Board of Education Regular Meeting, May 27, 2025

001We have a full house here tonight. Thank you for showing up. We appreciate having you. I'd like to welcome everyone here uh in the chamber to uh No, no, go ahead. It's okay. All right, let's rock and roll. Uh, I'd like to welcome everyone here in the chamber and those watching via live stream and call the May 27th, 2025 regular meeting of the board of education to order with all members present. Uh, we start as we always do with our flag ceremony. The University City High School Marine Corps JOTC color guard will present the colors. Please stand for the presentation. Left face. Please join us in the pledge of allegiance. Trusty Cruz, would you like to lead? I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it

002stands. One nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. forward. All right. Thank you. Please be seated. Okay. Land acknowledgement is a traditional custom that dates back centuries in many native nations and communities. Our land acknowledgement was developed in partnership with Kumi local leaders. Students from San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts prepared the following video to show our respect for the Kumi people who are the original stewards of the land our school district occupies. We respectfully acknowledge that the Kumi people are the original inhabitants and caretakers of these lands now known as San Diego. Despite the attempted genocide and ongoing impacts of colonization, the Kumi spirit remains unbroken and their traditions continue to thrive as they carry the memories of their ancestors who bravely resisted cultural erasure and fought to protect

003their land and way of life. In honoring their legacy, we pledge to uphold their cultural heritage and right to safeguard their sacred connection to the land for future generations. With gratitude and strength, we stand with the Kumi, embracing the past while forging a brighter tomorrow. All right, we will now move to item B, adoption of the agenda. We have a full docket tonight. You can frequently tell by the size of our audience how full our docket is. Uh and uh we will have the semiannual report from our district advisory council on compensatory education, our DAC, and a progress monitoring report on interim guard row 1.1 and 1.2 related to effective communication. Could all do a little bit more of that. Uh do I have a motion to adopt tonight's agenda as published? I I've got

004a motion from Trusty Hayen and a second from Trusty Baldis. We will move to a vote. Student trustees, please vote. All other board members, please vote. That motion passes unanimously with student trustees concurring. Clipping along here. Uh, Miss Alz, uh, can you please provide information to the public speakers about today's meeting protocols? Yes. Today's meeting of the board of education is a business meeting that is conducted in public and board members will not engage in dialogue with members of the audience. Board bylaw 1025 sets the time limit for public comment on agenda items at 10 minutes per side pro and con or 20 minutes total. Speakers will be able to provide testimony at the beginning of the appropriate agenda item or at the end of the meeting for non-aggenda comment. Please listen for your name

005to be called. Speakers are listed and called in the order received. When your name is called, please come to the podium to speak. Please follow along with the agenda so that you know when your item is coming up for discussion. When you begin speaking, the green light below my name on the dis indicates that the timer has started. When the light turns yellow, you will have one minute remaining. A buzzer will indicate that your time has expired. If you have not yet done so and would like to sign up for in-person public comment, iPads are available in the back of the auditorium and in the lobby. Excellent. So we uh as our agenda had a C1 which is our student advisory board report. We will be hearing that at our next meeting. Uh tonight we

006will proceed to item C2 which is the adoption of the resolution uh in the matter recognizing exceptional academic achievement. Uh trustes Baldis and Hazen uh as co-sponsors resolution would you like to say a few words? Trusty Hazen. Thank you President Patterson. Tonight I am proud to join uh student board member Bal Baldis in recognizing our validictorians and saludiatorans of the class of 2025. These students have demonstrated extraordinary academic achievement, perseverance, and integrity and deserve to be honored. Their success reflects not just academic excellence, but also resilience, determination, and the ability to overcome personal and systemic challenges to reach the highest level of academic achievement. This resolution is especially important because for the first time in many years, the district chose not to hold the salute to excellence ceremony, a long-standing tradition that celebrated these accomplishments.

007and Quinton and I introduced this resolution to ensure students still receive the public recognition they've earned. Their success reflects not only their hard work but also the support of families, educators, and school communities. So to our validictorians and saludiatoran salutatorans, we see you, we honor you and congratulate you on this milestone. Trusty Bas I can personally speak from a student's perspective being a valid Victorian or saludiatoran is an incredible accomplishment to balance sports extracurriculars and being the highest achieving GPA student in your school is a excellent accomplishment and we really do have to honor these students. So thank you all for your hard work, determination and grit and we do see you. Thank you for the introduction. Um, do we have a motion on this item? I will give uh we have a motion from

008Trusty Baldis and a second from Trusty Hazen. Uh, Miss Doulson, are there any speakers on this item? Okay, we will move to trustee discussion. Um, it looks like right out of the gate we have pain. Yes, I I want to say that um it seems like this year has just been so crunched. There's so many things because I think I've been to the last nine years of them and I'm really sorry and apologize to the students that we did not have it at SeaWorld or at the zoo or wherever we always have it. U but it just seems like we've crammed so much into this abbreviated year and um that's one of the things that I really am sorry that we've missed. So, please accept this on our behalf tonight in honor of all the

009work that you've done. Thank you, uh, Vice President Barrera. Yeah, thank you so much, trustees, Baldis and Hazen, for bringing this forward and making sure that our valictorians and saludiatorans are getting the recognition that they deserve. And we certainly congratulate everybody. Um, but we were especially proud of the San Diego High uh valadictorian, if we could put that a familiar uh uh person to to all of us here. So, congratulations, Matthew. Yep. Yeah. Trusty Bazo. Yeah. I echo my colleagues congratulatory remarks. Um, I was at a Miram Mesa Senior Awards early last week and uh they've they they say every year the principal is like this is the highest we've ever had and the only reason it's not a 5.0 is because they don't have AP PE. So they're working on a AP PE class.

010Um, but it was like 4.95 like something crazy which means they just got straight A's all the way through, you know, not one B. So, um just incredible. So, and you know, not only congratulations to um those students, but all of our students that are going to be graduating. I think we're all looking forward to uh the upcoming graduations and representing our classes. Thank you, Trust Bazo. Any additional comment? All right. U seeing none, we will uh move to a vote. Uh student trustees, please vote. All other all those trustees please vote. All right, that motion passes unanimously with student trustees concurring. And at this time, we are going to do one of our famous photo opportunities. So, we invite any of our validictorians and saludiatorans present in the auditorium to join us on the

011dis for a photo. So, if you'd like to come up, we'd like to have you. [Applause] Thanks for coming. Okay. You ready? Ready. Three, two, one. [Applause] Yes. All right. And I think Richard was referring to our former student trustee Matthew Ctorianiano who is is he a validatoran or yeah not validatoran um but not present tonight but he's been here many many nights. Um okay we're good. Uh with that uh we will move to item D1. Uh report out general counsel green under D1. Are there any reportable actions from close session? No. I have to ask that even though I was there and I know there was none. So, uh, we're now to item D2. Dr. Bula, under item D2, are there any management appointments to announce? I think there may be. Yes. Yes, there

012might be. I am really excited to welcome the following school leaders to San Diego Unified, fully knowing that they're getting keys to a school that is that I hope captures their heart and all of their leadership. So for um Gage Elementary School, Claudia Bugarin for Baker, Baker Elementary School, Jessica Navara for FA Elementary School, Joanna Bilma for Toller Elementary School. Christina Campisi for Cadman Elementary. Jeff Freriedenburgg. Welcome back. And our executive director instruction assigned to office of graduation, Dr. Jen Robersonson for all of your hard work. All right, don't go too far. Um item D3, Dr. Beula, uh could you please provide your information report? Yes, and it was great. I'm really grateful that you brought um the resolution for salatorans and validictorians. It's my aim to celebrate students more, not less. Um and so

013with that, we know that this end of the school year marks a marker for success. Um and it's actually students are at the center of everything we do for San Diego Unifi. So May being the graduation month, this week being full of celebrations, um I want to make sure that we celebrate all the hard work and determination put in by our students. I recently had the privilege of attending the golden pyramid scholars celebration alongside trustee Sharon Whitehurst Payne and also the firstgen scholar event. I was really proud to see 132 of our students be recognized by the urban league of San Diego County at the golden pyramid event and about 140 of our students to be recognized at the firstg scholars. These students like like you here are shining examples of the outstanding young adults

014who are preparing for their futures. And to properly prepare students, sometimes we have to put policies in place to ensure students can focus on their studies and not outside distractions. Which brings me to our next item, which is our district's cell phone policy. I don't know about you, but I get lots of questions about where we are in this policy. Um, but I appreciate taking things slow to be very thorough. So over the past several months, I've been engaging in meaningful conversations with members of our student advisory board and our parent teacher association leaders across the district about our cell phone policy. Our team has also analyzed California's new phone-f free school act with reviewed current cell phone policies across our middle schools and high schools. While many campuses already have restrictions in place, enforcement

015and expectations vary widely. And that's exactly what we're trying to get to. We don't want the inconsistency because that creates confusion and inequity. We've sent out recent communication to both parents and staff with a draft policy requesting any sort of feedback you might have for final input which we expect to receive by May 30th. And after all of that feedback is reviewed and changes are are appropriately made, we'll present the new policy to the board of education. So you'll see it here shortly. I also want to provide you an update and extend my deep appreciation to San Diego Unified for the way they stepped up when community was rocked by tragedy. In the early morning hours of Thursday, May 22nd, just last week, San Diego Unified team members sprung into action when a small plane

016crashed in the Murphy Canyon neighborhood, which is an area where some of our students and families live. About 1,200 students were impacted between those two schools. This was an unfortunate accident, but it brought together lots of community. So, I'm here to thank everyone who answered that call, but especially police chief Todd Jarvis, Officer Mason, and his entire team. Brian M from building operations, who was able to get Miller Elementary open before 5:00 a.m. so it can be prepped to be an emergency evacuation site. Dr. Dr. Michelle Kazari, the area superintendent for those school communities, who was instrumental in making sure all of the coordination with our schools, families, and first responders was happening. And both principles, Irene High Tower from Hancock and Denise Schoolard from Miller, both of them and their teams were outstanding. What

017I saw was everyone just coming together and putting wrapping their arms around a community, making sure that our students were safe and the community was safe as well. So, student and family wellness are a top priority and during this very difficult situation, our district made a real positive impact. We have a brief video um to show you just to give you a sense of of what it was like at Miller that morning. [Music] San Diego Unified School District. The superintendent talked to us and she was very uh adamant on explaining how well the reaction was to everything, you know, around six o'clock this morning. We're trying to offer daycare um not only for children and impacted families, but for any families that still need to have to go to work. Um we're also offering spite

018for any sort of pets um that might be impacted by this. But we have food, we have clothing. Um I was told that there was families that showed up with no shoes because they evacuated their home. So we have shoes, clothing, anything that they might need. Um, again, shower facilities if they need to shower before they need to head somewhere else. Um, but I'm really impressed by at least seven different community organizations that immediately said, "How can we help?" And we're going to show up to help. [Music] So it could have just been [Music] before that I wasn't [Music] So again, I just wanted to capture how quickly everyone just came together to wrap their arms around that whole community and I was just really grateful to be there because it was very, very stressful

019and very scary. Um, I do want to end though my report with some exciting news. one of our very own was recognized by San Diego County Office of Education as teacher of the year. Um, we got to meet him. Yes. Um, I want to congratulate uh Deorola Middle School educator Kevin White. He teaches Gateway to Technology, a college and career technical education course and has a mastery of broad spectrum of K through2 disciplines. He is resourceful and formed many partnerships, Toshiba, Taylor Guitar, and recently launched a capstone project that allows his secondyear students to design and build custom electric guitars that employ advanced CAD software and digital manufacturing. He's one of our district's teachers of the year, but he's also now recognized as one of the best teachers in the county. So, here's a little

020video about Kevin Learning. He was named San Diego County Teacher of the Year. And thank you, Trusty Hazen, for being there for the celebration. [Music] It was a surprise. Yeah. No, to the teacher. Yes. Fire drill. [Music] It's amazing. It's thrilling and it's a amazing shock. I have I had no idea this was coming. So, this is something that I never aspired to reach this level of teacher of the year. And the fact that I'm here now, it's uh it it gets my heart beating. Yeah. Countless hours that go into preparing and delivering lessons and grading assignments is tremendous and often not appreciated. Could not be more excited to be here this morning to celebrate you, Mr. White. Now, what we know in San Diego Unified, the entire county of San Diego knows what an

021incredible teacher you are. Someone who cares deeply about your student continuing to get better and better and provide incredible experiences every day. So, thank you for everything you do and congratulations. [Music] Thank you all very much. And I have to give a shout out to all of you, the amazing students who inspire me every day. And thank you for being awesome. You guys, [Applause] that concludes my report. Thank you, Dr. Beula. My kids and I went by Hancock Elementary on Saturday and the USAA catastrophe response team was still there. They were very grateful to the staff at Hancock and Santa Unified. Um so thank you for the work on that. We will now hear item E1 uh semian annual report from our district advisory council on comp compensatory education which we call the DAC. Dr.

022Beula, you're back. Please introduce the item. It's my pleasure to introduce this spring's update from the district advisory council on compensatory education programs. This presentation underscores the vital role that parent, student, and community voices continue to play in shaping equitable decisionmaking across our schools, particularly through our school site councils or SSC's. Presenting this evening is Lina Parker, DAC chair from Crawford and Man, Dr. Crystal Troll, first vice chair, Claremont High School and La Hoya High School, Nathan Williams, second vice chair and student leader from San Diego High School. Kishana Christopher, title one representative from Lincoln High School, and Dario Gutierrez, our director of strategic planning for student achievement. Together, they will walk us through key updates and outcomes related to onboarding, attendance, community engaging engagement, and student representation. Please join me in expressing our sincere

023appreciation to the DAC executive board, our SSC representatives across all 175 sites and the SPSA support team for their steadfast dedication to uplifting family and community voices in our decision-making. But I also want to say I always enjoy my time speaking to this group. You have really great ideas and I see you going out and actually working with SSC. So, thank you for doing that hard work. Um, and I'm going to pass it on to you to lead us through that. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Mulla. say, "Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world." Some powerful words by Nelson Mandela. Good evening, everyone. My name is Lucina Parker. It is truly an honor to stand before you today as the chair of the District Advisory Council for Compensatory

024Education, also known as your DAC. On behalf of our dedicated council, I want to extend our helpful welcome to each of our esteemed board members, superintendent Beula, administrators, educators, parents, students, and community members. Your presence here speak volumes about your commitment to the success and well-being of every student in our district. Education is more than just academic. Is it opportunity, equity, and ensuring that every student regardless of background has the support and resources needed to thrive? So tonight, as we come together in discussion and collaboration, we recognize that progress is made not just by policies, but by the dedication of individuals like all of you. Now, it is my pleasure to introduce my amazing team as Dr. Pakula already beat me to that and introduced them. So the purpose of our DAC, we always forget

025that purpose. So welcoming Nathan William Sue the podium to explain and good afternoon steamboard members. Um, I'm going to go over the purpose of the DAC and why we function. And that first point being we are there to support all school site councils. School site councils encompass students, parents, community members as well as staff. They ensure we are there to ensure effective use of state and federal compensatory funding to all students around every school site. We focus as on title one funding and that encompasses students who are foster youth, low-income English learners and or homeless. The DAC is there to provide resources and encouraging use of quantitative and qualitative data. ensuring equity in student learning around the district. We ultimately are there to be the I don't want to say middleman, but we're there to

