The January school board meeting was held on Jan. 15 and began with the superintendent and trustee comments before the public comments opened up.
Superintendent Brown began by highlighting e-bike safety sessions that will be held by Officer Brian Kinsey. Since many students received e-bikes for the holidays, the district felt it necessary to remind students of traffic signals and helmet safety. The first session will be held from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m. on Jan. 28 at Newhart Middle School.
Student board member Katherine Verrando (12) continued by sharing, “Many of our schools have organized donation drives to support the fire victims in Los Angeles. Despite this challenging time, it’s been inspiring to see how our schools come together to help our community.”
The next speaker, Juan Torres, shared how he feels the district has failed to supply his school with Mandarin-speaking teachers to teach language programs. He continued that parents were discouraged from signing their students up for the program due to the lack of educated teachers.
The next group of speakers were PTA members from Marco Forster Middle School, who united against the school’s closure. One member challenged the school board to find ways to utilize the school so that it would be seen as less of a liability that needs to be resolved.
Then came a presentation focused on the audit of district financials. The audit began between February and March and concluded in September. Overall, the district was issued a positive opinion letter and three additional reports.
Then came a dashboard presentation that focused on the charter schools throughout the district. CAPOUSD has eight charter schools, six of which are authorized by the district. The dashboard is based on performance from the current year and changes from the previous year. The data was overall positive and the presentation ended with the reminder of a WASC mid-cycle report due to take place this year.
The next speaker, Jessica Newburn, spoke on her experience helping the OCASA college prep plan for the year.
She shared, “All of our seniors graduated with acceptances to CSUs or UCs or both. And we are on track for that this year.” On this high note, they will continue to focus on monitoring student growth and promoting a strong learning environment.
At one point, one of the board members questioned the absent rates at one of the independent online learning charter schools. She noted that if the students just have to submit their work online and not be physically present, how are the absenteeism rates determined? One of the presenters mentioned that he would research that and get back to her.
The final speaker was a professor at Cal State Fullerton who provided guidance on teaching the new ethnic studies course coming to the district next year. Having taught ethnic studies at Cal State Fullerton, the professor suggested speaking about power systems and critiquing them throughout the world instead of solely focusing on the oppressive Western system.
This course will be offered in the fall of 2026 as a pilot class. The following year, the school board will decide whether or not the class should be piloted or mandated.
