also added a AP of culture and climate who is also thinking about the positive side of our PBIS system. So that Invictus just continues to grow as a joyful culture and continuing to increase that sense of belonging at school. We've also looked at other staffing structures. We've created a restorative justice coordinator role this year to really form the strong relationships with students and helping them de escalate before something turns into a larger incident. So there's been a lot of different initiatives that we've put in place. Those are just a few of those few of them in terms of chronic absenteeism. That has also been a very large focus of ours. Our students were hit very hard because of COVID and a lot have really had their academics interrupted or disruptive and have the pattern of coming back to school be challenging for, for them. We've worked very hard to make attendance Be an everyday thing, especially for that group of students. The largest initiative we've started this year is called Phoenix Fire Society where we have identified the students who are at risk of being chronically absent, middle school and high school, and we've partnered them with a adult on campus. For example, I've been a mentor to students and that really forms a relationship with the student, checks in with the student. And there are also incentives for students for coming to school and bringing back that habit of being in school. And we've seen that that has had a pretty dramatic impact on our students. I think what that has done is decreased the number of students who are chronically absent so that we can then really put our focus and attention to the students who are really sort of struggling for whatever reasons, mental health, family situations. And then we are able to leverage our student success team to provide support to those students and families and encourage their attendance. You asked also about teacher credentials. We have a a lot of early career teachers and we've worked very hard to make sure all teachers are on a path towards having a credential. We have five with the clear credential, we have five with the preliminary credential, seven with an intern, five with the STIP and one with the pip. We have two misassignments similar to schools across the country, unfortunately, and in California in the Bay Area, for finding teachers has been really challenging. We want to find the right teachers for us. That means they're mission aligned and that means they believe in our students. And then we work hard to make sure that they enter us on a path towards earning a credential. The final question you asked about was math. As I responded to another question. It is an area of focus for us and an area of concern. We have some great teachers and we need to figure out how do we support our students to demonstrate that knowledge to be ready for college. But also on the CAASPP exam, one data point that I did not share this evening that is a massive bright spot is that on the NWEA MAP exam, which is a recognized verification valid data source, our students had a 0.3 conditioned growth average. Sorry, had a 0.3 on the conditional growth index. And to demonstrate at least one year's worth of growth, you need the range is between negative 0.2 and 0.2. And our students on average in math were at 0.3. What that demonstrates is we are outside in the positive way of growth on the math MAP exam. So our students are growing and we're very excited about that and we need to support them to demonstrate proficiency on the math exam. As I mentioned before, we deeply care about teaching and learning and supporting students being able to access the curriculum as well as having access to grade level curriculum. We have math grade level teams that really come together, think about math content, math instruction. And we have seen some positive changes. It's hard work and we'll continue to roll up our sleeves until we get the results that our students deserve.
[61:16] Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. Yeah. So on the teaching credential. So if you have some teachers who don't have the teaching credential finished, do they. Are they still teaching the class by themselves or do they have to have a second teacher in the classroom or how does that work? I'm asking because I just read in an audit for a different school that there was a finding at the edit end of the audit report saying that that impacted their instructional minutes because they didn't have a fully credentialed teacher. And be aware, I'm not a teacher myself, so I'm not an expert on this at all. But I just wondered how that worked.
[62:01] Speaker 5: Are teachers do have the proper certification, they need to be in the classroom.
[62:08] Speaker 1: Okay, great. Thank you. And then one last area that I, you know, we touched on in the past because of a past meeting where we had issued a notice of concern around PE and that was related to your graduation requirements. And I know you have a board policy now on graduation requirements, but I'm still a little concerned that it's not actually in the petition. And PE isn't required in the school, as the petition reads, because it's subject to the board policy, which can change at any time when the board decides to change it. So I feel like PE is a very important thing. Not to have to have it all the time, but to have PE at some point during your high school years, it's good for kids, it's healthy. It teaches them to understand their body and get in, you know, routines for their life. That would be healthy. So I would prefer to see the graduation requirements incorporated, and that includes the A to G requirements. This is all subject to your board policy. I would prefer to see it in the petition or in an mou. And I'm not sure if it, you know, the details of how that has to happen if we wanted to change like that, But I wanted to bring that up.
[63:45] Speaker 5: Thank you for raising that. That's something we will consider and I'll speak with Mr. McChesney about.
[63:50] Speaker 1: Okay, that's fine. Okay. I think. Does anyone else have any other thing else they want to say, and then we'll go to public comment for Invictus. Okay. I don't see any other comments from the board, so let's call for public comment. Thank you. Okay, we're going to call you up.
[64:14] Speaker 2: Five at a time.
[64:15] Speaker 1: If you need a translator, please let us know. Please line up at the podium in this order. Robin Degrassia, Gondika. Nguyen.
[64:29] Speaker 2: Gregory Bates, Ryan Guzne.
[64:35] Speaker 1: Soren Churnell.
[64:39] Speaker 2: And Robin, if you'd like to step.
[64:41] Speaker 1: Up and your two minute timer will begin when you begin speaking.
[64:46] Speaker 2: Hello, everyone.
[64:47] Speaker 5: My name's Robin Degrassia and I have a 10th grader at Invictus and an.
[64:51] Speaker 2: 8Th grader at California Caliber. About two years ago at this time.
[64:56] Speaker 1: We applied to Invictus as our backup choice, but we were fairly sure that.
[65:03] Speaker 4: My kid was going to be going.
[65:04] Speaker 2: To middle college, top of their class. All their teachers said they were going to do it.
[65:09] Speaker 1: So when they came around and he.
[65:12] Speaker 4: Was one of the only ones not.
[65:13] Speaker 2: Accepted, we didn't know what we were going to do. And we called up Invictus and said.
[65:19] Speaker 5: I'm going to be real with you. We didn't expect to be here.
[65:23] Speaker 4: And they were amazing. They said, no problem. Let's talk about your student.
[65:27] Speaker 2: They got him into the 10th grade math class. They got him into Spanish, too.
[65:31] Speaker 5: They got him enrolled in community college classes.
[65:33] Speaker 4: And they said, we're going to set.
[65:34] Speaker 2: This all up so that way he.
[65:35] Speaker 5: Can apply again for his sophomore year.
[65:37] Speaker 2: That's what he wants. Come around to six months later.
[65:40] Speaker 5: Santiago, my wonderful, wonderful queer kid who's super shy, has found a community, has.
[65:48] Speaker 2: Created his own clubs, loves all his teachers, loves the fact that he's in.
[65:53] Speaker 5: Multiple different level courses.
[65:56] Speaker 2: His teachers are giving him extra work.
[65:58] Speaker 5: To keep him, you know, engaged.
[66:00] Speaker 2: And when I said, it's time to reapply, he said, why would I leave here?
[66:05] Speaker 1: This is a fantastic place for me to be.
[66:08] Speaker 5: I have friends, I love my class, and Invictus is giving me everything that I need.
[66:14] Speaker 4: And Invictus is still giving him everything that he needs.
[66:18] Speaker 5: This kid has now gotten involved in a local community theater and his teachers show up on their off time to.
[66:27] Speaker 4: Go and watch him be on the stage.
[66:31] Speaker 5: I am so amazed that they take.
[66:33] Speaker 1: Their time out to do that.
[66:35] Speaker 5: I mean, I love Caliber.
[66:36] Speaker 2: We'd been there for 14 years and I've never seen a teacher come, except once, to my daughter's dance recital.
[66:41] Speaker 5: So Invictus is amazing, and I really hope that you understand what it's giving.
[66:47] Speaker 4: The students thank you.
[66:59] Speaker 1: Hi, my name is Jhaunda Win, and.
[67:01] Speaker 2: I'm a parent of students at Caliber Beta and a high schooler in West County. I'm here to speak in support of Invictus. I know several families who chose to send their children to Invictus and have been happy to see the growth in their students. Invictus supports all students with wherever they are in their education journey and they genuinely care about their students. And that's why I'm here today supporting Invictus. Thank you.
[67:33] Speaker 7: Good evening, trustees, Superintendent Mackey and hemorrhage of the public.
[67:39] Speaker 3: My name is Gregory Bates.
[67:41] Speaker 7: I'm an instructional aide at Invictus and I'm here to share my experience in.
[67:45] Speaker 3: Support of Invictus charter renewal. I had a pleasure of joining Invictus.
[67:51] Speaker 7: Staff in September 2025.
[67:54] Speaker 3: It is difficult to put into words.
[67:57] Speaker 7: To describe the overwhelming amount of support from staff members and helping me grow in my role and continue to improve on the support that I provide the student that I primarily support. Without their support, I wouldn't have lasted.
[68:14] Speaker 3: More than a few weeks. It takes a village to run a school.
[68:18] Speaker 7: And the support that I get from Principal P, assistant Principal BA the front office staff, the deans and other staff is greatly appreciated. There are many organizations where there is.
[68:32] Speaker 3: No support given and you are expected to either sink or swim.
[68:37] Speaker 7: That is not the place. Here at Invictus, everything is not perfect.
[68:43] Speaker 3: There is still work to be done.
[68:45] Speaker 7: However, at Invictus, everyone supports one another and goes above and beyond to try and help one another out and do what's best for all of our students. This is one of the many reasons why this school should have its charter renewed.
[69:04] Speaker 3: Thank you for the opportunity for me to speak tonight. Good evening. Members of Contra Costa County Board of.
[69:19] Speaker 7: Education and Superintendent Mackey. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight.
[69:23] Speaker 2: My name is Ryan Guzne and I'm.
[69:24] Speaker 7: The enrollment and family liaison manager at Invictus. I've joined Invictus in 2019 as a.
[69:29] Speaker 3: Seventh grade history teacher, later taught 10th grade, and have now been with the school since its second year. I was drawn to Invictus by its.
