001Yeah ok, we re gonna Yeah. Yeah, that s ok ok, folks, we re gonna begin. All right, uh, so, good morning, everybody. We re gonna call this meeting to order. Uh, Commissioner Harris is not able to join us this morning. Uh, so it s just the four of us. Uh, with the, the great staff. Huh Yeah, that s, that s right. Ok, so we ll begin, uh, let s begin with an attendance roll call of commissioners. On the 10 roll call for today s meeting, APRIL 21st, 2026. Commissioner Tony Donviet. PRESIDENT Commissioner Gary Gary Gary Yee. PRESIDENT. Secretary James Harris vice chair Mark Tafoya. And Chairperson David Kakashiba. Coral present. Thank you. Ok, so, uh, folks, we re, we ve got some uh uh, we re gonna do I think 3 business items. 3 or
0024, but they should be relatively quick. Um, and then the last agenda item here. Is the uh retreat portion. So, uh, and then that s that thick packet that Zan just identified. So there is a more uh like a facilitator s agenda in the packet that we ll be following when we get to that item. Ok I m sorry ok, we re gonna start our first item, that s the adoption of the general rights center. Uh, anybody wanna move for a second, ok, moved and seconded. Any discussion? Any members of the public wishing to speak? No public speaker, uh, chair. I ll roll call to adopt the commission general consent report. Commissioner Yee Commissioner Dobiet Yes Secretary Harris absent, Vice chair for you. And Chairperson, chairperson Kakashi. The commission General Casson s report is adopted.
003Unfinished business, uh. We have, uh. The adoption of an amended alternative education formula. Uh, for the Messr h eip Education Improvement. For our presence. Good morning, commissioners. Happy APRIL. Um, happy to see everyone today, um, and to bring forth, uh, this item for commission discussion and, uh, possible adoption or requesting the commission s approval to move forward with this recommendation. So what we re bringing forth today to the commission is a revisiting of a conversation and some feedback that we received last spring from, um, a principal during eip presentations um, for context, uh, there was feedback that was shared on behalf of, uh, the alternative Education sites, uh, that currently operate under a different funding formula, um, as compared to our comprehensive school sites, um, and there was a question of the, you know, the
004rationale for why the schools were under different uh funding models. Uh, so just for additional context and just to and to recap for the commission, our current funding, um, formula for the alternative education sites which includes our, uh, continuation schools and um alternative schools of choice with the exception of MetWest, um, their funding formula was set several years back to be based on highest attendance reported, uh, multiplied by the percentage of Oakland residents and then multiplied by the per pupil amount of $850. Um, that is what is currently captured, um, and that is how the schools have been funded up through, uh, 20, the 25, 26 fiscal year. Based on the feedback that we received and just our own additional, um, inquiry into this funding formula. Uh, we d like to propose an adjustment to
005not just the funding formula, but also the template itself, which is where the funding formula is captured, uh, to instead reflect, uh, enrollment, which would bring us closer to um the same uh funding model that the comprehensive sites and the charter sites operate under. So, uh, we, uh, we re proposing to change the funding formula to be based on the 2nd semester highest enrollment count of Oakland residents, uh, for the, not, uh, previous, but the, the year uh prior, um. Academic year multiplied by the per pupil amount of $850 per pupil. Um, the biggest distinction here is that we re we would be going from, uh, a calculation based on attendance, which we know disproportionately, uh, is disproportionately lower for students who enroll in our alternative programs. We know that many students seek out alternative
006programs because traditional comprehensive, um, schools MAY not be a right fit for them, and oftentimes attendance is a barrier to their success at a more traditional school, which is why students seek out alternative schools. So we are pro po s ing again a shift from attendance to enrollment. Um for reference also we wanted to go back to and just connect the funding formula for the Alte sites, uh, to match up with the parcel text language, which stipulates that allocations be based on enrollment. Uh, the current formula or the existing formula has, uh, for the last couple of years been based on attendance. Um, here you see a snapshot of the language from the parcel text that speaks specifically to funding being based on enrollment for eligible schools. Um, so, you know, I think additional rationale
007for this proposed adjustment is, is based on two key points. Uh, first, uh, different from our uh comprehensive sites, or alternative education and continuation schools, uh, enroll students on a rolling year-round basis, and that s not to say that our comprehensive schools don t do that, but the, uh, overwhelming number of students comes well after the OCTOBER census Day, which is different for the comprehensive schools enrollment peaks in the first semester and then starts to dip in the second semester for our alternative schools, um, attendance is, is generally lower at the start of the year, but then pe ak s uh, the second half of the school year. So if we were to use an OCTOBER census count, that wouldn t necessarily accurately reflect the enrollment patterns that we do see in our alternative and
008continuation schools, um, and because enrollment typically peaks in the 2nd semester. Uh, we feel that using the highest 2nd semester enrollment would better capture fluctuations, uh, that are pretty common in the alternative schools, um, and to support a more accurate funding model, um, for, uh, the All Dead sites. The current funding formula, um uh based on the current funding formula, the allocations for students, uh, if we were to keep that the same, uh, the total allocations for all the old dead sites would total around $762,000. So, um that you can see there, you can see that um, it is based on percentage of uh the 2425 highest attendance reported, which oftentimes, um, and for several schools is very different than the number of students, um, who are enrolled, who still have different contact points with
009the schools throughout, uh, the year, um even if they MAY not be at school on any particular day, uh, the impact of the uh proposed formula would increase allocations to all dead sites by over, uh, a little over $250,000 and it actually reflects an additional 241 students, uh, as compared to, uh, just the attendance, uh, amount you see uh the current formula would have only captured 959 students, whereas the proposed formula captures um closer to 1200, or actually, it s an even 1200 students, um, based on the total number of students who were enrolled in, uh, our alternative schools in the 25 24 25 school year. Um, so that is, um, our, our proposal, uh, and we welcome any questions from the commission, um. Uh, based on our recommendation, and we d like to put
010this up for discussion and adoption. Any questions Um, I, I think this is, this is like more like a technical fix, right that makes it consistent with the language. Are, are we in the retreat going to have more time to talk about. Uh allocations in general um, as a, as a discussion point. I mean, because I think what this did is it actually raised um that it would be appropriate at this time to just kind of take a overall, take a look at, at. Our funding and the whole carryover, uh, discussion and so forth. So I hope that. That we can pass. I m supporting this, but I m hoping that we can continue the discussion about whether and how we, you know, maybe adjust the 850 because I think you were talking about before.
011And other and other elements of that So there there was some, uh, um. Some thinking that uh perhaps even in our AUGUST retreat, though there would be uh a more comprehensive discussion about uh funding of high schools, uh, that s both combination of the parcel tax, but also more theoretically about what a kind of core baseline funding formula for high schools, um, ought to be like, what it is it now? What? Might it, uh, what should it be given that the district is uh uh high schools are fully on board with, uh, wall to wall career pathways. So, one example came up as the weather um uh career technical education teachers are part of the base uh formula or not. Currently it s not, um, and so, and, and, and to have that discussion in
012the context also with side by side with parcel tax money, uh, is important, I think. And, and then the other one was, you know, we, we, uh, we had talked earlier. About, um, you know, the middle school to the high school transition and making sure that we uh and, and I talked to a couple of middle school. Principals and I don t think they realize that they that there was that thinking in the original language to actually maybe use some of the investment in uh supporting that trap that the transition So. But uh I, I m, I m, I, I really appreciate the um the work to move, move this forward. Ok, any other questions Uh, my question outside from $250,000. For the checks and balances for the comprehensive school sites. With the formula also
013need to change. To school sites because that Um, we don t anticipate needing to change the existing formula for the comprehensive sites, um, because the way in which their enrollment is pulled. It s, it s pulled in the first semester, um, which is when they do experience their um the highest enrollment, just historically we before presenting this, we went back and looked at, you know, what the enrollment patterns were. And again, disproportionately, the oe sites saw the peak in the 2nd semester, the, uh, comprehensive sites and, um saw the enrollment, you know, pretty steady in the first semester, um, so no, I guess just based on enrollment patterns, I don t foresee that we will have to change. I don t anticipate that we would, and also, um, we wouldn t change it, uh, because
014of, because this shift would then bring all the schools to an enrollment-based funding model as opposed to enrollment versus, um, attendance. So that, that then creates parody across all the sites. So I think the more logical conversation in my mind about funding for the schools would no longer be based on enrollment. It would be based on what our allocation formula ends up becoming based on what the commission. So any future shifts would really be based on how the commission wants to potentially increase the per people amount, but I think that getting everybody to an enrollment-based model, comprehensives, charters, and AlEs puts get gets everyone to the same starting point. The checks and balances, so if a student, let s say first semester goes to a comprehensive school. Doesn t, you know, transfers to an all-ed
015second semester. That s. I m trying to figure out what the the fiscal impact is the the money s not So we re, we re looking at two different I want to say data, kind of like formulas, because now that student is no longer at that uh comprehensive school, goes to another school. And now yeah, so we re basing that model based on the highest for both sides, right? So how does the checks and balances work? With the measure, do we ever hit a snag with a deficit or like how does it impact the overall funding for make sense Yes, I think, um, based on what you re sharing, um so I, I think one thing to point out, uh, is well, this isn t on here, this is just the all dead sites, but
016for the comprehensive school sites, the number that we use to generate their enrollment count is from the previous uh, academic year. So let s say, you know, we re looking at 26, 27 allocations, the number that we use for those school for those allocations come from 2526. Um, for the All Dead sites. The formula that we are proposing would. Not, uh, look at 25 26 numbers, the 2627 allocations would be based on the highest enrollment from 2425. So we re not gonna be counting the students twice. It s just more of a point in time snapshot. Um, we don t typically also follow um students, you know, once they, they leave a comprehensive and they go to uh an Al Dead site, um. In the traditional like the overall funding formula and all the dollars
017that go to schools on a per-up basis, um. Those dollars don t, um, there s no way to account for those dollars to go. They don t follow the student um, so I don t know that uh when you re asking for checks and balances, I guess I m wondering, is the question is how do we ensure that schools are not, I don t want to put words in your mouth. So if you could elaborate on the, the question around checks and balances, what would be the thing that you d be interested in, in understanding about the, the funding. So the question refers to making sure that we just don t overspend what s already allocated. So I see like a plus a deduction happening where one student goes and that money doesn t follow,
018so if that money stays at the comprehensive school site and then we re also increasing the funding at an all-ed school Do we have money in in. The right to make sure that those things are covered. So then we, it s not, so we re not overdrafting or over budget, overexpended. Ok, yes, so, um, before we set, so thank you for clarifying. So before we set, um, the overall budget we take what our um we get a projection on the overall budget that we re gonna receive for the following year. So, um, the county will tell us at some point before the end of this fiscal year. This is how much you re projected to receive in parcel tax dollars for 26, 27. Here s your total amount. Um, what we would do is typically
019run, we would run the numbers based on our enrollment either from the the two prior, um, fiscal years for the Al Dead sites and then the prior academic year for the comprehensives and the charters. We would run those numbers, do our tally, um, and add up. Ok, this is if, if we use the same formula, um. And based on these enrollment numbers, this is how much we re, uh, slated to allocate to school sites, right? And then uh the way in which the parcel tax is written we can allocate up to 10%. To the administrative costs. Up to 10%, right? So it s not exactly 10. If we were to need to adjust the admin 10% in order to accommodate the site, uh, allocations, we would do that. Um, and let s say that s
020not enough, we would then tap into our contingency fund or our reserve to make up the difference. And if we still can t make up, you know, the total can t cover the whole projected cost based on the formulas and the enrollment and the 10% admin, um, costs, then we would bring that back to the commission to discuss how do we want to, uh, you know, adapt? Do we want to, does the commission want to reduce, uh, the admin 10%, even more significantly um to make sure that the site allocations are covered? Does the commission want to reduce the per pupil amount? Does the commission want to do something else, right? Uh, but that would be something that we would come to the commission, uh, to discuss before over committing. The funding and putting uh
021putting the parcel tax in the red. As of right now, based on the amount that we have in the contingency reserve that is not currently sitting in the district reserve Fund. We have sufficient balance to, um, cover the cost of this increase for, uh, for the 2627. A fiscal year Long explanation, but I, those are all the possible scenarios, um, yeah. Just one comment for as a work on implementing this. Is um we discussed this like very briefly before, but I think it d be good to flag kind of where people s unenrollment trends are currently? And where they show you where if anything, like there are any shifts happen, um, because I think like anytime you, you create a system here, there MAY be an incentive. to, for example, not unenroll or to like
022to keep someone on the books. Like in a way that then increases your down the road. And it s not to describe any bad, you know, practices or anything like that, you know, it s like into the books, but I think it s worth flagging. Say, you know, what, what does the trend of like, um, over time and how like I like making sure that those practices don t shift in, you know, 2 or 3 years down the line. Yes, agreed, and I think based on our, you know, uh, brief conversation, what that has raised for us, not just for the comprehensives, or not just for the alt-Es, but for all schools is just doing spot checks quarterly. To see where enrollment trends are, how s attendance looking compared to enrollment, um, because I, I
023think that s also a a barometer for other you know, metrics of success, uh, for the school, not just for Measure h funding, but just, does that mean that we need additional mtss supports to deploy to the school. So that, that is, um, I, we re in agreement with that and looking forward to doing some more, um. Attendance, uh, you know, collecting attendance versus enrollment snapshots in the coming year as we roll this out to see if we re noticing any discrepancies. Thank you. Ok. Uh, are there members of the public wishing to speak? No, no public speakers. Let s get a roll call On the motion to adopt 25-2921a. I m Mandy alternative Education formula. And was there a mover in a second on this item? I Oh. 2, ok, it s moved to
