Ventura County School Boards Association - September 2019 Newsletter

Ventura County School Boards Association Newsletter

SEPTEMBER 2019

PRESIDENT'S CORNER

Welcome from the New VCSBA President

By Veronica Robles-Solis

Welcome to the new school year! As fellow trustees serving on Ventura County school boards, we are embarking on an exciting school year. Each year provides us with an opportunity for new adventures, experiences and challenges. Whether you are a veteran board member or just beginning your journey, the Ventura County School Boards Association is here to support you in all things related to public education.

VCSBA provides an opportunity for board members to be strong, informed learners so we can provide the very best educational opportunities for our students. I truly believe our meetings enable board members to stay connected and work together to advance the achievements of all public schools in our county.

VCSBA meetings are opportunities for board members to receive professional development and up-to-date information on current education initiatives, legislation and regulations affecting all schools. I encourage each board member to stay active with the association and participate in VCSBA activities whenever possible.

I would like to thank VCSBA past-President, Christina Urias, a Trustee for the Santa Paula Unified District. Thank you for your service and your leadership to the association. I look forward to continuing to work with you this year. I would also like to introduce our 2019-2020 VCSBA Executive Board members.

Eleanor Torres, VP Programs
Dr. Charles Weis, VP Legislation
Efrain Cazares, Treasurer/Delegate
Denise Helfstein, Secretary
Christina Urias, Past President/Delegate
Suzanne Kitchens, Region 11 Director
Darlene Bruno, Delegate
Sabrena Rodriguez, Delegate
Jackie Moran, Delegate
Rachel Ulrich, Delegate
Stan Mantooth, County Superintendent

You can find photos and contact information for the Executive Board members near the end of this newsletter.

VCSBA Presents 2019-2020 Dinner Meetings

Mark you calendars for these upcoming dinner meetings:

Monday, October 14, 2019. The topic will be Budget & Finance. The special guest presenters will be Michael Fine, Chief Executive Officer, FCMAT and Kevin Gordon, President, Capitol Advisors Group, LLC.

Monday, March 9, 2020. The topic will be “The Vaping Epidemic: How Do We Solve It?”

Monday, April 20, 2020. The topic is to be determined.

The association is planning various Dinner Meeting topics to keep all board members well informed and we welcome suggestions for topic ideas. Possible future topic ideas the executive board has considered are Cyber-Bullying, Violence Prevention, and How New Board Members Can Best Work with their City Councils.

As we move forward during this school year, let us take a moment to celebrate the importance and accomplishments of public education. The executive board is committed to providing each board member with the information needed to be informed advocates for public schools.

I look forward to seeing you at an upcoming meeting and wish all of you a successful 2019-2020 school year!

Veronica Robles-Solis, VCSBA President

Oxnard School District

FROM THE SUPERINTENDENT

Big Things in Store for the Ventura County P-20 Council

By Stan Mantooth

Since it was established in 2006, the Ventura County P-20 Council has played a major role in expanding educational opportunity in our community. It has sponsored workshops on college financial aid, promoted new opportunities for STEM education and facilitated tens of millions of dollars in educational grants. By bringing together leaders in the business, government, education and nonprofit worlds, it breaks down silos and encourages collaboration for the benefit of local students.

Despite its achievements, there are still many people who ask what the P-20 Council is and what it does. Well, a major new initiative is about to provide a concrete, tangible answer to those questions. In a brand-new building that’s currently under construction in Camarillo, the P-20 Council plans to create a high-tech makerspace lab that will serve middle school students throughout Ventura County.

The new building is going up next to the Ventura County Office of Education’s Conference and Educational Services Center on Adolfo Rd. It will house VCOE’s Triton Academy for students with autism and the administrative offices of VCOE’s Special Education Department. A prime 2,000 square foot corner of the building will be reserved for the new P-20-sponsored lab.

An inside view of the future home of the high-tech student makerspace the P-20 Council will build in Camarillo.

So, what will be in that space? The P-20 Council is in preliminary talks with telecom giant Qualcomm about creating a “Thinkabit Lab” in the new building. Qualcomm created the first Thinkabit Lab at its San Diego headquarters in 2014, and there are now additional locations in various parts of the country. Students take field trips to the lab to participate in hands-on STEM-related projects, such as building robots. While there, they learn about various career opportunities in engineering and other STEM-related fields. The details are still being worked out, but the goal is to provide one-day field trips to the lab for middle school students countywide, with P-20 covering the cost of the instructor and transportation.

In part to pay for those expenses, the P-20 Council is about to undergo an important transformation – becoming a nonprofit public benefit corporation. It’s a big change for the P-20 Council, which currently has no formal organizational status and no employees. As a nonprofit, the P-20 Council will be able to engage in fundraising and anticipates hiring a director to manage its activities.