[69:36] Speaker 7: Vision of doing something different. Creating a school where structure, care and.
[69:40] Speaker 3: High expectations allow all students to meet grade level benchmarks. At Invictus, students thrive because they are in a safe, structured and joyful environment. We explicitly teach routines and expectations to.
[69:51] Speaker 2: Students to know how to succeed.
[69:53] Speaker 7: The structure maximizes learning time, allows us.
[69:56] Speaker 3: To build strong relationships. We hold a high academic bar while.
[69:59] Speaker 7: Also knowing our students as whole people.
[70:01] Speaker 3: With lives outside the classroom. I have taught our last two graduating classes and our current seniors, including teaching them as seventh graders during the pandemic. Watching them grow from middle schoolers in zoom boxes into confident, caring young adults has been incredibly powerful.
[70:17] Speaker 7: In my current role as the enrollment.
[70:19] Speaker 3: And family liaison manager, I have the privilege of working closely with both new.
[70:22] Speaker 7: And returning Invictus families.
[70:25] Speaker 3: Our families offer invaluable insights into our program and provide thoughtful, honest feedback that helps us continue to grow. That feedback is encouraged and welcomed because we see families as true partners and in this work, by listening closely and collaborating intentionally, we are able to ensure our program not only meets the academic needs of students, but also reflects the values, priorities and hopes of the families we serve.
[70:49] Speaker 7: Ultimately, Invictus is a community where students.
[70:51] Speaker 3: Look out for one another, stand up for peers, and feel deep sense of belonging. The impact of this work is clear in our data, in the voices of.
[70:59] Speaker 7: Our families and our alumni who return to support the school that prepared them for their futures.
[71:05] Speaker 3: Thank you for your time and consideration. I hope you vote YES in February.
[71:08] Speaker 7: Thank you.
[71:16] Speaker 3: Good evening. My name is Soren Chernell. My family and I live in Richmond Annex, just a stone's throw from Invictus Campus where I am a high school English teacher and the head of the Humanities Department. This is my 15th year teaching, my fourth at Invictus and I'm here to talk about academic rigor at Invictus. High academic standards are baked into our culture. In this way, Invictus reminds me a lot of the high performing Boston charter schools I taught at for eight years before moving back to the Bay Area in that we are really laser focused on preparing students for college and career and this mission feels urgent. We all understand there is so much to do and the school year just isn't very long, so there's a tempo to the school day at Invictus that feels purposeful and serious. Students sometimes tell us they wish we would pump the brakes a bit, but that's not really our mo. If you were to walk around campus on any given day, you'd see Jeff Grossman's physics class where students work in self directed groups to solve really hard problem sets. You'd hear Megan Carter at our professional development meeting sharing ideas to get all of our students reading at grade level. You'd find a copy of Toby Child's Art Final on the copier like I did and you'd pick up the half inch thick stack of papers and shake your head because you weren't expected to know that much about Western art in your college class. And you'd overhear our middle school math teacher, Olivia Robertson, who the other day turned to me unprompted and said, I just love math. What I'm saying is that you would see not just academic rigor suffusing every corner of the school, and not just an emphasis on making things challenging, but a delight on the part of teachers in what they teach. A slightly nerdy type, a culture that prioritizes learning above all else. And this is core to how we see ourselves. It's one of the many reasons I'm proud to teach at Invictus. Thank you.
[73:24] Speaker 2: The next five, please line up at the podium. Jayla Speech. Mara Hilliard Salazar.
[73:33] Speaker 1: Oh.
[73:33] Speaker 2: Salvador Alonso, Udiel Gutierrez and Claudia Garcia.
[73:37] Speaker 1: Thank you. Foreign.
[74:01] Speaker 2: President Butler, trustees, student board members and superintendent Mackey. Thank you for the opportunity to share a little bit more about Invictus and why I think it is crucial for you to vote yes on our charter renewal. My name is Jayla Speech, and I'm currently an 11th grader at Invictus Academy of Richmond. I've been here at Invictus since seventh grade, which means I spent some of the most important years of my life at this school. When people ask me what Invictus is like, the first word that comes to mind is welcoming. Invictus is a place where I feel comfortable asking questions, trying new things, and generally just being myself without worrying of being judged. I know the adults here truly care about us and not just our grades, but who we truly are as people. When I'm having a hard day, I know that there's always someone I can talk to, whether it's a teacher, a coach, or a staff member who knows me by name. Invictus is also a joyful place. School isn't just about sitting in class. It's about belonging. I've been a part of student council, volleyball, soccer, robotics, and cheerleading. Each activity has helped me grow in confidence, teamwork, and leadership. Being on the cheer team has especially shown me that school we. Sorry. Show me that school spirit and pride exists here. We support each other, we show up for our school, and we celebrate successes together. Invictus is like a second family to me and has been home to me and so many other students. Because Invictus is a small and caring community, I've been able to build strong relationships and discover what I am capable of. I've learned how to advocate for myself, set goals, and believe that my future matters. Invictus is more than a school to me. It is community that has helped shape who I am today. And I truly believe this is a place where students are supported, challenged and cared for. And I hope that future students get the same opportunity that I have had. Thank you so much for your time and your vote to renewal our charter. I can't wait to experience my senior year with Invictus next year and thank you all so much.
[76:02] Speaker 1: Foreign.
[76:10] Speaker 2: Good evening President Butler, trustees, student board members and Superintendent Mackey. My name is Kimara Hilliard and I'm proud to be a graduate of Invictus Academy of Richmond Class of 2024, a founding student at Invictus and the very first graduating class in our school's history. I started here as a seventh grader and stayed all six years through graduation. Invictus wasn't just the school I attended, it's the place where I grew up, found my confidence and learned how to succeed in spaces that once felt intimidating. I'm now a sophomore at UC Berkeley and I can honestly say that Invictus prepared me to get there and to thrive. Once I arrived at Invictus, I learned how to manage a rigorous course load, advocate for myself with teachers, stay organized and push through challenges when things felt overwhelming. The expectations were high, but so was the support. Teachers didn't just teach content, they taught us how to think critically, ask questions, collaborate and believe that we belonged in college level spaces. That mindset has made all the difference at Berkeley. When I walk into challenging lectures, write demanding papers or juggle multiple responsibilities, I recognize those skills as ones I built at Invictus. What makes this experience even more meaningful is that the Invictus is that Invictus continues to be part of my life. My younger sister started out Invictus as a seventh grader just like I did, and she's now a ninth grader. I get to see how the school continues to grow and serve students with the same care and commitment that shaped me. I'm also honored to stay connected as this year's cheerleading coach. Being back on campus reminds me that Invictus is more than a school, it's a community that invests in its students long after they graduate. As a founding student and a first graduate, I can confidently say that Invictus delivers on its promise. It prepares students not just to get into college, but to succeed once they get there. I strongly support Invictus Academy of Richmond's charter renewal and hope many more students get the same opportunity that changed my life. Thank you for your time and consideration. Good evening members of board and Superintendent. Thank you for letting me speak Today. My name is Yadiel Gutierrez and I'm an ed grad, Invictus Academy of Richmond. I'm here because my school is important to me and I hope you will renew it so more students can attend in the future. I Invictus I feel supported. The teachers and staff really care about us. They talk to us with respect and don't put us down when we make mistakes. Instead, they encourage us and remind us that we can learn and get better. That makes a big difference because it helps me feel comfortable being myself and trying my best. One thing that really helps me during the school day is reading time. I enjoy reading because it helps me focus and relax.
[78:46] Speaker 1: I like that it's part of our.
[78:48] Speaker 2: Personalized learning time because it gives me a chance to reset while still learning. Having that built into our day so that the school understands what students need to be successful. I also like the people at Invictus. A lot of my friends from my old school are here and everyone is friendly. I feel like I belong. The teachers and staff make a school place. I actually want to come every day.
[79:08] Speaker 1: If Invictus didn't exist, I would really miss our classroom.
[79:11] Speaker 2: The teachers push us to do work, but they also help us when things get challenging. That structure helps me stay on track and grow. Invictus is a safe and caring, welcoming school and I hope you renew the school so future students can have the same experience I have. Thank you for listening. Listen.
[79:37] Speaker 6: Good evening President Butler, Trustees, Student Board members and Superintendent McKay. My name is Salvador Alonso and I am the proud parent of two Invictus students. My son is currently a 10th grader and has been at Invictus since seventh grade and my daughter graduated with the class of 2025 after attending Invictus for three years. One of the main reasons I am here tonight is to speak to the high quality, rigorous education that Invictus provides. As a parent, I have seen firsthand how seriously this school takes academics. The expectations are high, but students are never left to figure things out on their own. Teachers push students to think critically, manage their time, and take ownership to their learning while also providing the support they need to succeed. My daughter is a great example of this because of her experience at Invictus. She graduated confident, prepared and ready for the next step. She's currently attending Contra Costa College and is doing very well academically.
[81:19] Speaker 2: With a.
[81:20] Speaker 6: Clear plan to transfer to a four year university to complete her degree. The study, skills, discipline and persistence she developed at Invictus are things she uses every single day in college with My son, I continue to see that the same commitment is rigor and growth. His teachers challenge him academically while also helping him build strong habits that will matter long after high school. Like staying organized, advocating for himself, and setting goals for the future, Invictus has consistently delivered on its promise to prepare students for college and beyond. As a parent, I am grateful for the quality of education my children have received, and I strongly support Invictus Academy of Brisbane chartered renewal. I can kindly ask that you vote yes when time comes to an Invictus charter renewal petition. Thank you. Thank you so much.
[83:01] Speaker 1: One second.
[83:02] Speaker 2: You guys are using translation?
[83:03] Speaker 4: Yeah, she's gonna. She's gonna read in.
[83:06] Speaker 2: Oh, we're just gonna add two more minutes. We're just gonna add time.