0242. Great, thank you On the motion, Commissioner Zhuang Viet. Commissioner Yi. Sectarian absent Vice chairfoya. Chairperson Kakashiba. The motion is adopted. Last business item. Is under new business, and this is presentation and discussion of uh those strangers to the 26, 27 mou between the school district and Messr8 funded, uh. Charter schools Hi. Um, so just to recap, um, for our new commissioner, every year we um sign a memorandum of understanding with the charter sites because they re not part of ousd and so, um, this is just an update of some of the changes that we are proposing for the template. The template will go to the commission in our next meeting. Sounds good? Um, ok, so I m just gonna go over the first revision, um, it s, I would say the biggest change is
025this uh proposed to a proposal to front load um some specific reimbursement, um, right now, the charters are in a quarterly reimbursement process, so every quarter, um, they submit the list of things that they spent for that quarter to get reimbursed by us. And so, um, this has brought on some questions about how to pay for salaries of teachers at the beginning of the year. So, uh, we re proposing that the charter school can request advanced reimbursement for eligible full-time staff salaries and benefits funded by measures nnh, um, and if it s pre-approved, it, uh, it can, you know, we, I, we MAY provide funds in DECEMBER before costs are incurred, but only if funding is available, um. Vanessa, I know you wanted to talk about this one specifically. Oh, ok. Oh, ok. Um the
026district, uh, all advances must later be verified against actual staffing costs and reporting, um, so pretty much what we re hoping to do is we can uh provide kind of that uh this idea that they don t have to frontload all of their staff salaries at the beginning, um, they will still have to do the reimbursement process for everything else like supplies, materials, travel, um, that would still need to go through the reimbursement process because it s a little bit tricky to front load those, um. But we re really hoping to kind of alleviate some of that need for um. You know, reimbursement for staff salaries. Oh, I didn t realize it wasn t showing. There you go. Oops. Sorry. Do you want to speak to that Oh, ok ok, so next revision is the
027community practice expectation right now we uh tell the sites, hey, you have to attend our community of practice meeting once a month um, and we ve kind of seen some attendance issues and so we re trying to make sure that this is really clear in the expectations of the mou that they have to participate monthly, um, to really ensure that sites are engaged in our ongoing professional development and collaborating with each other and also being aligned with some of the practices of ousd because our goal is for all Measureh funded sites to really use the same work-based learning plan template, use the same master schedule, kind of have that standardization, um, we believe that having that consistent participation increases shared learning, alignment of best practices and just having meaningful collaboration because some of them don
028t really talk to each other, and so we really want to emphasize the importance of this community of practice and um they have to be required to attend and send at least one representative per site per month. Um, and then the third revision is the nsc data reporting, um, they must maintain an active subscription to nsc, which is the National Student Clearinghouse right now, all ousd schools are already members by default, but we re noticing that some sites are not, and that causes kind of a self-reporting issue, um, so only official, we ve realized that for the annual report, only official college enrollment data reported from the nsc documenting the total number of students enrolled in 2 and 4-year colleges within one semester, uh, and one year after high school graduation will be included in
029the annual report will no longer accept some self-reporting. We also believe this is like an equity issue because the oud sites don t have a choice. We get it from Clearinghouse and then if someone wants to self-inflate their numbers, they can if they do self-reporting. So those will be the major revisions Um. Questions or you want me to go back to any of them Any questions Are there any, any other data? Um sources that we should be incorporating into this revision Yeah. Are there any other data sources like? Fsc that we should incorporate while we re here to say. I ll subscribe to this service or that service so that we have greater data parity across the system. Um, our initial review is that National Student Clearinghouse is, is probably, uh, the most critical that
030we align on right now, um. In particular for the purposes of the annual report, um, the other data we can obtain pretty readily from um either our um enrollment offices or the cde because if the school is authorized by us or we would obtain the information from Alameda County Office of Education if it s uh a county authorized charter, so, um not, not at the moment we were, we re not thinking about, um, obligating for any other data points, uh, like a consistent data collection source, but nsc, especially because post-secondary enrollment, um, is, uh, you know, that we want to compare apples to apples. That is our priority for now. But are there data points that the commission uh, if you think about the context of the annual report. Are there data points where the
031commission has questions about potentially the sources of data, the sources of information where, where the charters are pulling their data from. If we re in here doing this already. There s ap data reporting or if the rest of the day is really coming Well I m, I m actually interested in a uniform, um, data reporting longitudinal like 3 or 4 year. Uh history and every time we have that presentation for our district schools. We don t usually, we don t usually have the charter. Um. Information organized in that way, do we? Do we get the, the, uh, do we get the charter data so that we can look at it at the same time. I don t know that we have in the past. Yes, so we um wait to publish the annual report that
032does the comparison on all the key data points until we have data for all, uh, Measure h funded schools. Including the charters. Well, so I mean it seems to me there, there needs to be some um. I don t want to call it penalty, but some expectation. All these things that that we want them to do, like let s say, attend the uh the the monthly meeting there s an expectation, but if they don t, what s the uh what s the, what s the recourse and the same thing with the data, it seems to me that we ve had that data problem for some of the schools in the past. If I, if my memory serves me. And so I, I don t know, it just seems to me that uh um, they wouldn
033t, they wouldn t do that. They wouldn t do that to the, to our uh. Our, uh. High school Who am I? What? Right, I mean, but seriously, they sort of get a, a, a little bit of a free pass because it s an expectation, but there s no um there s no there s no recourse if they don t. There is, there is actually, so there s um section 7 in our mou is the monitoring and oversight section, um, and it outlines what could be considered an infraction? Of uh to the mou, um, and it gives examples but not fixed, so it does allow us flexibility to say. You know, if certain expectations that are outlined in the mou are not met. It does give uh staff the ability to issue uh memos of
034concern. There s a technical term in the, in the mou but issuing letters of concern and escalating it up to and potentially including, um, withholding of their reimbursements if they don t comply with the terms of the mou. So there is a, a bit of progressive discipline, um. Uh, there s, there s the opportunity to do that and to go that route. Um, if needed, so to the, to the question about recourse, there is, um uh, we haven t had to do that yet, uh, our charter partners have been responsive when we have raised concerns. Uh, that said, we also have had a couple of experiences over the last few years that have prompted us to want to be even more explicit in the mou, I mean, I just clarify that because I think this
035is, I, I didn t realize that they did. That they didn t include it, and we don t, I haven t been paying attention to the the post-secondary success measures, which I think is really good, but I think that s what um I share Tafoya is talking about could we have something that um that is more inclusive so that it s standardizes the uh the charter report. In terms of time and uh format be consistent with what we have. That s the one. And then the second one that I m looking at is the identifying of the of the people for the uh. For the um the community of, of practice. You know, that I, I think, you know, if, uh if that happened to one of, one of our district schools, you know, they,
036I think they re they are district schools would be more responsive so because it s in the supervisory chain. But a charter school can have the middle. Limitless reasons why you know, they, they re not showing up They don t feel it s useful. They have better things to do. Who knows what. So, you know, what is the recourse if they don t show up? Um, withholding of their reimbursements. Right. I mean, I just think that that s part of the this whole this, uh, this, this whole um whole draft for me is to just put the whole thing together. And, and say because they re asking for something here. Kind of transactional, but they re asking for this uh this uh this front loading of the money, right? For staff And so it it
037occurred to me, uh why is, is there a way instead of, because that would come out of our, that would come out of your money for the coming year. Not their money, right? But they have a pot of, don t they have a pot of money that they carry over from year to year. It s all one pot, so all the, the funding for all the schools, um. Comes into it, it. Comes into the district and then it gets allocated accordingly, um I m saying is let s say this sounds like the problem is, ok, you, let s say you re a lighthouse. And you want to hire a a cte teacher, let s say, at the beginning of the year that they re saying they re only gettinghat as a reimbursement. Uh in right
038now they re getting it as a reimbursement a quarterly reimbursement or something six-month reimbursement quarterly quarterly. So so but Lighthouse actually has a carryover. Doesn t have some kind of a reserve? Uh, some schools do have carryovers, some schools don t, um, so it s the, are you asking about potentially pulling from. The school s carryover to front load. I mean, I ve, I ve just kind of thinking of a practical basis. Why would that be? What they could do if they, if they ve if they have prepared ahead of time and they know they ve got 50,000 in carryover. Why couldn t they use that carryover? Front load their money and They could if that s how they choose to allocate their, um, their carryover funding. About What do you think about that? Is
039that you wouldn t recommend that. See seems to add a layer of complexity. Your that outside of outside of it like you re already getting a pool of money. When you re getting the money is changing, not the actual amount of money you re getting. Right, currently they have to front they have to come up with the capital, right. Budget and then get reimbursement. Right And assuming that all schools are operating a very narrow margin like that, like that s the hardships I think Yes, that s correct. Thank you, um, for presenting it that way, vice chair Tafoya and team, if there s anything else that you would want to add on the uh on the operational side. Does it make it more complex if they, if they build into their budget. That they know
040that they re going to spend that money. That they, they use their uh carryover on that instead of us front loading it ourselves Good morning everyone. Um thank you for mentioning that because that s exactly what I was thinking, but I just wanted to clarify, maybe it s not the word front load, because currently all of our schools get their money front loaded or use the and charter schools. The way it works is we receive the revenue in two different installments per year, one in about DECEMBER, the other one in about APRIL or MARCH. So because it s not live money that we have at the beginning of the fiscal year on JULY 1st, ou is deep front loads the money for us. They give us the money, the revenue to work within that fiscal
041year. And then when they collect the money, they pay themselves back. So technically oud and charter schools are both being front loaded front their allocation is being front loaded, effective JULY 1st of every fiscal year. Um, the way it works with charter schools is they get reimbursed on a quarterly basis, so they have to spend the money, submit the paperwork to get reimbursed um to get paid back so what this is is essentially solving that problem that they have to put the capital upfront and then they seek reimbursement, um, but and that s where I just wanted to clarify that because maybe front load is not the word, it s, we re going to be prepaying them for services that haven t been rendered. But, but we don t actually have that. The district doesn
042t have that money either. They don t have it. I mean, this is, this is, this is, this is this is like a, a, a promise to pay. Not so there s, there s some asterisks, some, um, what s the word? I can t think of the word. I m blanking y all. Well, it s ok. I m conditional, right? It s conditional. It s, it s contingent upon the district having sufficient funds to prepay, right? So that is that language is built into the current draft of the mou because we don t want to overcommit. Um, and uh, you know, put the, put the parcel tax, put the commission, put the district, um, in a, in a negative spot, um, to overcommitting funding that we don t have. So there s, there s specific
043language that you ll see when the mou comes to you for formal approval. We just, we wanted to socialize the idea today to get your thoughts and see if there was any other input you wanted to offer before we finalize the mou um just seems to me that this is, this is the opportunity and this proposed changes to capture all the uh all the things that would be beneficial to the commission and to the district to standardize the uh the performance outcome. For the us. Performance outcomes as well as managerial expectations of both, uh both because I I think that s uh that s our responsibility as a commission. To manage the the uh the charters as well as the district. And uniform way. So it made it sound like it was more like an
044exception to me. But if it s consistent with the rest of the practices. The district, then it s ok Are you, are you saying, for example. Practice where Right. This is how we calculate x, y, and z, there, there s certain standards of practice that the commission should adhere to across all the funded all the funded schools. And I think this is a great opportunity to just to make that and it s not an encyclopedia, but, you know, a um a manual. Says this is where, you know, just like we re doing with the documents, you know, we re gonna build a document library. This is a procedures library that s, that is an effort to standardize And I, I appreciate like uh putting in here about school, you know, we re talk about later
045about school closures, because that s, that s a, that s much easier to do, and the charter world, and then we have to figure out what, what are we going to do about. And those practices and so forth, so to build that whole thing for the charter side and get it adopted at the same time seems to be great. This is a great opportunity to do it all. Because we re doing a new out and we re doing the new uh eip and everything I mean the library, the eip, these relationships standardizing it all is fair to everybody I just misunderstood the part about the, the, the front loading but. And that because the next step is going to be, well, how about every all the other things. Because that would be. Um, Nancy, didn
046t we, in the beginning, uh do advances to charter schools and didn t we have a kind of a an accounting problem? Yes, the reimbursement process came out of findings and um an accounting problem. The charter schools would get their full allocation at the beginning of the fiscal year, and then they would self-report, um, in many cases we the schools were not spending 100% of their allocation within that fiscal year, so there were a lot of thousands of dollars unallocated or um we had no idea what they were doing with the money. So when we saw that as a problem, we then came to the commission and that s how the reimbursement process came about. Vaguely remembered something like that. Which was the reason. Yeah, but a lot of the stuff that they did report
047when they reported was not permissible because, you know, uh a a funding category, the school district has around expanded learning is far, much, much bigger than Messr n and 8s, and it s strictly cost reimbursement. But it s done on a monthly basis. So it, the, the turnaround is is faster, and I uh it s um for, for the contractors, that s probably like uh. Not the most desirable. People always want to advance, but from a manage on the other side of it. Is that it s just more, uh, manageable to track uh your expenses and and all that. So I, I personally kind of don t like the advanced stuff, uh and particularly was an audit finding in the past, uh, it, it, it not huge alarm, but, but the other thing is whether