026be a link of connection between the district leaders and all school sites, ensuring that all school site councils function effectively. Next, I'd like to introduce the Kasha Kishana Christopher, our title one rep, and explaining the why and okay, good evening everyone. So, here's our why. This um this slide is comprised of parent um responses that have come to the DAC and asked answered these questions. So um in these why statements this is showing us why they um want to be a part of this group this committee. Um we don't want to go um anywhere without full knowledge. And so parents are wanting to be a part of this to access um um objective and school district information to stay updated and to get that um firsthand knowledge about things that are going to impact their

027families or their communities because a lot of oftent times this person this leader that is a part of the DAC is also um a leader in their communities and they go out and tell other parents and other um students what's happening. and what they've learned, which is um one of the key reasons why we want to continue to keep these um groups intact. Next slide is our onboarding processes. What we're trying to do this year and is to transform how parents and community and students are welcomed in to the SSC's. And that's um largely in part of um how we are giving them the information. It's one thing to elect an SSC member and it's another thing to actually bring them into the fold and say here is all the tools you need to be

028successful in your position. Here are some topics that may interest you. Here are some questions you may um you want to to know to form your thought process and advocacy around to really just get in that position and not just sit there um but to increase their engagement with their principles, with the school staff and a body of um people that could help them to um improve the school. And so in our onboarding system or process that we are um um creating at this time is to streamline so that all schools have the same information when a new member comes on board and they know exactly what to do. Um they have the tools, the essentials, everything they need to hit the ground running and to um make a positive um impact at their school

029site. And by doing so, we will um decrease uh members from not coming or or not feeling comfortable to speak and not feeling like they have the um most adequate information at these meetings. I'm sorry. Next is Crystal Troll. All right. So, we always have goals of the DAC because we're always trying to improve and make sure we're moving forward. So another one of our goals is to uh around communication which is not a new goal necessarily but we're we're taking some different strategies and approaches. Uh one of the things that we've discovered is that standardization about SSSE information is not consistent across school sites. So one of the things that we're trying to do is make sure that each school website has the same information when the SSE meeting is held, what the agendas

030are, the minutes, who's on the SSE from the current year. Some school sites have members from five years ago. So really making sure that that's consistent, I think, will help with the awareness that we've been talking about over the years. We also have a centralized platform. We call it our landing page that is a a one-stop shop for SSE and DAC reps to find the information they need to share with their SSEs. Uh so we're really making sure we're making the most of that. Um really trying to be transparent uh and as well as compliant. sometimes they don't always go together, but we're going to work hard to make sure that we're not only compliant, but transparent. Um, making sure, as I mentioned, all the all the information is posted. And then also, one of

031the other things that we're talking about at the DAC is to um ensure that we're actually monitoring this kind of thing. We're all volunteers. Uh, and we do this because we love the work and um, you know, but we're committed to doing it well. So, we're really going to rely on support from you, the district, to help us monitor and make sure that we're reaching out to 175 school sites to to make sure that the SSC's are really as strong as they can be. And we're also looking for ways to make continuous improvements, gathering feedback. We're always always welcoming feedback and we actually um use that to inform our decisions and we circle back with our DAC and our families and telling them, you know, what we've done and how how their input has made

032a difference. All right. Now, you know, I love the data. So, we're going to talk about some data. So, in our DAC meetings, the purpose of of these meetings are to really um empower our DAC reps to bring this information back to their SSES to share with their SSSE members and the broader school site. And so, what this means is we have to be really careful to make sure that whatever's presented in that hour and a half time once a month um has most bang for its buck. So all of the presentations we we allow, we kind of gatekeep those presentations to make sure they're actually purposeful are related to the work of the SSC. So you can see a sample of some of the topics um that we've provided over this past year. Um

033and then there's we always take a poll of how relevant we you know this topic was for any given meeting and we continue to show strong relevancy for our topic. So that tells us we're on the right track. We're not 100% relevant. So, that's something that we're going to work on to close that gap to make sure in the coming year that we're 100% relevant. I'm going to turn it back over to Kishana. Thank you. And so as the title one representative, what um came to my mind is that um back around 1998ish and in the early 2000s, I'm kind of dating myself, but that's around the time frame where I first started to be involved in um school site councils for my children who are in their 30s now. But um with this um

034set of children that I have that are teens and um one is at Lincoln, I wanted to to help us to get a way where we don't always have to go up to the school to get information if we want it. We don't always have to um ask um people if in person if we don't want to or we can't do it at that time. Um parents are busy, community members are busy and so for the first time um we are now launching a link that has already been live and active and working and this gives you access with just four steps, four simple steps and you will get the budget. You will be able to see what's happening at the school. You will be able to see what the money is being spent on.

035you will be able to um then form your questions and come to our committees, our school site councils, our um um SGTs or even the school board and ask questions about budgets and be informed about it before you get there. Um back in the 90s and the early 2000s, you had to like just walk up to the school and and be equipped to have that conversation and not everybody is able to do that. And so now what this has done is at your fingertips, you can just um there are the steps and once you hit that QR code, go through those steps and you'll have the budget in minutes. I've tried it at many different schools and I know it works and I think that this is um a transformative tool that we've used to

036actually show the community and um parents, students what we're doing with the money and how it's being spent. And so, um, this is just one of the key things that we're doing to, um, push things a little bit further and to transform things for, um, the people who are interested. And with that, I will give it to Dario. Good afternoon, trustees. Dr. Bgula. So for 2627 we will continue to monitor DAC participation and look towards ways to prevent schools from tapering off but we'll begin shifting that goals and monitoring to not be just around attendance because we know attendance is uh important but actually look at the outcomes that we're having at schools looking at student success what's working not working that's one of the key features. So that is what we'll be shifting our

037uh monitoring for the upcoming school year. But this uh slide right here just highlights some of the key trends to DAC meeting attendance clusters from 22 to 25. So we looked at some longitudinal data. So I want to just celebrate some wins and some recognitions. So that we have specialized settings have reached 100% participation this year. um that's at least attending once that Crawford demonstrated remarkable process in uh pro uh progress increasing attendance from just 40% last year all the way to 90% this year and Morse has shown a steady improvement improvement also hitting the 90% mark peaked at 87% or 85% in 23 24 and remained strong despite a small decline so there are some clusters with really solid um attendance so mirror mace has stayed reliably high at about 80% % the Lincoln

038has held steady around 64% so a little bit more than 50% on there and that Henry cluster around 72% um year-over-year so in terms of next steps so what are our steps so we want to start doing this intervention early intervention and clusters um that show a decline to offer some kind of support to make sure that again the school site councils are receiving the training support that we need to make sure that student success is what we're always trying to accomplish. We're going to continue recognizing uh and sustain high performing clusters through acknowledgement and encouragement such as uh today, but do it actually at the DAC meetings. And we'll also aim to gather topics suggestions directly from school site councils to better align future agendas with uh site interests and needs. So to Dr.

039Kroll's point, you know, making sure that all of our presentations are highly relevant for school sites. Some uh building on the previous slide, what we have here is this one dives a little bit deeper into insights by category. So when we look at our title one status that our title one schools are outperforming our non-title one schools, we know it's district advisor for compensatory education, but really the function and role of the DAC is also to support all school site councils, not just title one sites. So we want to make sure that we have that buy in from our non-title one sites as well. looking at our school types at high schools and K8s uh consistently show higher participation rates. We want to also be bringing in the student members from our secondary school sites.

040Uh elementary middle school sites trail slightly and they do are in need of additional support. So that's that followup that we want to start doing. We talk about bringing it back towards your SSC and we want to do is like uh start bringing in like what was that followup happening at school site councils. atypical schools do have a strong initial showing but they do show that there's no long-term attendance. So when you want to really gather in to figure out what's on that and the last one is that uh network D does lead into the long-term engagement but network has the highest number of schools with a high percentage. So some of just the insights so again action steps going forward what we're planning on doing is just uh do some uh targeted surveys with

041the elementary and middle school sites to uncover some of those attendance barriers. We are fully online, so that has helped with attendance uh from previous years, but we're still wondering why do we have some school sites aren't doing it. Our DAC is wonderful. As Dr. Kroll said, we have that one-stop shop. So, all presentations are posted online and all of our school site council members have access to the DAC presentations, but we want to make sure that they're there available to engage with our uh presenters at DAC meetings. We want to do follow up with our one-on-one site leaders uh to help us understand the specific uh why those drop offs do occur. And again, we're going to just highlight some of our attendees and some of our uh work that's happening at school site

042council. So when a school site council comes to a DAC meeting, they're hearing from their fellow committee members as to, you know, what is happening at school site council. our DACA members are actually attending school site councils to figure out what is it that we're trying and need to accomplish at our actual DAC meetings. Again, recognition does matter. We want to highlight the school sites that are attending and we want to publicly acknowledge all of the information. So, some of our DAC goals, you know, it's just summarizing of our strategic goals for 2425. Again, we will be shifting more from more transactional from just attendance data into actually monitoring what is actually happening at school sites because the presentations that we're having uh we're saying that are going to be relevant to student success. So

043goal number one as you can see on there is you know we have had an increase of attendance 72 uh percent participation again we want them to continue following up coming to those uh we do have uh for goal two which was there last year's at least 33% of our sites attended six or more DAC meetings you know we're we're actually doing showing progress year after year therefore again we're going to move now into actions for it um Dr. Kari talked about the highly relevant presentations. You know, we are already having that success, but we want to make sure we're trying to get to 100% but also including, you know, the feedback back from the non-title one schools when we are doing some title one targeted presentations on there. And then, uh, as far as

044student involvement, we do have more participation, um, that we've had in previous years. So again, our long-term vision is about continuing to empower the school site council membership. Uh improve access to timely and relevant information. We have that show us the money on there. We are presenting out some new SSC agenda templates. The DAC members have uh executive members have access early access to what we have on there. And we're talking about access at your fingertips for any new school site. Council member bylaws, parent family engagement policies, homeschool parent compact trainings, presentations, videos, all of them ready for any new SSC member to come and have access to it. So with your partnership, I think we're on the right track and I appreciate any kind of uh uh feedback back from the DAC. So with

045that towards our last slides, we have co-presented between our student member and then myself. So he just talked about partnership and the DAC we would like to continue that partnership with the district and for that we have requests that have been ongoing along with some new ones. The some of the ongoing ones being communication and helping um in any way shape or form and continuing monthly meetings with the district leadership. also the coordinating the official involvement of the DAC in the development of LCAP for all students as some of the new ones being community presence and boosting that up for the community members in school site councils as well as the DAC during the monthly meetings. And then we go on to the uh development and accountability plan and ensure that ensures SPSA goals are

046implemented throughout the entirety of the process. All right. You can see our district response. You know, we always welcome the dialogue that we have monthly. Uh previously we're having with Dr. Bula and D executive. I believe DAC executive wants to really work with our department to really uh tune all our resources that we're providing to school site council. So I'm I'm really looking forward to continuing that partnership we have on there as part of the development of the LCAP. You know, we are committed to uh meaningful uh meaningful uh two-way conversations with the uh DAC. So we've had uh several LCAP presentations uh at our DAC and so we want to make sure that continues. Community presence, you know, we encourage to have a visitable DAC. We are asking, you know, schoolside councils to continue

047coming to our DAC meetings and it's about that family committee engagement. And finally, the accountability pro accountability uh policy about our SPSA goal implementation. That really is one of the visions for SPS for the DAC about accountability. Do we write that uh school plan for student achievement? You know, what is it uh and how are we going to hold our school sites uh uh accountable for ensuring that the goals are on track? I know Dr. Moreno is already creating uh lots of uh dashboard data, public dashboard data that should been shared with the DAC executive. She created a new dashboard for principles that I had a sneak peek at today. I don't know if anybody's seen it, but that sneak peek progress is talking about looking at I Ready, looking at fast assessments and looking

048at our spotlight students and you know where our successes at different school sites. So actually excited to kind of continue that kind of progress with the DAC with that to close it out. I have our chair. Thank you. Thank you. As you can hear from our presentation, we have been busy. Um, we have a new superintendent, so we wanted to match her energy on trying to improve everything. And with that being said, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge and express my sincere gratitude to everyone who makes up our diverse community. This includes the DAC representatives from all 175 sites and their teams, title one representatives, members of the board of education, trustees, district staff, DAC executive board and body. I want to thank our translators every meeting. They're there hard working hard

049for us. And then the last thank you go out to our SPS department. Um this year we came demanding a lot of things and Daario did not sit. As you can see Daario came out with a lot of things to make sure that we are able to effectively communicate effectively do our job. So I want to thank you Dario and your department for everything that you've done for our DAC. And now opening the for up for any comments or feedbacks any questions. Thank Thank you so much. Uh first of all, we're gonna um hold on one second. We're going to take some uh Do we have any speakers uh from the public? Do we have any uh speakers in public? Um well, it looks like we don't you still can't hear me. Okay. How's Can

050you folks hear me out there? It may be a speaker question. Maybe that we don't have a speaker directed back toward you. I'll try I'll try to speak loudly. Everyone try to speak loudly, I guess. Or we can double up and maybe get more. Um, okay. Uh, we have no comments from the public at this point, so we will move to board comments. And it looks like Trusty Cruz is ready to go. Thank you, President Peterson. Thank you for this wonderful presentation. I've served on my school site council my entire high school career. It's what's given me the insight that helps me serve on this board to this day. And real quick, I think that last 10% on Morse's SSSE attendance is largely due in part to me because I've had to miss a few

051SSSE meetings due to board meetings. But I I digress. Um I really do appreciate, especially coming from a title one school, all the work the DAC does in ensuring that we're working effectively and efficiently. As a district, we strive for taking best practices and making it the standard. And so the work you guys do in supporting our ground level teams like our SSC's, our SPS, it's nothing but incredible. So thank you. Thank you, Trusty Cruz. Well said, U Vice President Breer and then Trusty Baltz. Uh thank you, President Patterson. So, first of all, uh Lina and Crystal and Kishana and Nathan, thank you so much for your leadership and and stepping up. I have to say that this is the most representative leadership of the DAC from our title one schools um that I've seen.