[83:10] Speaker 1: Great.
[83:10] Speaker 5: Thanks.
[83:11] Speaker 2: Okay. Mi nombres Claudia gar. Juntos por elexito de misijos los maestros y el personal. Administradores communicarce conas familiares yatodo el personar masayad lo esperado paras estudiantes. Se fue con confianza solidas avilidades academicas y la capacidad de abogarpos. Gracias.
[85:52] Speaker 4: My name is Claudia Garcia, and I am proud and Invictus mom. My son is currently at 8th grader at Invictus, and my daughter graduated as part of the class of 2025. After attending Invictus for six years, our family has truly grown up with the school. What has always stood out for me about Invictus is the close partnership they built with families. From the very beginning, I felt like my voice mattered, that we went working together for my children's success. Teachers and staff don't just know the students names. They know who they are they are working through and what they are capable of becoming. The staff at Invictus genuinely care. They show up every day doing absolutely the best for the students. When the work is hard, I've seen teachers stay late to support students, administrators, checks in. Our family and staff consistently go above and beyond to make sure students feel free, safe, supported and challenged. As a graduate, my daughter was truly prepared for life after Invictus. She left with confidence, strong academy skills, and the ability to advocate for herself. What means so much to me is knowing that Invictus didn't stop caring until the day she graduated. She knows she can come back anytime, whether whether it is to get help revising her resume, asking for a letter of recommendation, or just checking in with the adults who help shape her. Now, as I watch my son continue his journey here I feel incredibly grateful that he is part of the same caring, committed community. Invictus is more than a school. It's a family. I strongly support, and it's chartered renewal. And I hope future families continue to experience the same partnership, care, and dedication that is for my family and my family had.
[88:07] Speaker 1: Thank you very much.
[88:09] Speaker 2: Thank you. Can we get Nicole Douglas and Esther Procopianco? Esther Douglas. I mean, Nicole Douglas, please. And Esther Pronco. Thank you. Hi.
[88:28] Speaker 1: My name is Nicole Douglas.
[88:29] Speaker 2: I'm a parent of a student here at Invictus Academy. I purposely sought this school out. My students started to go into ninth grade. Being a parent of by proxy, meaning I have none. But I've waged 14. So you can imagine I've been to school 14 times. I'm down to my last two. And trust me, I am praying one is in regular school, one is at Invictus. As I said, I purposely sought out a different school for him. He needed a place where he could thrive, where he could be seen, where he would graduate, because at first I thought that he wasn't. He's been there since ninth grade. He's at 10th grade of this year. He has held a B average in school. He has no problems going to school. He doesn't get in trouble like he used to. And this is coming from regular school over to Invictus. It's a smaller school. There's always support. There's some supports that I heard of tonight that in the beginning I thought that we would need. I haven't had to, because he's found his place since he has gotten at this school. I don't have to yell at him about homework. I don't have to say, hey, did you study for this test? He's on the basketball team. He's on the soccer team. There's just so many things that I know with a regular school, I would have been pulling teeth. I'm not having those issues. I got two years to go, and I know that as long as he's at this school, he's gonna make it. And he's on the road to go to higher education. Good evening, Board chair Butler, Trustees and Superintendent Mackey. My name is Esther Prokopienko, and I am the proud principal of Invictus Academy of Richmond. I'm going to talk a little bit about our use of data. We use data throughout the school to understand both the strengths of our program as well as our areas of growth. Data shines a light in our practice so that we can continually adjust and improve to better meet the needs of our students. We also intentionally share this data with students, families and staff so that everyone is aligned around student progress and continuous improvement. Our data driven approach is grounded in a simple truth. Students learn best when they are socially supported, emotionally regulated, and consistently present in engaging classrooms. One example of how we put this belief into action is our weekly student data report, which pairs academic performance with attendance, engagement and behavior data and is shared with students and families directly. I will leave a sample report with the board tonight. At the school wide level, we analyze data across grades and student groups to identify trends and make adjustments for families. The reports provide clear updates on academics, attendance and social engagement, making the connection between daily habits and academic outcomes clear and actionable. This same commitment to progress monitoring applies to all students, including our English learners. In addition to the lpac, we monitor progress using NWA map growth assessments and formative measures such as exit tickets, quizzes, and class participation. We use this data in teacher coaching, grade level meetings, and professional development to refine instruction and target supports. Renewing Invictus Academy's charter affirms a data driven model that is reflective, responsive, and continuously improving. I respectfully urge you to support the renewal of Invictus Academy of Richmond. Thank you. Okay, that's the last of public comment.
[92:37] Speaker 1: President Butler. Okay, thank you. Thanks. Thank you to everyone who spoke tonight. I appreciate it. It's very informative. Informative and good to hear. So does that conclude the public hearing? Okay, so.
[93:02] Speaker 3: Oh, what.
[93:05] Speaker 2: Did.
[93:06] Speaker 1: Any other comments? Go ahead.
[93:09] Speaker 2: Hi. Before we end the public hearing, I just want to congratulate all of the students who came out and spoke today. I know as a student, it's hard to come out here. It's hard to put yourself out there. I think it's incredible that you guys are advocating for yourself in such a powerful way. And even the students who didn't speak, who are just here showing your support on a night where you probably have a ton of homework to do. I know I have a ton of homework to do. It's amazing that you guys are participating in your local government and just advocating for yourself and keep doing that. I think that's awesome. Thank you, guys. Thank you.
[93:48] Speaker 1: Go ahead.
[93:49] Speaker 2: I just wanted to add on to that because when I walked in here and I saw like, so many of you guys were students and I was, like, surprised that you guys are willing to show up and like, advocate for your school. And you guys are so passionate about it. So I think that's really beautiful. And yeah, I love how you guys have such a connected community.
[94:17] Speaker 1: Thank you. For those comments. Well put. Okay, so another comment, go ahead.
[94:24] Speaker 2: Sorry I had to piggyback on that, what she just said. So how you showed up today to this board meeting, you can show up to city council meetings, you can show up to the governor, you can show up to Washington D.C. if not in person through email or phone calls. So know that you have that power to do exactly what you did today at all levels of government.
[94:51] Speaker 1: Great point. Any other comments? No. Okay, so just to clarify, we're going to close the public hearing here in a minute, but if we have further questions, is there a deadline to send questions in and who do we send that to?
[95:14] Speaker 7: I thank you, President Butler. There is no deadline per se. My suggested timeline for board trustee written questions was by this Friday. That's with some thought into how long it takes it takes for the petitioners to respond and that we have all their answers before the staff report and that you have time to consider them before your final decision hearing.
[95:35] Speaker 1: Right. Okay. Thank you. All right. With that I will close the public hearing at 6:40. So.
[95:55] Speaker 2: Okay.
[95:55] Speaker 1: All translation equipment should be returned over here on the side of the room. Thank you. And we will now take a five minute break to allow for clearing the room. Okay. We will resume the board meeting at this time. It is now 6:48. So let's see. We'll go ahead with item 9.1. Charter Schools Update. Go ahead, Mr. McChesney.
[96:29] Speaker 7: Thank you and good evening again. Board President, Butler County Trustee, Superintendent Mackey. I will start my presentation as soon as it pops up here.
[96:50] Speaker 3: Great.
[96:51] Speaker 7: Some highlights in the agenda. There is always first touching on the annual oversight visits. As you will remember, education code actually says very little about the role of the authorizer save it does say state that you must make an annual visit to the the site. We are in the process of our annual oversight visits right now. It's a multi month process which I think I'll go over in the next slide. But it's effectively a comprehensive check in on the charter looking at aspects including educational program facilities, financials, school operations and governance. It began in December with the charters submitting a variety of documents and reflections on the year. We will conduct our visits in the month of March. This is an actual site visit with myself and at least some one other person from the Contra Costa County Office of Education team, usually from business services or education services. We meet with stakeholder groups at the charter sites including leadership, teachers, students, parents and others. We visit classrooms usually takes the better part of a day and then through follow ups is needed Facilities inspections occur by third party in the summer months and then I will always report out on the annual oversight visits in August. Moving on to Contra Costa School of Performing Arts. As you know, they closed permanently at the end of the 2425 school year. Just keeping you apprised of the progress there. They have completed their final audit. It was included, per Trustee Butler's request, in the packet tonight. The facility that Contra Costa School Performing Arts purchase is actually in the process of being sold to a non public school. They're in the final stages of escrow right now. The latest update is that the sale will close near the end of this month and then the organization will completely dissolve after that is done, pending Attorney General approval. Feel free to jump in if you have any questions at any point. Yes, Trustee Butler.
[99:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, I was just curious. Do you know who they're selling the facility to?
[99:24] Speaker 7: Off the top of my head, I cannot remember the name. For clarification, by non public school we mean the kind of school that typically serves special education students that's accessed by districts and charter schools. It's non public because there are tuition fees, but they are often included in the scope of the IEP and paid for by the district or the charter that's sending the student there as part of the services due to that student. I know the name. I'm happy to follow up and tell you about it via email. I cannot remember it off the top of my head.
[99:59] Speaker 1: Okay, thank you.
[100:01] Speaker 3: Moving on.
