Documenter: Ben Irizarry

The Scene

The meeting was called to order at 7:15 PM by board president, G. Brandon Vang. The board meeting was live streamed on the Sanger USD youtube channel and was available to all members of the public. The meeting was staged in what looked like a multi-purpose school building with board members, the superintendent, and district administrators staged on the outer perimeter of the room, each with their own table and microphone. The board members, superintendent, and district administrators followed social distancing protocols and wore masks throughout the meeting. When the meeting was called to order, there were 15 members of the public watching the live youtube stream. At the end of the meeting, there were 25 members of the public watching the live youtube stream. 

Board Meeting Agenda

Actions

Report out of Closed Session

• C-1: Conference with District Labor Negotiator (Gov Code Section 54957.6)

  • No reportable action

• C-2: Conference with Legal Counsel-Existing Litigation (Subdivision (a) of Gov Code Section 54956.9)

  • No Reportable Action

• C-3: Conference with Legal Counsel-Antiticated Litigation (Significant exposure to litigation pursuant to subdivision (b) of Gov Code Section 54956.9)

  • No Reportable Action

Adoption of the Agenda

Motion to adopt the regular board meeting of 2021 agenda for Jan 12th, 2021

• Motioned by Trustee Filippi

• Seconded by Trustee Solario

  • Motion is carried with 6-0 Vote

Approval of the minutes of the Regular Board Meeting Minutes from Dec 14th, 2020

• Motioned by Trustee Hernandez

• Seconded by Trustee Filippi

  • Motion is carried with a 6-0 Vote

Student Representative report by Sanger High ASB President Mr. John Pena

• Interact Club at Sanger High delivered free food to veterans packed in boxes

• Sanger High student Alison Chang passed away, students have mourned loss, and are promoting the gofundme for student funeral services and family

  • Editor-in-chief for the School Newspaper, also played water polo and participated in swimming

  • Funeral will take place Jan 31st, 2020

  • Pena stated, “Alison Chang was the senior who passed away, I know she was the editor-in-chief for out school newspaper and she also was a swimmer and water polo player. She was very involved and we all loved her. We miss her but we are doing everything we can to help her family.”

• Students have started the Spring 2021 semester online and are anticipating a schedule change

• Extracurricular activities are taking place, students are practing sports however games have not been scheduled

• Sanger High teacher, Ms. Pearson, is taking cash donations on campus and will forward the donations to the family of the student (A. Chang)

Recognition

• Nicole Rosales, Coordinator for Curriculum and Instruction, who represented the district in accepting the CSBA Golden Bell Program award on behalf of the district from  the California School Board Association in December

• Submitted a plan on curriculum and instruction website called Sangerlearn.com for technology

  • According to Superintendent Jones, the website was established in 2013 and really took off in 2015 as a way to begin incorporating ideas for technology integration

  •  The website has become a resource hub for teachers, students, and parents

  • Districts from around the state and nation have used the resources available 

    • English Learner, Math Instruction, and Distance learning resources

  • Website was developed by C&I department at Sanger Unified

  • Rosales expressed gratitude for the individuals who have helped develop the Sangerlearns.com website including Katie Gold, Teresa Blanchard, Jennifer Deiterman-Lewis, Rhonda Sequieros, Rachel Groft, Allie Krakorian, Michelle Carr, and Zach Williams, Jamie Nino, Carl Kesterke, Thomas Soto, and Tim Lopez. 

Representative Reports

• California School Association-No report

• Sanger Unified Teachers Association

  • Expressed gratitude for district listening to members concern

  • Settled a grievance and the agreement favors both parties involved

  • Negotiations still need to be finalized, next meeting will take place Jan 21st

Board Communication

• Trustee Her

  • No Report

• Trustee Solario

  • Thank all classified, certificated for all the hard work to help students and community, “Sorry for the loss of our wonderful students, Alison Chang, my heart goes out to her family about her loss. It’s trying times in our country, our nation, and our community, and we all need to work together to continue doing a great job. All I know Sanger has gone above and beyond in everything that they’ve done to help our community. So thank you and Happy New Years to everyone and we’ll just keep striving forward and overcoming all these things were going through, thank you. ”

• Trustee Vasquez

  • “Happy New Year, welcome back, and looking forward to a better 2021.”