048it could be done something more. Uh if we reimbursement, what is our current reimbursement? Sequence 4 reimbursements a year, so it s quarterly, so rather than prepaying we could consider doing it more often. That, that s something that you guys can discuss. I mean, and I think quarterly is also a very pretty standard practice, um. You know. County, state fed, federal government does that, but um you know, a monthly thing Anyways that I, I, I we re not acting on anything, right? So this is a discussion, but my, my thinking is that given our our past experience that, um. Uh maintaining the cost reimbursement process, I think is a is a better way to kind of uh just make sure that we, you know, we could account for everything, but look at where we might
049be able to do something more frequent, so that it s less of a burden for the charter schools in terms of being able to uh for them to front load uh costs. And, and this is why it s really valuable to have this library. Of past practices and so forth because the whoever s running the charter school now has no recollection of what the problem was in the past, and it just seems I m glad we re having this retreat in actually standardized everything on the front loading slash prepaying, um, just, uh, on that proposed revision to the mou, um, totally understand the concern. I definitely would not want us to go back to the days of not knowing where the funding was going, um, and I can t speak to how that happened when
050it happened in the moment. I wasn t on this team at, at that particular time, I will say that in our internal conversations, we ve, we ve raised some of those questions to ourselves, like how are we going to make sure that the funding is going to the positions that are ultimately approved, um, what checks and balances are we gonna put in place? I think we have identified a couple of mechanisms that have been put in place that MAY not have been put in place, um, at the when um when the charters were receiving their, uh, allocations at the beginning of the fiscal year, but things like um confirming uh only positions. Like that s why we also just only want to focus on positions because those are the the most expensive and um most
051uh burdensome on site budgets, both. Ousd and charter sites. Um, we, you know, are checking against their um verifying expenses through their general ledgers, which we didn t have in place previously. Um, we do a lot of front loading as well of uh requesting duty statements, um, you know, verification of positions, contracts, people s name, you know, just verifying that what is written in the eip and approved by the commission matches with how they re spending the dollars, and so there s a number of different checks and balances that are already in place. I think the other piece that I would um pose to the commission for consideration as we continue to discuss this topic is that our MOUs are also one year. They re one year at a time. Right? And um if there
052s an opportunity for us to test something out in the coming year. Um, and see if it s working, if the checks and balances are sufficient, um, then we could do that if the commission is open to it, um, if for whatever reason it doesn t work, we have the ability to amend the mou to revert back to the original, just quarterly for everything, for all expenditures. The following fiscal year, if not sooner, if, if the commission feels like there s a need to, you know, to, to, to go back. Um, if there s, uh, you know, immediate red flags in the process. So it also gives us a little bit of leeway, um, to try something with some additional checks and balances that we don t, that the commission doesn t have to commit
053to in perpetuity. So it s a one year, one year mou as well. Well, let me just give one example, ok, that crossed my mind while you were talking. So let s say um they put it into place a cte teacher, a half-time cte teacher that. To for Let s say they don t fill that position. The money s already in their hands, so then are you going to ask for do we ask for it back We could handle it a couple different ways, but the first thing that comes to mind is, um, requesting a budget modification. So if they re not going to spend the money based on how it s uh written into their approved eip then, as with any other school, uh, ousd or charter, they would need to modify their plan
054to indicate how they re going to spend it instead. Um, and you know, we would go through that, that process to verify that it s a permissible expense. Ok. Any other feedback forte? So, in that modification, the funding doesn t get spent the way that it was originally. Dated. And then there s modifications made and then what if the charter schools don t follow through on those modifications. Does the district and you know, does the district get the money back from the charter at any time or does it just stay at the charter schools after it s transferred. Um, well, we, we do have, we would have the ability to request, uh, repayment that already exists in, you know, um. There s, there s language in the mou that allows us to request, uh. payments
055back from charters for a variety of reasons, and so that that could fall under that would be one instance or one example of us, um. A reason why we would request, uh, a return of funds from a charter school. I point out that similarly a district like you know, that this all this all applies to district schools too. They if they wanted to hire a cte teacher. They couldn t hire a cte you know, that sort of thing. It wouldn t, the district wouldn t claw back the money that. Rolled over. Into, into the carryover Correct. So the, the site wouldn t be allowed to um or the money that would be sitting in the that particular. Account string in our, in our work, right? Uh, in our budgets, it would sit in the account
056string, um, and then the site would still need to go through the budget modification process to amend their budget to allocate it in a different way. So it, yes, similar process. It s, it s different financial systems, but the process would be the same whether it s um an ousd school that isn t able to fill a teaching position or a charter school. That s unable to fill a vacancy Very. Carry over is, is is really their money and it s sitting in a in a reserve account so they could, they, if they could tap that. For that first quarter tap the carryover money then we re not involved at all if they. Still have to put it back there, but that s no, but that s the technical thing that I don t need
057to. You guys know what I m talking. Yeah, I understand what you re saying, Gary, but the carryover money falls in the same reimbursement process as the regular eip money because they are in a reimbursement process, it doesn t matter which pot of money they re digging into it all has to go through through the reimbursement process whether it s effective JULY 1st or later on in DECEMBER when their carryover budget is approved. That s why it s nice to have you at the meetings. Ok, uh, any members of the public wishing to speak? No Piker chair ok Um, Uh, are there any next steps from this discussion? Thank you for the discussion. Um, so we ll process, we ll debrief, um. In our meeting tomorrow with, um, in our executive committee meeting and then,
058uh, we ll discuss internally if there s any additional, um, adjustments or amendments that we want to make to the mou based on some of the feedback that was raised today. We ll run it by our legal team and then we ll uh be able to point that out when we bring any changes or any additional changes we ll, uh, bring that to the commission s attention when the MOUs come up for actual discussion and adoption. Ok. Uh, that concludes all of our business items, so we re gonna jump into the uh retreat discussion Uh, so before the people want, is this a good time to take a 5 minute break? Yeah, ok, why don t we do that, um. So we re gonna be in recess for 5 minutes, maybe 10. We are coming
059back out of recess and reconvening. Do we need a roll call? Yes, we do need a roll cost to establish schoolroom. On the roll car to reconvene. Commissioner Donviet PRESIDENT. Commissioner Yee Secretary Harris accepts it if I shared for you and Chairperson Kakashipa. Coon present. Ok Thank you, everybody. Uh, so Jan had passed out a, a clip packet and you ll see this. Uh, is the um more detailed agenda for this retreat. Uh, ignore the times, um. Um, so um what we hope to try to accomplish, uh, today is uh uh it s sort of two parts. Um, one is that, uh, we passed um uh a kind of a a set of policy uh guide, and related to that were implementation, policy implementation priorities, and we voted on that, I think a couple of
060months ago. And so today, uh we re going to start with, uh, kind of revisiting specifically the implementation priorities and talk about what uh is uh we we think is the kind of the most important uh, and, uh, uh, and what we kind of expect. Uh to see uh hopefully uh worked on and and materialized over the uh upcoming fiscal year 2627, uh, so it d be just a, uh, the discussion among ourselves and and back and forth with the staff about what is the most strategic and what s doable, uh, and so on and so forth. And then, then we re gonna flow into uh the discussion, uh, revisiting the, uh, education improvement planning process, uh, the both the process and the tools, um, and the ideas that to be able to provide uh
061I, I think enough feedback uh, today that we might be able to get some uh kind of uh uh more specific, uh, proposals or or or uh yeah, I kind of proposed uh uh process and tools, uh, maybe in JUNE, uh, when we meet our, our last meeting of the year. Um this is the, the, the reason why we re revisiting eip is so that people remember that we are doing an unprecedented 4th year, uh, this coming year, 25 26 27, uh, we re rolling over everything. Uh, and, uh, really the policy document and the implementation priorities kind of precede why we wanted to uh kind of take a step back, reflect on whether the eip process is um how we can maximize the eip process to be a kind of a powerful reflection. Uh
062journey, uh, for schools and for uh district staff and for the commission, uh, so that we are in a pretty strong uh continuous improvement kind of uh ecosystem and culture. Um that s, that mark anything? that ok. All right. So, we re gonna start, uh, any questions about that? Sound a little grandiose. I don t know if we ll knock it out in 2 hours, but, uh, well. See what we could do. Ok, uh, so we re gonna start with the implementation priorities. Uh I don t know if sand you wanted to walk us through or Mary wanted to walk us through. Are you prepared, Ja I just wrote some of these questions, um, and also all the materials are in order based on what s listed on the memos if you re looking for
063something specific, the implementation priorities and the policies that were recently passed are in there. Um, it s right after the linked learning quality standards. Um, and I just wrote some questions I guess for moving towards planning for next year out of the priorities the implementation priorities, which areas should we priority prioritize and how should they be faced and how will progress be monitored? Um, these are some of the, I guess, guiding questions. Mark, do you wanna add anything? Ok, so we want to look at this document, right The implementation priorities, yeah. I, I need to print in a different color paper, huh? I ll take it from the budget, the color budget. So I personally have some thoughts about this, but um befo before we get into the commissioner. Uh Vanessa, Rebecca, anybody want to,
064do you have any things that you want to uh share put on the table, um, before we get into it? I think we, I maybe to start off the conversation, we would, um, welcome. I, I m looking forward to seeing what comes of our discussion today. I think maybe the framing that I would offer as we talk about implementation priorities is u I ve raised this before, but just striking the balance between what s the outcome that we are striving to achieve and what flexibilities are we allowing for staff both at both at the central and the site level to get to those outcomes, so trying to balance direction, um, but also flexibility for context, um, both financial school context, student context, etc. Um, so that s, I think that s the only offering that
065I have to start off the conversation. Ok Um, I think I want to add to this was a question that was raised by pathway coaches and sites, it s like. What do site visits look like, especially from the commission. I think they would love to see you in the school, so I think it s #3. Um, but that s just something that I I get asked that a lot, actually. Yeah, I, I can speak, um, I mean, we put together a kind of high-level illustration that might support the commission s process this morning. So can you actually go to the slide even before it, um, so this was a, a document, a kind of a visual that we that we put together to represent a shift that we re considering. We re all kind of,
066I think, in the, in the period of considering, right? And and proposing. So the, the goal, um that I, I think is um suggested uh by the, the guidance documents that the commission has approved. Um, might be to move from what we currently have, which is frankly, many goals. Right? So each pathway has 3-year goals, and each school has 3-year goals. And those 3-year goals are articulated along a long table, right? The goals for the schoolwide are a through g, graduation, everything down to cte completion. Um, so uh, a, a thought is that we move from 3-year schoolwide goals and pathway goals 2 3-year school-wide goals. With annual, um, strategic actions. The purpose for doing it would be to align perhaps better with the intent of the measure, which is to improve at kind of
067the high level of high school graduation and a throughg completion rates while decreasing dropout rates via these pathways. Um it might increase the collective focus on those core metrics with the pathway level actions, not goals, aimed at improving them. Um, and perhaps it will then deepen the impact of pathways on student achievement at that ultimate um outcome level. And, um, if you don t mind now going to that next illustration, um, there are some flaws in this. This was something that I, I put together and I ve realized in talking about it already there are some things that aren t quite right, so I ll, I ll address that in a minute. Um, but this kind of cycle, I think, reflects what Che Kakashiba was describing that is sort of this I think very doable,
068but also lofty culture of improvement. Um, this is a, a cycle that would be continuous and um it would be, um, it would be inclusive of regular reflection and feedback. um, to inform strategic actions annually, so. At kind of at the front of the school year in let s say AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, uh, this we ve discussed at length, uh, in this space, um, schools would have their data. From the previous year. They wouldn t have their cohort data by AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, so that s a bit of a we need to figure that out in this illustration, uh, but what we would have is a kind of system-wide is all measure h funded schools would be engaging at the school and pathway level in um a self-assessment. And so, uh, and there are some tools that,
069um, that Jan included in the, in the packets that you can see, but that would be a self-assessment against the quality standards. Which is the linked learning part, but then also against those bottom line metrics of graduation a through g and drop out. Um, the next phase would be almost immediately after, which would include the development just every 3 years as we ve been doing of the school developing, uh, of course in deep collaboration with pathways um, the, the, the schoolwide goals. Um those would then inform the next 3-year cycle of goals and benchmarks. i think NOVEMBER is too late, so that s an area that um NOVEMBER, I think is a bit late to do this, um, because it would be for that year, but then the, the pathways with clarity from from the
070school level, kind of the directive from the site leaders saying, listen guys, we re making progress in a through g, but here s where we need to get to, and I need your help. The theory of action is the pathways help the school achieve its schoolwide outcomes. Um, so then pathways considering school-wide goals and identified benchmarks would develop annual strategic actions so that theory of action of I believe if we do this, we will help the whole school achieve its school-wide, um. Goals and then of it would of course be across the three domains of linked learning, uh, we re also suggesting that potentially 1/4 action be required, which would be an instructional action. Um, because we system-wide in the high school network are working hard to just bring greater focus on instruction. Um, then
071you would, you would, um, get a big update, um, from the teams in DECEMBER, um, you would hear about the school s self-assessments, um, every 33 years, the school-wide, um, 3-year goals. Annually, you would be hearing about the pathway level, um, strategic actions, including the self-reflection, and you would see, I don t think a draft proposed budget because we won t have allocations out to schools yet, but perhaps some draft kind of budget um guiding principles or considerations maybe is the right word. Then our schools with input from you, from us, from the community would go into the regular budget development sys um uh season in JANUARY and FEBRUARY. So I don t know if it s helpful, but it s, I, I, I like it personally because it kind of gets us out of
072out of the, the complexity of some of the, you know, the, the long narratives into what could be a, you know, a concept, a clear cycle concept. Yeah. Sure Um, ok, so, um, I, I, so I, this is very helpful. Um. I wanted to touch on uh implementation number 3. And I want to throw out something to one is to see if what what I m suggesting is uh consistent with the intent uh of the of the uh standard uh, and also I think it relates to that. Uh. Timeline there So one of the things that, um, so um, this is and, and to be honest, the n8s, uh, the, the language and the measure. Kind of really speak to an internal process within a school. Um, and I think that this is very reflective
