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February 2024 VOLUME XXXVI ISSUE IV
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BLACK HISTORY MONTH SPREAD (8-9)
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STUDENT VOICE OF MILPITAS HIGH SCHOOL
School board approves 4% wage increase for teachers By Savan Bollu and Paarth Gupta
Sidhant Burela | THE UNION
Students between 8th-11th grade and parents tour the Innovation Campus at the open house on Feb. 15.
Innovation Campus update: Recruitment process begins, logistics being finalized By Sidhant Burela
The Innovation Campus, an extension of the MHS main campus, will be open to MHS students in August for the 2024-25 school year, Principal and Chief Innovator Greg Wohlman said. The application to enroll into the Innovation Campus can be found on the MHS website and will be open till Mar. 1, Wohlman added. The student population at the Innovation Campus will start off small with primarily Engineering and Technology (E-Tech) Academy students and incoming ninth graders, Wohlman said. “We’re hoping to have 265 to 300 students in August,” Wohlman said. “And within another year, probably another 100 and, within two to three years, maxing out at about 500.” There will be designated trans-
portation for students involved in after-school activities on the MHS main campus, Wohlman said. Students attending the Innovation Campus will be let out at 2:41 p.m. on Mondays and 3:10 p.m. on Tuesday through Friday, allowing them to return to the main campus, he added. “If there’s an event during the middle of the day, that may be something that the students attending the Innovation Campus won’t be able to attend,” Wohlman said. “But it goes both ways. If there is an event on the Innovation Campus that students (at the MHS main campus) want to attend, they may not be able to attend that.” The Innovation Campus will have classrooms with “accordian walls” that can move to conjoin classrooms, E-Tech student and sophomore Ziad Elkordy said.
Elkordy has visited the campus multiple times and was involved in making a video to show parents and students what the campus will be like, he added. “We got to see classrooms that were fit to the students’ opinions and what they wanted and what they were looking for in a school,” Elkordy said. “Mr. Wohlman looked at what the students wanted and that’s what this (the Innovation Campus) is based off.” While the Innovation Campus is focused on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors, it is also a campus for students who want a smaller setting or different elective choices, Wohlman said. “It will be hard moving over there since I do have a lot of friends on this (main) campus,” SEE PAGE 15
Admin analyze culture and climate survey By Agna Soneji
The results of the culture and climate survey allow administrators to see what groups feel unheard on campus and make a more welcoming environment for students, Assistant Principal Jonathan Mach said. Being able to meet with every student is impossible, but administrators use the breakdowns and feedback given from the survey to create change on campus, Assistant Principal Sean Anglon said. “There’s so many different problems for different kids,” Mach said. “We can’t figure out what it is that we need to work on today because it just feels like there’s a million things that go on in a kid’s head.” From the results of the survey, administrators found that many students who did not fit into the standard gender norm felt disconnected to the campus, Mach added. Next year, MHS will offer Ethnic Studies LGBTQ+ to help students who don’t fit into stan-
dard gender norms feel more seen at school, he added. “Mr. Webber is slotted to teach that class next year, as somebody who can give a lot of guidance on what the people within that community can do to be able to advocate and educate,” Mach said. Many administrators understand that there is a disconnect between students and staff based on the results of the survey, Anglon said. “We can work together,” Mach said. “And it’s not that you have to take the first step, but steps have to be taken all over the place until we find something that does work.” A school is a place to get educated and feel accepted, Mach said. The Ethnic Studies LGBTQ+ class is one of the things the school is implementing to create such an environment, he added. “One of my own personal goals is trying to visit every club throughout the semester,” Anglon said. “If students see that admin as well as teachers are interested in their
clubs, that also gives them that sense that we care about more than just their grades. We care about some of their passions.” The survey results are brought to a staff meeting, and an action plan for the survey is determined with teacher input, Mach said. It is difficult to make changes that accommodate everyone because there are so many different people at this school, Mach said. Administration figures out a lot, “from making the right choices at school to what catering trucks do we get,” Mach said. “If I just get the tacos then people don’t like tacos. But if I get sushi, then people that can’t eat sushi. All those conversations happen.” Bridging the gap between students and staff members can make students feel much more connected to the campus, especially when they first come to the high school, senior Haleta Ayalew said. “If we could interact with them SEE PAGE 15
