001On or off? On. Are we good? Sure. Calling us to order at 631 PM. We need first to approve our agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? Trustee's or Dr. Pennington's? Is there a motion to approve? Move to approve agenda. Second. All in favor please state your saying aye. Aye. Agenda is approved 5-0 and now we have our spotlight on excellence. And tonight we have Mindy Shelton here, principal of Arroyo. Hi everyone. I need to use this, right? If you so. Hello trustees and district officials and Arroyo families. Thank you so much for inviting me to come and share some of the magic of Arroyo. I have with me 11 members of our Eagle Council. They are elected by their class to represent them. And they are here tonight to share some of the
002things that make Arroyo special and really kind of bring our culture to life. Let me get my slides up so I can see. I wanted to kind of start with the way that I start many of my orientations for third grade parents. Some of you have heard this directly from me. Some of you have heard very similar information from Teresa Fox at Mariposa. But I think I really appreciate the model that we have here in San Carlos. I know it's kind of unique to San Carlos, but it really allows us to focus on the unique needs of 9 to 11 year old learners. Oftentimes in a K-5, which is where most of my teaching experience and background and also my experience as a parent and a student, there's benefits to that as well. But so
003much focus goes into the early learning years and teaching students kind of how to be in school, how to do school. And then by fourth and fifth grade, they're sort of left to their teachers and just kind of whatever happens. And because of our model, we're able to really focus a lot on leadership development, on the social emotional needs of our students and giving them kind of guardrails to take risks and try new things and to learn to fly a little bit and to really kind of prepare them for middle school. So we have that academic challenge piece, but so much focus on social, emotional and personal development and leadership development. Also, being able to really take advantage of our community and our parent volunteers and support and to have family events and to bring
004parents together during from multiple schools during a time where kids are kind of more open to that. And then you get a chance to get to know other parents, other people in the community, students get a chance to know each other before they go on to middle school. And instead of this really big transition at a time that can be really hard for kids, it's a pretty smooth transition. They have to adapt to a different side of the campus and to moving classes a little bit more often, but they know each other. They know they're elective and P.E. teachers. They know the counselor. It really makes for a much smoother transition at a at a more challenging time. So I'm going to kind of highlight some of the ways that some of the things we
005do at Arroyo that really highlight our strategic plan and our learner profile and the way that we want to create curious problem solvers and kind citizens and self aware learners. And I worked with our Eagle Council to kind of brainstorm. What are the things that make Arroyo special? What are the things that make your experience as a student? Great. Right. What are the things that excite you about our school and that kind of create these conditions for you? So they kind of brainstormed a list. I added the first one standards based instruction. But the rest of them really came from them, that it's our community building, our spirit activities, our leadership opportunities, our social emotional learning and the way we set goals for ourselves and reflect on those goals. Our diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging
006pieces and our elective and enrichment program and our project based learning. So they're going to do most of the rest of the talking. I'll come back a little bit at the end to talk a bit about our staff and our community. But I am going to introduce Nitya to start us off. Actually, Eagles, why don't you come join me up here so that we can just pass around the microphone. All right. So Nitya is going to start us off with community building. Hi, my name is Nitya and I'm in fifth grade. Arroyo does fun community building activities like Monday morning meetings. During these meetings we learn what's happening during the week, counselors corner, poems, sore cards and upcoming events. We also did a fun mix it up at lunch activity. What we did was Eagle
007Council made groups of random people instead of sitting with your usual group, you'd sit with new people and you connect and make new friends. The community building activities help people learn about each other. And if we didn't have them at if we didn't have them at Arroyo, then Arroyo wouldn't be the school it is today. Thank you. I should add we've got some photos to go along with with what they're talking about. And I want to also just add that it would have been really easy for me to write a little script and hand it to them and say read this. They wrote every word that they're sharing tonight. So I just want you all to know that these are straight from them. And next up we have my slides closed. Laila talking about spirit
008activities. Hi, my name is Laila and I'm a fourth grader at Arroyo. At Arroyo we have a lot of fun during spirit weeks. What that means is either for a holiday or the beginning of a season. We organize a week of really fun activities. For example, photo flashlights, wearing spirit colors, door decorating, anything but a backpack, and everyone's favorite pajama day. Thank you. Just have to add every time they vote on a spirit week, it has to end in pajama day. It's not optional. All right, Teagan and Hope are going to talk about our student leadership opportunities and Harris is going to chime in with our student-led clubs. Hi, I'm Teagan and I'm a fourth grader at Arroyo. At Arroyo we have many great student leadership opportunities. Some of these things are Eagle Council, talent
009show leaders, performers, club leaders, ambassadors, and equipment managers. All of these opportunities are very good for student's feet. Hi, my name is Hope and I'm a fifth grader at Arroyo School. Eagle Council is where each class votes on two people and the chosen ones come together to plan spirit activities and other fun things. The annual talent show is where student hosts and other kids display their talents in a show. Not to mention all of the help behind the scenes where students who work behind the stage in things like preparing the script, background, and other necessities. So I'm Harris and I'm a fourth grader at Arroyo School. What happens with the clubs is in like fall, maybe October, November, you have out these club leader sheets. So you can sign up to become a club leader
010then like a month maybe later or a few weeks later. Then you can start joining clubs. They send out a whole slide with all the clubs that are available to join. You can just get sheets out at lunch or you can fill out it. Basically, all of the clubs are student led and practically any type of club you can think of, you can make. You have science clubs, art clubs, theater clubs, computer clubs, everything. Thank you, Harris. And next up we have Bella. Okay, I wasn't sure if you were next. Bella is going to talk about our DEIB opportunities. Hi, my name is Bella. We have a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion and have ways to celebrate many different cultures. For example, at Arroyo we do an event every year that is called Multicultural
011Family Night where families come together to celebrate different cultures in the world. There's different dances and stations where you get to run and play games of different cultures and more. The cool thing about this year is my dad got to show my pals some instruments and teach them more about the martial art capoeira from Brazil that my family does. There's another fun celebration that is a cool dragon dance. Lion dancers come and perform a really cool dance at an assembly. Everyone I know that goes to Arroyo absolutely loves it. Thank you. Thank you. And Maggie is going to talk about social emotional learning. Hi, my name is Maggie Sleesman. I'm a fifth grader at Arroyo Upper Elementary. I would like to share with you a bit of our school's social emotional learning program. Throughout the