[100:04] Speaker 7: Touching on Differentiated assistance. California has a multi tiered system of support, if you will. Level two being differentiated assistance which is designed to address specific performance issues with schools, district and charter alike. Based on the California School Dashboard, eligibility for charters is based on two different methodologies. Actually three different methodologies. When you include local indicators, charter schools must meet those criterias to be eligible. And it's the terminations are made on an annual basis and the service support cycle is one year. I won't go over these in detail, but you can see here highlights about the criterion for eligibility. Charters that are authorized by county Office of Education are that are deemed eligible for differentiated assistance are provided support by the geographic lead agency. County Offices of education are the primary support providers for DA across the state. So when you have a charter that is authorized by that county, they move the DA assistance to the GO lead agency to avoid any possible conflict of interest or perceived conflict of interest. For us, that would be the Santa Clara County Office of Education. Last year in 2025, the calendar year, that's the cycle when DA is provided SCOE provided DA to three of our charter schools Making Waves, Invictus and Golden Gate. In following the release of the dashboard for 2025, a new list of eligibility was published by CDE. It actually included the same three charter schools. DA summary letters have been provided by SCOE and I've attached them to this agenda item for the Board's information. They will continue to provide biannual updates. So our next one I believe is in the June window and we'll share those with the County Board of Education at that time.
[102:25] Speaker 10: Moving on.
[102:28] Speaker 7: Just keeping the board apprised of other charter schools that are up for renewal. We finally have a complete table here. You'll remember ENIAC Charter Academy was approved as a high performing school at the time for a seven year term. Rocket Ship Delta approved for a five year term and then finally Voices College Bound Language Academy West Contra Costa was ultimately approved by West Contra Costa Unified School District because they were a low performing charter school. Education College Code requires an approval for a two year term at maximum to include a performance improvement plan which was agreed upon between the district and the charter. Conceptually they haven't put pen to paper in a final version yet. That will likely come in the next couple months. That's of course between the authorizer and the charter school, but for all intents and parts purposes, they are a renewed charter and will have a two year term. Some news we received on January 15th so just last week I'm literally cutting and pasting the excerpt from their email here. Manzanita Middle School is announcing their closure at the conclusion of the 2526 school year. Our office will meet with them in the next week or so to discuss what that looks like and ensure the process is compliant, financially responsible, and of course optimizes student transitions to their next school. Well, I will of course keep you apprised of our progress there over the coming months.
[104:15] Speaker 1: How many students do they have?
[104:17] Speaker 7: I believe they're in the 60 to 70 student range currently. And then finally I just wanted to let you know that we will continue our trustee Charter tours with our spring session coming in April, but we will send out signups for that in the next few weeks, likely or month. So be on the lookout from Natalia or Michelle for your opportunities. And as always, if you have any questions or specific needs, please feel free to reach out. That concludes my update for this evening. I'm happy to answer any other questions as needed.
[105:03] Speaker 1: Do any board members have questions? Yes Trustee, the Iranian I just wanted.
[105:11] Speaker 2: To ask what happens to the students at Manzanita Middle School, like, after it closes, would they transfer to other schools and would they get any support?
[105:21] Speaker 3: Yes.
[105:22] Speaker 7: Manzani Middle School is a middle school, right. So it serves grades seven and eight. I want to say maybe six, seven and eight. Actually, six, seven, and eight. So students, regardless of their grade, which will transfer to a new school that could be a district school, it could be another charter school, could be a school of the parents choice. And the support and ensuring that all students are accounted for and end up in another school at the beginning of the 26, 27 school year will be a large part of our conversation with that school. And we'll be making sure through our oversight that it happens as smoothly as possible.
[105:58] Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you.
[105:59] Speaker 2: Thank you.
[106:02] Speaker 1: Any other questions from board members? I don't see any. I do have one question for Neil. These. These reports from the SCOE about the differentiated instructions. It says update. And when you look at it, it's mostly a list of. It appears to me it's mostly a list of. Of when they had meetings and things. So I was wondering, you know, is. Could you share any more about that? Am I reading this right or what? What are we supposed to get out of seeing these final update reports?
[106:40] Speaker 7: I mean, without having it in front of me? It's a little difficult. I will say that based on my review of scoe's work, they. They send kind of an overview of their DA process, what it looks like over the course of the 12 months, and then they have individual information for each of the charter schools in da, what their focus areas were, you know, how the frequency of their meetings, you know, the goal of differentiated assistance is to see improved student outcomes. So that's the ultimate metric. And if I. If memory serves, the schools that are in differentiated assistance, even though it is the same schools, it doesn't necessarily mean it's for the same reasons. And I think the last thing I'll say is that. Not suggesting this was the context of your question, but differentiated assistance is not a punitive program. It's meant to support students in schools so that there is improved outcomes for their student body.
[107:44] Speaker 1: Okay, thank you, Trustee Maxwell. Go ahead.
[107:49] Speaker 3: Yeah, Neil, Going back to Manzanita, I think we kind of. The last visit that I had this was somewhat on the wall. The writing was on the wall. But we want to make sure the kids are placed the right way. I don't think. We don't provide that service, do we, as a county? We don't provide any type of. Here are your options. Am I speaking out of school by forgive for. Forgive me. By saying, would a good charter that's local to the Richmond area want to know this? Do we tell other charter schools or other people or every school that this one's closing? And is there a process? Do you kind of see where I'm going? I don't know how to really ask the question, but yeah.
[108:36] Speaker 7: So I would be surprised if any of the charter schools in West Contra Costa do not know that this is happening or won't know in the immediate future. It's a relatively close network of individuals in terms of providing direct services and support to the students or families. That's not our primary role. What we will do is look at correspondence that's sent out by the charter school, provide guidance in terms of. Of how they communicate and what information they communicate to families, and then we'll look at the list of students and really like literally help them by checking off each of these kiddos as their cum files depart and end up somewhere else. So we're making sure that nobody falls through the cracks.
[109:23] Speaker 3: Okay. I mean, you don't want to be ghoulish about it, but I would think that if other schools would come in, Sean, obviously I'm looking at your direction because you're here, but other schools would want to go in and say, hey, we have space and we'd love to have you come check us out. And is that appropriate or is that. Has that precedent been set or. I mean, that.
[109:44] Speaker 7: That's specifically up to the charter school leaders themselves.
[109:47] Speaker 3: I don't think it.
[109:48] Speaker 7: I don't think it's our role to do marketing necessarily. I will say, you know, given that these are families that sought out a charter school option, I would not be surprised. Surprised if they are already. Because according to the message, they've been notified at least initially already seeking out what other charter options there are in the community. So it would behoove the charter leaders that serve those same student levels to.
[110:17] Speaker 3: To reach out, to make.
[110:18] Speaker 7: Make themselves available.
[110:19] Speaker 3: Right. Okay, thank you.
[110:24] Speaker 1: And I assume somebody notifies that school district as well, the public school.
[110:30] Speaker 7: Yes, that. That will be of. On the long list of official bodies that will be provided notice.
[110:36] Speaker 2: Okay, great.
[110:37] Speaker 1: Thank you. Oh, go ahead. I just.
[110:41] Speaker 2: I want to point out how fiscally prudent it was of Mananita to come to this on their own and not have to be pushed in major deficit to do this. So I want to commend that because. Because it is a hard decision to make, but it obviously is a very fiscally prudent decision that they made on their own.
[111:02] Speaker 7: If you don't mind, I will also give kudos to our business services department. Candidly, we were preparing for a meeting with them to discuss some very specific concerns that our team had noted around financial issues. So our team had already kind of seen it coming as well.
[111:23] Speaker 2: To your team too then.
[111:27] Speaker 3: Okay.
[111:29] Speaker 1: Without any other comments. Thank you. And that concludes the charter update. Thank you. Oh, we need public comment. Could we ask for public comment, please?
[111:40] Speaker 2: If you would like to make a public comment, please use the raise hand feature. Seeing none.
[111:47] Speaker 1: Okay, so now we. Oh, public comment. Sorry. Well, I think they. They want you to come up to the mic, so they. It's our process. Thanks. My name is Elliot Spence.
[112:08] Speaker 3: I'm a parent at Invictus and I was at a board meeting with the Wisconsin Costa County Bond Bond Group over in Richmond. And I just remember a public comment by a man who was commenting about charters and he demonstrated through his comment that charter schools have a very hot political status with relationship to the. To the rest of the educational establishment. And I just want to comment on this Manzan disclosure. My comment is that the closure of.
[112:49] Speaker 1: The school seems to.
[112:50] Speaker 3: It seems like a failure, but in my opinion, it seems like a wonderful example not only of market dynamics doing what they should do to provide the best things for the people who need them, but as you guys noted, the people who manage that place being actually quite responsible with the resources that were entrusted to them. So addressing the thought that the failure of one charter school somehow diminishes the charter proposition as an idea. I would like to rebut that by saying this is an excellent example of the system working properly. Thank you.
[113:33] Speaker 1: Thank you for your comment. Okay, so we will. At this, at this point, we will move on to the next agenda item, which is item 9.2. Consider approval of the School Accountability Report cards. The SARC. The first one is for our special education schools. Mr. Berger, thank you.
[113:59] Speaker 3: So good evening President Butler and board Superintendent Mackey and community. My name is Nick Burke. I'm the senior director of student programs here in the county office. And tonight I'm going to share a little bit of information about school accountability report cards and then be available to answer any questions about our SARCs. Specifically, I want us to start off by recognizing school accountability Report cards that we Refer to as SARCs are really a tool that the community can use to do research and to learn about what the schools in their neighborhoods or schools are have to offer. So, and again in the slide, starting in 1988, the School Accountability Record report cards have been required for all public schools collecting public money and they are shared annually with the public information in the school Accountability Report Card. All of the SARCs have a template that's put out by the state. We make sure that we're sharing information about the school's mission, the school's profile. You'll notice in the SARCs there's they do three year comparisons. You'll notice academic data similar to data on the dashboard, the California Dashboard. You learn about the demographics of the schools. You learn about their, the graduation rates, class sizes. There's information, sometimes confusing information about teachers credentials. There's some mention about curriculum and how accessibility to the textbooks that the students have. There's some information about post secondary and then there is fiscal data as well in this, in the school accountability report court cards. Schools are required to produce these documents, have them board approved and provide them provide access to the public. We keep our sarcs on our district or on our county office website and we make them available at schools. One thing to notice we do in this Contra Costa County Office of Ed. We do provide Spanish versions of our SARCs because we know that's a population. I think the 15% is the number. If you have 15% of one language then you're required. And we've always provided the SARCs in Spanish for our community. One of the big parts, the big push for the county office folks and our facilities team is our facility inspection toolkit reports. So we call it the fit reports which are part of the SARCs in our organization. Our general service team partners with a third party vendor to go out to the sites to do the FIT inspections. And we ask our school administrators to walk the inspection with them as they go through the the inspection. We as a practice note anything that we see that needs to be fixed and our administrators put work orders in at that time. So our goal is always to identify any, any facility needs and to address them. And typically we try to address them before we bring the SARCs to the board. So next slide. Oh, and that's SARCS in a nutshell. What you have in, in your board packet we have item 9.2, 9.3 and 9.4. Those three agenda items cover our four SARCs. We have a school accountability report card for Mount McKinley, one for Golden Gate, one for our special education programs and then one for Marcus Schools specifically. So my ask tonight is for the board to approve items 9.2, 9.3 and 9.4. And if you have any questions about our, our SARC specifically I'm willing to answer questions.