• Trustee Filippi

  • No Report 

• Trustee Hernandez

  • “I just want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and just welcome all of them back, and I know that during the break there was so many certificated and classified employees that were still working, making sure our school’s still going on or are a lot of things that need to go on during break, so I know that they were out there. I want to thank the district administrators for being here a week early, making sure we were ready to get back, and we are back and we’re full swing, I want to welcome all of the teachers and classified employees that are back now.”

• Trustee Vang

  • Donation and Contribution means a lot to teachers, students, and Sanger communities. Thank you to the staff for continued work with students, and expressed condolences to friends and family of Alison Changs death.

Superintendent/Administration Communication

• Welcome back staff and students

• Grateful for staff coming back and for the staff members in Maintenance Department and Technology Department for all of the work that they completed over the break

• Thank you to Pupil Services department in collaboration with Fresno State to provide a speech winter session, where the district served 55 students in 125 speech sessions.

• 8 donations on Consent Agenda from Dhaliwal Family ($10,000)

  • 2nd donation that the Dhaliwal Family has made in honor of their daughter Cam who passed away in 2019 and worked with the district through the LEAP program.

  • Donation was made to provide aid in the nutrition department for students and families that struggle to pay for nutrition services

• Expressed condolences for Alison Chang, will be working with friends at the school to make sure that Alison is honored at the graduation ceremony

Open Forum for Community Members

• No one present to address the board members

Consent Agenda

• Trustee Filippi motioned to approve agenda

• Seconded by Trustee Vasquez

• All members vote Aye

• Motion carried by a  6-0 vote

General District Update

School Closures

• As recommended by the Fresno County Department of Public Health and the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools all districts in Fresno County were requested to delay the return of additional students

• Sanger Unified agreed to delay the return of additional students

• As a result, additional students will return Feb 1st, 2021 to Sanger USD

• 5,600 students currently enrolled in hybrid schedule

  • Students have returned safely

  • Those 5,600 were allowed to return to classrooms

  • However, additional students were asked to be delayed

• Students are receiving individual supports virtually

Technology Report

• Thomas Soto reported that

  • One of the first purchases was to make sure all students had Ipads

  • 1,000 hot spots in the community to help student connect to internet

  • Zoom accounts

  • Firewall

  • 65” TVs for 500 classrooms for the school district

  • 500 TV stands

  • 500 Apple TVs

  • Received shipment right before xmas break, but operations and maintenance department ensured that all tech was set up for teachers returning from break

  • Collective effort, coordination, among many different teams

  • Replacing all laptops with new laptops with wider screens 

  • All teachers are receiving a new iPad and apple pencil

Athletic Report

• Tim Lopez reported that

  • Over 500 athletes participated in athletics from June 2020-present

  • Using guidance from California Department of Health, Fresno County Department of Health, and Central Section CIF

  • Fresno County deferred guidance to the California Dept of Health

  • General Guidelines

    • Screening of athletes and coaches

    • Physical conditioning and skill building only

    • Cohorts established for athletes on teams and physical distrancing

    • Facilities and Cleaning/Disinfecting

    • FCDPH Guidance phase and permitted activity by sport

  • Inter Team Competitions

    • Cannot begin prior to Jan 25th, 2021

    • Competitions allowed by tier, sport, and schedule 

  • Schedule

    • Cross Country will be one of the first sports that will be allowed to compete

  • Sanger USD Athletes

    • Participating in Physical Conditioning 

    • Sanger High teams include: baseball, basketball, cheer, cross country, football, golf, track, volleyball, water polo, wrestling