073of this, and I think this is the, the way it s um kind of carved out, uh, makes a lot more, uh uh, makes a lot more sense in terms of the sequence and the time frame. Um. But one thing that I think is, is missing is, and, and I think that s where the idea about uh getting gold certification was of interest for me, was that um you know, uh, I, I don t know to what extent it goes on in Oakland Unified. But maybe about 1314 years ago, the board passed a policy. That I believe still is still on the books. It hasn t been rescinded or amended, but it was called a Quality school improvement. And it called for sort of both an internal process, but an a quote unquote external meaning
074kind of district level. Um. Kind of, kind of review. So whether you call that a wasp, you call that a gold certification, but I think high schools and this linked learning is probably in the best position. To implement a quality school development. Policy because we have standards. Um, and it s been, and then the, the work is matured for 1012 years in all of our high schools. That you know, to me a priority would be to figure out how to build an infrastructure in the high school network about being able to not necessarily every single school every single year. I would actually propose that we look at the big comprehensives, uh, and being able to insert like a number 6. That there is like this district level site review, maybe 23 day review of, say,
075for example, tech Oakland High Skyline, Fremont. And Calcimon um and to um and that would be sometime in the spring. Um, and that, you know, that whatever analysis comes from the district level team. Would be able to have shared with the school site that they can consider, uh, as a you know, ending the school year and, and in the summer and preparing for the fall about whether any of that data, oh , we didn t really um factor that in. And so we, you know, might make some modifications or what have you. But I think that that would um be if, if we could build that kind of culture, I think we would um there s always been that this thing in, in the school district about school the school autonomy thing as a uh
076school autonomy means schools can do whatever they want. And they don t have to listen to anybody. And I, you know, I think the quality school development policy and then I think Mess and Messr h was now there really needs to be this. Um. Interdependent, uh. Engagement between what is considered to be district level standards and practices uh, and then adaptation at the schools and then you know, this kind of back and forth kind of stuff. Um, so that s my suggestion is, like, what would it take to, to what extent we have elements of that already. And what, what would a strong kind of uh infrastructure look like, uh, and, uh you know, and uh and start building that over the next 3 years. So that s my contri That s all. Mark, you
077wrote the stringing ideas probably um #2 and 3 are the meat. Area. So ones I said the system of evaluation differentiates support. And then to increasing coherency, alignment and integration. Um I think that my priority would be doing like like focusing on number 3. Light of number 2 right So that for example if you did this, could you build it? In coordination with the wasp you know, like, like, you know, so sort of like, you know, accreditation like that sort of thing or build it so that you know, their next evaluation incorporates all the like the Was learning that happens. You know, prior and then adds on to it this other piece, right? So like how do you, like how do you think about that? Um, are there other like cycles of inquiry through lcap
078or anything like that that like. Support that learning so that they re not they re sort of that sort of sitting in disparate areas, but like you bring this together as a package. So that the outside accreditation team, like they re kind of like the osd district lev accreditation team. Has the lost report, the latest lcap report, the whatever, like, you know, this cycle, that cycle as like sort of the beginning part of like what the oversight looks like Um. I think that I would be interested too to kind of hear some reflections about like, where we, where you feel like you re at now on this, and what it would take to get. To kind of become more like if, if there, if there is support for kind of like an sqr type. Process
079because sqr was. What it was like they had teams of people from the district. Right? Different levels, different like positions, like that sort of thing would go to a school and be there for 2 or 3 days. To kind of poke around and feel like like that sort of thing and then come back out with some concrete results in ico and uh recommendations. Right. And I think that you could do it in a way that builds the capacity of the of the evaluators also. I mean, I think you have to have people who are going in the evaluation, but I think you learn a lot when you go to a place to look at it and sort of see what s working, what s not, and it, and it MAY be sort of. A way
080that like in practice drives that kind of continuous learning. Also because you have people who are prepared and that you know sort of going and seeing and trying to adopt, you know, things for their own, for their own business and tours, you know, with it. So I guess that I d be interested in hearing a little bit about like. Where we are now where we think we would like to get, and like what kind of level of effort it s it gonna take to get there? Right on the on the system of evaluation differences. But I, but I think, you know, like I, I just would not want it to be built without. Thinking about like the alignment to other systems or. Like being mindful of whatever, whatever ask is being made. Sure, uh, briefly,
081we, we do have infrastructure already in the district, the sqr School Quality review process is still in existence, still being used, um, in recent years we have worked, um, in the spirit of building alignment and coherence across the district, um, with, uh, and with our linked learning, uh, priority, um, we ve been working to revise the rubrics to reflect uh, the high school context and the linked learning context. So, um, there is infrastructure. Be a stretch for us to set something up. I, what I m envisioning as we re talking or as, as you were speaking, Vice Chair Tafoya is um like how do we use the sqr or, you know, uh, the, the school quality review or pathway quality review process, maybe, uh, as the umbrella to then um. Have that be the frame
082for how schools then lay out their education improvement plans and the goals and strategies that they identify there and then when we do the annual evaluation of their EIPs, how do our assessments, like all you know, vertically align Uh, so that way, you know, their wasp goals are included. The lcap goals are included, um, so yeah, so it would not uh, I think we, it would not be hard to implement. I do think that with staffing shifts at the district level, we will see an impact, uh, the staff that was has been holding that school quality review work or the positions that have been holding that initiative, um, unfortunately won t um. They ve been eliminated for next fiscal year, so we would need to figure out other ways to hold that work specifically for
083high school, um, in our office, but there s, there s a lot to build off of. To build internal high school network staff capacity to lead that independent of uh district uh district Yes Yes, I, I m confident. I mean, we do that informally. Already we ve had dry, I would say practice runs when we visit, um, conditionally approved charters, um, conditionally approved, um, measure 8 schools. So we would just need to fine tune our process and, um, adapt. I mean, I, I would say that there s some minor, um, adjustments that we would make to the larger district-wide sqr process to make it fit, you know, fit the linked learning high school context. But we could hands up, but can you just add one other thing is that uh, in, in that sqr process.
084Uh for the future is that if there s if it s I think it would be I think it would be helpful if there s a way to incorporate, include. Um. Some kind of uh mechanism to get, you know really good uh input feedback from students and classroom teachers. Um, so if you re, so it s not a district-wide. a survey or anything like that. But if you, if you say, ok, in 20207, we re going to go to these 34 schools, then it s, it s tailoring some kind of data collection tool to get teacher and student voice just for those particular schools. Um and that is like, you know, it s like 80% of all the teachers, you know, 80% of all the students. I think would be and I think that that
085data would be useful for other things that schools have to do. Like a wasp or anything like that Um, for just to get a quick idea out is maybe very tactical, but you know, right now, all the schools are in the same cycle in terms of coming up the 3 year, you know, like goals. What if you divide them into thirds. For example, and so that every year some cohort of schools developing their three-year cycle. Right? And every year that cohort would be the same cohort that you or sq like you were doing the sqr process with. So that it becomes not every school in there, but you have like a subset. That does that and then you see like if that s happening in the spring, that feeds into that school s 3-year cycle
086that fall, the other two, the other 2/3 of the schools. Are in year 2 or 3. Of sort of maintenance of what they previously developed. Right? But that can by like, you know, like I think that they contain with like some of the other stuff here about like. Who s being monitored or who s not, who has lighter monitoring, that sort of thing could diminish a little bit of like the um uniformity of the oversight and get to a more tailored place. The So I, I, I was still stuck on the uh the slide that s up there. And so it took me a minute to switch, but it occurred to me that um what the reason I like there s several things and the sqr comes into this as well, because this call is
087school quality review and I actually like school improvement review. Because I think we re talking about an improvement cycle and school quality, so it sounds like you either qualified or not, and we already have that in terms of the gold standard part and uh so I really like the kind of the language of uh of, you know, this is a continuous improvement cycle. But, uh, regarding, then I, I switched over to this document. and uh what I d, I d kind of like to propose is that we look at uh 4. 4 tiers the first tier being um the high school system as a whole. You know, the what are the what are the system system improvements that we need to make to be to be effective And then you got the school improvement, then
088you got the pathway improvement and then you got the student improvement. So those are the four, those are the really the four tiers that, that we, if we clarified, we d find a place for the quality review process that you re talking about, which is at that second stage, and I, I love the idea of breaking it up in 3 years, but then it occurred to me that our high schools are actually on a 4-year. You know, that we go from 9 to 12. So is, are we sacrosanct around 3 years. It seems to me. That, that that if you thought about uh and I m just putting that out there. We typically think about 3 years, but I don t know if that s actually is any more valuable than a than a a
089four-year cycle because I, uh, talking to Tony, the thing that I wanted to propose mainly on the the the student level, you know, if you look at those 4, categories. I, I d be interested in thinking about the 9th grade kid coming in, and there was this experience in the 4 years with the goal of graduation and adg and all the rest of it. So that puts it, that kind of puts it on a, the 9th grade is a kind of a planning year, and then a 3 year implementation year and then going back to the 4th year being the beginning of the review process, the school quality review is in the 4th year, leading to the improved leading to, leading to the plan of the upcoming 3 years. So just like we re doing
090this year by accident, we have this 4th year, but suppose the 4th you were actually built in to the process. So you re, you know, you re writing a 3-year plan, but you re actually taking one year to actually review and implement. So, uh, so that s the, the kind of way, I mean that it s actually exciting to to think about it from from my point of view to and it makes it easier on everybody. The problem is actually wasp. Because the wasp is on a, I think usually on a seven-year cycle or something like. 6-year cycle. So that s the one that s kind of off cycle to me But I, I m good,, I, I would hope that that s built into it, but this all starts with the fact that we
091re not the same district high school, as we were in 1314. In 1314, I would say it s fair to say we were in a lot of uh chaos. And, you know, we were building the systems and we are building the pathways and building the schools in ways that are changing the schools in ways that we don t experience right now. We re actually in a pretty mature place that we re even thinking of wall to wall academies, and we re thinking about gold certification for all of our schools. No, gold certification is pathway level, right? See, so we ve got a kind of a pathway standard that we re talking about a school standard of something which is. Which is, I think the school quality review. I don t know if that s what
092you re referred to the Chera Kakashiba, and then the evaluation system is on the individual student level, which is, you know, the, the data that I, I said to the staff and you guys, you know, that that West model where you re actually looking at individual kids in a focus group. We re not talking about category of kids but we re talking about real kids, that you have everything, including this reflection about how the commission works, how the staff works, and in all, in all of those systems which are really the system s changes that we were talking about earlier about the charter schools and all the rest of that, but it seems to me that that s the that s the pyramid to be, the systems, the schools, the pathways, the kids, and, and
093then thinking about it over 4 years rather than 3 years. 1 year of of review and planning, and then 3 years of implementation. When you think about that as an add-on to what you re seeing. S the year of reflection and review because that s like we re doing now. Execute Right. But I don t think uh I don t think that that there s anything sacrosanct around the the 3 years. To me, and I, I kind of like the idea of of the whole system doing a one year pause. Doing that reflective process and which in theory we re taking advantage of by having two retreats. And by having a pause on. On the reviewing and all the rest of that. And then moving on to, you know, planning. And they, it would really
094give everybody a chance to dig deep. In terms of the policies around the leaders just like we did in the charters and review of our, our, uh, student data systems, and it s the expectations and so everybody is kind of resetting. That year So, but that is still staged just the way you re talking about. So that s a planning year for a category of 4s for 3-year plan. Every, every year as opposed to trying to do the, the whole thing at the same time. The only thing that s done everything at the same time is the system the system um item. But I like this. I, uh, I, I like having some kind of like drafting a cycle like this. For the, for each of the 4, it s, it s kind of like
095kind of like a um a block of four of these rings. So the the first ring is, is uh system level. The second ring is school level, the 3rd ring. Is the pathway level in the 4th ring. Is the student level And I don t even, you know. I appreciate somebody even drawing this. I, I, I think if we, if, if there is that uh sqr or sir uh kind of process, um, that s from uh uh district organized thing. So in terms of the sequencing that to me would be number one. But if we were to think about in real time, like, that would be happening right now and obviously it s too late, right? So. Um. But that s, it, it s just like another set of data for schools to then. Be
096able to read from and learn from and. Or just say, hey, that, that, that don t make no sense it just be a good starting point for schools. So, so if you had just kind of argue out like 3 cohorts of schools they re going like you sort of divide it out the spring does not represented here. Would be because your sqr review. I think you, you re. You re thinking, you know, sort of external review, right? And some reflection about sort of what that. Means coming into the fall where you make your three-year plan. Set your 3-year goals, right? And that s a third of the schools happening as a third of the pathways happening given time. Like for example, you would break up your three big schools. Right? And your 3 medium schools,
097that sort of thing. So I kind of like an equal number of pathways coming across your desk at any given. Cycle. Right And then that, that, then those those schools are then be out, out of the sqr process, but like out of the they wouldn t have the sqr for the next two years. Until it s following like again until they come up for their spring. Like for the next 3 year cycle right? But there s always SQRs going on every like every spring. You know. And with a smaller number of schools going. Um, on that note, we, well, with the commission. I think it d be interesting for us to explore what the benefits and trade-offs are between a 3 year cycle versus a 4-year cycle, um, in terms of staff capacity but also