[118:35] Speaker 1: And have my mic on. Thank you for the presentation. Mr. Berger, do any of our. My colleagues have any questions regarding this? Trustee Lewis? Go ahead.
[118:47] Speaker 2: I'm not sure if it's a question.
[118:48] Speaker 1: So much or as a point. As we look through some of the SARCs, there's some issues with facilities and not necessarily the best. We are not approving that these facilities are lacking in certain ways. We're just approving the report. Is that correct?
[119:05] Speaker 3: Yes. And we always want to be honest in our reports. When we walk into a bathroom, if we see a leaky faucet, we report it, we put it in the sarc, and then we put in a work order and have it corrected.
[119:16] Speaker 1: Thank you. I just want to say I appreciate having SARCs, because whenever I'm going to go visit a school, for example, I like to look at it and see there's always a good little summary at the top and some information. I might not know, but I know it's required by law. But I'm just saying. And the interesting thing to me is always the number of school days at the very last page, the number of school days for staff development. And I noticed that varies on ours. So one is 10 days, one is. One is five or six days, and one is 16 or 17 days. But I know these schools vary a lot, so I think we probably have different kinds of staff development and then that's totally appropriate. Yeah. Thank you. I don't have any other questions. Does anyone else have any other comments or questions? Okay, thanks for the presentation. And. Oh, we need to vote on. On these. Oh, we need public comment. Right. If you would like to make public comment, please use the raise hand feature. Seeing none. Okay, let's take a vote. Can we vote on all three at once?
[120:43] Speaker 2: Well, it depends. It depends on what the motion is.
[120:46] Speaker 8: Yes.
[120:47] Speaker 3: I'm here to vote affirmatively or combine actions action items 9.2, 9.3 and 9.4 and vote to approve the reports.
[121:01] Speaker 1: We have a motion.
[121:02] Speaker 3: Second.
[121:03] Speaker 1: And we have a second. So motion was from trustee Nathan Heiss. Second was from trustee Maxwell. And let's take the vote, please.
[121:17] Speaker 2: Iranian yes and yes.
[121:21] Speaker 1: Yes.
[121:21] Speaker 2: Jamis. Yes. Lewis.
[121:23] Speaker 1: Yes.
[121:23] Speaker 2: Maxwell.
[121:24] Speaker 3: Yes.
[121:24] Speaker 2: Nathan Heist.
[121:25] Speaker 3: Yes. Thank you, board. And a big thank you to our principals for doing the work and our general service team for the fit inspections. And thank you for the technical support tonight.
[121:35] Speaker 1: Okay, thank you. So that was a motion to approve all three. Unanimous approval. So now we will move on to the next item tonight, which is our budget update item 9.5. And this is our director Parisites who's going to present. Thank you.
[122:03] Speaker 8: Good evening Board president Butler, fellow trustee, Superintendent Mackey. Tonight I am presenting just a budget update. The January governor's budget proposal was released on January 9. Yesterday a group of school county staff attended the school services budget workshop. And then this afternoon we also sat and listened to capital advisors present as well. So the purpose of this presentation is really to just give a high level summary of what the governor is looking to propose as well as a quick update on our county budget. It's important to note that the economy matters to California, especially as it relates to K12 education. And so far what the state is projecting our stronger revenue growth in 2526. And this is primarily due to tax collections related to the stock market. The broadest measure of the economy is the GDP or the gross domestic product sitting at a little over 4%. However, we are seeing some economic uncertainties remain in the stock market as it heavily relies on technology and the AI field as well as federal policy related to immigration and tariffs. Despite that, the Governor at this point in time is projecting a balanced budget for 2627. However, in the out years 2728, he's projecting a deficit of 22 billion and shortfalls in the years after that. And finally, the budget that was, that is currently being proposed does not project any economic recession or any downturn in the stock market. So overall, what with, with the increase in revenues we are seeing, the overall general fund revenue is seeing an increase of $42.3 billion in, in the budget period that is the prior year 2425, the current year 2526 and the budget year 2627. Again, this is all really driven by taxes, primarily income tax of the high earners. And again this budget forecast does not assume an economic recession or slow slowing of the stock market. That being said, Prop. 98, which is the statute which provides a minimum guarantee to education, is projecting an increase of $21.8 billion from what was projected back just a few months ago, June 2025. What's important to note is the LAO or the Legislative Analyst Office, which is a bipartisan group that looks at, at the numbers as well and provides their, their take on what, what the budget might look like. They're seeing something different. They're assuming different assumptions than the state governor is. They're not assuming quite strong revenue as this. The governor is. And so there is a gap of $7.7 billion different from the LAO to the governor. And because of this, this proposal also includes a proposal to hold $5.6 billion in the 2526 year from the Prop 98 guarantee. I'll go a little bit more into that in the next slide, but I just wanted to make sure I mentioned that. But in addition to the increased revenue numbers, that's allowing the governor to then replenish his rainy day fund. If you remember when we were adopting the budget that was set to be depleted by 2526. And so because we're coming into new revenues, you'll see in the chart in the yellow box, as of 2526, they're expected to be $4.46 billion in the reserve, and then in 2627 down to a little over $4 billion. So I thought it would be important to just go over a little bit about the settle up versus maintenance factor. As I mentioned, Prop 98 is a calculation that determines minimum funding to education each year. So what he's proposing this year or for 2627 is to hold $5.6 billion from the $121.4 billion owed to education in 2526. What makes this different than years past is before, years ago, there were maintenance factors where they said, okay, we owe you 121 billion, but we can't afford it because the economic outlook isn't great. So we're going to hold a maintenance factor factor and we'll pay you at a later point in time. And the amount we pay you and the timing we pay you is all written out in statutes. So there's some formula to get us paid back. This settle up proposal is quite different. It says that we owe you $121 billion. We can afford it right now. But because our projections are based on a steady economic economy, stock market maintaining stability, because we know that's risky, he's saying, well, we'll hold 5.6 billion right now, even though we can pay you now. So that's a big sticking point with many in the education world because Prop 98 is a guarantee that we should be getting now. And so we're hoping to see some kind of debate around that. And hopefully the plan is something that does not include the settle up. Besides that, this is Newsom's last January governor's proposal. And so he is maintaining priority prioritizing education. 71% of new money is going to core education as well as academic programs and wraparound services for students. And again, 29% of that is going to replenish the rainy day Fund or the state's reserve. And then again on this slide, that's on the back of a $5.6 billion settle. All that to say as of the proposal for January, we do have some updated estimates for COLA or the cost of living adjustment for 2627. It is now projected to be 2.41. Before this revised amount it was at 3.02, so that is a reduction. And then for 2728, the projection is 3.06%. At the enacted budget in June, that was 3.42%. So we are seeing a decrease in those factors. It's important to note that there are several indicators that drive this final number. We are waiting for two. The seventh factor is coming in in February with the final one coming in in April. So by the May revise we should have a final statutory COLA number. And then I just thought it'd be important to share some other investments proposed in the budget. The ones with the arrows are the ones that really impact our county office. There are many other programs that our LEAs will be taking advantage of. However, here at the county office at this point in time on the programs I've listed above, the only ones we may see impact from is the equalization of special education. We have to work with our SELPA to figure out what that would look like. The continual restoration of the LREBG as well as college and career. So those are some programs that are proposed in the budget for next year that we are hoping to tap into at some point. As I've mentioned, you know, right now we're coming in on some some good revenue but a rocky outlook depending on whose assumptions you're looking at. But always Prop 98 or in the recent past. And moving forward, Prop 98 does have a risk of declining enrollment, deficit spending and again, that settle up proposal. Before I move on to an update on our county budget, are there any questions?
[131:43] Speaker 2: Okay.
