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Board approves multiple routine consent items, personnel actions and expulsions; minutes and agenda adopted
Summary
Trustees approved minutes, the meeting agenda and many grouped consent items, adopted several resolutions and approved personnel actions and stipulated expulsions in closed session. The board also approved multiple contract and business items, with numerous motions carrying by recorded tally.
The Desert Sands Unified School District Board of Education approved routine minutes and its meeting agenda and passed multiple grouped consent items and resolutions at its April 15, 2025 regular meeting.
Early in the meeting trustees moved to approve the minutes of the regular meeting of March 18, 2025, and the special meeting of March 20, 2025; the motions carried as recorded on the roll calls. The board also approved the agenda for April 15, 2025.
In a group of business-services and facilities motions trustees approved multiple contract recommendations and construction-related items (items 18.4 and 18.6–18.11) after discussion about local subcontractor use. For the grouped items, the board recorded the motion as carrying 5–0 with one preferential vote.
Trustees voted on resolutions and grouped educational-services items (18.1–18.3, 22.1–22.2). Roll-call vote language in the record shows each of these motions carrying by recorded votes (frequently recorded as “aye” by individual trustees) and routinely reported as “motion carries 5 0 with 1 preferential vote” where noted in the minutes.
Personnel actions: The board approved several certificated and classified retirements (certificated retirees included Maxine Cobb, Enrique Davalos, Pamela Lapointe, Terrence Lee, Kathleen Olmstead, Sarah Salentic and Mark Weinstein; classified retirees included Daniel Capello, Madhu Desai, Charles Horner, Adi Corti, Frederick Leager, Gloria Maciel, Janine Middleton, Maria Palayo, Jose Reyes, Terry Sabatello, Marcelo Via Jr. and Edelmira Yanez). Retirements and other personnel items were approved in motions where the student board member did not vote when appropriate; the record shows the motions carried.
Closed session actions: The board announced several stipulated-expulsion decisions and reported that it approved multiple stipulated-expulsion orders in closed session by motions recorded as carried (several items listed as “motion carried 5–0” and one as “four-zero with 1 abstention”). The board also announced closed-session appointments of certificated and classified management: Joshua Duvall (assistant principal, Glenn Middle School), Michael Williams (assistant principal, Horizon Summit), Michelle Sherland (principal, Carter Elementary), Anthony Abney (principal, Earhart Elementary) and Justin Spinks (payroll supervisor). Those appointments were reported as approved unanimously in closed session.
Other routine grouped consent items — educational services, student support services, superintendent items and business services — were approved in blocks with the standard roll-call format. When votes were taken the clerk called roll and trustees answered “aye,” and the record repeatedly shows motions carrying either unanimously or by the reported tally.
Where the record shows a specific departure from approval, the board addressed it separately; for example, the district withdrew and tabled bid package 22 (electrical) for Shadow Hills High School Phase II after concerns about subcontractor prequalification and approved the remainder of the Phase II packages.
The board set future meeting dates and adjourned the regular meeting at 8:55 p.m.
