001the mass epidemic of students opting out of state testing in Miramar Mesa High School. As a junior, I talked to many of my peers that have or considered opting out of the state testing and the main motivation is academic pressure negatively affecting mental health. It is known that schools want their honors/AP students to take the test as their performance can boost the overall school score. However, as an AP as an AP student, as and someone who talked to many AP students, students expressed extreme concerns of losing mass amounts of class time reviewing for AP tests that happened literally the next week, causing anxiety and stress on the students. In fact, I am one of the AP students that considered to opt out due to mental health issues. It doesn't help that the junior year is
002objectively the hardest year for high schoolers. many handling a ton of AP courses, college courses, internships, extracurriculars, studying for the DMV or SAT tests, and maybe even jobs. Simply, state testing adds another psychological challenge to a critical period at the end of the school year. Additionally, many students do not know the true purposes of state testing. When I talked to many of my peers, they reported that state testing was only for school funding, not knowing that state testing can help with college opportunities. This is due to a lack of communication. Students in Mirram Mesa only knew about college opportunities through the testing until admin had to explain on the school broadcast. After such explanations, however, more people were inclined to take the test. Well, what are our solutions? Well, we can kill two birds with
003one stone. In our recent meeting, we identified that our interim superintendent, Dr. Fabi Bagua, is a great public speaker. But a lot of people don't know that because we never hear them speak. The superintendent can report record a video explaining the importance of state testing. Of course, other school board members can join in as we even in other videos. In another perspective, a district that wants to prioritize and promote mental health and student wellness, the district must acknowledge that having state testing a week before AP test is not a good idea. I urge the district to consider if it is possible to operate state testing a week earlier than it is now. In fact, I talked to my friend that attends a high school in Carlsbad, USD, and he said he took the state test
004last week. So, I'm sure it may be possible. I'm sure that by pushing the state test forward a week will alleviate the pressure and psychological stress of tests being closer together. Thus, students don't have the anxiety of losing time for review close together in AP testing. Again, thank you for this opportunity. All right. Thank you so much. Do you have anything else for the report? Okay, great. Um, okay. Uh with that uh we will move to item C2, a proclamation recognizing school police officer Cando Deator. Vice President Ber, please present the item. Thank you. I'm just going to read the proclamation if that's all right. U given uh the amazing work of officer uh de la. Uh whereas the San Diego Unified School District Police Department has nominated Officer Civando Deator as the recipient of
005the San Diego County Crimes Stoppers Enough is enough award. And whereas Officer Deator has been a member of the San Diego Unified School District Police Department for three years assigned to patrol in the southern area. And whereas officer de la's exceptional dedication, professionalism, and compassion towards students, parents, and staff has made a lasting impact in our school communities. And whereas one of officer de la's memorable cases occurred in September of 2024 when officer Deator responded to an area elementary school for a student in mental crisis. And whereas during his investigation, he learned the student had planned to end her life by using her parents' firearms, officer de la went to the student's residence to speak to her parents and conduct a firearms check. And whereas officer de la thoroughly documented this incident and worked with
006allied agencies to secure the firearms and provide a safe environment for the student to move forward. And whereas on this day his diligent work undoubtedly prevented a tragedy, now therefore be it proclaimed that the San Diego Unified School District Board of Education recognizes Officer Deator for his service to our students and as an inspiring role model for what it means to be a specialized officer in educational law enforcement. Thank you, Officer Deto. Yeah. Hold one second. One second. We need a mo. We need to pass a motion because we haven't give us one second here. Let me just do the the get get this on the record here. Um I'm going to take that as a motion. Do I have a second? Trusty Hazen with the second. Um and let's uh let's move unless we
007have further discussion on the board. No speakers on this item. Let's I'm so sorry about this. We just want to make sure it's official before we bring you up here because we want to see see you up here. Um, student trustees, uh, please vote. Remaining board members, please vote. I'm pressing my Oh, student trustees, please vote. Remaining board members, please vote. That motion passes unanimously. Please come on up. If we can get our camera folks here too and get a picture. Come on. You're all good. [Applause] All right, we're back in our seats here. Uh, okay. Um, with that we will move to item D1. General Council Green, under item D1, are there any reportable actions from close session? No. All right. Um, Superintendent Bukula, do we have any management appointments? Yes. I'd like to
008welcome um Chief Jarvis, his permanent status. He has been a great addition to our district and I just want to say congratulations and thank you for continuing your service here. [Applause] Thank you, Superintendent. Uh thank you, Chief. Uh we will now move to item D3. Dr. Bula, please provide your information report. Yes. Thank you, Dr. Person. Last week, I had the opportunity to join leaders from Long Beach, Oakland, and Los Angeles Unified in advocating for budget priorities that are critical to urban school districts across California. Together, we emphasize the need for a higher cost of living adjustment, funding to fully support transitional kindergarten staffing, greater flexibility through block grant funding, and strong investments in our special education students. We met directly with legislative leadership, the chairs of the budget subcommittees on education, and representatives from
009the governor's office to uplift the voices and needs of the students we serve. As state leaders prepare for the May revision of the governor's proposed state budget, I want to assure our community that I am fully committed to making sure our students remain front and center in these conversations. While the overall state budget picture remains uncertain, I'm encouraged by the meaningful discussions that we had, our students, our schools, and our communities were seen and heard. We look forward to continuing the partnership with both the legislature and the governor as we work toward a final budget that reflects the needs of all of our um students across California. We also happily announced an additional 10 new community schools last week um which we're going to hear a little bit more about. But one of the biggest