012year, the students at Arroyo are involved in a program called Sone to Grow. It is a program that helps kids improve their social and emotional well-being that makes me and most of my friends feel like a million bucks. The topics in Sone to Grow encourage students to talk about their feelings. In addition, our counselors and staff are also ready to help students through tough times where they want to give up. Social emotional learning is important for healthy growth of kids. Thank you. Thank you, Maggie. And Miyabi is going to talk about how we do some goal setting and reflection. Hi, my name is Miyabi and I'm in fifth grade. Arroyo is a great place to set goals. At the start of the year, we have a goal setting time where we write down our goals,
013learning how to make our goals achievable, realistic, specific, time-bound, and measurable. That makes it so that in the future we can set goals and accomplish them. If we didn't have goal setting in school, it would be harder to go after what we want to do in life. Thank you. Next up is Delia talking about our elective and enrichment opportunities. Hi, my name is Delia and I'm a fifth grader at Arroyo. When fourth graders come to Arroyo, they get to have electives. Not just one elective, but three. They get to do the elective wheel. The wheel is basically a list of three electives that change every year. This year, the electives on the wheel are Makerspace, Multimedia, and Art. When students reach fifth grade, they get to pick one elective for the whole year. They can
014choose a musical elective like band or orchestra and play an instrument. Fifth graders can also choose to be in design and create things. All students at Arroyo also get to do PE twice a week. The elective system at Arroyo is amazing because there are so many options. Thank you. And finally, Teddy and Laurel are going to talk about project-based learning. Hi, my name is Teddy. And my name is Laurel and we are fourth graders at Arroyo. We had three project-based learning projects, as we call it, PBLs. The PBLs we have had are Who Am I, Who Are We, Alien Adaptations, and Natural Disasters. Those are the fourth grade PBLs and here is more about them. For Who Am I, Who Are We, we got a booklet and then had to interview someone in our family
015about the history of our name. In Alien Adaptations, we got to make our own alien, but we still had to make sure it could live in the climate and had the right adaptations. For Natural Disasters, we had to study about a natural disaster then make a booklet and an infographic about it. PBLs helped us work better in groups and help us learn in fun ways. Thank you, Eagles. Fantastic job. You can take your seats while I finish up. Why would you want to listen to me talk when you can hear them? They are fantastic ambassadors for our school and I could not be more proud of them. But I also want to take a minute to talk about another really special group that's near and dear to my heart and that's our staff. I did
016not invite them to be here tonight because they are busy getting ready for tomorrow. They have worked so hard to really embrace PBL and standards-based instruction. They work incredibly well as a team and support each other. This year, we've really focused a lot of our professional development both on project-based learning. You can see a photo of us working with our trainer from PBL Works up in the corner and also really working on building teacher resilience. We've been reading the book onward together and building teacher resilience to help them be stronger and their best selves and to be able to show up as their best selves for their students. They've really embraced all of that and put a lot of work into what they do and I am grateful for them. We try to have fun
017too. As much as all of that work around student culture is so important, we do a lot around staff culture too. Creating fun opportunities for staff to come together. We recently did an Oreo bracket along with March Madness where we tried 16 different flavors of Oreos. Who knew? And voted down for our top favorite. Golden Oreos was the winner, by the way. I think that fun for staff really goes a long way in creating that culture for students as well. Then I want to highlight our community because they are so important in everything we do. We have so much parent support, whether it's showing up for events, teaching art and action lessons, really helping to create many of those DEIB opportunities for students around our multicultural family nights and other holiday celebrations. Our PTA and
018SCAF and our Healthy Cities tutors are all just amazing partners, so I wanted to highlight them as well. Then I wanted to end sharing this project that was really special. We did this last spring as a part of our California Distinguished School Awards ceremony. Those of you who have a royal students or did last year recognize this from the cover of our yearbook. Last year we asked Eagle Council to come up with some words that best described their experience of a royal and what a royal meant to them. Those are the words highlighted here. You see determination, community, leadership, friendship, pride, support. Then every student got to draw a little piece of this, so they had a chance to think about what they wanted to include, draw a little draft and then come add to
019the mural, so to speak. I just thought that was a really special way to highlight so much about a royal. Thank you so much for the opportunity to share all of that with you tonight, and thanks for all you do. Thank you again to our Eagles and their families for coming to support. Thank you so much, students. Well done. Thank you, parents, for coming out. I know this is a hard time of night to get out of the house. I really appreciate you being here. It's definitely been the highlight of our meetings this year. Thank you for coming. Nice job. Thank you, Mindy. Quickly before we move on with the rest of our agenda, a note about public comment. I don't see anyone in here, but as a reminder to the public, the board will
020take public comment on each agenda item as it is discussed, and we'll provide time for comment on the items at the end of the meeting. So if you're online and would like to speak, please use the raise the hand feature when that item comes up. We need to approve our consent agenda, which contains items that are routine in nature and for which no board discussion is anticipated. So we act upon them in a single with a single vote. Do we have any public comment? Okay, thank you. Is there a motion to approve? Second. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Great. And now we can move on to our teaching and learning update. Now I'll share my screen. I got a little excited there. All right. Well, we are, as you know, we
021recently conducted our California school climate health and learning surveys. That is a mouthful. And we generally refer to these as checks. The California Healthy Kids Survey, there is a parent component, a staff component, and a student component, and that is checks. We had tremendous participation. We'll talk a little bit about during the slides, but we want to thank our stakeholders for really giving us feedback. This is one of the primary ways that we take feedback across the board from all stakeholder groups. So students, caregivers, staff, again, all participated. There are similar questions, so they're not the same question. Student might have a certain question that relates to a question a parent or caregiver might give that relates to a question that a staff member might answer as well. We have a few custom questions that
022are either left over from the 2124 LCAP or the previous LCAP that we carried over. And some of those questions we'll have, we report out tonight about, and we may sunset some of those questions as well, just because that was March of 2021. We're now in March, April, May of 2024. Remember that our purpose tonight is to provide a high level sense of the data that we collected along the lines of LCAP questions and the specific goals. As I said, we're not in a recovery mode anymore, so some of these questions might relate more to when we were in a recovery mode. But the bottom line is that our emphasis on the whole child and the well-being of each child is clearly paying off in our results in many other ways. We aggregated a survey
