The Board suggests agendizing a discussion on the potential vaccine mandate in March 2022

TEMPLETON — Templeton Unified School District (TUSD) met for a regularly scheduled meeting on Thursday, Nov. 18 at 6:15 p.m.

The meeting opened with a reminder that masks are required inside the building except for those who have exemptions.

The first item was to report on closed session. The report stated that Trustee Nelson Yamagata made a motion to approve the readmittance of a student, which was approved 5-0. The denial of interdistrict transfers was approved 5-0, and no action was made on the personnel review and possible action, nor on the legal counsel on potential litigation.

Public comment opened with a suggestion of creating a fundraiser for those within the school who wouldn’t otherwise be able to have a Thanksgiving or Christmas. The next comment was by Jennifer Grinager, who represents Moms for Liberty and the opposition to the impending vaccine mandate. She expressed her concern with the special meeting to approve more COVID funds which would force the district to adhere to the impending mandates. She also addressed the idea that special meetings that come up after the agenda is first created could be notified to parents via email so that those who don’t check the TUSD site daily could still be informed.

Several more parents called in to ask to put on a future meeting a discussion about the vaccine mandate and how TUSD plans on handling it so that parents can plan around that.

Following public comment Trustee Yamagata addressed the issue of vaccine mandate and that until the district knows when it is planned to come through and what it entails, they can’t begin to plan their response to it. Yamagata stated that by best guess, it will be July 2022 and that it would be good to agendize around March of next year.

The consent agenda was approved with a 5-0 vote.

The next was the instructions report, which covered the California assessments and did not mandate that all students take the Smart Balance Assessment but that there were other assessments available. The district took into consideration all the difficulties of the year of distance learning and made the choices for their students based off that information. Vineyard made the decision to use the Fast Bridge Assessment, while high school students did take the Smart Balance Assessment.

Benchmark assessments are being administered so that the school can see throughout the year how the students are progressing. For students who have never taken the assessment because it was suspended in 2019/20, the school is creating a program so that the students can get familiar with the process and the assessment before the spring when they will take the assessment and have it recorded with the California data. The assessments are scheduled to begin after spring break.

Next was the resolution for national special education day. Dec. 2 is National Special Education Day because it is the date the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (“IDEA”) was signed into law in 1975. The IDEA made education available to all children and stipulates that children with disabilities have a right to the same free and appropriate education that is available to every other child. The motion passed 5-0.

The next item was regarding legislation passed that affects personnel. The new legislation AB 438 was passed in relation to classified staff layoffs that will be in effect the current 2021-2022 school year. This will change the manner in which classified staff are communicated if staffing changes need to be made to their positions. One of the major changes is that classified employees currently can be laid off in the current year, and the legislation changed it so that they can only be laid off for the following year, as well as giving preliminary notice of the change of being laid off by Mar. 15, and final notices by May 15. Employees have a chance to submit a request for a hearing after the preliminary notice.

The last item on the agenda was the change to the superintendent contract. As a management employee, it does not fall under the represented groups that bargain for scheduled salary increases. The recommendation to approve the contract amendment, which was approved 5-0.

The next meeting of the district will be held on Dec. 9, and the agenda and links to the meeting will be on the website when they become available at tusd-ca.schoolloop.com/