I attended the Long Beach Unified School Districts Board Meeting on June 12th and the

Chino Valley Unified School Districts meeting on June 15th. Both meetings definitely
had some similarities with the procedures and items discussed, as well as a few
differences.

Long Beach
The meeting began with the call to order, roll call, and everyone stood for the
Pledge of Allegiance which was led by a high school student. The very first item was a
presentation by Robert Tagorda, who is the Director for Equity, Access, and Career
readiness made references to the 188 page document that outlined how the district
plans to spend its funds. During the meeting, they actually provided a few copies of the
document for people and mentioned how it could also be accessed online. Robert
highlighted the new California School Dashboard which has a color coded system to
compare to other districts. Mentioned that progress is being made by English language
learners, all high schools are exceeding state standards for graduation rate percentage.
Referenced that many high schools have national recognitions as some of the best in
country (showed images of rankings in two different magazines). There are low
suspension rates across the district and eight of the ten subgroups have declining in
suspension. Mentioned there was a process of developing the LCAP and that different
meetings were held throughout the year to present to different stakeholder groups. He
also highlighted AP tests and the success of students taking it.
Overall, the presentation focused on the positive things that were happening in the
district and highlighted statistics that would show how well the District was doing.
When it was time for the public hearing portion of the meeting many community
members expressed concerned about the LCAP and its process. They wanted the
resources to be provided way in advance so they could get a chance to review it
properly. They wanted the process to be more transparent and they wanted to be more
involved. One individual wanted a Special Education Advisory Committee to be
included when creating the LCAP and mentioned that not having one was An offense
that needed to be corrected. A lawyer also spoke and asked for more community
public hearings around LCAP. They also referenced about an uniform complaint that
was submitted on April 4th wanting a more transparent process. One of my key
takeaways was how the district employee providing the presentation for LCAP
emphasized the many successes of the AP classes at Long Beach. When it was the
communities turn to speak they emphasized the needs for programs that helped ALL
students and help them with their social problems. They advocated for spending funds
on mental health services, counselors, and one of the groups that was there, Latinos in
Action, wanted more support services for English Language Learners. I noticed that the
majority of the community speakers were from two different organizations. One was
Californians for Justice, which really encouraged the board to consider professional
development and coaching to help teachers learn how to support students. They
advocated social emotional learning and they had signs as well as shirts to emphasize
their message. The other group was Latinos in Action who also mentioned that
students are not being given the and that funds need to be given for mental health and
other health services for students. One interesting part of the public hearing was that
many of the community members needed a translator and when the instructions were
given they mentioned that each person will have three minutes and if they needed a
translator their time would be doubled.
After the public hearing, the meeting moved on to recognize retirements as well
as the Classified Employee of the Year. This part was great but it those being
recognized did have to wait close to two hours before being recognized. They did get a
chance to address the board and each member of the board got up to congratulate
them and shake their hand.
During the next part of the meeting action items that took place which included
student readmits and student discipline. It was interesting how they regarded each
student by their student number and not their actual name.
The meeting moved on to business items and other items with regards to
personnel. Mainly it was reading of different assignments. This part of the meeting felt
as it was mainly for the board and there was very little community involvement. They
basically read many different items on lists and then asked if all were in favored and
moved on to next item very quickly.
The superintendent report highlighted some of the great things happening in our
district and mentioned that it was evidence of what the LCAP was all about. He said
thanks to the board and the staff. This meeting also had new administrative
assignments so there were a few people in the room who were there to hear what
school they were being assigned to as well as others who were being promoted to
administrative assignments.