010important things that happened is we believe in community schools as not just isolated institutions but that they're beating hearts of our neighborhoods. When we center the work around the whole child, we must center the work around the whole family and the whole neighborhood. When we attend to the basic needs, safety, nourishment, emotional care, then we can unlock the possibilities of their academic brilliance. Last week, I had the pleasure of welcoming our next cohort of community schools to the program, bringing our grand total to 35. Please join me in welcoming They're all elementary schools. I'm just going to read them all forward. Chesterton, Hamilton, Kimbro, Marshall, Penn, Ross, Rowan, Washington, Webster, and Whitman. So, thank you very much. I'm really proud of that addition. Tonight, I do want to reiterate my sincere appreciation to the principles
011and teachers for stepping up and raising their hand to join our community schools movement. And before I close on community schools, I want to acknowledge concerns we have received about the future of community schools. To be clear, 100% of our community schools funding is being used to support 100% of the community schools model. We're paying for the community schools coordinator from the community schools grant which is allowable under state law. This is an area where there are no cuts. In fact, we remain committed to community schools and we invite partnership to advocate for the long-term sustainability of the program and ongoing funding from the state. Speaking of schools, I want to point out that tonight you as board of education will vote on a new policy to improve our district's process for renaming our schools
012and changing mascots. Historically, the process and procedures around name and mascot changes has not been as clearly laid out or as transparent as they could have been. If approved, our district will have a new process and the community will have stronger voice. Claremont High School would be the first school in the district to implement a mascot name change. This change is just another example of our ongoing commitment to doing better for our students in our communities. On our next topic, San Diego Unified is proud to be partnering with the California Masonic Foundation and the San Diego Padres's, who are funding a series of learning opportunities around the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum exhibit, Breaking Barriers. This exhibit is open and free to the public through May 31st at the San Diego Central Library. I think it's
013really fun. You all should go and see it. Our equity and belonging team has worked with our black student unions to develop four inschool lessons that provide historical context around the Negro League baseball. Our students are being provided digital resources, videos, and lessons to supplement their classroom lessons. We're also holding four field trips for five of our high schools, Madison, Crawford, Karnney, Henry, and Hoover during the month of May for our students to visit this important exhibit. This is an important one and I again want to thank California Masonic Foundation and the San Diego Padres for making this possible for our students to learn and to experience. But to conclude um my remarks tonight, I want to recognize some of our outstanding schools and students and I see them here in the audience. Um we
014recently concluded our 10th annual San Diego Unified School District recycling challenge. I'm looking over at Dr. Whitehurst Pain who always has healthy competition around here. Uh but the recycling challenge winners and runners up are for the elementary and K8 school category. The winner is Sanberg Elementary with 67% waste diversion. Our runner up is Dingman Elementary with 66% waste diversion. So very close. It's good to see you. For our middle school category, our winner is Challenger Middle School with 60% waste diversion. Congratulations. And our runner up is Wagen High Middle School with 50% waist diversion. Our high school category, our winner is Patrick Henry High School with 55% waist diversion. And our runner up is University City High School with 50% waist diversion. We also have a most improved category. Um Porter Elementary School increased from
01521% diversion to 35% diversion. Congratulations. And this this improvement was marked to the implementation of an ongoing recycling program, a classroom green team leadership initiative, and expanding lunchtime recycling and student sustainability education. So, I think we can all learn from Porter to continue to improve our efforts. All of this year's winners recycled nearly 26,000 pounds per month combined. All of our schools recycle approximately 300,000 pounds per month combined. And since we started the challenge in 24 to sorry 2014 2015, our schools have recycled nearly 20.5 million pounds of material. The commitment by many of our young people for tackling climate change, protecting the environment, and and supporting sustainability is really inspiring. Congratulations again to all of the winners and runners up. And let's give them all a round of applause. We want to we want
016to invite any members of the audience that are here that are students and educators from these winning schools to come on up so we can take a picture together please and celebrate your efforts. Thank you. Where's the It's here. It was here. Where's the button on this one? I like that space. You got to move it a little bit. Thank you. All right, that was very cool. I got to work on organics. That's my one thing. I'm not good with organics yet. You know what I mean? Diversion. Organics. Diversion. Okay, we will now hear item E1, progress monitoring report on goal one, student wellness. Dr. Bula, can you please introduce this item? Yes, thank you, President Person. I'm pleased to welcome our second progress update on the development of our wellness board goal and measurement
017strategy work we expect to finalize by June 2025. We accepted this challenge because we recognize the essential link between student wellness and student success in literacy, mathematics, and graduation. Feedback from students, families, staff, and community partners continues to affirm what we know to be true. Wellness is foundational to achievement across every academic and social domain. Tonight, we'll hear from Scott Irwin, executive director of student services, and Melissa Sping Spaden, our partner from San Diego County Office of Education, who's the director of systems and supports. They'll share the progress made since our last update on February 11th, including the introduction of a multi-dimensional wellness index. They are joined today tonight by Lauren Hennessy, lead licensed mental health clinician, and Paul Brussel, principal investigator from San Diego State University, who will present insights from the lead and
018learn from the heart initiative. And thank you for that partnership. Through this journey, a few key understandings have emerged. The mind body connection is critical. Authors like Lisa Filman Barrett of How Emotions Are Made and Bessel Van Dur I can never pronounce that name. I'm sorry. Um, the body keeps a score reminds us that emotions and healing are deeply connected to our physical experiences. Wellness is collective. As Britney Stone, senior director at Wellness Together says, wellness is about the people around us because we are social beings. Wellness is also complex. A single score cannot capture it, which is why a multi-dimensional wellness index is being developed. Also, we must be careful not to overassess students. An assessment inventory is needed to align and streamline the tools that we are already using. This work has been