[131:46] Speaker 8: So I thought since I was giving an update on the January governor's proposal for 2627, I should also take the opportunity to clarify some information shared at the first interim presentation given in January or December. A question was asked about where our deficit and where our deficit is and how that might impact where we are and how long is it going to take us before we go? How long is the reserves going to take us? How far out? And so I thought this table would better illustrate and explain what the answer should have been at that time. So I have three years here. I have 25, 26, 26, 27, 27 28, I have it further broken out with unrestricted versus restricted and then the total of both for all three years. What I want to point out is the third row down where it's surplus deficit. You'll notice throughout from the unrestricted and 2526 all the way through through 2728, we are projecting a deficit in both the unrestricted and restricted budgets. Then we have our beginning fund balance. That's how we started the year. So on the unrestricted side of 2526, we started this year with $21.6 million, but we're projecting 1.8% million dollar deficit, bringing our projected fund balance in the unrestricted bucket 19.8 million at the end of this year. That is how you read this chart from left to right. Before I move further. Does anyone have questions about that piece? Okay, so from there I'll just focus on 25:26. The rows below is our components of ending fund balance. So basically it's what is the breakdown you say you're going to end with 54.1 million in 2526. Where are those funds going? And what this chart does is explain it. On the unrestricted side of the House we're going to end with 19.8 million, which is about 30, 32% of the entire fund balance. The majority of our fund balance in the current and two out years is significant sitting in our restricted programs. Our restricted programs are those that we. We have grants and entitlements that have specific spending requirements. So those dollars cannot just be spent on anything we choose. It's important to understand that because a majority of what we have left at the end of the year, we can't decide on how exactly those things can be spent. So if we look at the unrestricted balance of 19.8 and 2526, we have 10,000 sitting in a revolving cash. So that's a checking account we have. If we have an emergency, we can write a quick check out of there commitments. We have $4.2 million. That's primarily for our DA or differentiated assistant program, charter oversight and our MA medical administration admin Administrative Program. And then in assignments we have 8.8. That's for things like program transition as charters as charters transition and we might have to step in to assist. Those funds would help with that as well as we just had our facility master plan with no funding attached to it. So we've set aside some funds for that as well. Under that is reserved for economic uncertainty at 6% and that is what makes up the $19.8 million in our unrestricted budget. Again, I talked about our restricted. So overall, that is the breakdown of how the 54.1 million we plan to end in the current year is divvied out. What are our available reserves? So we have a policy that says let's maintain at least 6%. So that's $6.7 million. In addition to that, we have Fund 17, which not all leas or counties have this, but we do. And it's a special reserve fund, just a separate place to put funds aside. We have almost 9.3 million there. So when we look at what are available reserves to help us mitigate any unanticipated expenses, we have about $16 million at the end of the 2526 year, which represents about 14%. 26, 27, same idea. 15 and then 2728, we have 15%. So I've shared this chart with the board before, but this illustrates some facts about reserves. So our county office, as mentioned in an earlier comment, we're required to reserve 2% or $2.6 million, whichever is higher. So in our case, 2.6 was the highest higher of. And so that's our required. But we say we want to at least maintain 6. So we have 6.7 million. And then again our special reserve has 9.3 million, which represents about 8.25%. Some factors to consider when we want to determine how healthy our reserves are or not. We want to consider the cost of a month of payroll and the cost of operating expenses. And so for one month of payroll, it's about 5.2% or $5.8 million. And for operating it's about 8.3% or $9.4 million. However, it is the recommendation.
[138:11] Speaker 2: That we.
[138:12] Speaker 8: Keep at least two months of operating. And if you just take the bottom line, times it by two, that's 16.67% or a little over 18 million. So with that in mind, I'm going to flip back to this slide.
[138:29] Speaker 2: So.
[138:31] Speaker 8: Two months operating is close to 17% or $19 million. We're just below. But that's three years out. And so to answer the question that was posed back in December about how long will this take us really, we're looking at our unrestricted budget and it's about $2 million, two and a half million dollar in the third year of deficit and in the third year we have about 15.4 million. That'll take us to about 20 year, 20, 34, 35, not two years. Like I said, I I left that meeting and was in my car and I'm like, what did I say? That is not true.
[139:20] Speaker 3: I, I would attribute that maybe to your, how you were feeling that night.
[139:24] Speaker 8: I, I was sick the next day.
[139:26] Speaker 3: You were you.
[139:27] Speaker 8: Yeah, but no excuses. But, you know, so that's why I'm up here to clarify that information. I think it's very important. I think at this point we are in a, I wouldn't say wonderful, healthy. I think we're in a fair position. I did mention in that meeting that our level of reserves allows us to be mindful about any reductions we may need to make to address that structural deficit. A structural deficit is when your revenues don't cover your expenses. And it's an ongoing situation. The state is seeing this as well. And so we do need to take steps to address it. But we have time because the level of reserves we have. And right now we are in the process of working with our program and direct programs and departments to do budget development for next year. And so one of the approaches we are taking is to look at our budgets and develop scenarios with reductions of right now 2 and a half and 5% and to do it in a way that's least impactful to the students, the low hanging fruit, if you will. And so staff is working on that process at the moment. Most likely it will not make the deficit zero, but it will address it a bit. And again, our current situation, I believe at this point allows us time to make thoughtful decisions that are not rushed.
[141:17] Speaker 1: And.
[141:19] Speaker 8: All state, you know, all input and all that can be taken into account. So next steps, as I mentioned yesterday was the first conference I went to about the state budget. Went to one again today. Not all the details are out. And so in mid February we will have trailer bill language which provides us more information on the proposal.
[141:46] Speaker 2: Proposal.
[141:47] Speaker 8: March 18th we will have second interim budget report which will be adjusted for the information from the January governor's proposal. In addition, we will have a budget and LCAP workshop for 2627. In mid May the governor publishes his governor's May revise. And then May 20th we will have another budget LCAP workshop as well as the public hearing for the 2627 budget and LCAP with a final approval set for June 10th. Are there any questions?
[142:24] Speaker 1: Questions? Yes, go ahead. Trustee Nathan Heiss.
[142:26] Speaker 3: Just one. One quick question. If you don't know the answer, you don't have to worry about it. Not important. Well, it is, but you don't need to come back on it. We have, I think Looking at the number, an average of 15% reserves, let's just call it 15 because one year is 14. If there was a, an ideal number, what would that be? Besides 100, of course. And what do other schools that are considered financially healthy with reserves, what does that percentage look like for them?
[142:59] Speaker 8: Thank you for that question. What I would say is two months of operating. So earlier I had shared this slide, so 16 to 17% and what do others. It's all over the board right now, so I will not guess on that answer.
[143:21] Speaker 3: Well, I, but the second part of that question was really if there is a model for what it should be, it's not really based on percentage, it's based on two months.
[143:30] Speaker 8: Yes.
[143:30] Speaker 3: Okay, thank you.
[143:34] Speaker 1: Any other questions from others, go ahead.
[143:37] Speaker 3: I, I have one. Danielle, thank you for clearing that up because that was a concern of mine. I knew it wasn't as dire as I thought I heard. And I am not here to create any work, but the budget questioner person that I am, how difficult would it be to assemble a historical pattern for this office as well as a comparison to three or four really good high performing districts versus three or four districts that are not as. And we're probably near the top, obviously, but three or four that are probably county offices? Yeah, I want to, I want to compare. And again, I'm not asking you to assemble this, but maybe at our, at a budget workshop that we have at some point, that would seem to me like, that would be interesting to me to see how, you know that we're in $8 million of deficit spending, but we're also prepared for that. But how does that compare historically? I know we were spending more than that my first few years on the board. We were blowing through cash.
[144:52] Speaker 8: Okay, so if I heard you correctly, you would like some historical data on the trend of deficit versus surplus spending for the county office?
[145:04] Speaker 3: Yeah. This chart that you, that I've been sitting on, this, the multi year projection.
[145:10] Speaker 8: This one, huh?
[145:11] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[145:12] Speaker 1: So if you did, if you did.
[145:13] Speaker 3: Something like that and only had. Even if all we had was beginning fund balance, ending fund unbalanced.
[145:18] Speaker 5: Easy.
[145:20] Speaker 1: Yeah.
[145:20] Speaker 3: Careful. Which is. Careful, careful. By tomorrow maybe.
[145:26] Speaker 8: I think it depends what time it is.
[145:27] Speaker 3: I think that would be historically for us. And like I said, maybe in a budget presentation, like a ten year histor.
[145:34] Speaker 8: Historical.
[145:34] Speaker 1: Sure.
[145:35] Speaker 3: Or whatever, Whatever you can get.
[145:36] Speaker 1: Yep.
[145:37] Speaker 3: Yeah, that would be great. And then comparing maybe these three years or a year prior to, to those overperforming districts and underperforming districts.
[145:47] Speaker 8: Counties.
[145:48] Speaker 3: Sorry, counties.
[145:49] Speaker 8: Forgive me, I think this is definitely something we can have prepared for the March budget workshop.
[145:57] Speaker 3: I hate to. Thank you. Yeah, I hate to add, and I hate to stoke fear, but, you know, these are the times we live in. Would the 2007, 2008, 2009 years be indicative of what could potentially happen in the next two, three, four years?
[146:23] Speaker 8: I will say I cannot answer that question at the moment, of course, but.
[146:27] Speaker 3: I mean, in terms of the impacts that a recession had on our county budget and what that would look like potentially moving forward in terms of percentages, availability, resources, etc. And maybe that's a. A crazy question to ask, and if it is, I. I apologize and I will continue to sit down. Thank you.
[146:48] Speaker 8: I don't think it's a crazy question. I just don't have a crafted response at the moment.
[146:54] Speaker 2: I don't think that's feasible just because we don't have a high foreclosure rate, property values maintaining, and property taxes are still being collected.
[147:02] Speaker 3: Yeah, I, I definitely didn't mean in terms of like, you know, the, the housing bubble bursting. I'm just thinking in terms of, you know, 2020 was very recent, and so we have that information. But things that are major economic upheaval scenarios that could potentially impact the money that we have coming in and the students who are coming to the school, that would also impact revenues coming in. So, you know, I just, I'm. I'm trying to think of what could potentially happen that I hope definitely does not ever happen again.
[147:33] Speaker 8: Well, I do have a comment to that. So that's exactly the debate that's happening. Not the debate, but the variance between the LAO and the dof.
[147:47] Speaker 2: Right.
[147:49] Speaker 8: Department of Finance is having a pretty optimistic outlook on revenue, primarily tied to the stock market, where LAO is like, AI could. No one knows enough about it, and it could just, you know, and then the tariffs and there's a lot of factors that can go into the what ifs, and so I don't know if I answered that question, but that's okay.