023for the presentation and for district goal setting. But really, it's what happens at schools is where the action is. And Tom Domer, principal at CMS, is also here with us tonight. So we'll talk a little bit about student survey results. Sheila is going to take the mic from me shortly. And then Tom will come up and talk about what he does with these results at CMS, and then we'll move into parent survey results following that. So I'm really happy that we have our new-ish now wellness director here for her first time presenting at the board. So I'm going to hand it over to Sheila Brar. Thank you, Hans. All right. So like Hans said, we had high participation rates across school sites and survey types. You can see here very similar numbers of caregiver surveys
024to student surveys. Actually, the number is not on here, but it's about 1,300 student surveys and 1,323 caregiver surveys. It's important to note here that the parent and caregiver surveys are slightly skewed to elementary school parents. 68 percent of parents reporting for their elementary school student. And the student surveys are slightly skewered to middle school, particularly seventh and eighth grade. And just to note that the California Healthy Kids Survey does require an opt-in for grades three through six, which explains the difference in response rate. So just to think about that when looking at the data. So as Hans said, these are three of our measures that were used for the sun setting LCAP goals. These were questions that we added. They're not a part of the California Healthy Kids Core Survey. And as such, when
025they are given to students, despite their grade of participation, they can respond one of four ways. Yes, all the time. Yes, most of the time. Yes, some of the time or no. The response rates that you're seeing here are for students who responded, yes, all of the time or yes, most of the time. If you include the metric, yes, some of the time, these numbers change significantly. So for this year, I can express myself clearly would jump up to 98 percent. I set goals for myself and achieve them would be 93 percent. And I receive meaningful classwork that supports my learning would be 95 percent. So just something to note in terms of how students respond and the options that they're given. Sorry, question. Do you think there's a reason for that? I mean, that's
026a gigantic jump, right? So I think that I mean, I think we can look back at previous data, but I think it's really hard. It's an individual snapshot of when you're asking them. And a question like I set goals for myself and try to achieve them for a fourth grader that it might be some of the time and they might not think about. And we heard from a fourth grader just saying that it's part of their program. And maybe they're thinking, well, I do it one time, but do I do it multiple times? And so, you know, it's about how the goal is written it as well. Yeah, one of the things and I'm sorry if I'm stealing your. So the actual survey itself is developed by Westat and they're testing a domain. They'll have
027five or six questions on that domain. So then we can also say it's more reliable when we add a question we're not going at it several ways. And so I were left wondering, Sheila and I were thinking about this as the students understand the question, right? Because, you know, we want to make sure like going forward, we're really hopeful we'll just stick to the Westat because they've been developed so that we can trust what the reading is. But still, these are such high scores. We're not going to perseverate too much as we move on to our new L. Yeah, but just some context for how they were asked. And so these are two measures we use for also our sunsetting goal five from the LCAP, and they are chicks core survey questions. So adults at
028school care about me and I feel like I'm a part of the school. And we did note down the disparity between middle school and elementary school responses. So for the first question about adults at school care about me, 86% of elementary school students responded with yes, all of the time or most of the time, while 66% of middle school students responded with very much or pretty much true. So this is where the chicks core data actually asks differently based on the grade that's taking it. So in middle school, if you're given a question that has four responses, it's very much true, pretty much true, a little true or not true versus all the time most of the time some of the time and no. And the reason I pointed out is because those are very
029hard decisions to make. And so we do present the data that says yes, most of the time or all of the time or yes, it's pretty much true or very much true, but there is a lot of nuance in that. So if you did add the metric. Yes, some of the time to elementary school or a little true for middle school. These numbers increase quite a bit and adults at school at school care about me would be 96% of students. And so for question two, I feel a part of my school 80% of fourth and fifth graders say yes, most or all of the time, while 66% of eighth sixth or eighth graders say strongly agree. And again if you added that third metric in it would move up to 94%. So, highlights students report
030really feeling safe at school report high expectations that by teachers, as Jennifer mentioned, these are. This is data from the core survey questions so high expectations from teachers in the school is a set of multiple questions. One I wanted to highlight was teachers want me to try my best or teachers want teachers want me to do my best and 98% of fourth and fifth graders say yes, all the time or most of the time, and 87% of middle schoolers report, pretty much true or very much true. Similar for academic motivation, a set of multiple questions for elementary students nine out of 10 report that they keep doing schoolwork, even when it's hard for them. And when they get a bad grade they try even harder so sewing some of that resilience and grit. And for
031middle school students eight out of 10 positively report that they always try to do better in their schoolwork. One place that we've seen continued need for some growth is meaningful participation. That is a metric also of five questions. There's, we're reporting lower numbers some of this data is really great but there's some room for growth there and so our plan moving forward is to conduct some empathy interviews and focus groups with students to ask what that looks like. What does it mean to have meaningful participation in the classroom. And also, influence some of the school site plans. And I'll just chime in here about middle school SEL curriculum which I think in the last six years since I've been here, the number of times that it's come up that do we have an appropriate middle
032school SEL curriculum. It's come up, many, many times. And we've been through kind of up and down up and down let's try this let's try that. We just recently landed on a castle are this the SEL standards curriculum, California social emotional learning standards. And we're going to be implementing a castle based program that's well vetted and has research behind it called Wayfinder in sixth or eighth grade. That's hot off the presses as of this week but it's been a goal of ours. I want to say since I've been here. It's been a goal of mine to get some appropriate social emotional learning curriculum for middle schoolers so that's exciting turn of events as well. So at this point, we're going to hand it over to our friend and colleague Tom Domer principal at CMS to
033talk a little bit about his data and the importance of that. So, is this on? Yeah, it's on. All right. So for those of you who are counting this is the second year in a row and presenting the checks data. The lights blue. Sorry. How can you hear me. Okay, I'll start over. That's loud. So this is the second year in a row I'm presenting on on this data and I think partly because I personally believe this is the most important data we get all year. Part of that is that healthy part of, of the name without healthy children. There's not a lot of teaching and learning going on. Another reason is how comprehensive the data is. It asks all kinds of questions from like, how much sleep to kids get, and how bored or