052Uh and so and I know that that that has been a longtime goal of Crystal. So really really uh thank you for that. And uh Nathan um you're bringing not only the student voice but we can feel your leadership and your passion just in in your presentation. Thank you so much. And Dios, thank you of course for all the support that you're providing. Um and I appreciate the point uh Dio that you're making about um wanting in the board the the presentations of the DAC to the board. Um, we really want to hear your insights about uh how we're using our Title One funds to move our goals, you know, forward. And you know what would be really terrific would be um if you could ask the questions, do the analysis and then report out

053to the board but also to the public um around how are our title one funds being used around our student outcome uh focused goals. So wellness and literacy and math and college and career readiness and especially for our spotlight students. um how are schools prioritizing investment of title one funds in those goals and essentially how are we doing you know as a district. So just really appreciate it. I think you're building the infrastructure in the DAC that will allow you uh you know to to bring that level of uh focus and accountability uh to our public presentations around the use of our title one funds. Thank you so much for your work. I have trusty Baldis and then Trusty Whites Payne and then probably Trusty Hazen and then probably Trusty Bazo. Okay, I just want

054to start by saying thank you very much Nathan. It's amazing to see student voice and we do really appreciate all the work that you guys do as a committee. I am however a little bit concerned about goal four as in with a district of this magnitude 96,000 plus students and so many other school sites to only have five students on the advisory committee does seem to be a little bit short. I'm wondering if as a committee we're interested in expanding this, trying to get more representation from all schools and how we could go about this. Well, you know, that that's a I mean, it's a very important thing to bring out because that is definitely something that we've been trying to do over the years. Um there are some, you know, challenges to overcome with

055um high schools and middle schools. those are the only schools that can actually have students on their SSC's which then translate to a DAC rep. So sometimes it's about uh meeting times, sometimes it's about um you know workload for students, but I think ultimately what it comes down to is really just um encouraging and making available the opportunity for these students to serve. Sometimes students don't realize it's even a possibility till after the election for their schools site council. So, I think it's just really about increasing the awareness that students do have a place, an important place at their school site council. Definely, and I completely agree. I right now I'd be hesitant to move forward with the goal of only having five students on this. So, I'm interested to see if we could amend

056this for a higher percentage of students or a higher number of students because again, I can just share my hesitations. Five students seems very low. All right. Aim high. I agree. Yeah. Would you Is that Are you It's kind of Yeah, I would hope to amend Well, we're not. So, if I if I may offer We're just receiving a report or but I think moving forward on Yeah. If I may offer, let us look back at the rosters and see um because this these are students who are identified as the DAC rep for their school site council. But as in terms of students serving on SSC's, I I want to say we're I think a 60 we have about 60% of school sites that have a student representative on their SSSE for the school sites

057that do have. So let's look back at the roster and see um how how that kind of pans out. Okay. What what's a good number for you? What would you feel comfortable with? I mean, I I don't have a specific number right now, but if we were to move to request a higher number, I would be more comfortable in the ballpark of like 15 to 20 students on this committee. Okay, maybe we can come with a percentage. Maybe that will be a a way to approach it as well. That'd be very helpful. Thank you very much. Because I gathered the data part of the part of the problem was data gathering. We could only identify anybody signed in who had that stu uh email. Some people were signing in with their own personal email. So,

058we couldn't figure out who exactly they were. So, we're going to fix our Google forms to say, are you a student member or are you a parent community member? So, we have to kind of uh adjust our signin process. Yeah, you should communicate how attractive DAC participation is on college transcripts. Very And one quick comment um because on the SSC that I serve on, I'm the DAC rep, but there are three students that serve on the SSC at Lincoln High School. So that that's just something I want to bring out. Thank you. kind of interesting that that all would come up because that's what he was whispering to me as you all were speaking that about the Morris comment and the fact that he had to miss so many meetings and I asked him don't

059you have a substitute or can't somebody else come because they should not be penalized for the fact that he's here and required to be here by way of this position. Um, so I think we're all focusing on the fact that we need uh student representation, student voice, and I must say you did a a wonderful job, speak very well, speak nicely. We we enjoyed you participating tonight and uh we'd like to see more of that. So I agree with you. You have a second here on anything you want to do with that. I I also want to second what uh my colleague over there, Trustee Barrera said, "This is the first time I've seen such active participation from others in the community, and I'm hoping we get some good outcomes. I hope these numbers will

060go even higher now that we've got some others participating in this." I I said earlier in close session, I think I didn't realize I was so competitive. Uh, but I'm always I always want my schools to do well. Like last night, the children who went to the ball game hopefully was Hamilton the Hamilton students and then the team won. They were losing or whatever when I went to sleep, but they wound up winning. I understand. So, you know, I don't mean to be that competitive, but I appreciate all the hard work you all do for our students, for our children, and I want to just say keep it up and the rest of you get on board and let's do more for our students. Thank you. I can vouch. We knew she was very competitive.

061That was very clear. Just [Laughter] It's real. It's real, folks. It's real. Uh, we're we're gonna bounce over to Hazen and then we'll go to Trusty Boso at I know I had you on my stack. My stack don't lie. All right. And then Well, really appreciate all the work you're leading. Thank you all. I think over my twoish years on the board, the work of the DAC continues to get better and better. So, thank you. Um it's really exciting and I think you know Trusty Barrera said all of the things um that I was thinking as well but to really see your work um shifting to focus on goal monitoring and improving student outcomes which is why we all um collectively do this work is is really exciting and I think you we've been talking

062a lot um and I'm looking at superintendent Bugla around alignment right between the district goals and the LCAP and SPSAS and you all are such a critical piece in the alignment and so it'll be great to have you working much more closely on thinking about outcomes um and how our schools can be focused um on those outcomes really looking at the use of title one funds making decisions about your use of title one funds um in your budget so excited about that um I'm also also thinking about um our guard rails. There seems to be alignment around communications which I know we're going to be hearing more about. So really appreciate the feedback you're sharing there and that that's been a goal um and hope that that continues to be a goal um as we're

063all working to build trust with the community, provide transparent communications, um and be accountable. So please let us know what more um we can do to support schools in that way. Um, and I've also been thinking, um, and I guess it's a it's a wondering um, in the same way that teachers across schools are working closely together when they have shared priorities and principles are working across schools, what might it look like for um, DAC members or SSC's across schools come together when you have shared goals and to really dig in and think about what are the most efficacious use of, you know, those title one dollars to achieve the results um that you're working on together. And so I don't know if that's doable. Um but I think we always do better when we're

064working together. So it'd be interesting to see, you know, if if that might be able to be piloted. Um I'm really heartened also to see that we see the highest rates of attendance among uh title one schools since we know that is the priority um of the DAC. And I have a question uh about the attendance update um that you shared. So you shared a variety of outputs. So we saw um high schools show stronger ongoing participation than elementary and middle schools. And so I see a lot of what data and I'm wondering if you have any insights in into the why of of some of those attendance data points. appreciate the comment and know that's kind of one of our followups to create create those surveys uh for our school site council members um

065to find out like you know what is it what interested you in attending this SSC meeting especially for secondary school sites we have lots of representation there and so want we want to do that uh start that surveying to kind of make sure that we uh continue that uh uh progress for elementary and middles as secondary have job. Thank you. And then a question, and I don't know quite who it's for, but as I think about our shared desire to increase student engagement um on the DAC, is that an activity that would count for the state seal of civic engagement? Because I think as we think about how do we incentivize and motivate students recognizing their effort um in that way would be really wonderful. Just on your point um trusty Hazen about piloting uh

066how how the SSCs may come together. Actually at our last meeting with Dr. Gula, we talked about identifying a cluster with a strong um PTA presence that we would then coordinate with SSEs to see how they're connected across the CL cluster and if those um kind of practices are are moved forward as a as a parent or a student moves through the cluster. So, we are thinking about ideas of of piloting to see how how it works. But I've also I've had an idea of potentially having an intern. I know Claremont High School has an intern program, but we at the DAC, I'd love to work with an intern who could help us collect some of this data, visit school sites. You know, there's a lot of opportunity for leadership development that I know we

067would all be open to for students. Thank you. We're going to bounce back to Trusty Bazo and then come back. And then I wanted to add to that that one of our goals is community presence which is something we have been doing this year is visiting the schools because a lot of the kids didn't have didn't even know what an SSC is or you know who who's in there. So we I partnered with Nathan which is our student and we that's how we found out about the transparency. It wasn't transparent all the way around as far as schedule because we're trying to visit trying to get the feel trying to get the kids attracted and a lot of it with middle school they're not independent like high school. So there's got to be our presence

068to kind of let them know hey this is SSC. This is what we do. So, one more thing that we've been um discussing and and deliberating on piloting is um via clusters just going to the um different uh SSC's and also examining their um SPS to see if that alignment is there and to see if that progress is being made across grade levels. And so that's the work we're continuing to talk about and we're um really enthusiastic about moving things forward over the summer also to get closer to what we like to see. Thank you all so much. Thank you. So I'm going to say the stack so that everybody right now we have we're going to go Bazo then Beoula then Cruz then Whitehurst Payne. This is a very popular Oh okay. Yeah. jump

069in. Jump in. Yeah. Just to give a personal anecdote, when I ran my freshman year, there were three open spots and only three candidates. So, we were immediately put on. And when I when my term ended and I had to run again my junior and I had to run again my junior year, I don't even think I had to run because I think I was just appointed on. So, we really do want that 66% of schools to be 100%. you know, I really love Trusty Hazen's idea of really incentivizing this was, you know, so yeah, let's plump those numbers up. All right. Now, Trusty Boso and then Dr. Yes, thank you. Um, and looking at the attendance update slide, I see that my area uh well, network A is tied for the lead with network

070E. So, we're we're doing program start getting competitive now. just had to share that. Um um but no uh thank you and I love getting the input from all the different areas. It's it's that's fantastic. Really appreciate that. and in in talking about the community engagement. I think that's that's a lot of times what I really um go to um the parent engagement, the community engagement and in ways and I think this has been touched on a little bit but beyond just like attendance update even the LCAP um at some of these schools where we're doing well or we're seeing improvement um is that impacting it you know the parent engagement is high is there any way we can tie that to like literacy increases or math improvement at those schools because you know research

071shows the obviously usually the more you have the parent uh parents engaged and the community engaged typically they're more high performing schools. So tying it into all of that, all of their goals, all all of the things, um, would, you know, be exciting to see and kind of sounds like it's the next step. And also with with regard to representation, and I've mentioned this before because I know in Mir Mesa we have high attendance, but there is one lady in particular that I know goes to all the meetings. So, is it just one, you know, if one person's going to the meetings for all the schools, you know, is that really representative of that whole community? Um, are we getting a wide range of parents and other community members that might come to the the

072the meeting rather than just maybe one person who's saying, "I represent this whole community." Um, and then with PTA, you know, I think PTAs are great, but a lot of schools are not unfortunately. you know, all the schools my kids were at, we had PTA when I was there because I was involved with it and they don't have PTA anymore. Unfortunately, a lot of them gone to PTO's um so if there's a way to include engagement from some of those schools because PTA is not necessarily representative unfortunately um of all of our schools too. So just keeping that in mind as well. Thank you, Dr. Boo. I just wanted to say thank you. I was actually going to point out, Lucina, that you were visiting school sites looking um for transparency practices because that really

073impressed me the last time we met and I love that you're going out there too like hearing hearing the dedication that we have from this group. Um and also I really appreciate that you're using the data that is transparent with both money and achievement. So thank you to the team to putting those kinds of dashboards together. And I also wanted to say with your question around um student representation, well our communications guardrail is actually developing a way to communicate with students directly. So I think actually that's going to highlight our ability to be able to recruit more student representation across all of our governance. But I just wanted to say thank you because I really love meeting with you and I love the energy that you bring. So thank you very much. Thank you. Let

074me just say very briefly um I never like giving giving to-dos to volunteers. It's like it's such a thankless task and we are so appreciative of you. Um, and it's sort of interesting because this particular deck and Daario are kind of a black box because Dario Dario staffs it and you're doing a lot of the work and but you're in some ways reliant on Daario providing the resources that that paid employees of the district are able to provide to you. So, um, the couple comments I have are going to be about how we facilitate your work, um, and how we empowered Daario with staffing time and resources and able to in order to support you. And so, um, you know, the DACK ultimately is the tool you use to it's a district advisory committee. So,

075you are advising, but and DAC is the organization used to do that. And so the goals as they now stand as you alluded to are DAC specific goals but ultimately that's in order to improve the tool that you use to do a thing which is to be to to to do that advisory service. And so I guess in relation to that you know part of ultimately to me there's there's two real goals that the DAC as an institution once as you're improving it and you have improved it and done amazing work with it. How do we how do we help support the DAC not only to provide high quality content that's relative to that's relevant to SSC users um but also to actually drive SSSE participation. How do we help get you the tools to

076help us drive the SSE participation? That is one of the most challenging things and I served on SSC that was a non-title one where it was hard to even understand what an SEC was without title one funds. Um but I'll tell you something and this is relation other one. So one is how do we get metrics around the interventions the DAC is using and their impacts on driving SSC participation because that's really where the bottleneck is in terms of getting participation. It's getting SSC participation and then ensuring that that feeds into the DAC but ultimately it's order in order to get that participation at the grassroots. The other thing is and my colleagues I I wrote high leverage and and my colleagues have spoken to this already is the to me the most important information

077that DAC ultimately can provide is what are the high lever interventions what's the best cost benefit of those resources and ultimately you're going to need the district's support on that to do the research you spoke about interns or however we generate that data Roman Bel Rosario I'm going to offer his services um and how do we get those tools in your hand to to participate in the assessment and then the promulgation of what are your high leverage interventions because a lot of these SSC they want to do it and I would say furthermore this is where you spoke about non title one participation and the benefits that could be that title the the same input frequently what happens there's a donut hole in sites that neither have a foundation nor have title one and that's

078that is a ch a recurrent challenge but for for sites that may not have title one but they have a foundation that same information on high level interventions that's meaningful for them they're figuring out how to spend their money and so it really is it's not just ultimately it is predominantly about title one but the information on high leverage interventions that you'll you'll be able to provide in collaboration Dario is relevant to all of our sites in terms of providing enriched content because the truth is the nature of our budget from Sacramento is everyone gets austerity and then depending on our community we backfill it how we can either through LCFF have concentration funding, supplemental funding, title one, foundation support, however it is, we're all trying to backfill that and your that information on how

079what interventions are most high leverage is exactly how we inform how we get the best interventions in terms of backfilling that austerity that we're all facing. So, um those are my two both SSC participation and high leverage. Those that's what I would emphasize on this and so I'd encourage your thoughts about that. Yeah. Um well to go to your first point about SSSE participation I can talk about that from my own personal experience I one thing that has made it easier for me to know about everything that's going on in my SSC and the DAC2 is that I had someone telling me what to do and how to do it and where to go to get more of my questions answered. A lot of school sites don't have that person and it has to fall

080back to the district and one of those district um ways is the website. Ultimately, a lot of school sites when we were doing the data, the school site council pages on the websites for each school site isn't the most intuitive to use. And I feel that that part of communication ties back to a lot of the questions being asked by you guys, the representation of students. Students don't know where to go to they don't know about the school site councils and when they try to find that information, they don't know where to go. And that's the sad but honest truth. So school uh council participation could be very much improved with a higher amount of communication from a lot of the parties involved but especially the district uh website. But did you plant did you

081plant this guy? We got our communication president. On another note um regarding u access to data or interventions and things of that work. Um, one of the things that um, we wanted to do also was to um, know which schools are very high achieving, which title one schools are very high achieving. Maybe they qualified for blue ribbon um, or INCUS. And it's it's twofold. The reasoning is to celebrate them. one and two is to analyze what are they doing that works and what what interventions are they using that work so that we could you know share that amongst our uh title one schools and all be you know um hopefully um able to implement those for improvements. One final point about um participation. Um at some point, you know, a lot of what we do

082as a district is based on how we behave and so behavior matters. And I think if we behave in such a way where the SSSE becomes more about collaboration instead of compliance, I think we'll start to see some energy building in the desire to serve on the SSC. Um, and some of that just comes from communication, what's being communicated, who's communicating it, um, and and how how it's being perceived or interpreted or even understood. So, there's a lot a lot that we can do to change some of our our behaviors around how we talk about the SSC. My motto is the SSC is the place to be because it is really the the center of what's happening at a school site. So, I think some of our behaviors are in are in shifting to change

083some of the ways we talk about the work. Thank you, Dr. control. All right, with that I believe we we've exhausted all of you and we've exhausted board comments. Oh, and you have queued up our next communication presentation uh perfectly. So stick around for that. I just want to close by thanking all of you. We're very excited about this team. Um Miss Parker, welcome aboard is chair and uh Dr. Troll, we're still so grateful to have you around. and Nathan Williams. I think we are all very impressed by you. We're happy to have you here as well. And Miss Christopher as well, thank you for your presentation as always. Daario, thank you. Let us know what additional supports you need um for your team. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, with that