019ongoing and continues to do so as we are still learning. While we're not at the finish line yet, tonight's presentation moves us one step closer to a meaningful, equitable approach to student wellness. With that, I'll turn it over to Scott Irwin and Melissa Speden to guide us through tonight's update. Thank you. I appreciate that. No, we're really excited to u meet with you folks today to talk a little bit about the progress update on the wellness board goal and um I started my career as a history teacher. I really love history and in 1962 President Kennedy gave a speech at Rice University. He gave um he shared some language that's been quoted often. It's about the Apollo program and what Kennedy said um was that we choose to go to the moon and to in
020this decade and to do other things not because they're easy but because they're hard. That's probably a quote that we've all learned about in school. And um what's interesting though is about why Kennedy chose that language. He was trying to do two things at the same time. He wanted to motivate society to try to accomplish something that was important but very large. In that time period in 1962, many people thought it was impossible to go to the moon. But he also knew that if he set a lofty goal that it might motivate our society to try to do things they've never done before. I think that's I think of that quote a lot when I think about this wellness goal. Remember over a year ago we had been coached and guided by some people to
021say maybe you shouldn't take on the task of building a wellness goal. It's too abstract but we as a as a district and as a board you folks said no it's important and that we know that there's four goals and that really the wellness goal is foundational to all of them. And I just wanted to say that our team who has been working on this. Let's see if I can get this clicker to work. Well, you can you can work on that. I don't know. Well, some So, what we've learned right now is flipping the switch on always helps the clicker work better. And that that is the hardest thing we're going to need to accomplish tonight. I think we're going to be in good space here. But uh what I um I think what
022has been motivating for us as a team is to be able to work on this goal knowing that it will lay the foundation for the other three elements. Um that graph you'll see there you've seen it in LCAT presentations that wellness piece which is in the upper lefthand corner really is the foundation and um it's been an interesting journey. Um, I was in a parent conversation uh with a group of parents last week where we were talking about this work, right? One of our multiple feedback sessions you'll learn about. And a mom said to me, she said, "Why don't you guys just buy an off-the-shelf wellness assessment and implement it tomorrow? Maybe you're overthinking this, you know, but the irony is that type of assessment doesn't exist." that institutions across our nation and the world,
023people involved in health care and mental health are asking the World Health Organization today to create a wellness definition so that we can align our assessments and our work. And the World Health Organization has not done that yet. So there is no gold standard. But we as a board, we created our own definition in February. We created a framework that had four elements. body, mind, relationships, and community. And all of our work between then and now has been based off of that. On the screen right now, we have a timeline that shows you many of the key events that have taken place between February, when we last met, and now. And here are a couple pieces that I wanted to highlight. Well, one of them had to do with our learnings. We have been involved
024in conversations with partners in our community. Um, Dr. Steve Hornberger who's in the audience today from San Diego State University, uh, Dr. Amy Bentliff from UCSD, Dr. Jennica Paw, who's also from San Diego State University, and Marlon Morgan who is the leader of wellness together. We've been learning a lot about how to measure wellness. And we uh not only did Fabi highlight some of our key learnings, but we've also learned the danger of reducing a student to a single number. Research shows that's a bad idea. Research shows we need to adjust our assessment based upon age. What a high school and middle school and elementary school student will engage with will look different. We need to learn how to differentiate between objective and subjective measurements. And we need to know how they complement each other.
025And today you're going to learn about a wellness index that does that. And we also know about the importance of avoiding bias in our data output by relying upon and committing to the use of research-based questions. This piece, by the way, has been very challenging for educators. As a former teacher, I made my own assessments in my classroom. And for me to learn that there's more to creating a valid assessment than coming up with something on a cocktail napkin has been a little challenging for some people. But we're committed to making sure that everything we do is researchbased. And I loved uh uh how you referenced this being an ongoing journey because today we're going to present to you um a proof of concept of what could a multi-dimensional wellness index look like. I think
026the other pieces that I wanted to share to you were that we have been engaging students and stakeholders in all types of conversations between February and now. Um we've been meeting with parents at Claremont High School and at LMC. We participated in a presentation with some parents at the Ballard Center and we've even been getting feedback from you folks. If you remember last week through our conversation about the ELCAP goal, you were mentioning the importance of incorporating access to health care, about the idea of making sure that students feel purpose, about this concept of substance abuse, about making sure that social media addiction is incorporated in there and outdoor physical education. That's feedback we receive from you folks. And spoiler alert, later on in this presentation, you're going to learn why it is that we
027have moved away from the California Healthy Kids to the Scenic Unified Student Survey, and it's to be able to actually meet one of the needs that you folks identified last week. We've also been exploring other options. We have learned about the California Student Wellness Index. We've spoke to subject matter experts there. We have met with representatives from a neighboring district, Sweetwater Unifi, to learn about how does their early data warning system work. We've been doing a lot of time learning and one of the key pieces of information that we've learned about too are about programs that exist within San Diego Unified right now. This is one of the reasons why we had asked Lauren Hennessy and Paul Brazil from uh pro Paul Brazelle from San Diego State University to come speak to you a little