098the ability to follow um. Full cohort, like a student cohort using a 4-year model. Um, I think we can tailor um we could tailor the process enough to. Have the right look for for high quality pathway development at the individual pathway and schoolwide level, um, but I, I think that s the thing that I m kind of grappling with right now, like from a staff perspective, um. 4 years would allow us to follow a cohort of students. It would also allow us to have fewer schools to review if we re talking also about ousd and charters. That s 20. 2027. Uh 27 pathways, uh, fewer schools, but you know that s, that s a lot of um a lot of assessment going on. But I think the, the spirit of the, the structure, I, I
099think is something that we are definitely, um, aligned with and would bring us in more coherence with the larger districtwide improvement, um, framework. I would definitely sees all. In the same way you know, and I think that just becomes like a sort of the modeling of the capacity required, right? So say like if we had a 3-year cycle, we would need x number fte. For this given period of time to. 4 year cycle, it would drop to this amount. Part of that. And truthfully, I think the sqr part would be a district responsibility If I m assuming that s what we re all talking about. Well, a district responsibility, but I, I, I, I actually think it would be better that that s held. It s district level, but it s held by the high
100school. Well, what, however it s done, that s not specifically, I mean, uh it could be but I think that that s the way you create the uh the uh. Knowledge that that there s a separate level. That is, that is school full quality review I mean, I m, I m just tossing that out there because we re just talking about it now. But the other, the, the pathway level, the student level. And the system level are our, our responsibility, but the school quality review seems to be resides with this. These. High school network for. And that that s how the SQRs live within the other networks, they are, uh, based in the like elementary networks in the middle school network, um, but staff from other departments all contribute. I think though has to look
101at. There there s the practice standards like like gold standards, but then it has to look at the student has to look at student outcomes, and it should look at operational systems. Like you know, you got a school that has a lot of turnover, both leadership and classroom teachers, but we re completely like blind to that. That s like, oh, well, that s school quality review process is no good. I guess maybe as the staff thinks about this too, that like, we re we re looking at this through the measure and frame. Right? But the frame for a district sr process. Might be. Broader right? Like how, you know, you MAY not look directly at like uh. Disciplined things or ask you if you, if you do like a larger high school network as you
102are maybe broader than just measure n. At least at the district schools So how do we think about accounting for that? Resources thinking like that, that sort of thing, and then probably narrowing. At the charter level to say, you know, we re, you know, maybe what you do is like, here s your gold standards. And that, that that s, that s what s used to evaluate both district and charter schools. And for ousd schools, it MAY be like we have our gold standard for measure n. Or this equity standard or this, you know, like their school improvement process standard or whatever sort of whatever it is might be. Of that. Because if you re gonna have, you re gonna go through the effort of putting together sort of like a bond group of people and
103train them in quality and measurement like that. And I suspect you d want to like to look at the whole picture. I like in addition to measurement. Um, yes, I, I m, I m looking at our latest version of the school quality review rubric and the domains, um. The domains align broadly with what we look for within the domains of linked learning. So we look at instruction. We do look at culture, I think in the context of linked learning pathways, we would look at that data, um, as it relates to um, uh, the integrated student supports, right, and the impact that those student supports are having on attendance. Discipline, you know, those those standard metrics, um, we also evaluate, uh, systems and structures and quality curriculum standards and grade level aligned, like it s all
104in line and there MAY be, we MAY talk about it in different terms, but the outcomes are the same. It s high quality instruction, um, supportive school cultures, and then with the high schools in, you know, in the high school linked learning context, we would probably just need to add. Um, some more specificity around the work-based learning component which is unique to the linked learning model, but the other two domains are already reflected in the sqr rubric pretty clearly. And see, this is why I think that that that using the sqr districtwide. At school level down the pathway level, differentiates. What happens with high schools versus everybody else, and it helps it helps the high school network inform the middle school elementary school tk pre-k, all the other uh school elements on how to organize
105themselves around this. Uh knowing that at the present time they don t have access. To the. Resources and a commission. They, but this, this then becomes kind of the some way could be seen as the role for uh g1 or something else. Whoever s, whoever s going to. Hold that uh that uh that, uh, that other however that other level but I, I thought that s where you, I thought that when the uh chair of Kakashibu mentioned the sqr. That s what you were actually referring to that you wanted some, you, you were looking at a system-wide from, you know, from preschool grade 12, that was the sqr model was not uniquely. High school So this gives us an opportunity. I mean, I would love for the commission to be like the commission for Secondary
106Education, but we re not, we re only the commission for the commission. So the district there is bears the the more strategic responsibility for the for the um the cohort of high schools, and that gives that a place, the sq or the sir process gives them a place to do that and, and we focus on the gold standard and the pathways and our, you know, students and so forth graduation rates and all the rest of that, but we leave it to the district people the district superintendents to manage the sqr sir process, but we re going to start that with the high school Is that a friendly amendment Sheriff Kakashiba on your si s q r s I r I think. Well, it s, uh, we re we re not doing action. We re just
107giving. No, I mean just conceptually though. Um, yeah, I mean, I think we have to staff would digest all this and then bring us back something but you, you were gonna say something So do you have any thoughts on this I m still learning. Brand new at the table, so I m just listening. And what about any other of these priorities? Well, one last thing is, do you think that, do you think that the schools would prefer it if we broke him up, you know, like uh. Like every 3 or every, every 3 or every 4 years on a 4-year cycle rather than 3-year cycle, but they would they care? Because then they don t have, then there s not a preparation for a visit every year, but it s on a, on a 3
108or 4 year schedule except for schools that are on unconditionalal have the every I think, um, anything that gives sites more lead time, more planning and implementation time before evaluation would be welcome. Um, by school sites. I think the only thing we would need to, uh, keep in mind is um. With an extended cycle, like let s say 4 years, there s more likelihood of turnover at all levels, and so we would just need to be mindful about ensuring that there s enough institutional knowledge around the. Based on the initial plan and goals, etc. But that s not anything that we don t already do for any and all initiatives that. That we implement So putting my principal hat back on, I would want a 4 year. Uh, 4-year cycle Um, and I guess just
109one other, uh, advantage to going with the four-year cycle, um, is that gold certification is also a 4-year. Uh, 4-year cycle. Uh, the certification process, so, um, thank you for. Raising that um or yeah, so that s one other. Reason What is, what is the sqr capacity look like now, like if, if let s say. Um Garfield sending in an sqr visit this year, like what would that look like? It takes several days. It uh requires uh staff from various departments, uh, across the district to opt in. Um I don t think there s ever a challenge getting people to sign up, I think, you know. Whether it s operational expertise or instructional or school culture, there s always folks, um, at the different grade spans that opt in, um I think there s probably
110a fiscal, like there s some fiscal implications to it, which is just a, a function of time, um. But not significant. I mean, I think it s our uh if we zoom out also, um, I think it s easy enough to articulate or to help people see how evaluating operations at a school site or providing input. In such a way like an sqr process is part of our day to day work. It s not considered extra because our job is to help schools improve, regardless of whatever our individual titles are. Is it like 10 people go to a school? and are they producing, are they producing reports that you know, we can just see an example of to say this is what. Sample sqr report Um, I ll give you an example. So Hoover Elementary
111went through an sqr earlier this year. So in NOVEMBER. Uh, the team was comprised of 123. 9, 10, so the network team, all the nwork superintendents, plus staff from um, the instructional and academics department and other centralized departments, um, and after the sqr was complete. Uh, it was a multi-day process, um, and the sqr. Well, let me double check. I think this one was a, a truncated one, so it was a like a one day, and there is a report that is generated, um, like a formal report that evaluates or assesses the school provides strengths, um, areas of growth based on the domains on the rubric. So there is a tangible outcome, tangible deliverable. I to you know, principals at sur school. Level. Sort of you know like how how good of a product is
112it So like people having developed like like you know taking actionable steps to improve their schools Um, I think we would have to ask the bulk of SQRs have happened in the elementary network and so the tools that, um, the tools that have been used, I think we could get some robust feedback from our elementary site leaders on the utility of those and then the support that they receive, but I mean, I think the um. The other piece to consider is that after the sqr in the case of the elementary school, um, it s the work that the implementation happens through the work that they do with their principal supervisor. So it then goes back to the network. And then the network supports in the areas of um the areas of improvement for, uh, the
113remainder of the school year and until the school goes through their next sqr. Ok, uh, if there s not any other feedback on this section that we re gonna slide into the next. I think so that is uh we re gonna talk about the are we gonna, is that finished this up because I think this is where I can talk a little bit about the accountability the. The, the focus student challenge. Or not? Is that, because that, I wanted to be sure to by the implementation priorities? Right. We have. I m not going to get a chance to, to, uh, uh, to raise the, uh, evaluation. Evaluation since it s a retreat I mean, I, I I, I wanted to, I wanted to, uh, at some point to block out a little time about looking
114at the focal student group. And changing that to the actual students rather than a Could do I do it here or later Uh, no, is that from the last meeting? Yeah, ok, yeah, that s a separate topic. Ok, but, but how do I, how do I give uh feedback on the uh on the eip plan document Uh, we re going to talk about the eip next. Ok, that s what I wanted to know. Ok, so the next thing is uh eip. It looks like uh Zan has some, uh, you walk us through something. So yeah, the next topic is just about, you know, what is the purpose of the eip is an improvement tool, um, I added the current eip packet. It s pretty thick, but because we re now, you know, 4 years, um,
115so you could look at the structure and I think just discuss what is the core purpose of the eip uh per what the parcel request for us um and I also included the parcel tax for reference, um, some of the things that I guess. We you know, that we ve talked about in terms of what the eips, it seems like we want eip to be a reflection on think good reflection and program quality, how can we align the eip on the linked learning quality standards. Um, it s an analysis of student outcomes. Right now it has a root causes section, um, and right now it s been being used as uh development for strategic goals, outcomes, aligned strategies, and lastly, it s been a tool for budget alignment, um so I guess that some of
116the key question is, you know. How can we do we wanna change that purpose? Do we want to stick to certain purposes that are listed so far, um, and also kind of a caveat for later is that we also do have an eip assessment process annually, um, but right now, we don t have a self-assessment process that is consistent. So, if we want this to eib to be a reflection tool? Should we also fix the self-reflection tool Um, so in your packet, it s the current self-assessment that s only for conditionally approved schools, so those are the only schools right now who have actively like recently completed a self-assessment, but we do have a 3-year process for self-assessment that s, um, but it s not an annual thing, so I guess that s like the
117big overall eip purpose discussion. Yeah, like what are the implications for us as measures nnh staff like. You know, if you feel like the eip should serve a different purpose. Um, how can we support school sites to achieve like the intended outcomes. That is aligned in the policy document that was recently passed. Oh. Thought. Well this is the package, right ok, so the first, the 1st 3 pages are then. Duplicated and that s what you re saying is for the this this rest of this package is for the conditional schools, right? I see that looks the whole for that. Um, so they just have a old school. They have class. While the one Catholic school will just identical. With. Look at the Yeah it s the staple is. I get it now. Ok, so this
118is where I get to talk about the I my interest in the focal school population indicator. Yeah, you can bring that up ok So what occurred to me in all these years of looking at conditional schools and so forth. Is the whole school data and then the focus school part and, and frankly, I ve never actually seen any uh use or value of the focal school data. And I realized when I did this uh little uh simul this little uh sample at Midwest. The reason is that the having a focal group. Is not as meaningful to me as having a having a set of focal students. And the reason is because uh, it oh, if, if I want to begin with the fact that to acknowledge the um significant improvement in the schools over the
119years and actually the success of the work that that the that the schools and the pathways are doing in terms of getting the graduation rates up and so forth. Uh, and uh a to Grate s up. But I m not sure that the focal school, the focal student population provides any additional value. And so then I, I just talked to um I think David and uh and um Tony that we used to have a focal group of a focal 15 groups. In the beginning that where we were schools identify kids who are at risk of not, um. Of not making progress, and we talked about this as the 8th grade, uh, ready for uh academies, and that s where I got the idea the 4th year that the 9th year at some schools is just
120resetting the students are choosing their pathways and stuff. So I understand that that. That serious pathway work is mostly uh career-based pathway work. Is mostly in the temper 1 and 12th grade. But the 9th grade should be where a focal group of actual kids. Are evaluated and we re not doing a year to year, uh, like this focal, this focus. I m, I m kind of confused, but I attribute that to to my age. But when you look at, when you look at baseline data and changing data, you re not looking at the same students every, every year, you think you re looking at the same students, but you re looking at a collective of students and their performance level, but you re not showing the changes in the actual focal students. So I would,
121I became really interested in looking at the students starting in the 9th grade, who the school determines at risk, and it could be, I threw it out to Tony. How about if we did 25 students in year one and looked at those students in year 1, year 2, year 3, year 4, and look at the progress they re making in addressing the the the uh the the root causes of their at risk of graduation as opposed to just saying it is a group of kids. Actually talking about a set of kids that is actually identified in a case management way, and that those kids are followed for 4 years. Uh for an additional 3 years to see if they re getting the resources that they need. Uh if we are providing based on measure age.