084drum roll, they've prepared uh they've prepared your team here, James. Uh we will now hear item E2, a progress monitoring report on effective communication. Dr. McGoula, please introduce the item. Okay. Thank you, President Penderson. So, uh, I know I have these written remarks, but, um, just recently at the VAPA showcase, um, that we had at UCSD, I had a prior student of mine who has their admin credential, who now works, um, at middle school come up to me and say, I'll never forget that you taught me that we should always overcommunicate. like as a leader you have to overcommunicate because you never know when communication is actually being listened to. And so in that in that spirit I'm really excited um about this particular presentation because for the first time our board is receiving a

085presentation on guard rail number one effective communication. I know that's not the first one because it's wellness but I think communication is really important to wellness. Um and it's also a very important piece for a healthy organization. We heard it from many families seeking timely relevant updates. Um, and the complexity that it comes to when our schools have to navigate dozens of platforms to share a single message. We've seen it across departments doing their best, but doing it alone. So, we want to make sure to provide them that support. We all know that communication matters, but what we're saying here tonight is that it matters enough to define who we are and how we lead. When I reflect on the role of superintendent, I think often about what it truly requires and what it's become

086clear is this. To serve effectively in this role, you must also be what I'm calling the superintendent communicator. Communication is not an accessory to the work. It is a connective tissue that holds our vision, our people, and our progress together. Even when improve even when the improvements we made this year, I hear from staff who tell me, "Thank you for sending your messages. It's such a large system. There's still a human touch. That's powerful." Um, I receive almost daily communication from people out that we work with. I call them colleagues that say, "Thank you for sending these messages. Here's actually my favorite one was when someone said I watched the autism uh love on the spectrum and I loved the finale just on something to watch. So just bring really really bringing that humanizing touch

087to an organization but also reading the research articles that we provide. So, it's something about um nurturing to scale um with all of our colleagues, wrapping our arms around them about how can we do this together. And it's really about how we communicate. Our families, our students, our colleagues deserve not just good systems, but relationships that have built with clear communication, with honest communication, and with caring communication. I want to also talk about research. A research a recent 2024 RAND study surveying superintendents in large urban districts across nations found that the four most timeconsuming parts of the superintendent's role are one communicating with schoolboard members, two communicating with families in the broader community, three internal communications with central office colleagues, and four communicating with school colleagues and educators. Again, communication is key across many different

088avenues in leading a school district. In other words, communication is the work. It's the engine. It's how we drive alignment, inspire trust, and deliver results. Tonight's presentation, led by our executive director of strategic communications and information, James Canning, is not your typical progress monitoring report. This is a launchpad. You'll see the foundational framework that will become our communications dashboard, our system for measuring what's working, identifying gaps, and ensuring accountability across the district. And before we begin, I want to take a moment to recognize the communications team, many of whom are here this evening. Thank you for showing up, for going above and beyond, and for walking with us through challenges seen and unseen. I know some of you were first responders as well out um last week. So, thank you. Your resilience, your resolve, and

089your pursuit of excellence embody what it means to serve. We see you and we value you, and we are deeply grateful for your partnership. As we learned from the Council for Great City Schools, student outcomes don't change until adult behaviors change. And tonight, we commit to that change to change how we communicate, how we collaborate, and how we show up for each other in our community. With that, James Kenny, let's see. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Superintendent Pagoula, thank you for that uh overview. I really appreciate that, that introduction. Uh, trustees, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak with you. [Music] Um, I've been here since November 18th, so about seven months. Um, and today, this presentation is not going to be about bells and whistles of like external communications, right? We're

090going to do press conferences, we're going to do social media, all that kind of stuff. We'll touch on those things. Um, but the core of what you're going to hear about today is changing the culture, unifying our approach as a district, uh, and really finding a better way to connect with our students, our families, and our internal staff. Okay. Um, I want to talk a little bit about perceptions. So, I'm not going to go through these uh, Voice of San Diego clips here. Um, but in a lot of the conversations we've had with people, uh, you know, communication is always someone's topic. Uh, the goal of communication really should be behind the scenes, right? Lifting up everyone behind us. And if we're doing our job the right way, these kind of headlines and these kind

091of things won't happen. Um, and so we're here to kind of fix that. And so I want to kind of level set with what our responsibilities are as a communications team. So when you really talk about it, we're here to serve the district in a way that lifts up the work of our departments, our superintendent, and our board. Uh to communicate easily with families, students, and our broader community. Um our mission, our only mission is really to fulfill the guard rail here. Um and there's some core objectives that we have to operate with every day. proactively communicate, be responsive, share timely information, be transparent, be equitable in the way in which we communicate, and then be willing to make adjustments. And I'm saying that because you see the strategy at the at the bottom, uh

092it says, "Don't do things the way they've always been done." Frankly, that was Dr. Beula's like one of the early things she ever said when I got here, and it's just stuck, right? and I wanted to be a part of an organization that wanted to change things and so I'm really excited about that part. But the last part, don't be afraid to fail. So don't be afraid to fail and be willing to make adjustments are really important connectors here. Um I think culturally within communications uh there's been a uh history of where um the team hasn't been necessarily empowered. just people with good ideas with uh a lot of institutional knowledge that maybe haven't always been uh lifted up or appreciated. And so I want to seed a culture within this team, within this organization

093that says we're going to try things. Some things are going to work really well. Some things might not work well, but at least we tried and did it. And then we can stand up and say next time uh we'll do it differently. Um I want to take a moment. Thank you Dr. Bula for mentioning the team. Um, this is a team. So, this is our central office team. There are some other people within other parts of this organization that do some communications work in different departments. Uh, but today we're going to focus on the central office team. Um, like I mentioned, these are good people that want to do the right thing. Um, they haven't always necessarily maybe been given the right direction or given the ability to carry out what they know how to

094do. Um, and we're working on changing that culture here. I really appreciate the members of the team that are here. um they have bought in generally, you know, they still give me they they still hold me accountable, but they've generally bought in to the direction that we want to go, right? They've been open-minded. We've been able to have back and forth conversations about where we go as a district, and I'm really appreciative of their presence here today. So, thank you. Um yeah. Um, okay. So, we don't have to go too deep into this guardrail, but what uh what has been established is we will not operate without a healthy communication system to support families and students. Uh, there was three interim guard rails that we were asked to do. Uh, throughout this presentation, you're going

095to see that we touch on each of those. So, establish a year-long proactive calendar, train a 100% of school sites to have a toolkit and be able to use it, and then do school surveys. So, I'll touch on that as we go through this. I want to start with the proactive communication calendar. Again, this is more we're talking external. There's some internal stuff, but I want to level set on what our year should always look like. So, there always should be a beginning and there should always be an end. And so, right now, we're at the end of the year. And so my hope is that uh for communications every May this district can communicate out well about its graduations about how well its employees have been doing in terms of supporting our students and

096then celebrate the end of the school year. Okay. When the beginning of the school year is intended to happen starts in June right after the students end, right? We have all of our summer programming and preparation for the new school year. And then of course we hit August and we have the celebration of our school year. So these should become the bookends that every single year has maybe have different tactics or different ideas but every year this is what you should hear from us. And then in that middle part September through December, January through April this is all about supporting student success at our schools right living up to the go go goals and guard rails that you have all established. uh we will do that through proactive vern media, social media and enrollment strategies.

097Now I bring up enrollment strategies because in a lot of my conversations with people uh there's a lot of focus on enrollment. People want to know how you know my school is underenrolled. I want to put people more kids in the school. Can we just get on TV and then people will show up? And and that's not what has to happen. uh we have to streamline the way in which this district talks about enrollment. Right now it's talked about in parts and pieces. Every every time there's a new enrollment effort uh with TK, preschool, the entire year, people want to just talk about it in those silos. And so what we're saying is enrollment should be a year-long effort. um we have to extract some of the processes uh that we're using to uh create

098that the best process. And so what we're talking about doing is in this upcoming year establishing a crossf functional team that is not just communications but that deals with our area superintendent, you know, our building staff and other people setting some goals to determine what schools need that support with enrollment and then figuring out how to c mobilized this central office in partnership communications in partnership with the schools themselves to lift up and do uh enrollment efforts at their schools. Um we need to also look at leveraging some of the better practices when we talk about uh digital communications, grassroots communications. Every community needs to be communicated with differently. And right now all we're right now what we're doing is we're kind of spraying and praying and hoping that people want to show up. So

099in this upcoming year we're going to create the strategy do some beta implementation and and see what we can do. Okay. So then again talking about the external communications um I want to talk about the messaging right. So an organization like San Diego Unified has a lot of parts and pieces, right? You have finances, you have budgets, you have leadership, you have policies, you have departments, obviously you have the education components, but everything that we talk about with our external audience should be with the idea that we can lift that piece out of the organization. So if you look at the slide, there's your communications department at the end. We're your amplification tool. We lift out the instructional department and division work, right? Our job is to learn it, understand it, and then figure out

100how to tell the great work that they're doing uh by achieving the goals that are set there. And so through the lens of student wellness, literacy, problem solving, and mathematics, and college and career readiness, our job is then to translate that in a way through different channels and produce an outcome. And so we have to be the bearsers of standard when it comes to how we're communicating as a district. And so I think that requires us to maybe sometimes be the bad guy if someone sends us something and it doesn't talk about those things or if someone sends us something and it's not centering what we're here to do which is educate students, graduate them and make the world better by doing that. Okay. Um, so I want to talk a little bit about the

101work that we did that got us to this plan. Um, so as requested in the interim guard rail, there was a request for surveys. Uh, we also did uh 31 meetings. These were with staff, some parent groups, PTAs included. I heard a lot of PTA. Uh, Lina was in one of my meetings that I was in. Um, we also met with some some of the students. We met with staff and so forth. Uh, and then we did three surveys. So, district families, school leadership, and departments. So, I won't read these, but the key thing you need to know about this the district family survey is about 600 folks responded. We issued the survey in five different languages. 140 unique sites responded, meaning that parents from 140 of our schools actually responded according to our data

102and analytics department. that enables us to say that this was a broad district-wide uh survey. So, we could take what we got as being considered district-wide. 93% of our schools said their or parents said that their school communicates with them very very well. So, our intent is to focus a little bit more on the things that we're doing here at the district to start. And so, one of the things that we've learned is we overload parents and families with email. They're craving curation, not not numbers. Okay. Um, school leadership. So, about half of our schools responded to our survey. We're going to work on that. We're going to give the rest of them to respond next time. Um, however, uh, you know, these are some of the things they talked about. Most people don't, and

103I think this has been the culture of the past, lean on communications in the central office to to help them lift up the things they're doing. I think we've seen this uh you know, we get that last minute call, oh, the Padres's are showing up to my school, you know, so so we're working on that, right? Um but the but one of the things that we also recognize is that uh between the district and the schools themselves, they're using at least 15 different tools to develop and send newsletters. And so uh you're g we're going to talk a little bit about how we change that going forward. Um and then when we talk about department leadership, uh so 33 33 departments or divisions responded to our survey. Um, a lot of people talked about streamlining

104information. Um, we also recognize that, uh, some of our departments have their own identities that look separate from this district. Um, 18 of 33 responded have their own department logo and many of them don't even include the district's logo. Um so the conclusions that we came to based on this data, those meetings, all that stuff is right now we don't present ourselves as unified. We we must streamline information flow amongst our staff. We must provide useful information to families and we must deliver directly to students information that they need. So I'm going to take you through some fun proofs of some of these things. Uh they're more visual. I'll go through them quickly. Um, so we talked about brand and logos. So these are three different versions of uh department signatures in their emails. None

105uniform, none the same. You have a school, you have departments, and then one organization that might be our school, I think. Um, then you have a digital presence. So 30% or more of our district departments or divisions have their own social media, which means that's content that's being flowed to to different channels that at this moment, many of which are low performing. Um, so we're going to talk a little bit about how we address that. Students, our student trustees, they were they were very helpful. Uh they told me, one of them told me, and this is in your district, said, "We don't care about the budget. Just educate us. Just tell us about the scholarships. Just tell us about the events happening." So, that was really helpful input. I didn't call you out, but you

106just called yourself out. Yeah. Um, this is something that I feel like I heard in the meeting that I think I was in with Luc L Lucina about checking the box. A lot of the communications historically have been about checking the box, making sure that we did kind of the bare minimum. This is this is an example of a document that we are legally obligated, the facts for parents to send out every school year. Um, and we're going to talk a little bit about how we expand that into something that educates people about our district, helps parents as a as a guide, and then also serves as an internal customer service tool that our district uh team should be able to use in talking with families. Um, here's another one. So, in our survey, some

107of the folks asked, can we compile all those newsletters into a single like, you know, list and then we can look at them. So what we have is three different newsletters that are sent out internally amongst different departments to help ed help inform, right? They're useful. They have good information in them. Um but some and that the idea is that they go there, then they go to either a principal which then goes to a teacher which then is supposed to make its way to a family. Um again, very good information in this. And so what we want to do, we're going to talk about is streamlining some of that internal communication to make sure all of the uh good information that is coming out of our departments is getting to the people it's intended to

108get to. Um so now we're going to talk about the solutions to change the culture and unify our approach. So we're going to kind of follow these same things, brand, presence, student, family, and staff communications. Um so again all these solutions are the 2025 2026 school year. So most of them many of them the intent is to begin or have they already be implemented by the time school starts on August 11th. Okay. So uh for district offices and departments we want to retire some of the logos with some exceptions. There's a lot of work that we want to do. We want to talk with departments between now and the beginning of the school year. Have those conversations. We've kind of already started some of them with some some of the departments. Um but we know

109there's a lot of uh identity tied up in education and and what you do and it's all very important and we want to be sensitive to those things. Um we are going to create an overall brand toolkit for the district departments which will then have all of the materials they need. So, ideally, all of these PowerPoint presentations are uniform. There's a uniform letter head and a bunch of other things that the team and I have started talking about. Uh, the last one is is is so it seems so small, but it's just it might make the difference. Um, standardize our email signature to include a district logo uh along with contact information. What we notice a lot is that, you know, it varies. Some people got an email, some people got a phone number, some

110people don't have any. So then for schools, right, uh create a brand toolkit that they can utilize, standardize their email signatures. However, we recognize and want to appreciate the fact that our schools have their own identities. They have their own communities. People identify with them. However, we got to make sure that people recognize that that great school that your child goes to is a part of this district. And so what we're recommending is that we will include the school logo with a district logo in that signature. Um and then we going to the training part that was asked within the interim. We've already begun to speak with the area superintendent about setting up regular meetings to go to uh to speak with each area principles when they have their meetings. And we want to hold

111uh training sessions. So maybe one is about how do we help you improve your newsletter? Maybe another one is how do we help you improve your school social media, which is going to stay school social media, and and try to make sure that we're bringing them along as partners um in the process before we really start to dig deep with them. Um here's an example. So, this isn't the final design. There'll be some more conversation, right? But here's an example of the signature. Uh you know, we got we got there's on the left that is the example of what it would look like for all kind of district offices. on the right is what it would look like at for the schools along with uh the departments that uh will that end up maintaining their