    • 7th/8th grade sports have not started, and are scheduled to begin in February

    • Elementary athletics postponed

Health and Safety Update

• Jason Stricker

  • Contract tracing and covid testing

• 209 COVID cases for the district to this point

• 115 student COVID cases

• 94 employees COVID cases

• Last month total, as reported on December 11th, 2020

  • 99 COVID cases for the district

• Current active COVID cases at the moment

  • 12 active COVID cases for employee

  • 17 active COVID cases for students

• Mr. Stricker shared this summary with the board,

• “From the time we opened to the time we went on break, Mrs. Jones mentioned the 5600 kids that were coming to school, if you take the number of students by the number of days were we in school, there were 291,200 opportunities for families to decide if there children were healthy to come to school with us. From those decisions, there were 18 instances of students on campus that were positive for COVID. I really want to thank our community for being a part of our safety culture, and making those daily decisions to self-screen their children and make a decision about whether they should send their children (to school) that day. Our system is working. I also really want to thank them for recognizing if they call and tell us that their children have a symptom that they’re honoring that we have a way to ensure that their education continues during isolation or quarantine and that system is working. So again, 291,200 opportunities and our families are helping and partnering with us and I thank them for that. For employees from the time we started, there were 70,200 opportunities for an employee to make a decision that morning when they woke up as to whether they had a symptom or had a concern about a COVID related symptom. There were 23 instances where we had an individual on a campus where an individual that was positive for COVID. Very, very low numbers. We’ve had zero between staff and staff, we had one instance of transmission from student to staff, and we’ve had zero transmission from student to student. We’ve done 2952 contact traces, 2106 student contact traces, and 846 staff contact traces. 11% of those traces were positive for staff, and 6% was the positive rate for students. So when we look at our community that has positivity rates of 15.9%, 16.6%, 17%, our staff positivity rates for our traces has been 11%, and our student positivity rate has been 6%. That kind of get us up to today. Our safety culture is working, our contact tracing is working, we have a huge number of employees working on contact tracing, our families are partnering with us and I’m very confident in keeping the system going.”

• (P-2)Motion to approve Resolution No. 20-21-014 OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF SANGER UNIFIED SCHOOL DISTRICT CERTIFYING TO THE BOARD OF SUPERVISORS OF FRESNO COUNTY ALL PROCEEDINGS IN THE NOVEMBER 3, 2020 GENERAL OBLIGATION BOND ELECTION AND ESTABLISHING MEASURE C (2020) OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE

  • Motioned by Trustee Filippi

  • Seconded by Trustee Solario

  • Motion is carried 6-0 vote

• (P-3) Sunshine District’s Proposal for Classified Bargaining Unit

  • Motion to acknowledge receipt of by Trustee Vasquez

  • seconded by Trustee Solorio

  • Motion is carried 6-0 vote

• (P-4) First reading of Proposed Revisions to Board Policies, 

  • Motioned by Trustee Vasquez

  • Seconded by Trustee Filippi

  • Motion is carried 6-0 vote

• Next meeting: Jan 26th, 2021

Meeting Adjourned at 8:18PM

Summary

• It is evident that the tragic death of Sanger High School student, Alison Chang, has impacted the entire Sanger community. Throughout the Sanger USD Board Meeting, student representatives, district administrators, and board members expressed sadness and grief for the students’ sudden passing and expressed a desire to support the family through monetary donations and a special ceremony at the Class of 2021 graduation. Alison Chang was an active participant at Sanger High School and was the editor-in-chief of the school newspaper as well as a member of the swimming and water polo team.

• Although only 5,600 students are physically present in Sanger USD schools, the district is doing everything in its power to provide students with opportunities by updating classroom technology, offering winter sessions for students in need of speech intervention, and allowing athletic training to continue. District administrators and board members were grateful for the work of the teachers, maintenance department, and technology department within the district. 

• The health and safety update provided members of the public with the quantitative data related to the COVID pandemic. Sanger Unified District Administrator, Jason Striker, provided board members with a variety of data points including the number of total COVID cases for students and staff, the number of active COVID cases among students and staff, the number of student to staff infections, the number of staff to staff infections, and the percentage of positivity rates among students and staff members. Although there are currently 5,600 students currently in Sanger USD schools, the district has decided to follow the recommendations of the Fresno County Department of Public Health and the Fresno County Superintendent of Schools by delaying the return of additional students.