034not bored they are how engaged they are. If they've seen drugs on campus, or at home, and how safe, how safe they feel. It's just it's a really comprehensive I don't know if any of you have seen it but it's, it's really really big. And so, so I think it gives a really really really important and accurate snapshot of a community. So what I did you have a one pager here, what I did is glows, what we're doing good at grows kind of what we need to look look at and improve and then sort of action items like what we do with this data. So I'm going to start with the, with the glows. And I will say, overall, the state of the union is good. I'm proud when I look at this data, and
035I think it's, I think it's, we're doing pretty good. One thing I reported the first one of the or the second bullet point there is kids that see illegal substances on campus 100% said they didn't see anything. And that to me is pretty significant because middle schools and high schools around the nation are seeing an uptake, particularly with vaping. And we're our kids aren't seeing that on our campuses. So that is something that I think speaks very highly of our community. They also feel very safe on campus. So 95% of kids said they feel they felt safe. So our caregiver caregiver data, that's parents mostly and caregivers that was also very strong. For the most part, 91% of central parents agreed or strongly agreed that this, the staff is responsive to their needs. 96% agreed
036or strongly agreed that we treat them with respect. I like that. 95% agreed or strongly agreed that they were well informed. There's a lot more on there, but I kind of picked some of the highlights student data was also positive 94% of seventh graders feel an adult wants them to always do their best. I, and for a lot of these, I picked seventh grade because they that's the largest number of kids that took it seventh and eighth because of what we were saying that the sixth graders have to opt in. So okay, only 7% of seventh and eighth graders reported boredom with low value. There's a boredom metric on there, so they can be bored, but say it had was a high value activity. But it was boring, or it could be high. It could
037be not boring and high value, or it could be, you know, boring, but high value, whatever. So it's interesting to see that but but only 7% in for middle school. That's pretty good. Students feeling bullied or harassed was extremely low between two and 10%. And, and the reason there's that sort of variation is because they break down ways in which the different types of bullying and the ways in which kids can feel harassed. So I'm going to talk about that a little bit later on. But so so there was there was different numbers for harassment, but it's still very low for middle school. Only two students in the entire student body disagreed with the statement, I try hard to make sure that I am good at my schoolwork to only two kids. And 86% of
038students reported that teachers and staff have high expectations for them. So our grows areas that we want to improve on always finding the balance between rigor and the mental health we as as I think I've said this every time I stand up here, we were concerned about anxiety and stress levels that seem to be increasing. So how do we find that balance between making sure that they're that they're stay engaged in school, but when we're not pushing them too hard, basically. 13 students reported that they miss school because they felt sad or unhappy. So we want to see who those kids are, and how how is it that they haven't been identified and helped yet. 39% of seventh graders reported doing things that that they think make a difference. So only 37 39%. So obviously,
039we want to increase that. And 32% of seventh graders reported having a say in how things work. And I'm a little conflicted on that. I'm not sure which they should, but they don't want to hand and hand all the decisions over to 12 year olds. But they but we also want them to feel like they're included in the decision making process. 18 students feel chronically sad or hopeless. So again, we need to find those kids. And here was an important one race, race, ethnicity or national origin was the number one reason for kids being harassed at school. Having said that, our numbers were still very, very low, but that was the number one thing when when I was saying they say, you know, because you can be bullied for any number of things and and
040race was the number one thing that they reported. So that's important, very important information. So what do we do with this? Hans mentioned our wayfinder. So we met with them the other day. It seems like a really great SEL curriculum that we're adopting from from Stanford. Research based, super excited about it. We presented it to teachers yesterday at our staff meeting and they're excited about it. Or at least they said they were. So we want to also increase our our intervention for tier two kids. Those are kiddos that do not have an IEP, for example, but might maybe a little bit below grade level. And we feel like we need to do a better job addressing their needs, both with SEL and academic support. Because of the race and ethnicity being the number one area
041of harassment, we're doubling down on our DIB initiatives. So that remains high priority for us. We want to continue on working on our transition with our sixth graders. We give them a soft landing, and sometimes maybe it's too soft of a landing. So we want to increase the rigor. I kind of notice that when you ask our sixth graders about rigor, it's not as high as seventh and eighth grade, which makes sense because eighth graders are Mr. Richards. So and OK, and then the anonymous student data part, that's not actionable, but it's something that like it's a challenge because if we're saying 13 kids are feeling desperately or chronically sad, I want to know who those kids are. But I can't. Right. I can't look at the data. And I wish I could. Like, I
042wish we could identify who those kiddos were so that we could get them help. So that's kind of a challenge. And then last but not least, we look at this data to kind of specialize the work we do with our student ambassadors. So again, back to the racial component that we're going to train our kids to look for microaggressions and aggressions around that specifically. So we're kind of teasing out the data and looking at how we can train our kids very specifically for the needs that our school in particular has. So that's about it. I always like to include some student voice. So last month was National Poetry Month, and we had kids go into the library and just randomly write poems about things. So I just snagged a couple of poems that kids wrote
043to give you an idea of what we're up against. So this is one. It's anonymous. It says, I'm not going to lie. Math makes me want to die because we have to recite high and learn why we will use this in life, which I thought was funny because we're always trying to explain to them why math like real world applications of math. Apparently they don't want to hear it. And then this one said, this one's a little haiku. Half of my energy wasted on random knowledge. Knowledge is spelt wrong. So there you have it. Student voice. That's it for me. Well, thank you, Tom. Any questions? Do they get to ask me questions? At the end, we have time for questions. We just have a few more slides. All right. So handing it back over
044to Sheila and we'll go through the last few slides relatively quickly with you. So the next few slides are parent and caregiver survey questions. Again, these are used to measure and for our final year data for the LCAP. So for this question stayed pretty consistent with last time. So here's where this is the only question to highlight that we did see a statistically significant change of our school providing parents with advice, resources and resources to support their child's social emotional needs. When you look at this data, 86% of elementary school parents responded favorably and it was 79% of middle school parents. But to note, 9% of parents weren't sure or found it not applicable. So that is a piece of this data to take out. And again, ensuring equity, accessible students, cultural beliefs, the importance