112own logos. Okay. Um digital presence. So uh one of the things that we want to do is retire lowerforming social media accounts um and do a better job of streamlining that content. There's a lot of good content there into the district's channels. Um the district has the largest followings on its channels and we need to figure out how to take that content from those departments and put it in front of more eyeballs. Uh our goal is to obviously uh expand growth and reach on those channels. And one of the things that we talked about with the student trustees is creating and developing a campaign that's more social media uh to grow social media amongst our leveraging our students, our school sites along with our families. So that's another thing we're going to work on. The

113other two things are a little more processy but uh are really important and and we're uh things that we need to do to start this year in hopes that we can continue the work next year which is conduct an audit of the district website and develop a strategy to upgrade it. Uh I don't think I have to say anymore. I've heard a lot of people in this room. Um and then we also want to do conduct an audit of all information sharing tools that are used by school sites, departments and divisions and determine what are those contractual agreements, streamline the number of tools used and where where it makes sense find cost savings with redundancy. Um, we know that like schools use certain tools like Canva or S'more and then we as a district use

114certain tools. And so maybe if we start looking at enterprisewide accounts for some of these things, we can save dollars and make it easier for people uh to to share information amongst those tools internally before we send it externally. Um, the other thing that we want to do is family communication. So this is a really important thing. Um, we want to centralize. So all those newsletters you saw, right? Again, the trickle down, it's supposed to trickle all the way down, you know, and then kids are supposed to go home and tell their parents what the schools are going to say. So we want to centralize that communications to provide better content curation. Um, we as communications want to become the editor and distributor. So think about it like this. If you're a newspaper, newspapers are

115old, they're online, they're also in your hand sometimes. So the district is the publisher, communications are the editors and all the departments are the contributing writers. They the departments are so important in this process because they know all the information. They talk to the schools. They are the smart people in this area and we are the ones who have to help them break that down and put that in front of more eyeballs, more parents, more families. Um and so the other part of this is so we're going to centralize communications. You'll see we'll talk a little bit more about that. We want to leverage the facts for parents as I told you. Uh we want to rename the document. Put more useful information. I heard that in the meeting with Leina, right? Like uh what

116are all those acronyms you guys use? What are all the names of our schools? Who do I contact? Uh tips for parents who are new to the district because they don't know who all the stuff we know because we've been here, right? Um, and then we want to work uh more on digitizing the distribution of this. So, it it's already available online, but we want to be able to send it out ahead of the school year starting because right now kids are getting it uh kind of put in their backpack at the first day of school. And there's some also some legal requirements that we need to do uh that they check certain boxes on certain forms that they have to apply. Um the other thing is a really old school one but one that

117we want to really focus on uh because we think based on the fact that we have so many community schools and schools that are in neighborhoods um it's really important and uh marquees you know like the boards where your school's name is uh they're all electronic and we can be sharing information on those boards on a weekly bi-weekly basis. So, we're going to set up a process where we are communicating directly with each school and saying these are the messages that are important. So, if it's if it's enrollment for TK at your school, that's important. If it's uh you know LCFF forms need to be completed, just remember that like we want to reinforce these messages across multiple streams and that's one of them. Okay. So, here's an example. uh it'll look better than this

118when we're when we do it, but it's but it's an example of what we want to do. So, we want to create So, right now the district sends out a single family communication. Doesn't matter what area of the district you're in, doesn't matter what school you go to. And uh thanks to the PTA, we've been trying to put a little bit more like useful information in it, like identifying the things. But what we want to do now is essentially break up the newsletter into five separate newsletters, one for each sub area uh to send information. Some of it will crosscut and be the same, right? However, there's certain information that parents who go to Morris care about that parents who go to uh another school don't. And so we're going to really try to curate,

119listen to what the parents told us, curate and target that information to parents who want to hear it. Additionally, we are going to add a regionwide district newsletter, meaning how do we connect with not just our parents, but people beyond us, right? Potential people who want to send their kids to our schools, people who are business leaders who want to support our organization, uh nonprofits who want to donate. So they start to see all the good things that we're doing whether it was the commu whether it was a community school story in the UT today or the orchestra story on Fox 5 or something about what what one of our leaders did in Washington DC like we need them to see that information. And so we're talking six external newsletters a week. Now student communications,

120this is the fun one, right? This is the one where where where the two gentlemen up here uh Joseph and Quinton they were very instrumental in this. Uh my very some of my very first meetings were with them and they said you got to figure out how to talk to the students better. You got to figure this out and and then they came with ideas and then it's like the board would do board has some ideas. How do we execute it? Right? So I'll start with Quinton's theformational classroom. So he says, "You know, I got all of these classes at my fingertips on my computer or my Chromebook. Uh, and I want to figure out h how do we get like information that I need in that Chromebook?" And so we started talking with uh

121uh Julie Garcia and the team to figure out how do we do that? And so they came up with this idea that we'll create a canvas classroom for freshman, sophomore, juniors, and seniors, which means that we will identify items and things that they need to have in those classrooms. Many people have said, "By the time you get to high school, you're already kind of parenting yourself in some regards. And how do I find out more about the scholarships that are available? How do I find out about the testing that I have to deal with? How do I find out more about the health things that I need to know?" And so what we're going to be able to do is on a regular basis, we're trying to figure out the timing, whether that's a weekly

122or a monthly basis, but we are going to put new information in each one of those classrooms on a regular basis, so the students can get access to that information that the district needs them to see. And the good thing about using the Canvas classroom is parents have access to those classrooms as well. Uh, and so they will be able to see it if they're, you know, lurking in your classroom. I don't know. I don't know if that happens, but maybe. Um, the other thing to note about this and and I kind of I've kind of skipped through this in in talking about this, but with this and everything else, one of the things that we're really going to implement to figure out how well we're doing is metrics. Uh, whether we're talking about the

123media metrics, whether we're talking about the open rates on these newsletters, we already kind of have them, but we don't actively track them. And so, we're going to start doing that. Um the other thing that we're going to do and this is the Joseph idea was advisory period announcements from the district office. So similar to uh what we talked about with the marquees, we want to regularly communicate with schools and say and we got a list of the advisory periods where here's the information you need to know from the district. Now, some of it might be the same information that's in the classroom, theformational classroom, but some of it might not be, you know, and but we want to reinforce that information to the students, right? And and because Quinton said what he said, Joseph

124said what he said, and what that showed me was and our team is that different people get information different ways, which we all know that, but they came with two different ideas to connect with students. And so, we're going to implement that. And then the other one's like a fun one, right? us us media people like communication people like this stuff right so we've already made an initial communication to all of the prof I want to call them professors all the teachers that communicate regularly with our student newspapers or our media studios and so what we want to set up is regular uh quarterly meetings with the superintendent and the board for the students to ask them questions talk about what's happening and then we want to treat our student newspapers like they are the

125regular media, right? What better way to get experience than just be thrown in the fire? So, once you once they start getting our press releases and stuff like that, we might get some questions uh but we'll we'll be ready to answer them. Here's an example um of what theformational classroom will look like. Uh so, you see there's like and we're still working through some of this concept, but this is an example of what Canvas looks like today. there's important deadlines and dates, maybe there's college and career resources, announcement and news. So, we're working through how it'll be organized, but um it's possible and we will have it ready for the beginning of the school year. Um the last second to last thing is centralizing staff communications. So, um as I noted earlier, there's a lot

126of newsletters kind of floating back and forth, people sharing information. So, one of the things that we've begun to work toward is creating a user-friendly internet system that serves as the central resource for all the essential information that if you're an employee within this district, if you're a teacher, if you're anyone who works here, uh, can get. So, we're talking everything from like your W2 information to maybe those toolkits that I mentioned earlier to uh messages or updates about what we're doing at, you know, Hancock that morning, you know, things like that, right? Um, we also want to consolidate uh those those multiple and redundant newsletters. And so again, communications will become the editor, the district is the publisher, and all those departments will continue to contribute. But we want to send one communication um

127to our district staff so they understand what is important. And I think that that's a that's a really important point that maybe I haven't pointed out. A lot of our feedback was, I don't know where to look. I don't know what is important. There's a lot coming at me and and like I mentioned earlier, we're not going to stop schools from doing what they do because parents have told us we like it, but we as a district send a lot amongst each other, amongst to our parents. And so by centralizing it, I think that we're going to be able to figure out where are the best places to put it. And again, going back to our objectives, if we need to adjust, we'll adjust along the way. but we're going to work with everybody who's

128been doing the work already because what they do is really important to getting us to the point of moving forward. Um, and so with that newsletter, we'll also have some regular tracking of of metrics and we can make adjustments based on those kind of things. I wanted to just also note a few small things. Uh these would ideally be things that we would come to you next year uh at this presentation update and talk about where we would be going. So we'd report out on all the things that we've done and accomplished with what we're presenting today. And then there's some other things. So we want to talk about you know considering you know a district re redesign of the brand. Some of those things I talked about about the uh website audit and the

129tool audit. Ideally, we would be implementing them for the upcoming school year, that upcoming school year. Figure out how to take those workshops, uh, you know, to support school sites a little bit better. Like at first we're talk starting with the schools. How do we then go deeper into the schools and help them? Um, and then we want to figure out how to in the long run create opportunities for the students own social media content to become the content, some of the content that people see on our channels. Uh, so that it's not always as curated by our great team. Uh, and then staff, we got to figure it out. I think there's going to be some of them that might not uh that we got to work through a lot of things and we

130have a lot of activities that we have to do. And so we got to figure out once we implement some of the things what is next. Uh and I'm ready for any questions anyone has. Oh boy. Thank you James. Um Miss Tulsa any speakers on this item? All right. I assume there's going to be some dis conversation here. Uh who would like to uh test the waters first? Uh Trusty Baldis. James, I just want to start by sincerely thanking you for all the work that has been done. This is one of the plans that I can fully say is so comprehensive that I'm in full support of and I really don't see anything wrong with it. This being said, I do have a little bit of a cautionary for student communications. As students, I know

131Justin and I can attest to this. The second that we register something as spam, we completely tune it out and we stop looking at this. I think we have the systems in place now or we have a plan for the systems to send out information but to curate that information and to ensure that students are intrigued by it and that we'll look at it is something very important and is something I believe we need to work on more. I believe it'd be very important to get a sort of student communications intern or to collaborate with future student board members of the student advisory board with each and every piece of information that gets sent out to ensure that students will be looking at this and students will appreciate this. So I want to know if

132we'd be open to this and if we have any sort of plan to ensure that the media that is being sent out is student oriented. Yeah, I think you know one of the things that I've recognized um in my short time here is you know there's a lot of people that frankly didn't even know communications existed. Um and it wasn't because these folks and other people weren't working. It was just that the systems weren't set up to create that direct connect. And so one of the things that you know and we kind of mentioned it earlier but like one of the things that we want to do more of is have a better presence at the area soup meetings right I want to come to those uh ASD meetings I want to figure out where

133we can plug in to getting information in real time um you know because I think that's going to be really important I think we're going to see open rates are going to have to make decisions and decide like okay this isn't working what do we got to do and that's why I say we got to adjust Like we can't just plug and play and do it and then say, "Oh, this just works for the year." Like part of our job is to be dynamic, right? We're communications people. Like things snappy. Like we got to do it really quick. We got to do it timely. And so yes, you have my commitment that we're going to figure out a way to make sure that we have the student voice represented in telling us what matters. Um,

134now sometimes I I don't know if all the problems where all the problems are matter, but we can talk about that. No. Yeah, definitely. And I really appreciate that and to know that you are committed to listening to what is going to be sent out. I think my question is really tailored to if we're committed to ensuring that when media is being sent out that we're verifying with students and that we're passing it by them to ensure because I think just hearing from students what matters is really important. What I'm really getting at is if we can review with a student students before we send information out to ensure that the media that is being put out is student centric and that students will be tuned into it. So I think that there's information that

135the district is going to be important whether that's for you or your parents. Yeah. Right. And so there's things that we're going to know we need to get in your hands. I think there's a probably a subset of information that we could have a conversation with yourselves along with your new colleagues and maybe have some other meetings to figure out like you know I'm joking about the problems but maybe that is something that needs to go out right and I think that there's this subset of things that you all really care about that is maybe separate from what uh you know Susan Barn dollar says we need to make sure is in your hands she's our nurse and wellness says is what's in your hands as a student right So yes, there's room for both

136and we're committed to working with you. I can't promise you that every single communication is going to have a student looking at it. Definitely. Thank you very much and thank you for all your work. Trusty Hen, thank you. And I am so excited about this report. I think it's been a long time coming and I think President Patterson can attest to the fact that I've been talking about district communications I think since like 2021. Um so exciting to really have a clear plan um backed both by community voice and data um and also best practice to improve our communications um and in alignment with with our goals and and the values of our community. and really want to thank you also for describing the perceptions that the community has voiced about the district's lack of

137transparency over the years and providing proof of the areas where improvement is needed because I know that's not an easy thing to do. I think historically we've been uncomfortable saying these kinds of things out loud and it's a refreshing change to admit we have work to do to build a system that clearly and honestly um and consistently communicates with students, families, employees and the broader community. And I know that if we don't name the problems we're facing uh there's little hope that we're going to be able to solve them. Um, and this report really leaves me optimistic that we are committed to naming those things and improving those things and to failing forward. So, appreciate you mentioning that as well and to continue building trust with the community, engaging students uh and working in partnership

138uh with our schools. And I think, you know, it was like one bullet point, but I really want to lift up that this communication strategy to me really feels like an equity strategy. Um, I know that when all students, regardless of the school they attend or say which counselor they have, um, have consistent access to information about college and career opportunities, we can start to break down longstanding barriers, right? As you described, you know, one of those tactics being, you know, every advisory is going to have access to the same information. So, it's not just the luck of the draw. We're sort of going to eliminate the luck and make sure that everybody has access to the information they need to be successful. And I think particularly for students who've been historically left out of

139these kinds of conversations, um your work and the work of the entire team is really going to open pathways to success. So, thank you for that. Um and also I've noticed the the stories you've been sharing of our graduates and all of their different pathways and all of their unique stories um and all the different ways our kids are working to realize their potential. So, thank you for that. Um hey, that was these folks right here. They did that. They figured that out. Yay. Yay. Yay. Yeah. I mean, but that is that's really elevating student voice, right? As we talk about, you know, that it isn't one-sizefits-all and every student should figure out what their passion is and we should support and empower them. Um, and then to be able to tell those stories so

140that, you know, maybe a seventh grader now says, "Oo, I didn't even know I could do that thing." And I now I see someone like me who can do that thing and I want to do it, too. So, thank you for telling those stories. Um I appreciate you talking about um in alignment with the guardrail measure for this year focusing on providing those ongoing trainings for school um and thinking about the effectiveness of your department really as a service to our schools. I think for a long time schools have sort of operated as like mom and pop shops when it comes to communication. So really thinking sort of as more of a franchise model, right? How can schools leverage the work and expertise of your team um to make their lives easier? I think often

141I talk to principles who not only do they have to be instructional leaders have to be chief marketing officers and we don't want them to have to be that also. So, thank you for lightening the load in that way. Um I'm wondering, you mentioned the 15 different software platforms and tools that we're using. Do we have any idea? You mentioned trying to figure out the cost, but do we know yet sort of how um those inefficiencies are are costing our sites? And are you going to be vetting and providing um sort of preferred vendor recommendations to our sites? So, um I don't have a sense yet of cost. I will say this. I I know that there are some sites that indicated, you know, they pay for a Canva account. A Canva account is a

