By Andrew Alonzo | aalonzo@claremont-courier.com

Claremont Unified School District’s August 15 Board of Education meeting saw two longtime district employees swap positions, a proposed homework policy sent back for a redo, and some off-schedule raises for one of its unions.

Closed session
Three actions were taken following the board’s closed session, all passing unanimously, 4-0, and each centering on student matters.

Settlement agreements on cases numbered 20240815A and 20240815B were decided.

“These cases involve student information and records protected under privacy laws. Therefore, the details are not public information,” CUSD spokesperson Elaine Kong wrote in an email Wednesday.

The board re-admitted student number 20240620A. The board voted unanimously June 20 to uphold an administrative hearing panel’s decision to expel the pupil, and to re-admit the student for the 2024-2025 school year.

Claremont Unified School District Board of Education President Bob Fass during the August 15 meeting. Courier photo/Andrew Alonzo

Public session
The board members, again voting unanimously, approved nine items in public session, including:

• minutes from its August 1 meeting.

• a public disclosure with the California School Employee Association, Chapter #200, as proposed in the 2024-2025 collective bargaining agreement. Details are outlined in item 14.01 in the August 15 agenda, viewable at cusd.claremont.edu, search “board agendas.”

• five tentative agreements with CUSD and CSEA, Chapter 200, which included one-time 1% off-schedule raises across all 2024-2025 CSEA salary schedules; entitlement to Juneteenth as a paid holiday; and health and welfare benefit, compensation, and leave provision updates.

• Janie Nuanes as permanent director of CUSD’s child development program, effective September 9. Nuanes leaves her post as principal of Vista Del Valle Elementary School where she’s been since 2018. In her new post, Nuanes, an at-will employee, is expected to make $164,735 annually, plus benefits. During the 2023-2024 school year as principal of Vista, Nuanes’ salary was $157,465, plus benefits.

• Brett O’Connor as interim principal of Vista Del Valle with an effective start date of September 9. He is expected to stay in the new capacity until a new principal is found and will earn $14,057 per month. During the August 1 meeting the board approved O’Connor to the position of interim child development program head. He will now take over for Nuanes.

• a new job description for registered behavior technician, which the August 15 agenda defines as a new position to CUSD “designed to support school sites with proactive and responsive support for student behavioral needs.”

• the 2023-2024 fiscal year Art and Music in Schools annual funding report, which detailed how Claremont High School spent $69,188 of its $305,000 AMS budget last fiscal year on a new digital art class. The district has three years to spend the funds. The remaining funds will roll over into this fiscal year.

• a memorandum of understanding between CUSD and the City of Claremont for a school resource officer through June 30, 2025. The district will pay the salary of the SRO, Claremont Police Department officer Jeff Dunbar, for the 180-day school year.

“[T]he District’s compensation to the City (payable to “City of Claremont”) for these services provided shall not exceed $12,300 per full-time equivalent month (or $147,6000 per full-time equivalent year),” the MOU read.

“The direction the City Council gave was for the City Manager to execute the SRO MOU. It does not need to go back to the City Council for ratification and can be signed by the City Manager,” Claremont Public Information Officer Bevin Handel wrote in an email on Monday.

• the consent calendar with a slight revision, with the homework and make up work policy pulled pending revision.

The issue at heart was the policy’s sixth paragraph language, which reads, “Although on-time completion of homework is important to maintain academic progress, the Board recognizes that students learn at different rates. Students shall receive credit for work that is completed late in order to encourage their continued learning.”

During comments at the podium, Claremont Faculty Association president Brian D’Ambrosia-Donner said he’d like to see this policy revised due to the “generality of this language.”

“We 100 percent believe in encouraging students and providing lots of flexibility to submit work,” D’Ambrosia-Donner said. “The fear is that if a teacher’s policy for homework has students submitting all of their work, let’s say before the last day of the triad, and students come in on that last day with a whole bunch of unsubmitted homework and demand that they get credit for it… that’s an undue burden on our educators who have these established policies.”

Board member Kathy Archer wanted the item revised to install some level of accountability on the policy. Board President Bob Fass agreed with the proposed arguments and a vote was taken to pull the policy in order to correct it.

McDonald during the August 15 meeting. Courier photo/Andrew Alonzo

Informational items
Two items were delivered for info only during the public portion.

The first was a presentation by CUSD Assistant Superintendent, Educational Services Julie Olesniewicz on data recently released by the California Department of Education on “the 2022–23 Teaching Assignment Monitoring Outcomes (TAMO) by Full-Time Equivalency data report on DataQuest,” the agenda item read.

Her presentation explained there were “six misassignments due to scheduling errors,” but no vacant teacher positions in 2022-2023.

“The CDE will report 2022–23 TAMO data for each [local educational agency] on the 2024 California School Dashboard (Dashboard) as part of the Priority 1 Local Indicator,” the agenda item read.

When Assembly Bill 1219 passed in October 2019, the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing began to develop the California State Assignment Accountability System, an electronic teacher assignment monitoring system, for the purpose of annually monitoring teacher assignments.

The second item was the first reading of new and revised board policies, including a local control and accountability plan, intervention in underperforming schools, employee use of technology and student use of technology, preschool/early childhood education, and comprehensive health education.

Board Clerk Richard O’Neill was absent from the August 15 meeting.

The next board of education meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Thursday, September 5 at 170 W. San Jose Ave., Claremont.