Chino Valley Unified School District

This Board meeting started very differently from the Long Beach one. They
actually started with mentioning the promotions and new hires. This part was one of the
last thing addressed in the Long Beach meeting. Another difference was that each
person promoted was allowed to come up and addressed the board. In the Long Beach
meeting, there were so many that this could not be done and the names were basically
read aloud and then people were given a list of the new assignments.
After the announcements, the meeting moved on to the pledge of allegiance
which was done by a graduate of Chino Hills High School who needed to complete
merit badges for Boy Scouts and needed to attend a board meeting as part of the
communications and citizenship merit badge. This too was different from Long Beach
which began with the pledge and the call to order.
The next part of the meeting involved different presentations. First one was about the
Big Yellow Bus for County Fair and they mentioned how the program is aligned to
standards and gives students an opportunity to see educational exhibits. Speaker was
very passionate about the program and mentioned how it could make the classroom
come to life.
After the first community speaker, a staff member spoke about the need for more
security in the schools. She mentioned she has gone to the board meetings to ask the
same thing for the past few years but no response. She said that there is four high
school with events throughout the summer. There is a need to protect the children and
employees. She wanted the district to be proactive rather than reactive. She has
worked in the district for 38 years and is president of the classified employees for eight
years. She believes it is the best school district with great teachers and employees and
just wants the district to increase security for everyone. Next was Ivette Farley from the
Champs programs who discussed highlights of the program and the two recipients of
their scholarships. She highlighted the students success.
The next part of the meeting was comments from the audience for the
non-agenda items. They mentioned that each speaker had three minutes to make
comments which was the same that was stated for Long Beach, but they did not say
anything about community members that needed translation and actually there were no
speakers during the meeting that asked for a translator. A Board member asked the
audience members to please refrain from commenting while someone was speaking.
They mentioned that if a topic has been covered please leave remarks to new points.
There were far less speakers in this meeting than in Long Beach. The only community
members that spoke were in regard to OPA, which is a Charter school that is being
closed on June 30th. This was a school that we almost enrolled my daughter in and its
regarded as one of the best schools in the district, with high achievements and great
extracurricular programs. I had no idea that it was being closed and actually read more
about it after the meeting and learned that its founder is Under investigation by district
attorneys in two counties for alleged fraud. (Yarbrough, 2017) The parents that spoke
wanted the board to give the school another chance and thank them for visiting the
school. One of the speakers even cried and asked the board to keep the school and
the children in their hearts.
The next part of the meeting was surprising to me as there were no speakers
when it came to the budget or the LCAP. The president asked audience members if
anyone wanted to speak on the matter and no one said anything which was very
different from LBUSD which had many community members who wanted to address the
board with regards to LCAP. In the Long Beach meeting, they actually asked if they
could make the public hearing portion longer so more people could address the board.
During the next part of the meeting I was very surprised because I noticed two different
board members were on different sides of the argument when it came to possible new
calendar for schools. The Vice-President emphasized how she wants schools to
consider a new calendar and not have kids attend school in August because of the
weather. She also mentioned how sports are affected and that we cant really expect
kids to play in that type of weather. The president of the board had a different opinion
and said that September is almost as hot as August, she also said that heat cant be the
only reason to change a calendar. Another member jumped in to say that she has
received feedback from staff that they like the calendar as is and that people enjoy
having vacation at the same time as their children who may attend other school districts.
It was interesting to me because the interactions between Board member in the LBUSD
meeting were very positive and I never heard them disagree with one another. They
appeared very much as a team and laughed and joked around with one another. For
the Chino meeting, during this part it felt a little tense and you could sense how far apart
they were when it came to this topic.
During the last part board members spoke of some of their recent events. This was
very similar to LBUSD as many highlighted the great things they have seen. A few
spoke of the graduations they attended and how great they were. One board member
had a slightly different opinion about graduation and was bothered by how special
education students were left to the end. She mentioned that they should be where they
belong with other students.
They also mention that the approval of LCAP will be at the next meeting. A member
wanted everyone to consider peer courses at high school level to promote positive
school climate and said that the current school ambassador program does not go far
enough. She also mentioned that she does not want people to forget Music and Arts
when developing the LCAP.
I was a little shocked when she talked about the need to Encourage a discussion about
all the principals enforcing discipline regarding the use of racial slurs. She said that the
N word should not be taken lightly and neither should Wetback. She then reminded
everyone that we are a diverse community and need to teach students to respect each
other, we may not agree but we need to respect one another. During this part of the
meeting, they also discussed how GED completions and graduation at adult high school
was a great success!
When it was close to the end of the meeting the Superintendent showed up, it was close
to 1 hour late! When he spoke he announced to the board that he will retire next year
and that was the extent of his involvement in the meeting which was very different than
the LBUSD superintendent. Perhaps this was a special circumstance but I was very
surprised that he was not really involved in this particular meeting. The president of the
board discussed her highlights which included graduations and the retirement dinner
which she thought was a great success. Before closing the meeting two other parents
were allowed to speak. One had spoken earlier and basically repeated her statement
and the other parent pleaded to the board and some specific board members with
regard to the OPA charter school.
I was surprised about the difference in length for the two meetings. Long Beachs
meeting was extremely long and lasted 3 hours while Chino was only 1 hour 20
minutes. Long Beach also had more community members attend the meeting and I
noticed that the majority were Latino while in the Chino meeting there were more White
Caucasians and Asian members. The interesting piece is that there were no Latino
Board members in the LBUSD board and yet in the Chino Board their president is
Latina. Based on the attendance of the meetings and on the overall ethnicity of the
cities you would think this would be the other way around.
Overall, this was a very interesting experience and I definitely learned a lot. Both
meetings did spark my interest into other topics. In the Long Beach one, I really wanted
to learn more about what action the parents had taken against the district. In the Chino
one, I really wanted to find out why OPA Charter School was being closed, even thou it
was regarded as one of the top schools. It was great to see how different districts
conduct their meetings and how they try to follow the laws and regulations according to
the Brown Act.

References
Yarbrough, Beau. "Oxford Preparatory Academy to shut down after appeal fails." Inland
Valley Daily Bulletin. Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, 12 May 2017. Retrieved June 23,
2017, from
http://www.dailybulletin.com/social-affairs/20170511/oxford-preparatory-academy-to-shu
t-down-after-appeal-fails

Nittle, N. K. (2016, August 24). Why School Funding Will Always Be Imperfect.
Retrieved June 23, 2017, from
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/08/will-there-ever-be-a-perfect-way-to-fund-schools/4
97069/