142uh kind of a out ofthe-box design tool, right? Uh some other sites pay for a s'more, which is a newsletter site. You know, we as a district pay for a Mailchimp newsletter site. And so I think that we have some of the preliminary information that tells us. I think we have to do more of the work uh to figure this out. I mean, we're probably not talking super significant amounts of money. We're we're probably, you know, some of them may be using the free version. Mhm. Um and so we're probably talking thousands, not tens of thousands. So, you know, but it but again, I think the bigger part even beyond dollars and cents is this idea that we can more easily share information and work between school sites, our own district staff, so that maybe

143we're creating greater efficiencies in how we work. um as much as even saving those dollars. Thank you. And then two other quick things. So for other um goal monitoring reports, we see bright spots right on the instructional side. And I think for you know when you come back it would be wonderful to see what are those bright spots um whether they're schools that are leveraging the resources you're now providing them um or departments um but to really lift up those communications best practices through some bright spots um to support students would be great. Um and and then lastly around um the enrollment I'm going to call it an enrollment promotion plan because that's what I've been dreaming of. Sure. Um really appreciate the thoughtful and forward-looking approach to boosting enrollment and to thinking of this

144not just as a communications exercise or an enrollment exercise but having that cross functional team. So I am excited about what we will see um as we elevate our schools. Um and I think we know you we talk a lot about demographics limiting enrollment. There are places where there are families who are opting out of our schools. And so how we tell the stories of the great things happening in those schools is critically important. So I'm wondering how you'll measure success in terms of this proactive marketing to promote schools and a year from now when you come back to us how we'll know if it was successful. So this is why I think it's um important for there to be like more of a crossf functional focus on this. So, there are going to be

145some things where I can say, "Oh, we got 25,000 people to look at that little video online and uh you know, a thousand of them clicked." But there's a whole back end of that is how many actually turned into enrollment, right? Um, and I think that this is where I can give you all those metrics, but I think we as a as as a district and as frankly these kind of sub area teams need to kind of create different metrics for different areas because there are different goals and so I think that communications alone can't make that decision. Um, and so I think our job is to come up with what's the strategy going to work in area A, area B, area C, identify key goals, maybe identify schools where we feel, and I think

146this is not necessarily me or our team doing this, but it's the collective saying these are the ones we got to help this year, these are the ones we got to help next year, and maybe there. So, I think there's a lot of work to do, but I think we have to establish them before we even I would just encourage us to do it because I think it costs money to drive enrollment and we want to be able to make that investment and so knowing that we're making a measurable difference allows us to then you know shape a budget that empowers you to do that work. Yep. Thank you for that. All right, Trusty Wyers Pain. First of all, I I want to thank you for making a presentation to each one of us individually.

147I know he did with me and I really appreciate that upfront presentation because I mean it's time consuming for you to go over with each one of us individually but I do want to thank you for that even before tonight and I I'm going to keep this picture of you all right here. I love the picture. I don't recall seeing the picture like this before, but that's a good thing. And then I must say I'm really excited because a few years ago Morse cluster tried to um get some we did some work with the district communications department but we weren't that far along. And thank you for showing us all these various um platforms that are used. And I didn't even see snail mail. Maybe that's uh under paper. Is that where snail mail is?

148Yeah. I mean, but some of them I've never used and um not sure exactly what they are. Like Joseph was asking me about samores. I told him the only kind I know about is the marshmallow and chocolate and graham crackers. I did that. That's the only kind I knew about till I became an employee of a school district. And it's got quite a few folks using it. I mean, I think it's the second highest one. So, congratulations to all of you out there using S'more. Um, we'll learn about it here. We're a little slow, but we'll learn about that, too. And, um, finally, when I I see this page of District Grand 2009, he was two years old. So, you know, some things have happened since uh since then. And, uh, I think when you

149get around to it, we'll be ready for a redesign. um if I'm a little bit right since we don't want to wait another 16 years. Yeah. Um before we do a re redesign, but thank you for bringing it all together. I mean, just the fact that I now know that we have all these platforms out there. Uh that's information in and of itself. Just want to say thank you to you and to the team to all of you for all your hard work keeping us on track and letting us know you need to be right here Sharon to speak right now. Come on down. So uh I just want to say thank you to all of you. Thank you Justy Bosu. Yes. And uh thank you also and to your whole team for uh fantastic

150job uh this on this presentation and all the work you're doing and uh the communications front and yes it was helpful to kind of go through everything beforehand and I I don't remember it's been a long time since we've had a presentation on communications to on this level so it's really appreciated. Um I had I guess two points or two questions. One was around with the students. Um, I know both students, parents, community members, whoever is going to be using or communications. I mean, just knowing, you know, living the life of like a busy parent with kids in the school, it's like you you want information, you want it quickly. And I think we're all used to do getting that now. We have our apps, we have all the information, you know, at our fingers.

151So, it's like super annoying if you can't find the answer to something in like two clicks. And I know Dr. Bugul is our is it the two clicks or three clicks, I think. Yeah. Um, so I think that, you know, just kind of summarizing it down to that, I think for a lot of people and for our students, I think in addition to what you're talking about, I think, um, Dr. Robersonson or when we had had a conversation about graduation um something visual for the students like when you start high school there'd be like a circle and this is what you have to achieve um you know in high school and you've achieved this m this much like kind of something like that so that it's really personalized to them um you know this is

152how many classes left you have in math if you want to apply to a four-year you know UC school um because I shared the story about how my younger daughter graduated and we didn't realize one of her science classes didn't really count and so she was short of science class and so um so yeah just having that on you know somewhere where both the parents and the students could just see really quick visual like okay you're on track um you know really from that kind of visual perspective um and then also for the parents I know again you know we we had our own website through PTA because the one through the school was so had. So, um, trying to consolidate those and really make it again something that the parents just can get to

153the information quickly. And I know I've brought this up before, but I still think it's would be good to do something along the lines of like an app for each school. So, say um, uh, Sanberg Elementary, where my kids went to school, if there was like a place on the app where they could click to say, "Okay, tonight's the talent show or this, you know, form is due on this date." um something that really gets them down to their school because they don't really care about everything else that's happening in the district unless it really applies to their school and their child. Or you could have like PTA meeting, you know, all of that right at their fingertips. So, I love the idea of being able to filter through all that because when you get

154an email or a newsletter, you know, there's a lot of I'm always trying to scan what am I most interested in? People are busy. They don't have time to read a bunch of stuff. But if you could just get it down to like, you know, maybe some of the big things that are, you know, important to the district, but really also the really specifics. And I think that would also help a lot with parent and community engagement. Really having um that information, you know, easy to get to, have QR codes for people to um get that to that information quickly. So, no, I appreciate that. I think you know to your first point I think one of the things that we've been working toward uh and I think doing a pretty good job can always

155do better uh is for communications to become a more integrated partner within departments right I think historically um you know I know the team has been like oh he's searching and asking what do you got going on but I think we're trying to put ourselves at the center of the work that's being done. So, how do we get in with uh whatever department it is that's working on something and help them along the way versus kind of like, oh, we just finished this report. Help us communicate, you know? So, we're working on that. And I think to so I I say that to say I think to your point about visuals and things like that, I think as we start to become a little more integrated, uh some of that will gradually start to get

156better. I think the other part as it relates to putting things in front of students, you know, the app, I love the app. We're just not there. And I think but I think when we really look at the website, you know, most websites are supposed to be socially or excuse me, um, cell phone responsive, right? I think the current platform and we've kind of looked at this is not that responsive. And so I think as we uh work on this audit, we also have to do some things before 2026 to keep it in compliance. Uh and I think we're talking we've already begun the process of talking about uh they call it a skin. So like a new outside of this website, new platform. And I think if we once we figure that out, we

157then might be able to work with schools a little bit more closely to determine how do we help them in one of those workshops, put that information up top, like start to think about prioritization of information. I think a lot of people think like, oh, I just put it here and it's there. But to your point, like people got to go dig for it. I think there's other things that we're learning. Um, for example, uh, you know, there's there's a text message system that this district has. uh it only has 60 characters that we're allowed to use. So that leaves a lot of room for not lack of clarity. And so we've already started talking to the vendor about expanding those characters to enable us to more clearly communicate in that way because one of

158the data points that maybe I didn't touch on super uh extensively is parents just to your point want it in front of them. And sometimes some of our communication, not all of it because we don't want to start getting to be like, you know, political campaigns, but some of the information uh could be texted to them. They would prefer it that way. And I think some of our schools are already doing that. But by expanding our tool capac our tools capacity, I think we're going to be able to help schools do that. and then teaching them and ourselves, you know, a more consistent um and clear cadence of information being shared because again, what we're learning is they're not it's not that we're not sending things, they just don't know what's important. And so, we

159got to help lift up and help them see what's important. And yeah, just wanted to point to that is along those lines is even just having focus groups like get a bunch of busy parents and some students together and have them try the website as you you know, okay, what do you want to look up and see how many clicks it takes them to get to, you know, a certain point because yeah, I just have a lot of challenges on the website just as a board member finding information. So, we're going to work on it. Yeah. Thank you. We are. I promise. Trust Trusty Barrera. No, thanks uh President Peterson. So James and Comm's team, thank you so much. And I what I'm really getting out of this is um we will prioritize and be

160able to communicate the things that really matter. and that when the people that we're communicating with, students, families, staff, receive communications from us that they would have a sense this is worth paying attention to. Correct. You know, it's like getting to that culture. Yes. And there's a couple of things that just, you know, immediately came to mind. So, um, Superintendent Bul had been talking earlier about Cal Kids, you know, so here's this opportunity that, um, every eligible family in our district, you know, should be signing up for. Um, and so if our if our communications, you know, uh, culture and infrastructure is really clicking, those rates should really skyrocket, right? Because why wouldn't a family sign up for Cal Kids if they knew about it? Yes. Similarly is FAFSA. You know, another example that um

161you know uh with the right um you know, culture and system in place, we should see dramatic increases in our FAFSA rates. And then one that just, you know, really I I think um I think we'll know that our communication system is really clicking is something like uh high impact home strategies that parents can use to support their students learning. And we know that that's a communication that is more likely to be received by parents if it's coming from a teacher. But how do we equip a teacher, you know, to be able to kind of get those um, you know, get those strategies out in a really, you know, clear, easy way where parents are actually saying, "Oh, okay. I I want to pay attention to that." So, it's like these big things, you know,

162our academic goals, our um uh, you know, opportunities for for our families. Um, this gives me a lot of hope that by prioritizing, getting clear, um, kind of eliminating the noise that we'll be able to to break through and and and really, you know, kind of make some impact in things that matter. Thank you. Yeah. No, I I appreciate that. I think there's a lot there's a lot of work to do, right? And we can give this nice presentation, but we got to deliver on it. And so and we will and but I think that like things like when you talk about like the high impact home strategies right for me that goes back to okay we're going to work with the department who is kind of helping lead that effort maybe that communication starts

163with okay how do we me message this better to our principles and then the principles can share that information better with their teachers and then simultaneously it's like oh we got Maria working on a little video on how parents can do that and then we put that in front of them or then we you know I I I think it's it's it's about at the end of the day once we know what our channels are the work really then becomes okay how creative can we be right right and and and you know capacity matters so we got to balance that a little bit um it's it's a it's a it's a mighty team it's not not a large team but I I I've worked on much smaller and we've done we can produce a lot

164so thank Thank you. Okay, I will just we've uh we've worked you a lot here. Um let me just say briefly a couple of things. First of all, Sharon got her own meeting. I'm sorry. Sharon got a personal meeting. I'm just hearing this now. I'm um I um I want to thank um I want to thank you for presenting this vision. I want to thank your staff. This is a lot of change and in my experience change is very challenging even for very highly competent staff. So I want to thank your staff for being along for this ride. Um I think I'll come back to friction, but I just thought of a I mean I thought of a quote earlier as we were talking about this but I think it's thorough but don't don't nick

165me if it's not. It could be Emerson. It's um all machines have their friction, but when the friction comes to have its machine um you're in trouble. And um and I would say there were time there were times when we first came on that the friction seemed to have its machine where it was like the goal was not to be clear and have the community along for the ride. And I think and I'll try in my comments here briefly to stay at the this top level of the board relationship with with the work with the staff and that is I am a firm believer and my colleagues and all our conversations I believe are firm believers and our leadership team completely genuine about as flawed as we can see democracy is what the church will

166say about the it's the it's a terrible system but it's the best of all of all the terrible systems. Um it has its flaws but we are firm believers in democracy. Uh we I certainly think of our role as being um not stenographic in relationship to our constituency but to represent the best of what our community believes and what their values are and to hold the district accountable to those needs and and values. Um and so I am very excited about that the democratic the the democratic vision that is embodied in this not in terms of democratic party but in terms of a belief that the more the public knows the more our families know the more the community knows community knows the more that they are they are making the decision with us and

167through us the better. Um and so I I I just um I'm excited about that about that in this thing I would say. Um, one of the things and I think it's the presentation itself is a little indicative of this. I would say one of the things we are learning from our student board members, I'm learning from my daughter and son. Um, is the goal is is meaning making and you kind of you kind of alluded to this. It does like all the texts in the world doesn't matter. The goal is to make meaning. Yeah. For our for our constitu whatever our constituency is is to help them make help to make meaning. Correct. And toward that end, I would say this is a very textheavy presentation and a lot of the newsletters I see

168are very textheavy. Um, where the the way that information both for me as a board I mean I am amongst the most textual my colleagues will tell you I'm amongst the most textheavy person in the entire universe but I am willing to say you need only as much text as is necessary to make a unit of meaning with it. And so I think part of increasing and I'll return now to the friction. The goal with all of this is to reduce to an absolute minimum the friction between the recipient of the information and and us. And and to to me there is so much friction. I mean I'm a I'm a receiver of the this information and it's like 99% of the stuff I'm like dude I can't read that right now. This too much

169what it's like the second I hear like I can't even repeat. I can't even remember to give you an example of the of the emails I get. I'm just like whatever. I don't even know what that is. I'm too busy. So much friction. And so to the extent that our part of what we're doing is always reducing to a bare minimum the friction between us as the speaker or the writer and the the recipient is like if that's a icon, if that's a you know whatever that is. Um I just text in a certain sense is our is our enemy. I mean it's it's really so and I I'll be very brief about these next things. I wanna uh in in relation I I want to say in relation to standardization because a lot of

170what we're talking about in terms of tools you provide is standardization. You're not trying to make all messages the same for everybody, but you're trying to standardize the tools so that they actually have you're reducing the friction for composition. They'll send a newsletter, but you've standardized the newsletter so that they can put it in. You've reduced the friction for the producer of the information. Um and and toward that, I think Richard just alluded to this, which is professional development is a huge part of this. Preparing teachers and site leaders to be able to use the product that you've engaged with the community, with the people producing the information, with people receiving the information, with the students, and you have created a standardized format to reduce the friction for producing it. Um and so I think

171it's very important to then have train your staff to be able to do that. So I'd love to see a professional development component of this. Um and I would say as a as a recipient information. So much of what we really care about, whether you're a student, whether you're a family, whether you're a staff member, is super white to the eye stuff, like stuff I need. Is it a is it a half day on Thursday? You know, like boom, really. And the correlary of that is 99% of the information I'm gonna want for the district, I'm not going to get it when you try to give it to me. you're going to send it to me to I'm gonna there's going to be a moment when I need it. And you you spoke to this