The MUSD Board of Education unanimously approved a 4% compensation increase for certificated staff for the 2023-24 school year, among other tentative agreements in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). The vote took place at the board meeting on Feb. 13. Prior to this agreement between the district and the Milpitas Teachers’ Association (MTA), many MTA union members attended the Jan. 9 board meeting to urge the district for a better compensation increase than what was originally proposed. Over 100 teachers attended, MTA president and Rancho Milpitas Middle School physical education (PE) teacher Clarissa Isbell said. “What we proposed was met with something much lower than it should have been,” Isbell said. “I’ve been on the negotiation team for a long time, and we felt that they were, what we call, ‘lowballing’ us—going really low.” MTA worked with the California Teachers Association (CTA) to analyze district finances and believes “the district is manipulating the budget,” MTA Vice President of Secondary and lead negotiator Brett Webber said. “There is a practice of moving money into restricted accounts that creates an illusion that we can’t afford to pay teachers a reasonable wage,” Isbell said in a public comment at the Jan. 9 board meeting.
The district typically spends $3-4 million on the Books and Supplies portion of the annual budget, Isbell said. However, this year, the district budgeted $25 million for Books and Supplies, which is a “red flag,” she added. Overall, the district has a $27 million surplus carried over from last year, Isbell said. “We want them to understand that we know that there’s money, so the offer they had given us that was really low was unacceptable,” Isbell said. The Books and Supplies category is like a “holding account” for unspent state grants earmarked for specific purposes that can’t be used for compensation increases, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Wendy Zhang said. Last year’s surplus was primarily due to an influx of this state-provided money, and the district is developing a long-term spending plan, Zhang added. “There is a particular resource code attached with each funding, and we’re supposed to use those funds to spend on either supporting student learning or maybe on staff development,” Zhang said. “There’s a specific need attached with the spending, so we’re not supposed to use this for salary negotiations.” Instead, compensation increases come from unrestricted funds in the district’s reserves, Zhang said. During negotiations, Zhang analyzes the budgetary implicaSEE PAGE 16
Toilet to faucet: California plans new method to recycle wastewater By Yunxi Fang
California approved its first regulations for using Direct Potable Reuse (DPR) on Dec. 18, 2023, according to the California State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) website. DPR is the purification of wastewater into drinking water through a treatment plant without first going through an environmental buffer, such as a groundwater aquifer, according to the California State Water Resources Control Board website. Indirect potable reuse, in which wastewater, such as sewage water and industrial wastewater, is first transported and treated using an environmental buffer such as a groundwater aquifer before being treated at a drinking water treatment plant, is already in use in California, according to the State Water Board website. California will be the second state to allow DPR, according to the article “California Adopts Direct Potable Reuse” on the Wastewater Digest website. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC), which provides around 56% of Milpitas’ drinking water, has not started implementing facilities for DPR, SFPUC commissioner Newsha
Ajami said. “There are other agencies in the Bay Area that are considering building it, that have been building facilities to make that happen,” Ajami said. “We are talking to a few other of our utilities to collaborate on one, but that’s only a conversation.” The Bay Area has the technology capable of doing DPR, Ajami said. It’s excellent that Milpitas will have the regulations to use that technology, Ajami added. “From the system’s perspective it’s a little bit more complicated,” Ajami said. “I think all the utilities (will) like DPR because it gives them an opportunity to treat the wastewater and put it back in their centralized system.” The challenge with using DPR is that it requires a lot of energy and electricity for the water to be clean, Ajami said. There is a huge carbon footprint and a huge material cost, she added. After the treatment, “that water comes to people’s homes, and they use it for various purposes,” Ajami said. “For example, they flush it down their toilet. So the water that we use in our home for different purposes doesn’t need to be the same quality.” SEE PAGE 16