[148:23] Speaker 3: I mean, I'm in a very what if moment with this type of thing, so I appreciate even your attempt at answering that question, but I just, I think these are the things that we, as we move forward, we need to think about all possible scenarios and what, you know, we can't plan for everything to be positive at all time. And this number shows that. These numbers show that. So thank you. But just wary of what could potentially happen. And if we don't think about what could happen, we could set ourselves in trouble.
[148:56] Speaker 2: I Do have a question, if I.
[148:57] Speaker 1: Could please, go ahead. I know you were at the same workshop as I was today from Capital Advisors. Do you want to touch it all.
[149:06] Speaker 2: On the news regarding federal.
[149:10] Speaker 8: That was so new that I was. So what was shared by Capital Advisors earlier this afternoon was that the federal government is not going to make deep cuts. In fact, I think Lynn sent an email earlier today, didn't open it until maybe an hour ago, mentioning the cuts would not happen. And in fact, there's going to be a slight increase to the Federal Programs, Title 1, 2, 3. Yeah.
[149:50] Speaker 2: So on top of that, that there.
[149:52] Speaker 1: Was language, there was language added that they could not parcel out the Department of Education programs to other places also. So that's hopefully that all gets signed.
[150:05] Speaker 2: It was good news.
[150:06] Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. They're having a vote in Congress, I think, tomorrow. So it's a moving thing.
[150:15] Speaker 8: As I mentioned. And you know, in my budget presentations that slide with the little dots and it's because information is changing all the time. And so we've got to be cognizant of that and adjust our budgets for. For the latest information we have available, which is why what we approve in June as our adopted budget isn't exactly the same numbers we close our books with. Because things change. And so I think that's important to remember.
[150:50] Speaker 1: Okay. Trustee Lamas.
[150:52] Speaker 2: Sorry. So I'm looking at your, you know, your graph, your chart. And when I'm reading this, I go to the total with which is the expenses. So like 2025, there's the 112 million. And then I take that, divide it by 12 months, right. And then I multiply that by it gives me the number, whatever. And then when I go to the ending fund balance, the 54 million, that tells me that in 2025, we have six months of fund balance left over if we spent 112 million. And then I go into 2026, I take the 102 million divided by 12 months, and that gives me, you know, the ending fund balance tells me that we have six months of money left over to run the district. I take in 2027, 2028, I took the 102 million, divided that by the 12 months. Then we have the ending fund balance of the 38 million. And that tells me we have a little less than four and a half months to run the district with the money that is left over. So that's the way my brain is interpreting this is that, you know, outside of percentages, I'm looking at how much money we would have to allocate per month to run the district.
[152:08] Speaker 1: So.
[152:11] Speaker 8: The way you're reading it, I understand how you're doing that, but what I would suggest is you only look at the unrestricted side because the restricted side just look at 25, 26, we have a deficit of $6.6 million. Right? We started the year with $40.9 million. That $34.2 million in the restricted program programs is specifically to address that $6.6 million deficit. Okay. So we take in money that has restrictions in one year, we don't spend it all. So then it. It ends up in our fund balance for the following year. And so that is what is alleviating the restricted deficit does that it's worse than.
[153:08] Speaker 2: Then it's lower than six months and lower than four and a half months that we have.
[153:12] Speaker 8: So I would say to look at the unrestricted side. So for 2526, we have $1.8 million deficit. But if you look down at the available reserves I've got mentioned there at 16 million, that's what I would look at if you were trying to figure out how much time we have left of reserves.
[153:36] Speaker 1: Okay, gotcha.
[153:39] Speaker 2: Okay, thank you.
[153:42] Speaker 1: Okay, I have a question going back to your presentation earlier, and you were saying, so the staff is starting to work on budget budgets for next year and we're going to have to. I think you said something about making reductions like 2%, 5%. Is there any staff reductions you're talking about, or is this, you know, expenses of other types or what? I mean, you said we have time. But I'm thinking if you're talking about staff reductions, you got that March 15 deadline, right? But maybe that's not. You're not considering that.
[154:20] Speaker 8: So in budget development, we consider everything from people to supplies to contracts.
[154:27] Speaker 3: So.
[154:30] Speaker 8: When I say we're looking at scenarios of 2 and a half and 5%, we are trying to start at the lowest hanging fruit, which is hopefully not people. And so that's where we're starting. But if a budget doesn't have any supplies or contracts, then we might consider. So I can't say at this very moment that I know of any staffing changes, but that is the process we are working through. Right. Right this moment.
[155:05] Speaker 1: Okay. Because others were asking about, you know, the historical how much has our budget changed or whatever. To me, I think it's also important how have our staffing numbers changed? I don't know if that's easy to, to come up with. But if you're going to do a historical comparison, you know, over 10 years. You know the chart that shows staffing levels. That would be interesting to me.
[155:36] Speaker 8: I can look into that and see the other request. I. I know exactly where to go and how to get it. Fte piece. I have to think about that.
[155:47] Speaker 1: Okay, no problem. All right. Oh, I had another question on another slide. Oh, just the. The one about the trailer bill language. I don't remember that being such a big deal last year. Is that a.
[156:05] Speaker 8: It's a normal process.
[156:07] Speaker 1: So.
[156:08] Speaker 8: And it happens every time. So every time. So in May, he'll put out a May revise and it's just high level the idea. But the trailer bill language details the per pupil amount, how the money is going to be allocated, if it's going to be given to every lea or if it's going to be a competitive situation. So all those kind of details are laid out in the trailer bill.
[156:34] Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember that at the end of the year, after June. But this. There's mid. Says mid February, so. Okay. So that's the same kind of thing. It's just. Yes, the one that happens after the governor's proposal. Okay. And then. Yeah, well, that's all the questions I have now, so thank you. Public comment. Ms. Ciccone, do we have any public comment?
[157:04] Speaker 2: If you would like to make a public comment, please use the raise hand feature. Seeing none.
[157:10] Speaker 1: All right. Well, thank you for the presentation. And now we'll go on to the next item. That's committee assignments for 2026. Okay, that's my item. So what I did was take everybody's request requests from last time. At our last board meeting when I asked for requests for committees. And I have a recommend. I have. What I would like to see happen is four committees. We had three last year, but the year before we had a budget committee. So I'm reinstating the budget committee. So we'll have the legislation committee, policy committee, charter committee and budget committee for standing committee committees. And for legislation, I put trustee Lamas and trustee Nathan Heiss. You both requested that so you can be on the legislation committee. Oh, and I remembered that the students asked what the committees were about, so I wrote a little short thing that's sort of the charge or what they are supposed to be doing. So the legislation committee would be review legislation pertinent to education and make recommendations to our board, like for support or opposition of if we want to take a position and. Or just report back. So that's the legislation committee, then policy. The policy committee would be trustee Maxwell and trustee Lewis. And you both requested that the policy committee reviews the CSBA updates, reviews our policies and any CSBA sample policies that they put out for our policies and board bylaws and make recommendation back to the board. And I'd like to request that the policy committee take a look at board bylaw 9100, our organization board bylaw. Since it was a little bit confusing when we discovered in the last. Last month when we had to address that in terms of the board president requirements. Just take a look at that is my request. Okay. So then we would have a charter committee. The charter committee would be myself and trustee Lewis. And the charter committee reviews charter issues and topics related to charter oversight and accountability. And then there's the budget committee. That would be myself and trustee Nathan Heiss. The budget committee review will review all county office budget reports and budget topics and report back to the board. And these are all advisory to the board. And then we will have one ad hoc committee, continuing or reinstated, which is the board retreat planning ad hoc committee. And that will be myself and trustee Lewis, since we were on that committee before and it needs to continue. What we're going to do there is get the results of the CSBA survey that we all took and look at what is our next step. Then what is area do we need to focus on? So those are the committees. Does anyone have any questions, comments, or. You.
[160:48] Speaker 3: You started a board retreat ad hoc committee. Are you considering also that you have a student board member ad hoc committee that you'll need to form in. Marcus isn't here.
[161:01] Speaker 1: Yes, that. That would be in the.
[161:03] Speaker 3: Oh, March.
[161:04] Speaker 1: Okay.
[161:05] Speaker 3: March.
[161:05] Speaker 1: Okay. I'm aware that we will do that. It didn't seem like time yet, but we will. We'll start that one in the spring. Yeah, that's fine. And I don't know, does trustee Panda or Iranian, are you interested in any of the committees?
[161:28] Speaker 2: I would actually be interested in the policy committee.
[161:31] Speaker 1: Okay. Okay, great. So that's wonderful. So we'll assign you to that and you can work out with the policy committee what time you're all going to meet and everything.
[161:45] Speaker 3: The policy committee is now meeting in the San Ramon Valley, just so you know.
[161:50] Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought we were taking them.
[161:52] Speaker 3: Out to Oakley majority rules.
[161:55] Speaker 1: And Ms. Ciccone can arrange scheduling. All these things, all these committees. Great. And Trustee Ironian, are you interested? Or Panda. I'm sorry? I mean, no pressure. You don't have to. I'm sure you're really busy with school, but I don't want you to feel left out if you want to participate.
[162:16] Speaker 2: I Do not think I'll be joining a committee just because I don't think I have the bandwidth to commit to that.
[162:24] Speaker 1: Okay, no problem. No problem. All right. Very good. So there's committees. Do we need to vote on this? Yes. Okay. We need to take public comment first and then we'll vote.
[162:38] Speaker 2: If you would like to make a public comment, please use the raise hand feature.
[162:41] Speaker 3: Seeing none, I move that we approve the committees as presented. I'll second.
[162:47] Speaker 1: Great. We have a motion from trustee Maxwell and a second from trustee Nathan Hines. So could we call for the vote, please?
[162:56] Speaker 2: Iranian? Yes. Tanda?