The new building is expected to be open for the 2020-21 school year. So, stay tuned for more information about the exciting ways the P-20 Council is going to be making an even bigger impact for Ventura County students.

Stan Mantooth

Ventura County Superintendent of Schools

Chair, Ventura County P-20 Council

14 Months in 2 Minutes

Time lapse video of the building that will house the new lab: bit.ly/vcoetimelapse

Inside a Thinkabit Lab

See inside a Thinkabit Lab in this introductory video from Qualcomm: bit.ly/thinkabitlab.

SACRAMENTO LEGISLATIVE REPORT

School Start Time, Funding, Charter Schools & More

By Charles Weis, Ph.D.

The legislature’s summer recess ended August 12 and this return to session was devoted to acting on existing proposed legislation, much of which will affect school districts in California.

By August 30, "suspense file" bills were reviewed and many bills were forwarded to fiscal for review. By September 13, bills that passed were forwarded to Governor Newsom for action within 30 days. Therefore, it is likely that by the time you read this article, advocacy with the Governor’s Office is our last opportunity to support bills we like and stop bills we do not like. This article will highlight a few bills about which CSBA and other educational organizations have strong feelings and thoughts.

School District Base Funding

Four bills about funding of our districts should get our attention, if they were forwarded to the Governor for signature. CSBA is a co-sponsor of AB 39 (Muratsuchi) that expresses the intent of the Legislature to increase school district base funding grants, which are set at the 2013-14 fiscal year, to amounts equal to the national average per-pupil funding level. AB39 is on the Senate floor for a vote at the time of this article’s publication.

School Bond Measures

CSBA supports AB 48 (O’Donnell) that would place a $13 billion K-University general obligation bond on the March 2020 ballot and another bond on the November 2022 ballot. In addition, this bill would add provisions to the act to require the Department of General Services to process, and present to the State Allocation Board, all applications received under the act on and after July 1, 2020, within 120 days of receipt of the application. AB 48 is in the Senate rules committee at the time of this publication.

Special Education Funding

AB 428 (Medina) is also a CSBA co-sponsored bill that would equalize special education funding rates to the 95 ^th percentile, but it was moved to a two-year bill that can be taken-up in January 2020. We should advocate for this in the upcoming year.

Parcel Tax Vote Threshold

Finally, another CSBA co-sponsored bill, State Constitutional Amendment (SCA) 5 (Hill) has been moved to the inactive file at the request of the author. This bill seeks to reduce the current vote threshold of 67 percent to 55 percent for local school parcel taxes, if they meet certain specified requirements. We should continue to advocate for lowered passing thresholds during the next legislative session.

School Start Time

CSBA has opposed SB 328 (Portantino) because it challenges local control of middle and high school-day start times, ignoring the needs of students and families in their communities. This bill would require the school-day for middle schools and high schools to begin no earlier than 8:00 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., respectively by July 1, 2022. Rural school districts are exempted from this law.

Charter Schools

Two bills about Charter Schools have CSBA support, AB 1505 (O’Donnell, Bonta, McCarty, & Smith) and SB 1507 (Smith) . Both of these bills comply with recommendations from CSBA’s Unchartered Waters report and, at the time of this publication, are on the Senate floor for vote. SB 1505 would make substantial changes to processes governing charter school petitions, renewals and revocations. AB 1507 would delete the authority of a charter school to locate outside the jurisdiction or geographic boundaries of the chartering school district and related provisions to existing law.

The above bills could have been forwarded to the Governor’s desk for signature. Please work through CSBA’s Legislative Advocacy Office to communicate with the Governor’s office if you have strong feelings about any of these bills.

Charles Weis, Ph.D.

VCSBA Vice-President for Legislation

Hueneme School Board, President

SAVE THE DATE

October 14 Dinner Meeting

VCSBA dinner meetings are a wonderful opportunity for you to grow as board members. We encourage you to attend with your superintendents, assistant superintendents and any other interested parties. Please join us so we can continue educating ourselves and do the best job possible of informing our communities about the important issues affecting education.

School Budgets & Finance

October 14, 2019 • 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm

VCOE Conference & Educational Services Center

5100 Adolfo Road, Camarillo

CLICK HERE FOR THE FLYER

Future Dinner Meeting Dates

Monday, March 9, 2020

The Vaping Epidemic: How Do We Solve It?

Monday, April 20, 2020

Topic To Be Determined

Help Pick the Topic for April

Last year's VCSBA Dinner Meetings featured insightful presentations on early education, special education, social and emotional learning and public information. Our first two meetings of the new school year will cover school finance and the vaping epidemic. The topic for our April meeting has not yet been set, and we'd like your suggestions. What are the issues that concern you most as a school board trustee and what would you like to learn about to help you best perform your role? Please send your topic ideas to any of your VCSBA Executive Board Members, whose email addresses appear below.