172and this is why the elephant in the room is always how bad our incumbent website is because I am the board president and I use Google to get the content or I can't even get through our own website to navigate. And that's a problem when 99% of the information I'm going to need is not when you send it to me but when I need it. And so I would just say priority number one is getting our our data architecture in order because so long as the 99% of the data that I'm actually going to get is not accessible to me, that is a very serious problem. So and I know you spoke to that and I think that's important. Um I think that that's about it. I just I just have to say this one

173thing because it's not only um written, it's even verbage. the kids in the classroom, lower grades and even upper overload. Don't y so much. Say it simple and get it over with. I mean, that's for all of us. Stop talking so much. Just say what you want to say and be done with it. Otherwise, you know, you get shut down. Sorry. So, I'll give you an opportunity to respond if there's anything in there, but just to her point, reduce the friction. reduce the friction at the home point of composition, the friction at the point of reception. I mean, all of that just friction. So, I think the first thing I want to say is I'd like to credit Tara who was like, "Hey, James, I think you got too much text." And and she said,

174"You should put a couple more uh like graphics and stuff." And I said, "No, we're okay." So, so I you know, I I agree. Right. And I and I think that um a part of this is saying less and making the words matter. However, I think one of the things that I'm learning in in when I meet with what I've met with parent groups and so forth is we too often in this space operate like people even know what we're talking about. And they don't. They really care about what's happening in their households and how it affects their kid and what's happening. And I think that there's this there's this balance that we have to strike in terms of continuously educating and informing people about who we are and what we do and and how

175what we're doing helps them so that they're so that we can eventually have that. I can say three words and you know what I'm talking about. And and I think that goes to structure of how we how we share information. I think it goes to consistency of the information being received. So I'm in agreement with you. I I think we just have to do a little bit better job of bringing people along before we can expect that, you know, they're going to be able to say the word whatever word and we know I just that was a response when you're just a board member and you're not having to chair the meeting. You like lean back like We're saying we got to keep moving this. Well, so it looks like uh the board has exhausted

176their question comments. We are very grateful to you, James, and to your entire communications team. Thank you very much. We're very excited about the path forward. Thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity. You are free. [Applause] Okay, back to the agenda. Um, we are now at uh items F1 and F2, unless I am very badly mistaken, which is our student readmissions andou with SDA. Is there a motion on these items? I see a motion from Vice President Barrera and a second from Trustee Cruz. We have a motion and a second. They're both what? They're they're part of a combined Oh, you're asking to take his motion F1 to F2. So, what Trusty Wyers Payne suggested that because student trustees cannot vote on this item, they probably should not make the motion either. So, I will

177take a a a alternate second from Sharon Wyhers Payne. She she Oh, Sabrina Trusty Bazo will make the second. Um I but I appreciate your enthusiasm. Um okay. Uh Miss Staltz, are there any uh we have a motion to second? Do we have any speakers from the public? No speakers on this item. Um do any trustees have any questions or wish to discuss items F1 and F2? Seeing none, we will move to a vote. Uh trustees, trustees, please vote. The That motion passes unanimously. All right, we will now move to a public hearing. It's like a play within a play. We will now move to item F3, public hearing regarding the initial proposals from the California School Employees Association, chapter 724, CSEA OSS, to bargain a successor agreement in accordance with section 3547 of the

178California Government Code and section 1031 of the bylaws of the board of education. The public hearing is now open. Miss Staltz, are there any speakers on this item? Okay, seeing none, we can open this item for dis for board discussion. Do any trustees have any questions or wish to discuss the item? Seeing none, uh the public hearing is now closed. That is the magic of board governance here. Okay, we will now consider items F4 through F7. This is another public hearing. the district's initial proposals to the OTBS, OSS, SDA, and PAR bargaining units. The public hearing is now open. Uh, Miss Staltz, any speakers on these items? All right. I do. I do. It's very empowering. Uh, seeing none, we can open these items for board discussion and approval. Is there a motion on these

179items? Trusty Hazen and a second from Trusty Wires Paint. Unfortunately, we are still in the uh public hearing section of our meeting. So, the second will be from trust. I already got whiter pain, I think. Right. Yeah. It's a little faster on the draw there. Um, we have a motion and a second. Do any trust? We have a motion and a second. Do any trustees have questions or wish to discuss these items? All right. Uh, this is uh now this is interesting. So, we strike the gavl and then we vote. Yes. Okay. Sometimes I doubt my own script here. It's just like, wow. Okay, that's interesting. This got vetted by somebody. So, okay. This public hearing is now closed. I have faith in you, sister. I really do. Adult trustees, please vote. Now, I should

180say our student trustee is 18. So, he is an adult. So that's that is I should have caught that on the script there. Sorry, Marty. That motion passes unanimously. Okay, we will now move to our uh board consent agenda. All right. Oh my goodness. We so many public hearings on this one. This is not typical of our board meetings. We will now conduct a public hearing and consider approval of item G1. The public hearing is now open. Miss Staltz, are there any speakers on this item? It's very popular items. Um, seeing none, we can open this item for board discussion and approval. Is there a mo a motion on this item? And I believe on this one you Yes, we have a motion from Trusty Cruz. He was ready. And a second from Trusty Baldis.

181Um, great. We have a motion and a second. Do any of the trustees have questions or wish to discuss? All right, get ready for it. The public hearing is now closed. You see how light I was with that gavvel touch? Uh, student trustees, please vote. All remaining trustees, please vote. That motion passes unanimously with student trustees concurring. All right, we are burning through this thing now. We will now hear item H1, an update on the governor's May revise of the proposed 202526 budget. Dr. Mula, please introduce the item. Thank you, President Patterson. Next, we have an informational presentation on the recently released governor's May revision to the state budget. Before we get into details, I want to offer a brief uh personal reflection. Having experienced this process in my many roles in education, I've come

182to recognize a familiar tension and I think this is where we are here too. The deep desire to invest boldly in our students and colleagues while also ensuring our budget remains balanced and sustainable. I believe we need both tensions at the table to make the most informed and responsible decisions for our students. The governor's May revision brings this tension into a sharper focus. It offers a clearer, though still cautious, snapshot of the state's economic outlook. It affirms what we've been projecting, persistent uncertainty, slowing revenue growth and difficult decisions ahead for public education. But we most must always also remember this that the May revise is just that, a snapshot in time. It doesn't tell us what the future holds. It only offers a projection. That's why even with its updated assumptions and one-time funding, the

183May revise does not change the structural realities we must confront. Like many districts, San Diego Unified is navigating long-term pressures, declining enrollment, rising costs, and revenues that no longer keep pace with our obligations. And this is precisely where we focus our fiscal advocacy to maximize every dollar available from the state and federal government for our students. The May revise includes some wins for our advocacy and it lays the foundation for what we must continue to advocate in the year ahead. And yet what I know to be true about San Diego Unified is this. We do not shy away from complexity. We face it together with discipline, creativity, and an unwavering focus on students. We grapple with our challenges as a one governing team united in purpose and driven by a shared commitment to steward public

184resources wisely. We are committed to holding two essential truths in balance. Preparing for the future while investing in the present. Tonight, Deputy Superintendent of Operations Drew Rollins and senior executive financial director Amy Shackleford will walk us through key elements of the May revise and how they shape our multi-year projections and budget development process. Though the state's budget process remains ongoing, we are on track to adopt our district budget in June, guided by the best information available and by our collective resolve to lead with clarity, care, and courage. I'll now turn it on to the team. Thank you, Superintendent. I'm still thinking about James' uh wonderful communication presentation and that statement in there that students don't care about the budget. And I I'm not taking it personally. I'm okay. And uh we'll forge through this, okay?

185We'll we'll get through it together. Uh tonight, Miss Shaq Forai will be making a presentation on the governor's uh May revision to his budget proposal. We'll touch on the timeline. Sorry, I'm supposed to be clicking. Uh the timeline, what are the themes that come across both for the state budget generally and for education? What does this translate to uh as an impact on our local funding? And then what's next? Our budget development wheel shows where we have been and where we are headed. Today we are sharing updates on the May revision and then in June we'll be be bringing forward uh for adoption the 2526 district budget. In the box on the right you can see uh what is happening at the same time at the state level. As mentioned the governor provided his May

186revision on May 14th. The work continues at the state um assembly and senate as they review the revision. Legisl legislative conference committees come together leading to the legislature approving a balanced state budget uh by June 15th passing that back to the governor and then the governor having until uh June 30th for approval. I'll now hand over to Amy to dig into some of the details. So in January, the governor had released a nearly balanced budget. However, since then, the California's fiscal outlook has softened driven by slower than expected revenue growth and higher than planned expenditures. This is primarily on the nonprop 98 side. Um the expenditure side um uh focused mainly on the medical spending. Um, so the governor attributes much of the economic downgrade to changes in recent federal policy, particularly around the tariffs,

187which are impacting California's revenue projections going forward. While currentyear receipts have come in above the enacted budget, the longerterm revenue forecast for the state has been lowered. And so, as a result, you'll see that the minimum guarantee has been lowered by $4.6 billion over the three-year budget window. U compared to where we were sitting in January's governor's budget. So to close the gap, um the May revise is relying on solutions such as utilizing $2.9 billion in one-time funding to support ongoing programs. The governor is also proposing a $1.8 billion cash deferral to help balance the budget. This is up from a $490 million deferral for 2425. He's also proposing to completely drain unfortunately the educational rainy day fund. This is uh the public school stabilization account. Um it's not the same as the general fund

188reserve. So there are two reserves at the state level. And then lastly um the governor is continuing to propose the underappropriation of that Prop 98 minimum guarantee true up for 2425. whereas back in January is roughly $1.6 billion dollars, it's now been recalculated down to 1.3 billion. So moving on to the local control funding formula. So for 2526, the cost of living adjustment or COLA has been finalized. It's now 2.3% so slightly down from the 2.43% that we reflected in our second interim. So that is an additional revenue decrease of about $1.5 million. Just as a reminder, we did include a loss of revenues at second interval about $6 million because the COLA did go from $2.93 to 2.43. So that is a net loss of $8 million from where we started at the beginning

189of the school year. Um, moving over to the transitional kindergarten or TK add-on. Um, the May Revise is proposing the adjustment of the TK add-on. And just as a reminder, this add-on is funding the staffing ratio. So, it's currently 12:1. Um, for 2526, it would be lower to 10:1. So, in January, the governor had proposed uh 6,44 per TK add-on. We do have about 4,500 T um TK88. Um fast forward to where we are now with May Reise, they have lowered that estimate to 5,545. Um so that is roughly $10.7 million. Um, also wanted to point out that at second interim as part of our $112 million solutions, we had already included $7 million of that TK revenue. So, it would really be an increase of 3.7 million um, compared to where we at second

190interim. I know there's still a lot of conversations at the state level. This is something that we continue to watch closely. Sierra Cook, our legislative advocate, is very busy at the state level. Um, ideally it would be great if we could get back to the $6,400, but right now it's not looking like it's that would be the funding level. Um, so the uh the governor continues to propose the student support and professional development discretionary block grant. Um, although the funding has been slightly reduced from 1.8 8 down to 1.7 billion basically adjusted for lower ADA at the state level. This remains a flexible funding source intended to help districts address rising costs and also supporting state priorities such as student well-being, professional learning, and academic interventions. The proposed funding would be allocated on a per

191ADA basis. Um, I've heard a couple of different numbers. school services published a $314 per ADA which would give us roughly 27.8 million. Capital advisors um talked about a $35 per ADA which is roughly 27. So we're looking somewhere 2728 million if that funding stays um as is in the final state approved budget. And then lastly these funds are um good through 2028 29. [Applause] The May revise maintains the partial restoration of the learning recovery block grant. So as a reminder, this block grant was originally established in 2223 at 7.9 billion. It was subsequently reduced by 1.1 billion in 2324 to address lower state revenues. And so in 2425, I also wanted to note that they did make some changes to the learning recovery block grant requirements. And so that main one being that any

192unspent funds in 2526 will require a uh student needs assessment. And um the uh San Diego Unified had originally planned on spending down all of those funds by 2425. So at the time we were not planning on that student needs assessment with this partial restoration. These funds do qualify under that under that statute. So that would be something that we would need to conduct that student needs assessment. And also given the time of when the state approves the budget and when the district would be approving the LCAP, the um direction out there was that we would be able to um include these funds and that student needs assessment and any resulting actions um in our mid-year LCAP update. That is typically around February. And we could also include at 2627. So we would have some

193runway to complete those tests once the state approves the budget because um they approved the budget after the district would have already approved their LCAP budget. So um moving on to the expanded learning opportunities program. The May revise continues to propose a key change to the program especially for a district like ours. We are sitting at 60% unduplicated students. So this would shift our district from a rate two funding to be at rate one and this would potentially increase our revenues by about $36 million. While this provides additional revenues, it also expands the requirement to offer ELOP access to all TK6 students, not just to those unduplicated students. So that would increase our program cost, hence the increased revenues. Um what's new in the May revise is some contingency language. This is another outcome of

194our advocacy which would provide districts a longer runway to implement that rate one requirement of um providing services to all of our students. And so what that means is that um districts that are moving to rate one and 2526 that we would be audited based on our rate to requirements that were providing access to just those unduplicated students. So that gives us a longer runway to um build out those programs. So Amy mentioned the Prop 98 settle up. Um and as the budget is right now, the governor is continuing his proposal to not fully fund Prop 98, the minimum guarantee for 2425 uh despite these updated revenue estimates. And under the constitution, the state must recalculate the final guarantee after the close of the fiscal year based on actual actual revenues received. Uh so that's

195what the process that would typically happen in the in the May revise. Uh the settle up has been reduced. Uh it was 1.6 billion in um in the governor's budget in January. Now is down to 1.3. U if they were to distribute this equally, it would be about $214 per ADA or about $19 million in additional revenue to us. Um however as we know the governor's budget u or proposal is delay defer this obligation delaying funds that would otherwise uh come our way. Um ideally and the push in Sacramento depending on where you are is that this is allocated directly into the L LCFF provides the greatest flexibility. Um and I think another push would be at a minimum a more prudent approach would be to deposit the funds in the education rainy day fund

196uh until the final settle amount is is confirmed. So it to help with the risk of overallocation as occurred in 2324 while still perver preserving the intent of funding TK uh 14 education at the U constitutional levels. So just a quick look at the timeline as we move towards finalizing the 2526 budget. Our next key steps are are approaching very quickly. At the next meeting on June 10th, we'll bring forward the first reading of the LCAP and the proposed budget along with the required uh education protection account EPA public hearing. And then final board approval of the budget is slated for the June 24th meeting. We'll continue to watch the state budget process closely to ensure we remain aligned with the respon uh and fiscally responsible and centered on student needs. And just a note

197that very little of this will actually be built into our budget because of that dual timeline, our work and the state's work. Uh so as that plays out, we will then come back around on what's called the 45day memo into August where we once have our adopted budget, the state's adopted budget and and line up those differences to explain where we were when we adopted and where the state has ended up and those last allocations. So in a nutshell, that's it, and we're ready to take any questions you may have. Thank you, Drew and Amy. Um, we will now turn to Miss Staltz and see if there are any speakers on this item. Oh, okay. Um, do any of the board members have questions or comments in relation to the report? We all care. Yeah,