045of cultural beliefs increased. But overall, I mean, the parent and caregiver data is overwhelmingly positive, where we have 8 out of 10 parents responding favorably on most metrics and 9 out of 10 on many of them. As we're thinking about developing our next LCAP, oftentimes we have to think about do we want to carry any of these questions over? Setting a goal for a caregiver survey question that's already in the 90s is pretty tough. And yet, some of them I think are still fairly applicable to what we want to do with our goals and actions. That's what we'll be grappling with next is which ones of these are we going to continue? What do we want to choose? As Jennifer said, we'll be substituting CHECK's goals or CHECK's questions for the questions that we had
046that were customized from that previous LCAP. We won't be using customized questions anymore. We want to make sure we're using better questions that have been tested out with numerous students and you're sure to get accurate results. So, last but not least. Overview, 9 out of 10 parents responding favorably that school promotes academic success. They report feeling welcome by staff and to participate in school activities, reporting that staff treat all students with respect and school being a supportive and inviting place for students to learn. In terms of areas of focus is increased communication to parents regarding how to help with classwork and homework. That was still around 20% of parents saying they disagreed with having that support. There are also parents that did say it was not applicable. So that takes that out of the big
047denominator and also student progress between formal reporting periods. And what was interesting about this data is pretty consistent across from elementary school to middle school reporting similar parents feeling that they didn't know their students' progress between report cards. So we're going to go back to parents and ask them again, what is meaningful communication look like to you? And we did this with PTAC yesterday and it was interesting because one of the responses we received back was parents not knowing when to step in, particularly for their middle school student to support if they are having challenges in the classroom or with homework because students need autonomy and they need to be advocating for themselves. But when do parents come in? And we thought that was a perfect place for some parent ed to talk about kind
048of the transition to middle school, how to track your students' progress, how to talk to them about it, and then how to support them best. All right. Well, that concludes our overview of the results, which Tom, what Tom said resonates with me really well. I mean, we sometimes lose perspective in our school district and I can tell you that these results are mouth gaping as far as how good they are, how positive things are. And a lot of colleagues would be jealous of the results that we get and yet we continue down that continuous improvement. Right. We know that's our goal. And that becomes a real challenge when you have data where our data is, how do we get better? We've talked about once you get to 80%, how do you get better than that?
049It takes hard work. You really have to drill down and know where you're going. In two weeks, we'll bring back another presentation about LCAP goals and where we are and in process of developing our new LCAP. We're down the road now a little bit. So lots of engagement and including some with you last month, which was really fun. And now it's your turn for questions. If I may, please, Jennifer. So we've spent a lot of time digging in this data and I've had some good conversations with some of you about it. But one of the things we want to remind everyone of is that SEL is important to us as an end to an end. But also the indicators we would use that it's paying off are things like attendance, where attendance continues to be
050a big challenge for some of our colleagues. But we see that our kids feel like they belong, our families feel like they belong. Those are things that are leading to our improved attendance and also our improved outcomes. We have our California distinguished middle school. That's not an easy thing to get as middle school. And so making sure that the linkage is between they feel like they belong, they have some say about what they're learning so that they do well in school, so that they come to school. We do care that some students feel sad, but we want to make sure we circle back and everyone knows what to do when you feel sad because some of that's normal. But if you feel extra sad, where do you go? But as we I think our new
051goals and actions, we can start tying that a little bit closer so people can see that correlation. One other thing I want to note, we had CMS here tonight. We had planned this when I was out in the last meeting, Tom was going to help present and we ended up not presenting this. I'd be remiss if we didn't mention that Teal also saw some really phenomenal gains in their data, in particular in the parent and the student survey. Really big massive gains in certain areas, so that was wonderful to see as well. Thank you. Questions? Really, I was ready. I'll start. Sometimes it takes us a minute. Okay, got it. Relative to life. So again, always the question I have for, you know, anyone in the room is data gives you a snapshot of time,
052but is this data, does it support what you're seeing on your campuses? Principal Tom, Principal Mindy? Yeah, I was like, two principals. Two principals. Yeah, you can stand up and dress. Thank you. The other side of that question is there's something that's surprising because it doesn't match up with what you don't feel like you see. Yes. Yeah, I was sitting over there nodding my head. Yes. Yeah, I think, I think we generally see a lot of happy kids, happy families and, and, you know, not, not everything is perfect all of the time. But I think the effort that we put into creating that sense of belonging and helping students find their access points pays off. And what I would add is for middle school, it is nerve wracking because the middle schoolers can be kind
053of hard on adults, as you know. And I mean, with the poetry, if you, if you're reading the poems that the kids posted in the library, you think they're the most miserable people on earth. But, but I think that they think that poems are supposed to be, you know, depressing and, and like that's where they go in their minds. So, so, so, you know, and it's, you know, the middle schoolers are going through a lot of changes and stuff like that. So, so to your point, it's one, one, one day that they're taking it. So it always makes me nervous. And then, and then particularly when we're focused on seventh and eighth graders, because all of them are taking it. And then I think Sheila hit on this a little bit. The data can be
054a little tricky. For example, there's a question about goal setting and like something like, I can't remember, 60% of our kids said that they set goals. And we know that's not true because we make them set goals. Like every 100% of them set goals. We have goal setting conferences. So it's like, well, who doesn't think they're setting goals? But like, what are they thinking when they, when they're answering that question, right? Are they thinking, are these goals that, that, that I'm not being forced to make? Like, do I go home and make, make a list of goals? No. Right. So sometimes it's hard. The data can be a little difficult to, to discern what it actually means. But yeah, I mean, my kids are, are happy and healthy. And I mean, we, we don't, we
055don't catch kids vaping on, on school then. And kids will report like, oh, the bathroom smells weird, or I saw this, that, or the other thing. And I feel extremely fortunate that that's not something that we're dealing with regularly. I would add along those lines, like a student will come to the office and say the bathroom has been vandalized. And I go in expecting something horrible and there's toilet paper on the ground. Like that's, you know, that's kind of the one among the worst we're dealing with. But I, to that goal setting idea, too, when Sheila was talking about that earlier, I think thinking about fourth and fifth graders, especially, they do set goals. And that's something we do as a part of our classrooms. Do they internalize that at nine and ten years old?