028bit about what is happening in the Hoover cluster when it comes to lead and learn from the heart. So, I'm going to turn that over to them right now so you have an opportunity to see what kind of wellness work is taking place in our district. Thank you. Um, and thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you to the board for inviting us to present today. My name is Lauren Hennessy and I'm a lead licensed mental health clinician with our district's mental health resource center and I've been with the district for over 20 years now, but most of those years have been spent on this project in City Heights. It's a collaborative project with our district SDSU School of Social Work and uh our funer Price Philanthropies. I just want to recognize the um the importance of
029the investment that Price Philanthropies has made in the City Heights community because our work wouldn't be possible without it. They haven't just funded our program um and other things in the schools, but also the they provide a lot of funding to the local nonprofits and the ethnic based community organizations that we partner with. So, I wanted to recognize that. I also want to introduce my co-presenter, Paul Brazelle. Hi, good evening board. Thank you so much for having us today. And I'm Paul Brazelle. I'm field faculty with San Diego State University School of Social Work. And I'm also fortunate enough to be the principal investigator on this program. And I've been with this program for five years now. And we'll just jump right into the next slide. So we have a visual here. And you can
030see this little flower. And so I'll start off uh just explaining that we are we do consider ourselves a social emotional learning program. And you can see the little hearts sort of surrounding there. Those those are the the goals that the collaborative for academic, social, and emotional learning uh lays out for us and things that we want our students and families to be aware of. So we are we do use a traumainformed care lens with our program. We're wellness focused. We have an intergenerational model. So we like to work with both the students and their families. and we use an evidence ba based program called random acts of kindness. It's a program that's free and it has an equity score. And so that's how that program was chosen selected for this program. And I'm going
031to um just describe a little bit about the clinical components of our program which are the top pedal and the the two pedals to the right. So, we have school social workers at all three of the schools that we're at, and those schools are Rosa Parks Elementary, Monroe Clark Middle School, and Wilson Middle School. The social workers are employed through uh the San Diego State Research Foundation, and they provide resources and referrals to students and families both within the schools and in the community. They also provide mental health support uh through individual, group, and family therapy. They support with the implementation of random acts of kindness at the three schools and they also provide um task supervision for the social work interns that Paul's going to talk about in a little while. Um uh the
032next component of our program is the parent center at Rosa Parks Elementary School. Really at Rosa Parks, they've been following a community school model for over 20 years since before it was the thing to do. Um, the school is very much seen as the hub in the community. And in the parent center, they have a parent center administrator. They also have a Spanish-sp speakaking um, family outreach facilitator as well as a Vietnamese speaking family outreach facilitator. They um, they help to facilitate and provide workshops on wellness that are both social, emotional, and academically focused. They support um well they have partnerships with many local uh nonprofits. They have a law project weekly every Friday morning. They also have a food distribution every two weeks. So just a lot of support to the families. Uh they
033also support in the parent center with cultural events at the school. So we have a really big celebration in September for Mexican independence day. Another really big celebration in February to celebrate T Vietnamese New Year. Um, so that I think that covers the parent center. And then the last pedal that I'm going to talk about is uh what we affectionately call our three C's programs. Uh they are uh the parent leadership component of our program. We have a lot of leaders in the City Heights community and just our parent group. And so they work collaboratively with our staff to present um SEAL workshops for in Spanish for the community. And so part of our like Paul mentioned our intergenerational model is that we want the students to be getting the social emotional learning in the
034school but we also want it to continue at home. And um this is one of the ways that we're working on that. Yeah. And I'll jump in and talk a little bit about the social work intern. So we have a competitive stipend uh program. So we have 11 stipen positions that are within the schools and also with two of our community partners mending matters and also reality changers. And those interns are all working uh to make referrals to meet famil family's basic needs, but they're also providing individual support and small group support around social skills. Uh might be things like grief and loss depending on what the community brings each year. Again, supporting the teachers with the implementation of the random acts of kindness program that I mentioned and our interns are trained in restorative
035practices and also mindfulness-based interventions. Uh again, I'm fortunate enough to be the principal investigator. So, uh San Diego State Research Foundation and Price uh pays for a little bit of of my salary to do this work. All of our students as the PPS coordinator, all of our students are reaching the requirements for the pupil personnel services credential for school social work and child welfare and attendance. So, we're building capacity. So, City Heights being a wonderful training area, uh these folks are going out and we're either hiring them as our as our uh program staff or they're being hired by other districts. And we have uh an evaluator as well named Patricia Hodgej who's here and she supports us with uh both qualitative and quantitative uh data to support our program so that we can continue
036to be funded. Um and so we we look at everything. We use a case management program. We're also interviewing students and families post pre and post surveys as well. Um let's look at the next slide. So this slide again is is just a visual so you can see a little bit about our partnerships here and and all the folks that that work in this program. But really we want to jump in and talk a little bit about some of our lessons learned and a few of the challenges that we faced over the years. Um so some with our challenges uh staffing can change right in schools. We have uh program changes uh with staffing but also leadership changes within the school. So every time that happens, we have to uh reorient and work on those
037relationships so we're able to to do this work. So that's one of our challenges. And we also want to make sure that our program staff are not pulled into other roles. Uh schools are very busy places and we want to make sure that our that our staff are the folks that the families and kids can come to uh that feel safe to to talk about their challenges. So, uh, the last thing I'll say about challenges is that we're constantly looking at ways to measure our impact as our we make minor changes. Again, we're really fortunate to have our evaluator to help us uh set those goals. We wanted to end with um some of the things that we think are going well, though. Um, we think that our training program for interns is going well.