122The kinds of resources that they are getting, for instance, are they on track on ag classes? Are they taking the cte class? Are they getting uh workforce work based experience or they having uh support for their uh for their under the for the underlying root causes, not of the category of kids. But of the actual kids and uh and and talking to Tony, this is, this would be a real challenge, because people are going to stay there they re uh they ve already got a caseload, etc. And who s going to manage those, those 25 kids because there s a new group of 25 kids every year. So at the full development of the 4 years, there s a group of 100 kids that you re keeping track of, but that should be the measure
123of our success or not, not necessarily just the 80% that are succeeding. So, uh, so that s my kind of uh a proposition that we go back to a focal. Set of kids that are actually identified not the category of kids that are. We have some assurance that they are the kids also they get opportunities. Based learning, to have a mentor, to have a to have a social services support and all the rest of that. How would we do that in the eip? Well, see, the eip has this whole section. It s about focal students. Right. So, that would be a focal step. Yeah, and I, I would say I, I don t know what I ve said this before. Is that. We they identify the focal population, they ve got all this data, and
124then nowhere is our goal or strategic action. It s like I, I don t know why we re even doing it. Exactly. But then what you re raising to me is like super duper direct service. I think it s very valuable, but I don t know if that s what could be in the eip It seems like somewhere like the 9th grade, however, high schools are organized or 9th grade, like you know, like some of these schools got case managers and they got other kinds of things, so I m just wondering like how, how are they holding young people, particularly the most. That s what I m saying. I have no idea whether the focal group of kids is actually has a case manager. Right, but they have, they that s that s a pillar
125right? That s a, that s a pillar of that. So what are they doing? The, uh, you re referring to the comprehensive student supports structures to Yeah. Yeah, I, I think in, in listening to um and listening to what you were sharing, um, Commissioner Yee, I. I feel like there s a way to. Keep the focal school population and do the more granular level of direct service work that you re describing, um. I see a benefit to us maintaining the vocal group distinction in the eip and making sure that the data is, uh, such that it s more prevalent. It s like more present, and we are asking questions every year about how is this, and, you know, we re pulling data specifically for that focal group. It allows us to, um, keeping the focal
126group as part of the eip allows us to maintain alignment with the schools, um, with the district s llcap goals. So the district, um, has 4 lcap goals. Goal 2 is specifically around um. Improvements for a designated focal group. What I ve, uh, what I have proposed in in years past is that we limit the number of focal groups uh, because up until now we ve allowed sites to select you know, whatever that, however they want to designate a focal group, right? Whether it s, um, you know, it s African American students with EIPs. I m sorry, with IEPs getting my acronyms mixed up here, um, but, uh, you know, and sometimes that allows for that level of direct service work that, um. That sites can plan around, but I think keeping the llcap focal
127group or distinguishing and saying the focal group that we re talking about in the eip has to be one of the 9 district El Ca groups allows us to say, ok, well, we re looking at socioeconomically disadvantaged or uh foster youth. Or unhoused youth, right? Like, allowing schools to narrow in, and then the work that you re describing around the focal students would then happen in the pathway team, right? So then schools would then identify, ok, based on our school-wide focal group. Um. How are we doing, uh, how are we providing additional direct service to the students that our school has identified as our lcap focal group, right? So it would just allow for a bit more alignment between the eip and the the uh the school s sipsa, um, and then the the individual
128planning is uh around direct service to students happens more at the at the pathway team meeting level, but not necessarily captured in such detail in the eip. Well, that s helpful to know that that s how they focus student group. Identify I don t it I want to be sure as a commissioner that when we re investing, let s say an internships, but we re investing in a case manager that the case manager is actually understanding that their responsibility is not the collective responsibility. Whole school level, it s like we care about the students who are at risk of graduating and non-meeting ag. Being a dropout So I want those kids, specifically to be uh touched by the investments that we re making. You know, our, uh, to measure h and measure n. And that
129s the, that s I guess the way I m framing it. I have no idea when uh when uh Emiliano. Comes and talks about building trades that the building trades internships are uh are the students that are in a focal group are specifically. Um being uh taking advantage of that opportunity. And whether or not the same kids are getting all the resources because they are the ones in the after-school program. In the in the college visits in the internships, and the kids that are failing are not getting any of those services. And so that s why I m personally as a, as a commissioner interested in, in a group of students that we are committed to serving that they, they are touched by the four areas. In some way, or if they re not, we
130understand why not. I, I, I, I, I think I, I get what s what you re getting, but what, what I m concerned about. The there s this attention on these say whatever the cohort sizes 20 per grade, 100 for the entire school. Um and that we push some point, it s creating a program for those 100 kids. And what our responsibility is. Creating a school system that is in fact serving all these kids now whether or not all the students generate the same outcomes. We know that that s not gonna happen. But the I, I think that s just my only concern about. Going down that road in terms of identifying these 25 names or these 100. And then saying case managers and you know. That we are investing in that measure age is
131investing in, but we re not totally investing it, but what I m saying is in the investments we make the investments we make, need to need to not only boost the overall graduation rate to the 80%, but it needs to actually be aware of 20% I mean, I think it s within the frame like the it s like the charge is to increase high school graduation rate but also you know, but I, but I do wonder if there s something in ultimately you re tracking dropout rate because like people are getting pushed out Whether you count it and say I want to talk to all. Middle school principals, my incoming kids not this group of kids like in particular or I am focusing on I am focusing on a broad co-election. Ultimately there ultimately the
132outcome responsibility. As you graduate, is your dropout rate right Give kind of where the kids like your incoming class was. Is it dropping or not and like articulated strategy. Davis s point we have the story that the outcomes on the top end. But do we have the articulate strategy? That that says this is my dropout. Opportunity. Is to, like it is to like you know identify a vocal but say like focal group and do the following. Is to identify 25 or 30 most at-risk kids and do the following you know, but whatever, whatever it is, as long as you re, as long as you, you have a strategy that you re implementing and following. Feels like our, our labs, like our elevation should be easier dropout rate following or not right? Is your graduation rate
133dropping like raising, raising or not. Rather than like, here s the implement, like here s the sort of like the specific implementation. Side of it. They re and part of the reason I think. Uh that heightened to me is the flatlining of our graduation rate actually fallback and um and. That was worrisome to me because 80%, 85% seems to be hazard that I ve in terms of looking at other districts, other high schools that 80 to 85% seems to be kind of a um. The high end of all those graduation rates, we ve been catching up. But because of the fallback, um, you know, unless there s some other reason. I m not exactly sure why. And the a to g rate of 40 is over 80g rate like 48% or something. Huh I remember,
134but it s 48%, you know, how are we gonna get from 48% to 100% or 90% Very few districts that I know of across the state are, are as high as we are. 48%. But is that good enough for us, or do we want to go? That s why I ve asked in the past, do we know why, who is in there, that other mix. So, you know, uh using that little pilot I have, I have 9 kids now. Graduated but didn t didn t meet ag. So I want to know why Was there some, is it within the capacity of our investment to change that to reduce it from 9 to 3. And you can t do that unless you actually know what the reasons are and where the where the root causes of
135those 9. So the, to the extent that we know what those root causes are and commit to those 9, I don t see how we re gonna move so, uh, and I don t think that, I don t know that that s a direct, that s a program that I m specifying to anybody, but I just want I, I think it s it s the measure to me of the maturity of the com of the commission s work. Measureh Investments that we have the actual uh money to find out why. And to actually make the implementation um, about those, about those kids. Yeah, I, I still my my thing is that like. We we know at 9th grade that 40, 45% of the students are off track at the end of the 9th grade. So
136depending on what you define as at risk. Because at risk could be you were sexually abused for 5 years when you re a kid. And and you could be at risk because uh you re off track at the end of the 9th grade. So we re, if we define it at, at that in terms of because that s the metric that we re looking at. And it s like, what is it that we re doing in the 9th grade in these schools. What, what s going, I mean, either, you know, do we need a better transition program from 8th to 9th. Uh. Uh, what s, what s the, is it? Is it behavior, is it attendance issues, you know, what kinds of things that are going on. But it becomes like when you get to
137schools like tech and Skyline and Oakland High, those are, that was a large numbers. Uh, like 45% Then you look at overall graduation, right? You know, I m not trying to call out, but, you know, there s just certain schools where the graduation rate is uh significantly lower than the district sanding. And I think we have to pay attention in those schools. which is why to me, like having a school quality review, having more data and insight and opinion about where the school is at. And how it can improve is, is all. So anyway I mean, I think speaking to this larger point. You know, one of the things that help you make eip serve as a tool for reflection of program quality stuff like that, I think. Some of the stuff we re doing
138isn t all in the spirit of that, right? Like moving it to the fall. Giving you the chance to like look at all of your data. Right? Is, is a move to make this a more of like like I think that the like asking for self-analysis on the link like the learning centers and sort of some of the consist of our, our previous discussion about like the levels. One wondering I have is could we allocate on a rolling basis some dollar level to or when they re in their reflection like to craft their four-year plan. They like, you know, when you are in your sqr year. Which is also your 3rd year, like your year of like crafting your 3 year plan. That you get your plus another $50 a kit to fund staff retreat
139tip of release that sort of thing to do the planning that you need to do to actually step back. To hire a contractor to come in and help guide the process, those types of things. Ok Um. And that would be an uneven allocation. You know, across those things, but I think it s us. I think it would be us signaling and supporting the schools to say that you know, instead of just you got to grind every all like all three years and and then every 3rd year, you re gonna grind extra hard and put there s really important task for what s gonna set you aside. What s gonna set you apart for the next 3 years on top of your already full plate. There a way for us to pull something out for resource
140them. To engage in that process every 3 years ok. So, um, I, I m a, I would be all for that. Um, and but I, before I ve, I, I presented so uh directly on this. I asked Tony, since he s the commissioner and leading uh um youth development work at, uh, Skyline if he ever had this experience, if you remember that, he said yes. So, so could I uh ask him to just that reflection on that for the record you know, about the focal students. I m trying to figure out how much time we have in this retreat where we got a move things forward and um. You know, I can share out that experience around the, the focal, but I, I think for the moment in time, uh, for like the eip process
141and trying to get through it because we only have another retreat left in AUGUST. Um. Wondering how useful it would be for the commission to hear it. So, uh I think for the sake of the time of this meeting and the retreat time. Um, I can share it with the commission, I can share it with the staff, um, outside of the commission meeting around, you know, the, the experience of integrating different uh interventions to support students success. What do we have to get out of here? We open until 12:30 ok. We got a little bit of time ok. Did, did you want to say, you want to add on? Well I think to um to uh commission I m sorry, blanking out a little bit. You re not 80 yet. It s so good. The
142Mark s point uh around the timeline, I m wondering if um if we can like bump up the timeline a little bit. To where we actually start phase one. And in, in the second semester And I think when we talk about teachers and the time and the capacity to have. A lot of that time happens in the in the summer. Um, and so instead of, we could still fund more, but I m just worried about if if we do fund like you asked, um, that it s gonna be hard to find like the subs to support those classrooms. And then the intentionalities with that time. So, the, the recommendation or suggestion is that we pay for more time so then they have very intentional time. So I think like summer is is a opportunity to
143have that intentional time. With the teachers, um, and with those pathway directors. So I m just wondering, is there a possibility, um are we stuck on this timeline? Can we bump up the timeline to be reflective. 2nd semester and start the 2nd semester. Does that interfere with the budget development happening. In phase 5 and then how do we integrate the teacher and youth data points that was mentioned by um Cheriakashiba, um. And the, and the last one, we add a 6 and then we add a 7 and how does that fold into it? So this is kind of my thought process, um. What, what, what, what would you change in the timeline? Um Could we bump up the timeline? Could we do it in the 2nd semester and then utilize, so bump up the self-assessment
144to happen. Um during the 2nd semester before uh school was done and then having that reflection period with the teachers, um, and those pathways and the staff in the summer when there is flexibility and then being able to launch, you know, whatever plan that they designed. Coming into the school year Yeah, I m noting it. I think that 11 of my big takeaways from, from your insight and your question is just about how we actually support the kind of time and, and planning that teachers will need to be involved in. And 100% that that um is best in the summer. Um, I think what we have learned over time is that when the reflection happens in the spring. Our schools and teams don t have robust data. Because they are not able to, to, in
145fact, the reflections have happened in the spring. So for many years, the, the presentations to the commission, which include a lot of reflection and and you know, articulation of strategic planning. Um, it has happened in the spring. And so the, the flip that you see here is an attempt to give our um, our schools the opportunity to see all the data which can t happen until the fall, but I m hearing you on, um, you know, to, to really comprehensively do the kind of self-assessment that we re. Audaciously envisioning is going to be a logistical challenge. Especially I think to do it equitably. We have some schools that can kind of carve for, for various reasons, not just financial. So yeah, I definitely appreciate that. Yeah, and I hear you So, so I, I, I
146just want to go back then to the uh students and with respect to you, Doctor Tashiba and Masoo. That you raised, you know. With the had a tough possible challenge uh before high school. I mean, I acknowledge that. At the same time, we know that half not half. At about half of our uh kids are are, uh, graduating without their adg let s just say. So it s not that adg is sacrosanct to me. But it says something about one either the kid is not showing up to school. Yeah. Two, the kid is failing classes and I m making them up. 3, the kid. The teachers giving or the kid is getting a d s and not, uh, not making it, we don t have the resources. I think, and I don t think it