056I don't know. I don't know how many kids are setting goals for themselves when they're not being told by adults and thinking about those on a daily basis all of the time. But our goal is really to build those skills and to kind of develop that muscle for them so that as they get older, they have some experiences to draw on of like, oh, yeah, I did do that. Oh, we talked about how important that was. We learned how to write a smart goal. They may not be doing it automatically yet, but they're getting that background. I mean, I guess the flip side I just want to know is, are there times where you've seen, obviously you've been around long enough to see different sets of data on it. Are there things you can pinpoint
057that you think maybe moments in time where the data, right, when we have been low or things, right? Would you say those are outside forces, inside forces that maybe change the data to less positive results? I would say both. I mean, some of this data, we have no control over some of the questions like what time they go to bed. I mean, we can tell what, but we get a good night's sleep, but we have no control over that. And we know if a kid comes to school tired and hungry, they're not going to do as well. So yeah, and then, I mean, obviously the pandemic, the data was really bad after the pandemic, and it should have been. You're asking them if we cared about them. We told them to stay home for 18
058months. No, they didn't think we cared, right? So yeah, I think Hans mentioned this. We were in kind of a rebound mode for a while. So I don't know if that's completely what you were asking. I think we saw an uptick in the data as we were coming back. Like, oh, we get to be back at school, and we're all so happy to be here, and everybody loves everybody. And I think even during COVID, some of the numbers, like we were really going out of our way to show kids that we cared about them. And I think even in that moment, it came across in our data, like it wasn't as good as it maybe is some years, but it was also a lot better than many other places across the state. So I think
059and I think sometimes I think we're doing something that's going to really like impact numbers and we're going to see a big growth, which is hard to do when we're already in the 90s and things like that. And then it may or may not translate depending on the day they take the survey. And are they thinking about that thing that we did in September when they take a survey in April? So it's interesting to kind of look at how things impact those numbers. I was going to say that the results for adults at school care about me, and I feel like I'm a part of my school actually were like the highest in 2021. You know, when they we talked about that earlier. And we gave that survey about the same time of year that
060year, and kids had just come back. I said, Sheila, let's pretend that we gave this survey in September every year. How do we think the survey would vary if we gave it in September as opposed to when we give it, which is February, March? You're in the honeymoon in September, right? Like things are good. My teacher loves me. I have lots of friends. So, you know, that helps kind of for Sheila to go, oh, OK. And think about that. So that that was definitely a factor. So I'm wondering if we have tools to gauge. So in the fall, we did give the health and wellness survey, which was around, you know, identifying emotion. And so for next year, we are planning to revamp that survey a little bit for particularly the preschool to second grade
061group and give that both in the fall and the spring. There could be some similarity to this survey. And we've talked about validated survey tools. You know, this is something we. So one, there's a survey instrument I'm familiar with that I've used, but made by the tripod project that is developmentally appropriate. And so we did something we'll probably explore, especially as we advanced our UKK work. And there's curriculum that we're starting to line up. So that would be an instrument we'd want to look at a preview of coming attractions. Yes, we didn't talk about that. Yeah, but we are editing that survey. So that's right. The time to continue. And yeah, I have a couple of questions. So I know that, like Tom, each school is kind of diving in. And I think I've seen
062it. I went to the TL parent coffee and heard about the amazing gains at TL. And I know that it's also being shared back through newsletters. Right. The principals are sharing back in that way. I guess I was curious about like, that's what's kind of happening at the school level. And then at the district level, are we also looking at like across the schools? What's going on? Or even like a lot of this data is sort of very high level. But are we also looking at like, you know, equitable access to learning for all students requires us to then look at sort of different student groups to make sure that there isn't one that's far below, you know, like if everyone's at 89 percent. But is there one group that's maybe lower? Are we making
063sure that we're diving in and looking at those like subgroups? We do have disaggregated data, but it's quite small. And we want to keep that analysis to the individual school site because some of those numbers are so small. And we did talk about them sort of publicly in a district. But no, each report does have some disaggregated data. And I've actually been working with several of the principals to go through some of their reports. Tom did it on its own. I mean, I'll offer. But I have been going through like years past reports, too, to give like a two to three year snapshot on some of those deep dives. But we're still looking at it at the school level versus kind of across the district. Just because that's the place where we feel like the
064most action. OK. And then the other question was, oh, I'm curious about. Well, actually, I don't have another question. Yeah, I just wanted to add kind of on the topic of D.E.I.B. and looking at different groups are our final D.E.I.B. steering committee of the year is coming up next week. And Sheila and Hans and I were talking about sharing some of this data with that group, too, and looking at it kind of from that perspective in that lens. Do we have plans or have we shared any of this data with the students themselves? Well, that's our plan for our empathy interviews and focus groups, particularly focus of the middle school. So we did this last year. Alana and I aggregated some of the results and then we met with students. I was with her at
065T.L., for instance, and we had some of the statistics and then we had questions for them. Again, what would it look like if you had meaningful participation? This was love for us. And so students gave us responses and then we were able to feed that back to the principals and did the same at CMS as well. I wasn't at that session, but we do need to interrogate that. And the leadership groups, I think that you all do that at both at Arroyo and Mariposa. And then there's tabling sometimes at the TK3. So, you know, so we can learn, like, do they understand the question, first of all? And then what does it look like? Well, I mean, it seems like a learning opportunity for them to learn about their own community and educational space, but