038Um Paul mentioned a tenant of our program being capacity building and we see um we we make a point of choosing interns that are culturally and linguistically reflective of the City Heights community which is a very diverse community and the learning that we see happening the interns working with the K through8 students um just the way the K through8 students connect with the university students who often share their lived experiences um that some of our students are going through and are some of them are the first in their family to go to college but definitely the first in their family to go to graduate school. So the way that they influence the K through8 students and the connections that they're making are really special but also the learning that's happening on the other side for
039the university students. Um Paul and I do a group supervision and one of the students mentioned the other day that she has found so much meaning in being the person for our students and families that she wish that her that she herself and her family had had when they were um when she was going to school. So that that piece is going well. I think we're training good social workers and they're going out in the community and having immediate impact. I also think that you know I was excited about the wellness school because I think we're hitting a lot of it. We definitely are hitting all the tiers with a multi-tered system of support. Um, and we have great partnerships. I mean, not just the partnership with SDSU and with Price Philanthropies, but um, within
040the City Heights community. There are so many organizations that support families and we have great partnerships with them. And also just the relationships within the schools. So the social workers are working very collaboratively with the restorative justice facilitators, with the counselors, with admin, with nursing. Um, all of those relationships just to better support students are are going really well. So we wanted to end on on what's going well and we're open to questions if you have any. Scott, should we take some questions directly for them right now and then tack back to you? What what would you prefer to do? while it's fresh on our mind. Should we I'm gonna let you drive the way you'd like to go. All right. Why don't we take a few questions for our lead and learn folks and
041then we'll tack back to the the broader goal. Um do I have any questions or comments from uh the board? I see Trusty Hazen and then uh Vice President Ber. Thank you so hard. You're behind us and I want to direct the microphones over here. Um, so first of all, I really appreciate the the work you've been doing and and leading and um seems very aligned actually with our community schools model. Um, I'm wondering um if you can speak a little bit to how this initiative um has measurably improved student wellness. um if you think it has at Rosa Parks, Monroe, Wilson um in terms of some of the I think goals that you said, you know, you're driving towards self-management, relationship skills, responsible decision making, um or any other outcomes. Um we heard a
042lot about all of the great things that are happening. Um and I'm really interested in the like so what like what what has changed as a result um in all of the years that you've been doing the work? Okay. Um I think that we're seeing um well with the so the SEAL component of our program is the newest part of our program because the social work and the parent centers have been in place for for a long time but um since we started implementing the at all three schools. Um we we started that just postcoid which was not planned but worked out really well because it was a time when students were needing a lot of support. Um, we just actually came from a focus group with students at Wilson who were talking about the
043change in culture that they're seeing at the school. And it's not just due to our program. There are a lot of different things happening, but um, specifically what administrators have mentioned to me is a decrease in some of the aggression on school campuses, fewer fights and fewer um, behavioral acting out. One of the administrators at Rosa Parks told me that the teachers that are doing random acts of kindness most consistently at Rosa Parks are also the teachers that send the fewest students down for behavioral referrals. Um, so those are some of the things that I guess I can think of off the top of my head. Yeah, I would just add when we're when we've surveyed the parents as well, just their knowledge about social emotional learning and their knowledge about things like cyber bullying,
044uh things about uh sexuality, uh things about human trafficking. When we survey, when we do our pre and post with those parent workshops, they're reporting that they are now more informed. So, I hope that's helpful. Thank you. And just a quick question um to staff who are aware of um the program um are there any key takeaways you want us to bear in mind in terms of the work that's happening through through this program as we think about what wellness um can look like uh districtwide. I think one key takeaway we have from the experience with lead and learn from the heart is that it's a evolving product that they have. It kind of gets back to the original um statement that we talked about when we opened this conversation about how this is a
045journey and that we're getting better every time. And so I've been very interested in learning about how lead and learn from the heart has evolved and how we as a district then are going to um have to put ourselves in a position where we're ready for our work to evolve next year and the year after as we're certainly getting closer to that end goal. Vice President Barrera and then I see that Trusty Wire is paying his attention too and then we'll come back to Baldi. Yeah. Thanks again for your presentation and for your work. Um, so I'm wondering about what your specific pipeline efforts may be with Hoover High School. So, is there an effort to recruit Hoover students into the School of Social Work and then bring them back as interns? Oops, sorry. The
046question was about whether we would include incorporate Hoover high school students into uh I love that idea. That's not what we're currently doing. I mean I I do think we have a pipeline going as far as um developing school social workers per their professional development. Um we don't currently have a social worker at at uh Hoover although we have in the past. Um, but there are definitely I think students that are being inspired by the the social workers and the social work interns that they're working with because they see like that's who I could be for my community as well. Right. So, exactly. So, I'm thinking about current students that might take the program. Yeah, let's let's give them Paul's number. Yeah, that's right. I'm happy to speak with any students. No, I I appreciate
047hearing that question. And um there are, you know, we do have interns that are over at Hoover High School. We have two interns that um historically mending matters has asked for Spanish speaking interns to work with the students directly there at Hoover High School. So they are seeing that um who school social workers are and the type of work that they do. There are other programs that SDSU has uh that that are I believe supported by Price as well that work with um Hoover students that graduate and there there is a pipeline into SDSU but not specifically for the school of social work but I'm I'm going to write that down. So I appreciate that. Yeah. All right. Trusty Wyers pain then we'll come back to Trusty Baldis. Thank you and thank you all for
