Board passes 11 resolutions including approval of the budget, a letter authorizing the Cedar Cove School to operate within district boundaries, and approval to move ISI Lynch from a daily salary to a monthly.
Information items included a budget update, a Chromebook update, the Special Education Strategic Plan update, and school-wide connectedness activities for August
ISI Lynch’s update included COVID-19 measures and news on the College Committee
Many resolutions passed “unanimously” 4-0 including adoption of the budget, adoption of the LCAP, adoption of new and revised board policies, approval of site plans, text book adoptions, job descriptions, and additional days for school psychologists.
Trustee Katrina Young was the lone dissenter on the resolutions pertaining to the letter authorizing the Cedar Cove Charter school and the amendment to ISI Lynch’s contract. Trustee Young expressed uncertainty about how long the school would stay and she didn’t like the language of the letter. ISI Lynch’s new contract allows her to stop “punching the clock” every day and documenting hours. Trustee Young expressed approval for her performance and said she is approachable but just putting the change on the agenda and changing the language in her contract creates uncertainty. Both President Muir and I asked her for clarification on the reasoning behind her votes. Other than saying she had problems with uncertainty and language, she didn’t explain further. I still don’t understand the reasons.
I was the lone dissenter on approval the bell schedule for 2021-2022. I had a few issues with the proposed schedules. First, school starts early. For example, here is the start time for our high schools.
Canyon Crest: 8:00am - 3:00pm
San Dieguito Academy: 7:50am - 2:55pm
Torrey Pines: 7:40am - 2:40pm
La Costa Canyon: 7:40m - 2:40pm
That seems too early to me. I understand that there are after-school activities, such as sports, that need to be considered, but I received outreach from students and parents that we are starting too early. Ethan Fitzgerald, Student Body President for SDA contacted me about this and made an eloquent public statement for later start times. Bryan Marcus stated clearly that it is too late for changes to the 2021-2022 schedule. I made a comment that if the process to create the master bell scheduled started in November or December of last year and it’s just presented to the board now, it seems a bit late. This is asking the Board to just give it a rubber stamp of approval. I think we and the community should have been part of the discussion from the beginning. We will do better going forward. SB328 will go into effect next school year and high schools will not be able to start before 8:30 am and middle schools cannot start before 8:00am. We need to understand how this will be implemented.
The administrative services updates were very thorough: special education strategic plans, school wide connectedness activities, and the California school dashboard. My biggest issue is that the presentation materials were not given to the board in advance as we have asked the Executive Cabinet to do. The screen was almost impossible to read from where I was sitting, and it would have been helpful to be able to look at the materials more closely ahead of the meeting. The details were important and I know it took a lot of time getting the presentation together, but it was extremely difficult to see.
Progress is being made on the Superintendents Pool Committee which will meet on June 23rd and the College Readiness Committee. The College Readiness Committee has been a project of interest for Board President Muir for years and she seemed genuinely excited to see this start to come together. President Muir also expressed concern in the meeting for prioritizing the falling attendance at LCC. We need to figure out why it is on a downward trend and what we will do about it.