066then also to feel heard and have a say in things, to see the data come back. I think many people often participate differently when they know that their input was taken and they see the results. Oh, you actually read that. And then do we have state level data on other districts or similar? And, you know, for future reference, you know, it is nice to see the numbers going up and to the right and so on. But it would be awesome to have some sort of aggregate for either state level or similar sized districts or anything that would just give us a sense of comparative barometer. So on the Cal Schools dashboard, you can look through and select for a similar district like a Belmont Redwood Shores. And then we do have report cards that show
067our middle school metrics along with the state average together in split bar graph. Well above. Yeah, I think that would be a great addition in and I know you can't go line by line, but just kind of like a highlights like this just being a little bit like here's benchmarking for some other districts or just giving us a sense that really I think helps the parent community make meaning of it and helps with the storytelling. It also might also might expose themes like feelings of isolation and loneliness are not a San Carlos only challenge if actually we all know this is a huge generational challenge and rally people. Okay, so now for my far out question a comment. I think this data set is a really great data set for AI, and just thinking about
068how you could leverage this data and create new analytics new graphs, questions and analysis. This is the kind of like rich stuff that you can like feed into it, and then, you know, create. For example, you could take that dashboard download a bunch of things and then have it create an action plan or like, who are the districts that are best in class and what should we ask them about I mean it's like, this is like a super super ripe experimentation around how we might leverage that technology to help us see these things in new ways so just encourage, knowing that someone like new period like this is a whenever you have rich data that's complex and hard to, and it's anonymize and it's, you know, it's important that it's anonymized by the way because
069we shouldn't send it. If it's not anonymized. But this is a really great area. Thank you for that we have a volunteer who has volunteered to do some analysis of our data using AI and so I will be matchmaking with Sheila. Because I would like to see how they put it because we get their, their paper reports, you're aggregating. I mean, yes, I think they know they have 167 page reports for each school. Yeah, I toggle through eight so it's a great use of that. Okay, thank you. I think everybody covered the questions. Thank you so much for the presentation, and your time. Welcome, Sheila. That, and then we'll move to our single action item, which is approval of a resolution regarding the bond. Good evening. Thank you so much for celebrating with me the
070resolution number 132324. And we look to hope you're to certify all the election results tonight. And we'd very much like to thank our community and the support of all of the people that helped us effort on all of our voters who would help us achieve 63% of our community that we're voting that election we're able to say yes to measure H. So we have all good things coming our way we were able to feature our facilities master plan recently at the climate ready school symposium this week where Tracy attended and I was able to present our work around that and so we are very much excited to get started. We're working on determining our funding cadence, as well as the term using the facilities master plan phases to inform our next steps and decision making
071for crafting a work schedule to be fiscally efficient and also find some matching funds out there. And our next adventure is the May 8 steering committee with Ben and Neil, that we are very much looking forward to sharing what we have in place so far. So tonight I seek your certification of this resolution. Thank you. Any questions. We do need to approve it. I don't see any public comment. Thank you. With that I'll move to approve resolution 13 for 2324 certifying certifying all proceeds in March 5 2024 general election. Second. You know, it is a general election twice. All in favor please say by saying aye. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you. Right. And a quick meeting future agenda items that feel like we've got a lot coming up. Is there anything you
072wanted to highlight. Well you can look forward to seeing an implementation plan after we meet with our committee, and then there is also another resolution that the board will consider running tax levy, and then making determinations on bonding. So that will be the one main show and then the other big show is LCAP and budget, so you'll have a run to that. Thank you. Anything else. All right. We'll move on to public comment on non agenda items. There's no one here in the room. Is there any hands online. Okay, we'll move to employee group comments. I don't see them as their camel is there. Okay. Okay. Oh, Kamala if you are ready. Have you go ahead. Okay, hold on. I'm trying to get my video to start. You can see you know. Okay. Hello Board
073of Trustees my name is Kamala umbenhauer, and I am the CS EA vice president and an instructional aid at Heather school. I'm speaking tonight for Lisa she takes care of a family member. I would like to speak about classified school employees week coming up later this month. May, it's going to be May 19 to 25. And the school lunch hero day this week. Our classified staff are amazing and make a difference in students lives from our one amazing bus driver who transport students to and from school and field trips to our hardworking administrative assistants who provide ice packs and care for injured students during recess and lunch. They also wade through the hundreds of registrations making sure each student gets to the right school and classroom. We are looking forward to celebrating these hardworking staff
074during the upcoming classified school employees week. We would also like to acknowledge the upcoming retirement of Linda Townsend. She is a Rendell's incredible school library tech since 1998 her love of books and working with children is unparalleled, and her shoes will be hard to fill. Thank you Linda for being such a dedicated part of SCSD and a wonderful example of CSEA. Thank you. You can we can move on to board member comments. Is there anybody that would like to start. Let's make an icon. There. Okay. The shorter meeting. I'm going to take just 15 minutes to recognize the life. She was the first female state superintendent in the history of our state 170 years of state superintendent. And I was reading triggies I realized she had a deep San Carlos connection. So, she started elementary
075school in San Francisco in a class of 44 children in the second grade and her parents moved her down to San Carlos for the great school and small class inside. So, a trend we still see today. And so there she was in a class of just 20 children, and that moment really shaped a lot of her policy agenda. And she actually had her public inauguration at where she went to school in June of 1995. And I just, again, I wanted to acknowledge her she's really a champion of the universal preschool and And also reflecting on that and, you know, the fact that she has passed through our schools, sort of dreaming about we've been our school right now. First one year. And really a deep appreciation for the staff. Thank you. Sorry, what's your name.