048the presentation. Um this whole question I think we're all focused on the same area. It's always fascinated me that there we have the social workers and the intern using the intern model. I believe Johnson and the deep program may have used some social worker interns uh in their program but it's kind of bothered me that we trained them. You almost have a lab. I was on campus last week and the activity going on in that area is just mind-boggling because it seems like you're you're really busy working with the students. But why is it that we've never really gotten into it as a district to consider social workers and and the program? I mean, the benefit Richard, maybe this is for you, too. We've never really looked at that to see why we don't somehow
049another engage. We've talked about getting the county to bring maybe some of their social workers in, but I don't think it's quite the same as as what they're doing to actually work with the students and the family in a comprehensive way. So, Scott, I don't know. You're looking at me like I'm taking notes. Not going to answer. That's a good question. And so we can get back to you folks regarding the history of where social workers have played a role in Sango Unified and options that we've looked at through nursing and wellness on how to bring those services to our kids. So we that's a good point to bring up. I have a very basic initial answer to the question which is not going to be adequate and we probably need to dive deeper but
050part of part of I've been wanting you guys to present now for Lauren. I think Sharon and I met with the team maybe a year and a half ago and so I'm very happy you're here today. But uh I learned about lead and learn not because any staff knew about it or could tell me about it but because I said how do we have no social workers? The vast majority of the challenges our students are facing are exogenous to the classroom. They're in their lives. They're in the poverty they're facing. They're in their families and neighborhoods. It's nuts that we don't have social workers. And no, we don't have social workers. Well, we do have one. We have people who are social workers happen to be social workers in other roles, but in terms of
051social workers, no, we do have one and that's Lauren. And uh and I had to Google it. I was like, that's crazy. Santa Unified social workers. And it was and your picture came up for with lead and learn. That's the only hit that came. And so then I asked some staff. I said, I don't understand how we have no social workers. And evidently maybe 20 years, 15 years ago or something, there was some sharks and jets like type fight between counselors and social workers. And I counselors won the fight. Um I do not want to create invidious comparisons here, but I believe that that is some part of the story. It was something about that. And so um and so I think for me I I'll just sorry I'll jump you balls because I already
052started on this thing, but I'll I'll bring in one second. For me, part of this having you here tonight is important because as we try as a district, community schools the way of doing this as we try to imagine it isn't the case that we don't know if we had more funding what we would spend it on. We we see programs like this and thank goodness for Price Philanthropies. They've stepped up to provide this funding, but without them there would be no program. and S and and thank you to San Diego State for doing your part as well. My understanding there was somewhere like uh eight eight eight social workers in training from your your program or um maybe you called them interns or um some sort of residency program and then and there's actually
053eight employed social workers that accurate from Price Philanthropies funds or something. Yes, I didn't see the whole staffing here but something on that order. Yeah, correct. We have uh there's 11 11 interns uh each receiving a stipen and a few uh two extra bachelor's interns this year as well. And then uh what are was our total with our our social workers that we've hired. We we have four social workers. Well, and then um Price also funds my position. Okay. And so my question is this for those of us that are like progressive minded and really deeply believe that part of addressing challenges, behavioral challenges in the classroom, psychological challenges in the classroom, achievement challenges, growth, development is is is about finding ways to leverage out to to to address the what are exogenous to the
054classroom and in the lives of our students. And toward that end, what I would like to see, what what I think is really important for us is to tighten the relationship between you as a principal investigator and and Lauren as a lead and Roman's um team on data to take a deep dive, which is to say we have a I mean, I think all of us believe that helping to address the challenges that families are facing is a core part of addressing the challenges our students are facing. in the classroom. We would really love to see data on sort of demographically comparable sites that do not have these resources. What was happening at this site prior to the prior to the introduction of this program? What's happening on these sites with students that are actively
055involved versus those that are not actively involved? Not just because we want to monitor your program or celebrate your program, but because we we really want to know the story. is our belief that if we were able for example to go to Sacramento and get additional funding and we said look we want to get the most bang for our buck and if I think many of us share a belief that helping to address the challenges the families are facing is a is a high yield intervention but it's really important you are a pilot and you're a test case for us so Roman's out in the audience if we could tighten that relationship and and at some point come back and say, "Look, these are the results. These are the kinds of investments we got from
056Price Philanthropies, the kinds of um uh the kinds of inkind support we got from San Diego State. Uh and this is the kind of delta we saw in terms of the behavioral outcomes, academic outcomes, um graduation outcomes, attendance outcomes, um suspension out, you know, all all of those suites of things. So, that's really important to me as a test case for what we really believe is a future for education if we're adequately funded." So, that's my part. And I see that trusty Baldis had his hand up. Oh yeah. Thank you, brother. President Peterson, uh, I initially just want to say thank you all very much for the presentation, for all the work you've been doing. My main question is we have these very influential programs at the elementary school level, at the middle school level.
057Do we have a plan to move this towards the high school level? Do you want to talk to Price for us? Just kidding. Um we we did previously have a social worker at um Hoover actually. Um and just with some changes that they made with the mental health support and they brought mending matters on campus to provide some additional support. Um we don't at this time but um you never know. They have a a great principal over there right now and I know she's expressed some interest in having social work support. Thank you. Any additional Oh, I see trusty on the hand. Just a quick add-on to your request. It would be really interesting um once we start conducting our own wellness assessment to be able to disagregate and understand um the results for students.