147s unreasonable, um. I think it might be predictable in the 9th grade. This is going back to to the local students um, and this is just out of respect for what you ve always said about that early pre. That early analysis and I don t see that in this focal group model and so that s what I m saying, and I m not dictating how it s going to be, but if I know that I have responsibility for graduation rate dropout rate in ag. I want to be able to know that the investments are supporting those kids. And if the, if the investments like the dual enrollment investments. Or the uh or the uh paid internship investments. Uh, if those investments are made to students that are already succeeding. Then uh is a different are
148the kids who are predictably going to not make a to g. Benefiting from those services that they ve chosen not to take them, or is it that they don t have access to them for some reason. And if that s the case, to heighten that to the school as a responsibility seems to me to be worthwhile. And so just looking at the data for the focal group. I ve never seen for myself any any real connection between the focal group, the root cause analysis and the expenditures. So that s why I, that s why I think it s a legitimate request. So I just say, so if you take the 9th grade as that as an example. I mean it because that speaks to actually one of the outcomes that we re looking at. Is
149that it s not catcalling it a focal student, but it s like. what is it that we re doing school by school, particularly schools that have really high. Percentage of students off track. What s the game plan there Now, I ve not seen in in our EIPs you focus on that or a level of detail, but I will say that in hearing testimony, from the presentations, like when I hear ccpa. In years past about what they re doing to hold students to get that. It s like. A very detailed and they re looking at actual human beings. That s what I m asking for. That we modeled that Right, so, I mean, that to me is like kind of like a community practice. This would, like, for me, out of the last meeting was sort
150of like, well, ccpa is working with the pretty similar kind of demographic or other Fremont. You know, but they re generating very strong graduation and a3g outcomes. What s going on? What is it that they re doing? And then like, what s the applicability to that to say Fremont campus. or else um and, and so, and then from that, like, if we can then see the level of detail about what that. Plan is at at that school or reducing the off-trackness. Of, of your, your ninth graders. So I think that s kind of taking your, your vocal cohort of of say 20 but then taking it where there s a kind of a pain point in, in the data that s a little bit more system, system-wide. Yeah, it s, it s, I, it s
151not that I don t care about the 20 kids, but they re, they are only the, the data sample that I m talking about that that first of all, the school has to identify those 20 kids. Exactly. Which means they have to, they have to have done the analysis of their did not a to g, did not pass a to g in the 12th grade. They have to then make a hypothesis about, well, could we have, is there anything in that kid s life that was he a a straight a student and all of a sudden in the 9th grade uh the 12th grade, he drops off. It s probably not the case. It s probably something else, but we don t yet know what that is, and, and that s what happened when we,
152when we reviewed the data. This the last time about the, you know, the falloff rate in the graduation. We re looking into it, but, you know, it s one thing for district staff and for the commission to look into it, and it s a totally other thing for the school to look into it itself. Do you know who didn t uh, didn t, uh didn t graduate. And that s the benefit I want to just shout out to uh Principal Gregory at Midwest, so she laid out her, her kids who did not graduate, and she knew every one of them what happened to them. And so that gives you a sense of satisfaction that at least she knows who they were, but we didn t get down into the a to g level, and we
153didn t go back to see what could we have predicted this because the, you know, the, the kid is couch surfing. And so, you know, he, he, there s no reason for him to stay the whole 4 years. So, you know, all those things are just helpful for people to know who they re, who the court, and maybe that happens in the cost meetings at the school level. I have, I have no idea, but I know for myself that s, that s the part of the frustration. That s also part of the analysis of why you ve got these results. Too which is a little bit irrelevant example, but, you know, we re, we, we, in my day all we re dealing with chronic absenteeism. And then there s a lice breakout in an elementary
154school and boom, all the kids are, are not, you know. Come to school Oh, forget about it. We re not gonna, we re not gonna get go we re gonna get the annual disaffection. It s over by that one incident, that kind of blasts the whole thing. But it d be important to be able to document that. That um that experience. Did they say, well, this is why this school had. Had that, right? Who knows it would have been better if nothing happened. We don t know that, but it does explain why it resulted in this one. And, and I, and I do know in high school, if you re an exceptional student coming into a high school. Um, the counselor pays attention to you. Make sure you get your internship, so make sure somebody
155s there to help you write your your letter of recommendation. Make sure you know the the colleges that you can get, what kind of scholarships? I know that student is invested in, in the school to be a success, we feel that way. So can we turn that on his head and say to us, success is getting this kid graduated with their a to g. Right Anyways, but, and I, I think this fits within the, the review of the expenditures and responsibility of the commission. That s all I m, I m saying. Is to for us ourselves to be able to explain the 50%. And you know, that, that we we uh we help the staff in the school to know that this is a, a priority when you come to write your vip and you
156write your budget, you know, you you re going to have to you re gonna have to know that the investment in youth together at Skyline High School is because youth youth together is gonna work on those kids that are that are uh that are at risk and not uh not graduating or not finish I would like to broaden this conversation So Um, and so can I move on to the second section on the eip? Yeah, right, yeah, let s move on. So the second thing on the eip is I would love to know who are the funded, the the best community partners at a school. Who, who has the school identified as the community partners that are either, you know, stepped up to, to offer internships. To have, um, you know, um, contracted for, for
157case management work or for some other kind of work or done, you know, college, uh college success work or something, uh, especially if they re funded. If we re funding people to uh like, I m just gonna ask, does you together get any measurement? You don t, you don t. Well, if they did, I would like to know that this is a and and be able to actually document in the eip who those people are because I think if, if, uh, you know, when we do an annual report, it would be great to be able to shout out. You know, a few of our,, our stellar partners. I don t know how anybody else because I have no idea if I look at the skylines, uh um if I look at Skyline s vip, who,
158who are their community partners? Do we have something like that Um, yes, I, I mean, I think as we re, we re listening, we are thinking about the spaces where some of this data already lives, um, and just kind of aligning the grain size of the ask from commission with, um, like the purpose of the tool so that level of data, for instance, is captured in the school s program of study, which is one part of the supplemental materials that sites submit with their eip. It s not in the eip itself because we want that. We want that to be more high-level reflection and planning. Um, but that level of data lives there, um. We could also capture that in a more qualitative way. In, uh, the sqr whatever our final assessment, uh, is at
159the end of a pathway or a school quality review. Um but I think it s, it s interesting to hear. What the different uh data points, both, uh, qualitative and quantitative. That are um that are being raised in the discussion because I do think some of them are appropriate for the eip and some of them MAY be already exist or could exist in a different tool that we already. Support pathway improvement. Um, I wanted to raise two things on this. So looking at this, uh, this template, um, so this is what s being used for uh this currently. So this doesn t reflect this. We, we haven t made any new ones. Ok. So, two things. One is that, um, um do you have, is this what this is looking at what uh is there
160kind of some kind of uh guide for schools and pathways to um to reflect. Some kind of so when they re doing step one questions the self-assessment, how are they doing that? Yeah, I actually just realized my my microphone was still on. I hope it didn t cause issues. Um, so we, we have some. I mean, I would say it s partial. So we ve been attuned with the help of one of our, our most veteran pathway coach to developing tools, uh, over the past few years. So we have kind of a, a partial tool kit, um, and then we also included in the, you know, the significant packet for you today. You can see some of what exists to support self-assessment, um, I, I think it s an area of growth for us. We,
161we have something which is better than nothing, but we envisioned something more robust. So yes, and I, I think I would say. So I, I just wanted to lift that up, that I, I, I think we probably want to take without it getting bureaucratic, they got to fill out all these cells and stuff like that, you know, but just like real, you know, uh very provocative kind of questions and you know, they re, and they could at least say this is the process that we went through to grapple with these these issues And I think, you know, Gary has has before, said, you know, do our school principals, our leadership teams verifying the data that s already being prepopulated here. And I think, and I get the sense a lot of them didn t. It
162s sort of like, ok, well, you are not even reflecting on your data, right? So I, I kind of think like the outcome data student outcome data, and then your program quality questions or something in in that assessment tool. Uh would be helpful And then the second thing is um and, and this might be more the, the, the grant writer mindset, but, you know, I keep on seeing different things with, when people, when we all our goals and then actions um, and, uh, um. And so I see different things that like they re a lot of process schools. And and not a lot of student impact. No student impact or I shouldn t say no. Very little around student impact. Goals and actually not a whole lot around program quality goals either. So um I
163just wanted to kinda like I m trying to fig, really trying to figure out what is the outcome. That over the next 3 years of school, like the most important outcomes that they re trying to achieve. And then, you know what are their goals to, to get to that outcome. I m less concerned about all the, the, the the, the action steps, some less concerned about that because I kind of think it naturally changes. Um, that s the most volatile, or not volatile, but that s the most it s gonna change with different conditions and just somebody getting you know, somebody who s on maternity leave, you know, that could just, you know, small school could really affect. Uh all the activities But being clear about what the Ainite because I think it does speak
164to the all the stuff that Gary is talking about. It s like, if based on your review of your data, like oh, you know, this you know, there s a through line between what we re doing in the 9th grade and what s happening in the 12th grade. So maybe in the next 3 years, next 4 years, really gonna our outcome is going to be like increasing the uh on track rate by 50%. And then these are our goals that we re, we re going to do. We re gonna you know, uh cause I, I think case manager job. Roles are like there s a generic thing around a job description, and once they ve landed a site it s, it s, you know, kind of up to you know, and I, I don t
165know the time and effort and skill set are strategically deployed. So. You know Right Well, we have to, we, we have to support providers here, whether you know, I mean, there s actually that level of responsibility uh for case managers to I don t I don t know if it s appropriate or not I mean, in, yeah this is like different question and I don t know, uh, because if staff has reflections this or not. But 11 question is, the when we have all this information in Excel. Are we exporting it or aggregating it elsewhere? In this in a way that like that excel in particular is made for in terms of, you know, it s like, you know, like you, you like, yeah, like, like one of the reasons you use Excel is that
166you link all the tables together and like you say, like, here s all the schools and all the pathways and all the whatever, you know, things out there. And, and part of what I was thinking of is that um I ve been looking at these reports for like 5.5 years now, right? And I understand the logic of them. But they re still very hard to read. Right, in terms of like trying to say, this is what a school is doing. Right? And articulating to anybody else at the schools. And I think there s some stuff in here that s really good, like for, like, I think the stuff that here that s good for Excel is probably. The data points right? And the budget I like the budget sheets, you know, from it. But in
167terms of pulling out the strategic goals and the actions, and like, you know, things like that and like the root cause analysis. I wonder if the form is makes it more arduous right? Or the form like they actually like putting in Excel makes it like makes it more difficult, rather than saying that, here s your, here s your uh eip. Spreadsheet, which is your data points. And your budget right? Here is your eip narrative, which is your goals overall, your root cause analysis overall, you re this overall because like in that you have just a form wise track changes, um. You know, comments that people can leave back and forth. They do, they, they don t have an excel because this is all collaborative, right? It s happening in sort of different places and I
168wonder, I just wonder if there s like something that like gets squashed in the actual function of it. That we could change pretty easily, especially if we re not. Using the core properties of Excel that makes it a different thing. Yeah, I ll just mention that we, we ve gotten a fair amount of feedback on just the, the format and so in one of our versions of We could do this. It, it varied, it exactly reflected what you re suggesting. So the, the spreadsheet would be the data in the budget and everything else would be in a Google document, um, for accessibility, for collab for supportive collaboration, also for version history, um, and frankly, you know, I ve heard from many teachers that they have never used Google Sheets. It s not a format that
169they re comfortable with or familiar with, and we don t really need them to be comfortable with it, but we do need them to be in the tool and experience it as a tool and a resource. So I, yeah, I think we ve, we ve heard that, uh, resoundingly from the people that were closest with teachers and teachers themselves, yeah. Yeah. I to put it s No, no, absolutely Yeah, I ll Google sheets. But I think, I think that s like I think like. Kind of like thinking like all the way, like, you know, sort of soup to nuts change, you know. We ve done this for a long time. It s like, you know, I think it s, I think it s probably tried and true in terms of data. Right? But, but if
170it s not, but if you re not sort of like it. To explore or compile or whatever data. I I think it just make make it just like a business. I m sure that when the eip was designed originally and there was some clear rationale for why the Google Sheets format, uh. So um, oh, maybe it was Excel first. Well, there you go. So I mean I think we re it it all that to say, right, like we re in, in a space where we re responding to what the current. Context is and, you know, after many years of people working through the tool to use it as both a, a tool for qualitative and quantitative reflection. We ve gotten that same level of feedback like Rebecca mentioned. So we re already got some mockups
171and you know. Mind Are there other issues that I would you guys have, have staff has reflections on this issue of making into a learning tool to hear in terms of uh using the, the currently formatted tool. Broadly, broadly the eip, you know, in terms of like if there s timing or you know, it s too much, it s, you know, too complicated or whatever the things are that are popping up. We ve had a discussion kind of ranging about what we speculate those things might be. Guys have additional issues that have come up Um, actually on the last page of your packet, um, it s a combined feedback that we ve received when we were kind of shopping around some of the proposed revisions so we went to the charter community practice. We went
172to the principal s meeting. We went to pathway coaches, um, and so I kind of grouped them into themes and so some of the general support structural improvements, some need for clarity, some questions and concerns about goals and budget alignments. So I, yeah, this is just a recap of our, I call it our, our world tour cause we went around to very different stakeholders this year. These are mostly from fall, um, to really kind of talk about some of the possible changes to the eib. Yeah, it s the last one. It s like a feedback summary. Yeah, uh, and I think just to distinguish this is site-based staff input. So principals, pathway coaches, pathway directors, um. By Sertofoya, you were asking the question about our reflections as staff, so I also would like to open