198I know you do. We won't take offense. We know it's late at night. It's all We're all Yeah, we're all eating popcorn waiting for these things to develop. Um well, Trusty Hazen, just a quick one. um around the 36 million and anticipated new expanded learning funding. Um do we expect to be able to use any of that um for unrestricted purposes or is it all going to be used to do new activities within the vein of expanded learning? My assumption would that would be that we would use um given the intent of those dollars are to help offset rising costs because our cola did start off as a higher number. And with the cola dropping, I think part of what they've been talking about is to help is these funds could help um fill in

199the gap from those lost cola dollars. And so the expanded learning 36 million, you were on the block. I went back to the block grants. So, I was going to go. Um, so, yes, with the ELOP funds, um, the expectation is that we would be able to utilize some of these funds to help with some of our programs such as like the expanded school year um, and any expenses that are related to summer school and things like that because we have the ability to do the braiding between the ACES and the ELOP. And so the expectation is that we would be able to help with the gap using utilizing some of these funds after we fully provide um students with the access to those programs and that's what the auditors are going to check. And

200I think to rephrase the question slightly is are there resources that we are are there services consistent with ELOP that we're currently currently using unrestricted funds for that we would be able to free up some unrestricted funds by allocating those to uh to this uh budget line. Yeah. Yeah. And so we would be able to some of those solutions are already embedded in our $112 million solution that we have for 25 to 26. So these additional funds would help um augment and continue those um into the out years as well. Excellent. Additional comments. Okay. I just just basic top line. We've we've all gone over this many times and had sleepless nights on this. My basic takeaway is this may revised leaves us largely where where we were. It's not bad news. It's not super

201awesome news, but it's within margin of error in terms of what we projected back in January. Correct. You saw some slight movement. You see a few one-time funds that are coming in that are certainly helpful and then as we discussed something like ELOP goes to the program predominantly and and with that comes uh more students that will be served. though very all told very neutral I would say with a little bit of help in the onetime funds maybe something like in aggregate somewhere like five million or something additional 5 to 10 million when all is said and done to the good yeah I mean we were expecting TK to come in around $14 million that would have been the 6404 um dropping down to the 5545 it's a loss of about $4 million um with

202the drop in cola. Um, fortunately for us, our P2 attendance report came in higher. So, similar to second interim where we've um finished um with additional savings um to the bottom line, we would have a little bit more savings because that P2 report. And so, those savings are going to help offset the loss of cola next year. So, that one would be about neutral as well. Yeah. Okay. And then you take the ELOP funds and the refunding of the Yep. We're going to be Yes. more opportunity to be strategic about finding items that would qualify. I'm sorry, I just want to clarify you. You were saying because we have an increased in where where was the savings that you were just mentioning? Our attendance or ADA is higher when we submitted our uh P2 report

203to the state in April. It did come in higher which was good news. Um and so it will offset that loss of cola next year. And then I saw uh Vice President Barrera. Oh yeah. I including the onetime funds. Yeah. So to what we were expecting back in January, it's roughly about the same. So some are up, some are down. But yeah, so they're when we talked back in January and February, the workshop, neither of the dollars, none of the dollars had been put into the budget except for the COLA and TK. And so yeah, we should be I got about 35 million and then depending on what happens with the true up of $19 million and yeah, it should be somewhere between 40 and 60. I'm sorry. To the good to the good. Okay,

204that's great news. All right. Um, with that, uh, we do not actually need a vote out of you. So, thank you so much for the presentation. All right. Um, we will now consider items H2 and H3. Uh, declaration of need for fully qualified educators and position reductions for fiscal year 202526. Is there a motion on these items? We have a motion for Trusty Whitehurst Payne. Do I have a second? Trust trustee Bosa with the second. Thank you very much. Um, Miss Staltz, are there any speakers on this item? All right. Do any of the trustes have any questions? Seeing none, we will move to a vote. Uh, student trustees, please vote. All remaining trustees, please vote. Thank you. All right, that motion passes unanimously with student trustees concurring. All right, uh, we will now consider

205items I through I44, the superintendent's consent agenda. Consent items are considered to be routine and will be enacted by one motion followed by a vote. There will be no separate discussion of these items unless the board, member of the public or staff requests specific items be removed from the consent agenda for separate discussion and action. Any agenda item removed will be voted upon following the motion to approve the consent agenda. Uh Miss Staltz, has anyone from the public uh pulled anything? Uh, do any of the board members wish to pull anything from the consent agenda? Quick one. All right. Trusty Hazen, what would you like to pull? I 24. I 24. Okay. Uh, Trusty Hazen has pulled I24. Uh, we will consider that after the the vote on the full consent agenda. If I could

206just say broadly speaking if we could and I've said we've said this multiple times but if we could at the end of the year get some sort of a assessment of we have a lot of will not exceed or not to exceed values but in the end a lot of that funding doesn't get these are almost all always not to exceed values but we don't really know how much was actually allocated. So it leaves us with a pervasive lack of understanding about how much we're actually spending on these things. So I know we've said it before, but it'd be great at maybe at the end of the year we have a moment where we have a spreadsheet that talks about it where we figure out how how much we actually allocated to the things that

207we Thank you. Sorry. Um so we have pulled I24. Uh is there a motion on the remainder of the consent? Okay. Trusty Wire's pay with the motion. Do I have a second? Uh, Trusty Cruz with a second. We have a motion and a second. Um, we are not going to discuss since it is a consent agenda. We will thus move to a vote. Uh, student trustees, please vote. All other board members, please vote. That motion passes unanimously with student trustees concurring. All right, we will now uh take up item I 20 24 rather. Um Trusty Hazen, would you like to say anything in regard to that? Yeah, so I24 is ratification of an agreement with um CD around um career technical education grant funds. I'd asked this question. I apologize it came I asked it

208late. Um, but we're being asked to ratify this new grant. Um, which is fantastic, but there weren't any details about what we're doing, scope of work. So, if we could I'm just wondering, um, we're a year in, what what are we endeavoring to do here? Um, what is this funding? It describes K through 12. So, additional details would be helpful. we can get them for you because um this was a grant that we applied for so it was very extensive as well so we'll make sure to get them. Thank you. Thank you. And yeah just I guess moving forward in general having a scope of work for grants is would be really helpful because there were no details here. All right. Do we have a motion on item I24? Trusty White Spain. Oh yeah, Trusty

209Balls with the second. Um, we have a motion in a second. Is there any additional presumably there wasn't at the time anybody but is there any now from the public? No. Okay. Uh, seeing no further discussion. We will We have a motion and a second. We will move to a vote. Student trustees, please vote on item I 24. All other board members, please vote. That motion passes unanimously with student board members concurring. All right. Here. All right. Thank you for bearing with us all those in the audience. We will now move to item J1 which is non-aggenda public testimony. Uh Miss Stoultz, have we received any request for non-aggenda comment? Yes, we have five speakers. Each speaker will have three minutes. Anthony Pard followed by Victor Ward. Hello, my name is Anthony Pard. I identify

210as an apost apostolic Christian black American man with a multicultural background. I'm not sure how this situation could be rectified. I thought I was alone in this situation and find out that I'm actually not. Last year I suffered a very traumatic experience during my school year. came back this school year and uh kind of had some similar uh situation. So, I wanted to bring it to your attention because this matter is not concluded and more information will be coming your way here in the future. I do have a prepared statement here, April 16, 2024. Before I stood before this board, San Diego Unified School District Board of Education uh to concisely inform this board at the time Dr. Lamont Jackson was in attendance. To my dismay and administr and administrative protocol, I learned about some

211of our San Diego Unified School District personnel and practices. It is said historically, it's difficult to expose, argue, and admonish the appearance of discrimination and untruthfulness. and people willing to perform these types of acts. Since then, I have learned and experienced the definitions and perspectives of these particular terms, systematic racism, institutional, misogyny, nepotism, and collusion. As much as I know at this present moment, these are not good words to speak about public education and our personnel. I've been threatened and poss for uh possible termination. I've been told I would not be able to get a job and any other teaching position in other school districts and other worse consequences. If I will continue to speak about pursu perceived violations of social justice issues, our God forbids no weapon formed against us to prosper. Here's one

212example of of one of my experiences. One day, as I offered a solution to a teacher to help them with a student behavioral issue, I was told by the teacher, "You are the problem." After attempting to give advice about a student who identified as a Mexicanamean, I intend to pursue an administrative credential. I intended to pursue an administrative credential to enable myself to add qualification to the suggestions and guidances that I argued in the past which have been proven effective today. I was met with disappointing opposition similar to how I remembered I wanted to take advanced placement courses in high school, but it wasn't seen as acceptable. There's one uh something more has been brought to my attention. There's a growing concern identifying black teachers. They're being looked past for teaching positions and to include

213administrative positions, too. Understandably, this is a human resource question and individuals responsible form these selections. I'm here not to burn a bridge but to advocate what is quoted right is right. Thank you. So I stop. Victor Ward. Good evening, board. Superintendent Bugula. Uh my name is Victor Ward. I actually live in the Bay Area and uh my boss told me you need to go to San Die. My boss is my wife. She's the president of the company. She said, "You need to go to San Diego because they have a great VAPA program." So, got in the car and drove down. Glad to be here. Um, I have two products that I wanted to mention. I only have three minutes, so I'm going to spend a little bit of time on the first and most of

214the time on the second. The first thing that we have is a video platform based on competition. We designed it specifically to help reduce chronic absenteeism. love to spend another 20 minutes explaining. It's a very simple concept, but like I said, I want to spend most of my time on the second based off of the meeting. Uh we have the second product is a video yearbook. It allows students, teachers, principles to upload their own videos. And it works off of the concept that if a picture is worth a thousand words, a one minute video is worth about 2,000 pictures. Now, we are talking today about text and the, you know, Mr. Kenny did a great presentation and people who do the yearbook, the students and the teachers who do the yearbook present a fabulous yearbook.

215This is not to shy away or to to put the yearbook off to the side at all, but sometimes the yearbook needs to be supplemented because people are working hard to produce something in the year 2025 using 1925 tools. To remind you of 1925 or maybe 1955, I have a few things. I have a transistor radio. Now, although I used I live in the Bay Area, I grew up in Los Angeles, so I used to listen to all my Dodger games. I know I'm in hostile territory here, but used to listen to all my Dodger games on the Transistor Radio. Next, we have the Polaroid camera where the picture, my generation, the Polaroid camera, the picture came out the front. This one comes out the side. And finally, the relic of relics. the rotary phone.

216Okay, so all of these things are old. We've moved past them and yet we still have the traditional yearbook. Again, nothing wrong with that, but it needs to be supplemented. In a few days, few weeks, there will be the greatest day of the year, graduation. There has never been a graduation photo in the traditional yearbook. So again, I'm just here. I wanted to present our different things, introduce myself, maybe uh follow up with someone at some point in time in the future. Thank you very much. Arlene New followed by Charles Green. Time to let the 1900s go. Movement boosts memory, focus, mood, and even test scores. Yet our school days are still structured like a 1900's factory line. Sit still, be quiet, stay inside the box. It doesn't work, especially not for developing children. In

217Finland, students outperform ours globally and they get a 15minute break every 45 minutes. In Japan, group exercise starts the day. In Canada and Estonia, movement is required daily by law. We have the data. We have the examples. What we apparently lack is the initiative to change. Let's stop punishing children for needing to move. Stop making them sit still while falling apart. Let's pilot extended days at our highest need schools. Not to pile on academics, but to make room for the movement and development that actually improves learning. If you are serious about equity, science, and doing what works, this is the moment. You want academic games, add movement. You want better regulation, add movement. Countries that add movement blow us out of the water academically. This isn't fluff. This is science. This is equity. And it's

218just common sense. If you've ever been in a room with five-year-olds, movement is not a break from learning. It isn't the enemy of learning. It's a missing piece. Let's stop clinging to broken systems from the last century. Let's start leading like it's the 21st. Charles Green followed by Nazarene Atasi. Dr. Gula, trustee members. Um I've never been to a meeting like this. So, uh I am really impressed at all you do for the community. So, thank you for that. Um I'm representing uh three congregations of Jehovah's Witnesses um over on 47th and um by the Abera school. Um we've been parking in that school since it was built in around 2005 um unimpeded. And in that time a since our Kingdom Hall was built in 1957, a lot of apartments have popped up in that

219neighborhood. So, we've lost all of our parking and a couple about like two months ago, we lost the parking lot to the um Ibara school, elementary school um where we were that we were using. Um we understand that safety is obviously your primary concern and but it inadvertently put our over 300 members at grave risk. Um, I would ask both of these officers if they would let their families walk around Orange Avenue and Uklid between Uklid and 47th if they would feel comfortable with their FL family members. Probably not. Um, so we're I'm just kind of here to basically we need your help like really bad. Um, we have single women uh mothers with children. the that neighborhood is not well lit and the sidewalks are really bad and there's a lot of crime. There's

220a lot of a lot of these apartment complexes are hubs for drugs and uh the one actually right next to us, there was a stabbing in the parking lot recently and um you see them doing that kind of fentanyl slump right out front. It's really unnerving. Basically, if um I've been working with the rentals department um with Tracy Tiknell and they created a facilitron account for us, but they they want like 7,000 a month basically for off for for school hours off off hours. We we only meet on off hours of the school in the evenings and on weekends. Um like I said, I know you guys are really tired. I don't want to throw any more burden on you than already, but um I did send an email. Hopefully, she got it out to

221you. We we can do like 700 a month um to rent the parking lot, but we can't do 7,000. Like that's we're we're a a nonprofit non-tithing non-payroll volunteer organ um congregation. We help the Karan and Burmese and Amhara communities um learn to read. We've been, like I said, we've been um an established institution in the community um since the 50s. Some of our members have been attending this congregation since 1960. So yeah, just take a look at the email and uh maybe we can work something out. I was going to show a map, but I didn't have time. Hello school board. Good evening. My name is Nina Tassie and I'm a credentialed mild mod special education teacher. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you tonight and thank you for your service and commitment

222to our schools. Over the past school year, I've had the privilege of working closely with our students, staff, and families to support diverse learners in both academic and behavioral growth. Throughout this time, I've consistently stepped in as a substitute teacher, often on short notice across various classrooms, programs, and grade levels. I do this because I care deeply about our students and believe in being a flexible, reliable member of this educational community. Despite this ongoing involvement, I have not yet received a contract or formal offer for the upcoming school year. I'm coming to you today not with frustration but with a sincere desire desire for clarity and communications. As someone who values curiosity, I continue to seek ways to improve my practice, collaborate across disciplines, and serve students with dignity and skill. I know that the

223work we do together is deeply important, and I want to continue being part of that work in a consistent and meaningful role. I believe in our district's mission and feel aligned with our core values, especially communication, curiosity, and skills. These aren't just words on paper to me. They're values I try to embody every day through open dialogue with families, adaptive teaching practices, and the ongoing development of inclusive strategies for our learners. My goal tonight is simple. To ask for transparency regarding next steps and hiring decisions. I am ready and eager to serve full-time in the role I've trained for and passionate about. I hope to continue growing here, contributing to students success in a more stable capacity and collaborating closely with admin and colleagues to make that possible. Thank you for your time and your

224listening and your continued investment in our students and educators. That concludes public comment. Right. As much as I'd like to detain you further this evening, um we've all worked through those. Thank you to everyone who presented tonight. Thank you to everyone in attendance tonight. Um and uh we definitely deeply appreciate your input and uh please know that your perspectives help us to better serve our students, parents, and community. Thank you so much. And with that, this meeting is now adjourned. The next regular meeting will be held on June 10th, 2025.