058Um and I think there is there a staff I guess students and staff um at the schools that are participating um in this program. Thank you, Trusty Hast. Oh, I see a hint. Trusty Boso and then Trusty Wires Payne. Yeah, actually mine is quick, too. I just wanted to add on to um President Person and Trusty Hazen to also ask about um when we're talking about family support and parent support. Um which is fantastic, but it's always hard to determine like what does that mean? Like what are we doing? I mean, I know we're doing things, but is that really making an impact? And like what does that look like? And if we can, if there's a way to line up like the parents that are active with the students in this program versus maybe
059students that don't have parental involvement. Um, I mean, anecdotally, I'm guessing they're going to be doing better, but it would also be nice to have that information because in a grant funding kind of situation that might that would allow us to, you know, pro probably have more funding for that aspect as well. Trusty Wesman. I was just going to point out that I believe the DEP program and don't ask me what DEEP stands for uh at the elementary uh at three or four schools that there's a piece of it that has social workers in it that if we could kind of tap into that because they were dealing with uh attendance. They were focusing on that for interns. So uh Ramon may be involved in that and working with them but I know they have
060an evaluator. So, if we can get those results tied in, it would be good. All right, it sounds like our our play within a play here is wrapping up and we will tack back. Thank you so much to the two of you. Uh that was wonderful. And we'll tack back to the um the the play that was in progress. Yeah. But what's interesting is that the prior segment of the play actually feeds right into what we're going to talk about right now. I feel almost as if uh I was in the hallway before this presentation bribing you to ask those questions. I mean because really if you take uh if you think about some of the points you folks brought up about how do you measure wellness? I mean isn't that at the root of
061why we need to have an accurate wellness index right so that we can have an overall picture of how our populations of students are doing. we can diagnose, identify groups that they're experiencing challenges with well-being and just sort of just evaluating the impact of these policies that we have. So, that really kind of gets at what we want to chat about next with you. This is a part that we're really interested in sharing with you, which is a draft wellness index. I wanted to let you folks know that through some of the conversations that we've been having with our our community partners, uh, one of them, uh, Amy Bitliff from UCSD recommended an article that really grounded some of the, um, decisions that we've made recently. It's titled a valid and reliable assessment for wellness
062among adolescents. And it goes on to describe what would a multi-dimensional wellness index look like and how could it measure the exact same things that you folks are talking about. And I think that what we have done is used information from that body of knowledge to create a prototype we're going to share with you tonight. I think that to understand the prototype, you first need to remember what are the four elements of the framework that we approved in February. Our definition of wellness that's aligned to the feedback from students and our community partners and vision 2030 has body, mind, relationships, community. I'm going to ask Melissa Spade in to speak a little bit about a wellness index and you're going to see how what we're sharing with you today dovetales in with those elements of
063that framework. So Melissa, sure. And if I could give a a shameless plug, social work services actually falls under my team at the county office. We have an amazing group of people um who support social work interns throughout the county. So I will I will put a plug in. I you know where to find me. Um so a little bit about the multi-dimensional wellness index. We touched upon this in um I believe February, but to truly understand, you know, all of these different components, we want to have both qualitative and quantitative measures. We want to ensure that we're designing measures that encompass all of the different ways that students experience wellness and the way that they experience it in their own in their own mind. Um we've done a lot of work on how can
064we make sure that students are giving input, are giving feedback. I was lucky enough to uh to listen to a presentation recently that um a researcher did with cognitive interviews with students about how they respond to certain questions which was completely aligned with what we've been talking about because the way a student might interpret a question and respond to it is not what we have the as the adults had intended. And so our whole goal is to go through this process and make sure that it aligns with um the way students understand and respond to these questions because as we can all other than two members of the board, we are not students. We're not living the current life. We don't use the same language. We don't have the same frame of reference. So our
065goal is to really make it something that is um actionable, that is understandable for all of our students. Um, and then the pieces that are included here, I believe you got a copy of a very draft, it's still a work in progress, so please keep that in mind version. Um, we wanted to make sure that we're including things that we're already collecting. That makes sense. As well as things that we might be collecting in a way um that is not currently rolled up into our data. So, we've been talking to people who work on our Kalpaz data that's constantly rolled up. um different information that we're collecting whether it is through our data systems, through our SIS or through um educator discussions at school sites. And so there's a lot of different pieces here and
066we're still working through what some of those will be. Uh but we think we've gotten to a good point where we can engage in some conversations with adults, specifically with students because that's what we're really more interested in um about how it makes sense to them. The handout that you folks received is a prototype of what a multi-dimensional wellness index might look like. And as you look at that handout, you'll see that there are sample questions on there. So then the next logical question becomes, where did those questions come from? Well, prior to us even engaging this work, we conducted a district-wide assessment inventory about how San Diego Unified currently measures different elements of wellness. We found over 15 ways which were currently measuring wellness in some degree or the other. We then analyzed those
067different assessments that are out there and looked at the questions and backwards mapped them to the uh uh uh framework that we have to put this in perspective. We found over 150 different questions that we're asking elementary, middle or high school age students that are somewhat related to wellness. Now, to be fair, when I was meeting with a mother, she said, "Are you asking my child all 150 questions?" I'm like, "No, no, no, no, no. What I'm saying is is that overarching across San Diego Unifi, we found over 150 questions that can be mapped backwards." So, we don't necessarily have a challenge with finding questions. The grid that you're seeing on the screen right now is showing you seven seven of the assessments that we relied upon heavily. And the seven assessments on the on
068the screen are organized by color. Some assessments are adult-f facing. They're adult surveys. Other assessments are studentf facing, the blue ones. And so what we did was by analyzing the elements from these seven key assessments that currently exist in the district right now, we were able to put together some form of of an index to help represent what something might look like. And I'm gonna show you a slide that Melissa is gonna talk about a little bit to help you orient to how the um handout is structured. So we went through this process and again this is not a perfect process um and thought from some of these questions what are some examples we could pull. This is not complete. This is just an initial look at what are some of the questions that have