076Thank you. Anybody else comments. Casey. Sure, I can go. So I wanted to take this time to talk about, I had a chance to go to two things related to sort of performing arts and that were one event the average age was six other event the average age was probably 76. So, but it so I went to Heather school they staff helps with the principal funds. And they were able to teach a dance program to like the students of, of Heather and I, it was just so moving to me like how much like creativity, self expression, confidence that these little children had and I just thought that that like just the whole child education And just knowing that like they're going to have this when they're in kindergarten, first grade, and it's going to just
077kind of help them through other things as they go through life and I just, you know, I, my kids aren't really into performing arts I they barely sing happy birthday on birthdays and, you know, at least with theater I think they're both they both play instruments that I think just it's so important for us to like invest in that type of education so I just was really moved there and then like the weekend Sarah Kinahan and I were at the chicken's ball, like the final celebration as they were closing their doors and yeah I think also there's the amount of connection and camaraderie. And, you know, the, I was just like moved tears, just watching sort of how much it meant to all the people that were there. And so I just like I love
078that San Carlos will district invest in the in these programs. I like the partnership I know like lots of schools are doing things with San Carlos Children's Theater to put up productions and I just, I'm glad that we're doing those things and I just wanted to say, you know, yay for that. And then, what else did I want to talk I did, I did, I've done a lot of things and I, but I feel like I'm going to stop there. Oh, the other thing I wanted to mention was, if you receive the county office of ed. Like the spotlight newsletter. There were like five people from the San Carlos school district that were featured out of like not that many right like we're such a small school district and yet like five out of 17
079of them were employees of San Carlos school district I'll just mention that I wrote it down to who's the bus driver, Linda Townsend. These are both people that Kamala mentioned Linda Townsend librarian at Rundle. Jen McKinney at first grade teacher at Rundle, Connor Giuliano who's a paraprofessional at Central Middle School and also my next door neighbor, and Howard Jones was a para educator at the Learning Center so I was like kudos to us so. And then I think Jen Gabri also mentioned that she was on the panel, talking about the facility master plan and at the climate ready schools symposium. And I was just so proud of our school district, so very proud week for for me at least for being part of the school district. That's it. Thank you. To Dr. friendship. Thank her
080for presenting planning committees. Grow your own pipeline strategy. I'll go. April 19 was AI literacy day. I don't know if you can tell but I'm into AI. I'm actually a human being. But, but I want to just call out one we had a really strong showing Dr. French was there at the tech interactive museum, alongside representatives from the White House representatives from the state government of superintendents across the state. And it was really great to also see five organizations. I think all five are nonprofits, all releasing curriculum and resources and tools. For students to use in classrooms from age from second grade on to 12th grade, but also some curriculum that's really mainly for adult learners who are trying to understand use cases just for making their job more efficient, or finding appropriate use cases
081in educational context. And so, this is the kind of work where we're looking for philanthropy, and for school districts, and our educator communities to come together and say, here's the supports that we need. And it was a great first step to to deliver on those resources. I would also, I just got back from Washington DC, and there's a number of policy proposals around new funding for infrastructure. And that includes updating school infrastructure so I'd encourage us to look into that. The S or funding cliff which was the emergency funding from coven is all going away. And so they're looking for ways to continue to invest in schools, but it's unlikely, you know that the legislative report was from a federal level, it's unlikely to come into operational dollars but but more likely into facility dollars.
082So something probably not relevant to our upcoming round of the facility financing because the legislation hasn't all passed but in future times we've got a roadmap, we've got a facility master plan. And then last I just want to thank all of our teachers and school staff may is kind of this final push. And June, you know, is still far enough on the horizon that it still seems like a long way away. And I just want to encourage everyone every last bit of reading every last bit of writing and math and project based learning all of these pieces, really, you know move learners forward and it is shown that when they have meaningful experiential learning in May June, that carries over through the summer to guard against learning loss over the summer. So this is just
083a really great time for all that learning to come to fruition and thank you for all your hard work. Back to you. Thank you. Okay. So, I have been reflecting on our last board meeting and wanted to share some additional thoughts quickly regarding the negotiations with CSCA. I realize we have a small audience that are meeting tonight compared to last time so I may need to find other ways to get this message out but the main thing I wanted to do is assure our classified staff members that we as a board do deeply value their contributions to the district. We know they're the backbone of our schools and we couldn't operate our schools without them. They provide essential services that allow our teachers to focus on education and create a safe environment for our students.
084I know that all of us on the board recognize how important their contributions are to student success. And I believe our actions of the board over the past three years have shown how we value our staff, and we approved raises for staff last year and the year before, as well as the proposed increase for this year. And an impasse and negotiations doesn't mean that we don't value our employees, it just means that the district and CSCA haven't found common ground yet in all issues. So I hope we can continue to work together in a positive way as we close out the school year. Our students deserve that from us, and I appreciate how much our classified staff do to make our schools safe and welcoming places for our students every day. We've been through difficult
085times as a district before and I remain confident that we can get through this challenge and ultimately reach an agreement that benefits everyone. The other thing I wanted to say is that I'm headed to Anaheim tomorrow for the California Distinguished School Celebration. I'm looking forward to the opportunity to celebrate Central, and if they have achieved this year. I'll pass it over to you. Okay. First of all, Dan Lanier sends his regrets, his mother had surgery and so he is helping out with them. In May we elevate and we celebrate all staffs. We have classified week. This week we lifted up our heroes in the nutrition department. Thank you, Jen Gabri. She had students writing notes alongside Sheila. We have teacher appreciation week. There are lots of ways to celebrate staff and as Ben points out,
086make sure that we keep the energy strong. I was so proud to be at Arroyo at 12 15 on a Wednesday, and kids were talking to me about their project based learning they were reading historical fiction. And as a reminder, they were just getting ready to get out of school but they were working in their groups and nobody was looking for their backpack and so I know for sure that our leaders and our teachers and our staff are making sure every second counts. We had a principal celebration yesterday. It was like principal awareness day or something important. Yeah, we can't keep up with all of this. And so I asked Amber to help me write a poem, and she, she collaborated with chat GPT, and then I tried to make it better and I had
087a little fight with AI because they wanted all the principles have ties. And then I said, how about sometimes they're women so then they had ties and gowns. And so, as we learn to grow, I'm going to read a haiku. Okay, in the halls of learning principles guiding light shines gratitude abounds with a nod to Ambers first attempt, I just decided to keep it short. Thank you. Okay, we are now going to adjourn to close session to discuss items 13 A and B is listed on the agenda. Do we have any public comments on. Okay, the board will now adjourn to close session. Okay, the board will now leave closed session and reconvene into open session pursuant to California government code section 54957.1 no reportable action was taken in closed session on items 13 A
088or B. And then I adjourned this meeting at 835pm.