[162:59] Speaker 8: Yes.
[162:59] Speaker 1: Butler. Yes.
[163:00] Speaker 2: Jamis.
[163:01] Speaker 1: Yes. Lewis. Yes.
[163:03] Speaker 2: Maxwell.
[163:03] Speaker 3: Yes.
[163:04] Speaker 2: Nathan Heiss?
[163:04] Speaker 3: Yes.
[163:06] Speaker 1: Great. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you, everyone. And we'll go to item 10, which is the superintendent's update.
[163:17] Speaker 2: Just one. Just a reminder that read your news and notes. If you're not getting a newsletter called News and Notes, please reach out to.
[163:26] Speaker 1: Natalia because that is where all the work of all the departments from the county office. We do a monthly update and that is all really good information about all the hard work our departments here at the county office do. So if you're not getting that newsletter, reach out and Natalia will make.
[163:41] Speaker 2: Sometimes people accidentally.
[163:45] Speaker 1: Unsubscribe, and I'm sure you want to get that. And then also just want to let.
[163:50] Speaker 2: You know we will be emailing you.
[163:52] Speaker 1: Tomorrow with the LCAP educational partner dates. So we have the completed dates. We're going to be having 13 different educational partner meetings. Most of them you'll see when you look at the list, many of them aren't open to the public because they're in our custody situation or they're for like, you know, we have one that is young men in juvenile hall that we meet with. Right. So it won't be open to you all, but it's good for you to have that information. And there are some open that you can either attend and just listen to as a board.
[164:28] Speaker 2: Board member.
[164:30] Speaker 1: If you are want to participate, you.
[164:32] Speaker 2: Need to make sure to let Natalia.
[164:34] Speaker 1: Know because we want to make sure.
[164:35] Speaker 2: There'S no more than two board members.
[164:38] Speaker 1: Who might actually want to give input at any one time.
[164:42] Speaker 2: Right.
[164:42] Speaker 1: You can go listen, but you cannot have more than two participants.
[164:47] Speaker 2: And we also have to keep in.
[164:48] Speaker 1: Mind it's supposed to be community input.
[164:50] Speaker 2: So if board members go and are.
[164:52] Speaker 1: Really vocal, that sometimes will sway things. And you really want to be listening to the community input on all of these. So we will be sending you out all the those dates and there will be a link. There's a couple that will be virtual.
[165:04] Speaker 2: So there will be a hot link.
[165:05] Speaker 1: On the notice that we will send you out. And with that, that's, that's all I have to report. Thank you, Superintendent Mackey. Okay, so now we're on to board updates. Well, so we have boards. The number one is board standing committee update reports. I don't think we had any standing committee meetings in the last month. Right. Okay. So we don't have anything to report there. So we'll go on to comments from board members. These are our board board member board updates. Who, who would like to go first?
[165:48] Speaker 7: I will.
[165:49] Speaker 1: Okay. I did. I did very little over the holidays except this afternoon attended the budget perspective workshop.
[165:56] Speaker 3: Good information.
[165:58] Speaker 1: I will share the presentation because it was emailed to me and have Natalia send it out. The one slide regarding federal. I don't know if they've updated it so don't necessarily trust what it says. That all changed last night before they could even update their PowerPoint. That's all I have. Very good. Thank you. Anyone else wants to go next?
[166:25] Speaker 3: I'll take this. I also was very light but did meet with a couple of had the opportunity to meet with a couple of principals from my end of the county during the holiday season and just talked about communication and education issues moving forward and how we can help out. I did not. I missed Capital Advisors today. I was on the roof of my building and I think that's it. I think that's what. Oh, I did meet with east county, some folks out in east county this week regarding education. I also didn't really get up to too much but I did happen to have some conversations with a handful of parent advocacy groups in west county, specifically in the the Richmond and El Cerrito areas. They've scheduled me to show up at a yet to be determined event to speak about the work that we do on the county board. Likely sometime in April. I will update this group. As that happens. I think it would be a great opportunity to interface with some west county parents. Outside of that. Just really excited to hit the ground running and thank you for the appointments and look forward to working with everyone.
[167:57] Speaker 1: Okay, very good. And Trustee Lamas.
[168:01] Speaker 2: No comments. The holidays and New Year's were a blur. I don't remember when I did last week week. So I will get back to you next month.
[168:10] Speaker 1: Okay. Well I, I also since it was the holidays I had a a little slower time myself. But what I want to do is point out a couple things. Coming up tomorrow, ACCBE is doing the online virtual IT'S called Board Presidents Learning and Network Working Session. So I'm going to be attending that that's a free session that they're hosting for new newly elected board presidents or officers trustee lamas. You're welcome to attend if you're available and talk about board president roles on county boards specifically. So that's great. And then they have a couple of other really good sessions coming up that I hope to also also attend or plan to. February 5th, there's a virtual session on special ed, Deep Dive series, Special Ed, what you need to know and Transforming outcomes for Special Ed Essential Strategies for County Board Leaders. And the presenters are Kristen White, executive director of Inclusive Practices and Support Services from the Sacramento County Office of Ed, and another woman, Gina Plate, senior vice president, education. Looks like she's an attorney, DeVober Group, LLC. So anyway, that ought to be very informative. And February 11th, another topic also hosted by Accbe, it says on zoom and no cost. It's this one is at noon on February 11, special topic, who who's who in state education and why knowing matters. That ought to be interesting. Presenters are Matt Navo, CCEE executive director, Brooks Allen, education policy advisor to Governor Newsom, and Richard Barrera, senior policy advisor to the Superintendent's Initiative Office, California Department of Education. I think that'll be interesting in light of the fact that the governor had proposed reducing the role of the state superintendent. So it's good to know who's who in state education, all the things going on. So those are things I'm going to be doing. And, and that's all my comments for my board comments. And we'll go on to the student board comments. Do either of you have anything to add this month?
[170:46] Speaker 2: I guess with the Contra Costa County Youth Journalism program, we've been reporting on San Ramon's new police chief, who's the first female police chief in Cinnamon's history. And I've been doing like the photo essay with the East Bay spca and Contra Costa Youth Journalism will actually be at the East Bay Leadership Council event. And the guest speaker there is Stacy Abrams, who was a former Georgia state representative.
[171:17] Speaker 8: So that's really cool.
[171:18] Speaker 2: And yeah, this Contra Costa mock trial next week, so we've been preparing for that as well.
[171:25] Speaker 1: Wow. So are you going to be in the mock trial? Oh, wow. Good for you. Okay. Thank you for your report. Go ahead. Hi.
[171:35] Speaker 2: So this is a little bit more local, but something fun I got to do this week is College Park High School ran an anti racism and anti bullying panel at Sequoia Middle school yesterday because of MLK Day, which I thought was a really cool thing to do. It was fun being on the panel. It was fun talking to the middle schoolers. I think it's great that our high school is trying to raise awareness. I do think we'll be going to other middle school schools, hopefully in the near future. Another thing that I did want to bring up, because I can, is between now and our next board meeting, February 11th is International Women in STEM Day. And since it is course selection time to all of the budding women in STEM out there. Sponge. As I love being one of three girls in my calculus class, I do encourage you guys to take that hard step course, that AP class that you think you can't take. STEM is a growing field and it's a field where women should be participating. So that's all I have to say.
[172:33] Speaker 1: Great. Thank you for your report. It's very exciting things you're doing, both of you. Okay, so now we're on to item four, future agenda items. Does anyone want to propose any future agenda items right now? No, not seeing any. Okay. If you do have suggestions or requests, you can send an email to the superintendent and myself and hopefully before. I think it's two weeks before the meeting. Now we're on events, calendar, board meeting dates. There's a calendar of dates here. Our next board meeting date is February 18th at 5pm Our regular board meeting. And the rest of them are there in the, in the agenda. Any comments or public comment or.
[173:32] Speaker 2: Seeing none.
[173:33] Speaker 1: Okay, then there's the calendar of events. There's a whole year of calendar of events here coming up. It. It's listing Special Olympics January 16th and 23rd. I guess the 16th happened already. And then CCSBA membership meeting. Okay, that is February 3rd, 5:30. And they changed. The person who's speaking is going to be the community college chancellor. Yeah, I forget how you pronounce her name, but most. Yeah, she.
[174:17] Speaker 3: She's.
[174:18] Speaker 1: That should be great. And Hope and everyone is welcome to come. It's at 5:30 at the Aklani District board meeting office. No, I will forward it to Natalia and she can send it out to everybody. Okay. Yeah, let's forward that out. Did you get that? The ccsba. Okay. Okay. All right, well, we'll send it and. Yeah, send it to Natalia and then she can forward it out to everybody to send it to the whole board and the superintendent, if you would please, after we send it to you.
[175:00] Speaker 2: Okay. Yes.
[175:00] Speaker 1: Okay, great. Thank you. And then the other thing I wanted to highlight is mock trials. It says here February 19th. But I know there's multiple dates. I've never.
[175:11] Speaker 2: I think that's the date for the award.
[175:14] Speaker 1: Award ceremony. Okay. Okay. So anyway, that's a very important event as well. So with that, you can see the rest of the dates here, and I think we're ready for adjournment. Oh, and I'm adjourning with a special message. Hold on. I've got to have this right in front of me. I'm going to adjourn the meeting in memory of somebody. Just one. One second. It's almost here. Here we are. Okay. We adjourn tonight's board meeting in honor of Ms. Betty Reed Soskin, the U.S. park Ranger and trailblazing historian whose life reflects extraordinary courage and dedication to truth. Her voice ensured that overlooked histories were finally seen, heard and valued. She passed away in late December. May her legacy inspire us to lead with the same integrity and purpose that she carried throughout her remarkable life. Okay, so the meeting is now adjourned at 8. 10. Thank you, everyone.