173it up to. Yeah. He, you know, from the rest of the team around I think your question or just paraphrasing your question, um, how the tool has maybe. Not been as efficient, and our process. Um, I did have a question. So early on in Measure n, the measure n um clan and budget lived and was part of the spsa. Those documents, especially for the comprehensive schools were like over 150+ pages. So that s where we got the idea, feedback back then to take it out and it lives separately. Um, I don t know if there s any feedback from school site staff or the commissioner on incorporating incorporating it with the spsa again. I know there s a lot of times where some feedback. Um they compare our documents or processes to other resources in
174the district, so that s just the thought, but I did have a clarifying question. Um we were always told from very early on that once the eip gets approved by the Board of Education, we could not make any changes to it. It remains like that for the entire fiscal year, so most of our processes have been developed around not being able to change the eip, um, specifically the budget modification form process. It was created, um, because of that. So as we re now reconsidering our budget modification form process for the new fiscal year. I m just wondering, is that still like um a solid no, you cannot make changes to the aip or is that something that has changed in the last few years that um we should consider. Um for our new process Would
175you, would you mind sharing the example of what So for example on that. So for example, when the school puts together their eip and the ap gets presented to the commission. So first, we re the first level of reviewers, um, the staff, and we work with the school site on making any changes and vetting it before it comes to you as a commission. Then it comes to you, you approve it eventually it makes its way to the board and it s final. Like it s on record and no changes can be made. If anyone wants to modify their expense s then they go through the budget modification for process which is a different document to make changes to their current investments. Um, I track all of those. That s fine, you know, but I m
176just wondering, is it still that strict where we can t change the eip, um, and back then we were told we couldn t because if it involved money and the modifications were being made with the dollars that those needed to then eventually make their way back to the commission and eventually the board so it s documented. Um with the modifications and the investments are. It s been a while though, so just putting it out there because we re now looking into the budget modification for process for the upcoming fiscal year. Of when a what s an example of like the level of change of school would say. I d rather not do allergic modification. I d rather modify my eip. Send it back to the school board is, is like, I don t want to
177hire a particular type of teacher and I would like to rather. Hire, you know, an arts teacher who I didn t contemplate. Pass cip in the beginning. Is that kind of what we re talking about? Uh yeah, so for example, um, when the auditor reviews samples, they, one of the um steps is the expenditure must live within an approved. Eip or strategic carryover plan or a carryover plan. Otherwise it becomes an audit finding. So the modification form takes care of that. It covers that. If it s not in the plant, it lives in a budget modification form. If a school says I no longer pay for case manager. I now want to pay for an administrative assistant. We do all the paperwork to ensure that it is compliant and it s documented in the event
178it gets sampled, but as we re now looking into changes to the budget modification form, um, one of the suggestions is creating an entire different process to what we curntly have so that we can remove the paperwork trail and have something that lives maybe like in a new Google document and so I m just trying to explore and put ideas together so when we meet again I have more information and that s a thought that came to me today, like, is it still set to where we can t make changes to it. So we rethink how we redo the budget modification for process, um. It s, it s just not And maybe Vanessa might be able to provide a better example of what you re asking. Yeah, well, I mean, I think that s a
179perfect example. I don t think we ve had a site ever say, I want to bring my whole eip back to the commission. Really, they re not changing their strategies, they re changing their investments, right? And the investments we ve been able to capture the changes to investments we ve been able to capture in the budget modification process. I, I do think maybe another example. And this is for us to continue to work through, but is, um. The really, I, what we re, what we re trying to figure out is if. The commission, starting with the commission and then ultimately the auditor, right? Giving us the green light to be able to um amend budgets in real time in the eip after it s been approved, when a site. Submits, you know, the justification to
180to modify their budget, right? Um, that happens with other plans like the spsa is a living document, and my experience has been that what gets sampled is the pdf that is board approved, but what is not sampled is the. Real-time Google spreadsheet, Google Workbook, where the sites are identifying their investments and their strategies, so that s one thing that we could explore doing where, you know, when we re working on the audit, we re working from the PDFs. That are approved by the, the commission and then the board. And then the um. And then that still allows us to modify the plans in real time so sites have a more accurate uh accounting And we also have an accurate accounting when budget modifications. Come through Um, but I think there s not anything beyond the
181example that Nancy offered. Like, that s, those are the, the bulk of the change, those really are the only changes. That cites requests to make. To their EIPs after their EIPs have been approved by the commission and then the board. It really is all about allocations We don t, we, we have not made it a practice to approve pathway changes, um, like industry themes or anything like that mid-year. We, we wait until yeah, we wait until the, you know, uh, a natural breaking point like uh between academic years. Yeah I can also just add, um, it s a little bit of a different part of the conversation, but, um the work that I ve been doing with the Pathway coaches, so not, not directly with charters, um has included, um, excitement about, you know, so
182again, thinking about format and how format can also can sort of hinder or liberate a little bit the reflective process and the, the, the planning process. So. The Google document, um, there s been conversation about the Google document being a space to log reflection. So it would be a much more dynamic uh format than what we currently have. Again, it would be a kind of whiteboard equivalent, a Google document, um, it would log the, the, the strategic actions, the reflective on pro the reflection on progress, and that could, um, that could come to the commission. So I think it, it just creates a kind of workbook space, um, that I think uh, that we think, uh, pathway coaches, um have indicated would be more supportive of, of the, the process that supports the reflection. And
183it also just gives us a format we can share with you anytime you re interested, a kind of peak hole into how teams are, um, are looking at their work and making sense of it. And I would imagine that that doesn t get commission approved that part of the eip. Because it s more of a process piece. I think part of what maybe we re getting at is um, clarity about what needs to be approved by the commission and then go to the board, which I think is ultimately the, the, the budget. Um where, uh, relative to what are the parts of the eip that can be a little bit more iterative and um and dynamic as as teams come back to it. We, of course, wouldn t um likely be able to bring EIPs
184to the commission as changes to the reflections happen every quarter, for example, I don t think you would like that, I think you still want to snapshot. Yeah, we, right. So I do think that that, that yeah, I think that s what, uh, what Vanessa described was a kind of a snapshot. The pdf would be a snapshot. Yeah. And I ll say just, you know, to, to punctuate it, that s kind of the extent of our thinking. If you have other thoughts, I think that s, that s as far as we ve stretched in terms of thinking about how to shift the way that um the format invites a different kind of engagement. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if that kind of, if you could bring that kind of reflection into. Spaces where you are
185doing other sort of shared practices right? So like take your reflection and turn it into a consultants. You know, for example, where you re saying you know Castlemont is bringing this issue that has been like, you know, like, like, you know, like, like, you know, here s the thing, and this is like a, you know 1015 minute presentation and you know turn to share where you explain your true cause, you explain this thing, and then the other schools are kind of weighing in. About this. Have we tried this? We thought about that, to kind of like bring that into kind of like a living space. So it s not so static Um, we have like, are you talking about the community of practice? Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, I was just whispering that I mean, I
186think we we are in a good place, uh, not quite fully realized, but of of, uh, even better aligned communities of practice across multiple um, groups connected to the success of our students, um, and so I think, you know, we, we ve had some, we ve made some intentional moves to have greater alignment across the communities of practice and increasingly are using kind of consultancy, um. And I imagine there could be, that s been heavily considered in the design of the practice sharing forum. Um, it hasn t been, at least on, on conversations that I m aware of been part of the the thinking about the design of the eip. I guess one thing I was thinking of is that to the extent that you integrate it into a lot of different aspects of it
187that, you know, if I, if I designed it, if I, if I am creating a document that s sort of like goes here, then sits on a shelf over here you know, versus like is living in like many different places, you know, that, that. You know, like I think brings a different type of reflection, you know, to it. Ok, I Yeah, no, I think, I think that that s right. I mean, I, I, I I think the separation, so you, you re separating the uh the xl. And then uh a word document. So the, the stuff around basically what is a eip narrative that has goals and um, you know, objectives or goals. I think it should come back to the commission for um you know, um, kind of validation. Uh, I, I, I am,
188I, I, I would just continue to harp about, you know, to what extent we want to get school leaders to think about outcomes. Um and, and have that guide, uh, that narrative. Um. I think the part of this is sort of like a concern about you know uh you know Gary used the term flat lining, um, and so like how, how do we continue to improve? That, right? And so I think if you re, if your game plans aren t outcome-based, that I think it s hard. Uh to do that Uh, so I think it s a critical kind of thought process, uh, that has to take place. And then there s the reflection tool. Or tools or whatever it is, uh, that gets school leaders to think about their data and their lived experience,
189uh, running their school and pathways. Um um. And then the, that kind of bleeding into cars, summarizing this whole discussion and then going back to the implementation priorities. I, I think a next step is we, I think we do want to uh see from, from you all about what you think is a uh a viable work plan for implementing the implementation priorities. I think the discussion was more, at least for me, I, I think I was embellishing or adding more. Content to item number 3. I think Gary was as well in terms of whether it should be a 3-year plan or 4-year plan, and Mark was talking about doing. Uh organizing all of our high schools into different cohorts, um, and, um, I think it just puts more stuff, but, but all five of them
190are interrelated. And so we d wanna uh, next up whether that s in uh in Zoom because it s late APRIL so like probably in our JUNE meeting that maybe much of that meeting is dedicated to relooking at the implementation like a work plan for the implementation priorities and then like the latest thinking on the eip process from reflection to uh by the Excel sheets are straightforward and then the, the narrative part. Jan. I know we re short on time, so maybe this is for the next meeting, but I don t think we really touched upon what the presentations will look like, um, if we re gonna continue presentations at all in the fall? Would it be focused on the goals or would it be focused on reflection? So would it be future facing? Would
191it be past facing, um, would we not have reflection? I mean, would we not have presentations at all. We did not have it this year, so I think just in the future I would, I think what that s what I m curious about like if we re talking about goal setting in the form, maybe we can use the presentations for reflections. We can also do that and like have a separate or have the narrative, have both goals and reflections, and then they re presenting on both. So that s just something that I m curious about, um in, in terms of also kind of the logistics like are we gonna continue to promote student boys and have students come over, or are we gonna go to the, I, I know we talked about maybe only limiting
192it to possibly uh just the pathway coach and the principal, so that s just something that I m curious that I know we probably don t have time to discuss. I think we ll talk more in JUNE about this, but I think that I mean me personally as one commissioner, uh, in terms of, uh, school presentations. I, I m, I m more uh, given time as, you know. Um. Uh I, I wanna know what their outcomes and their what their plan is I m I m less concerned about the budget because I could just read it. You know, uh, I think it s more self-explanatory and same with the data, but the um you know, I ll be looking at what they re, if we go outcomes and you know, with their implement with their
193implementation steps are. Then I m gonna be matching that in my mind to the budget and to their, to their data. Um I don t know if people want to weigh in or just wait until. We see the whole package Yeah, no, that s helpful. I guess I was curious because in the past, you know, and when we did presentations, a lot of them focused on the past. A lot of them were very fast, uh, fast facing and be like, this is what we did. This is how successful it was. This is where, you know, some things that were not so successful. It was very reflective. Um, so I guess if that s something that we wanna really narrow down and emphasize. It s like something, you know, more goal-oriented presentation. That s also another
194shift that we can really implement That s just my experience, it was very all about past reflection I think I ll just point out also on the illustration that the illustration does reflect, um, that, that reflection would be part of it via the self-assessment. So, but what I m hearing is brass tacks, its goals and, and plans. I think, well, I, I think, and then I think the reflections in that context. right? So Yeah, exactly. Ok, did I summarize that retreat part? Yeah. Ok ok, is that, that, that sound good? Ok Currently, So I think that the in. I m just asking you. Part are They re not I, I think our csm s have a varying levels of uh understanding like of the granular level of what is measured and what is measure h,
195uh, I think they all. Generally understand the, the purpose of the parcel tax, and they all play different roles in the comprehensive student support structure, but um, they, they are, I m just kind of doing a quick scan of all of our, uh, sites and the CSMs at those schools, um, they all play an integral role in the comprehensive student supports domain, right? Like they re. They are the conductor if you will, of all of the services, um, at a high level. I think it depends, um. I would say that the CSMs at our multi pathway schools probably have more clarity about the, the pathway structure specifically. Um, because they see it happening, um. You know, they, they have the conversations about comprehensive student supports in the pathway context, whereas at our single pathway schools,
196they re just navigating it for the whole school, not necessarily. As a, in, in the con in the context of a pathway team. You have professional development to development dedicated No, not on the district calendar. There are 2 school-wide professional development days on, on the district calendar any other workdays that are specific to pathway development are typically planned at the site level, and they re planned as release days, where substitutes come in so that the teachers on the pathway teams can step off to do that work. The gold? That you did. This is actually a very interview. A very good summary of. I go I think that actually the whole standard thing is gonna be get a feeling that the system gonna be. Really helpful I just want to give, give credit where it s
197due though that I, uh, we contracted with John Watkins, who brought in the, the, the footnotes, um, you know, kind of the research lens. So John Watkins in a consultant capacity contributed. But I mean this, this is the version of this Thank you for having me ok, I think we can wrap up. I don t think there s anything else on the agenda. Ok. All right