069shown up the most or that would apply to each of these elements underneath the separate dimensions. So physical health, that's one of the ones that we've talked about before and it's kind of difficult because we don't have great ways of measuring that anymore on a consistent basis at the school level. We also had conversations about should we be collecting data about students and their physical well-being in ways that they might not want to share. So we do have some sample data points. Um one of the most common ones is asking about sleep. We also have some questions that we found about you know what physical activity students are engaging in um outside of school within school. Um under attendance chronic absenteeism is pretty solid indicator um to to start from and at the site or
070the district level. We have some questions about sense of self like confidence in their ability to manage their own work you know their self-efficacy um coping with emotions um we know that stress and anxiety comes up a lot I heard our student earlier talking about stress and anxiety specifically around assessment understandable um we have engagement so do you feel comfortable reaching out to your teachers or other adults for help which we know having that school connectedness that one adult is a huge factor in student success um having friends at school that care about them and then connections to themselves, their world. So, thinking about how schools are doing things that um reflect that students well-being or their culture um and help them create sort of a sense of self-nowledge as well. A lot of this
071information came from some of our surveys that have been piloted. Others are from, as you can see, the SIS. Um, and then that last question comes from a SIT assessment that an MTSS team would do. So, it's a group of adults having a conversation. So, the idea is not to be we're not at the phase of the project right now where you're choosing your favorite question for lack of a better word. Instead, this is meant to show you how we're trying to map our existing assessments towards a index that's aligned to our framework. And in a moment, you're going to learn a little bit about what our next steps are. And we're going to talk about the strategy we're using to pair that 150 questions down to something that's reasonable. But before we do that,
072I wanted to share with you some interesting information regarding our logic and thinking about why we have moved away from using the California Healthy Kids Survey to using the San Unified Student Survey. Both surveys are surveys that are given to students and it helps us collect information that's very valuable. But there are four five key ways which we believe that the San Diego Unified Student Survey is the right tool for the job we're trying to complete right now. I think alignment is important. We are able to construct the student survey so we can make sure it's aligned with our LCAP and our BOR goals and for vision 2030. Frequency is very important. We want to be able to assess students multiple times in the year so we can monitor the progress we're talking about. Efficiency
073is very important. We want to create a short survey. Research shows students don't want to take 75 question surveys. We're not creating anything like that. And we have the ability to create something that's almost like a pulse. Flexibility is important and I'll get back to that in a second. And I think if we're able to save $66,000 a year from the cost of administering the check survey, then why not? Flexibility is key though. Do you remember when during last week when you brought up the idea of social media and we were saying, "Hey, should social media be incorporated into the wellness framework?" Quinton, that was something we talked about. We went backwards and looked out of the 150 questions that we found. None of them address social media, except for one that references the use
074of the cell phone, but only within the context of bullying. But it's not really about social media addiction. So if we were to rely upon the California Healthy Kids Survey as our primary tool, we as a district couldn't pivot based off of the direction we get from the board. So therefore, having the flexibility is really key to what it is we're trying to accomplish. So here's what's happening next. We're continuing to gather feedback during the month of May. We're trying to integrate the data that we're receiving. We're meeting with Roman and his team to make sure that we can design dashboards, prototype dashboards that make sense. A key piece of what's happening in the May is getting feedback from students about those 150 questions. We have developed a strategy that has a two-step process. The
075first will involve a very large audience of students who will be able to select and prioritize questions based off of what makes sense to them. And then afterwards, we're going to create an opportunity for some uh smaller group of students to engage in one-on-one consultation with adults and students who are involved at wellness at schools regarding their perspective of why they answered a question the way that they did. Melissa sort of alluded to that when we talked about the student assessment design team. We can create a question. We need to test it out and make sure it's given us the data that we need. We're going to make sure that the product that we create is aligned to our goals. We're aligning the work of the wellness board goal with the wellness LCAP goal and
076that those two worlds are coming closer together because in the future they will be one and we're going to present you with a strategy in June. Now, I want to give a shameless plug out to Mission Bay High School because Mission Bay High is opening up their wellness center. It's coming shortly. It's happening on Friday, May 2nd. You all folks are invited to attend. It's a great opportunity to see what a wellness center can look like. This is part of the continuum of care, which is what we're doing as a district to help create vertically aligned supports for students. I've been to the wellness centers that are at Canyon Hills. I've been to the one that's at FRB. They're beautiful places. They're very welcoming. They do their job. And I would like to encourage you
077folks to come or the public, too, to come and um celebrate the fact that Mission Bay High is opening up their wellness center um next week. So, that's the conclusion of our presentation. Thank you so much. Bobby and I actually snuck in pre-opening to the Mission Bay Wellness Center. It is it's a lot more soothing than my house is, that's for sure. Um, thank you so much. Board comments or questions? Oh, members of the public, one speaker on the item. Oh, great. Come on up, Giza Deng. [Music] Giza, I guess she's not here. Okay. Uh, we'll come back to the board. Uh, comments, questions from board. I'll just as a pream, someone's now entered the chat. Um, uh, I will just say as a preamble, we, um, we discussed much of this at our prior
078meeting on on our LCAP. So, um, there there may not be quite as much. You can actually tune into that on YouTube if you'd like to hear thoughts on much of this. Um, and now I see Trustee Cruz. Thank you, President Patterson, and thank you for this very comprehensive, in-depth presentation. And so, my question for you guys is, I understand the reasoning behind keeping these questions aligned to our LCAP and board goals, but how do we make sure that we aren't leaving out crucial questions that that relate to our wellness dimensions? You know, one of the strategies that we're using is to rely upon our student assessment design team to really give us feedback on what are the key questions that we want to utilize. And uh so we believe that uh we believe their
079perspective on the situation will help us pick questions that are meeting the needs of their population and uh make sense to them. Thank you. We're also hoping to leave space for an open-ended response for better or worse when we're asking uh folks to rank questions. We know that last time there were 700 responses. So we may have a lot of information to sort through. But asking, you know, when we're looking at the questions related to a specific dimension, say body, is there something that's missing? Is there a way that you measure your own well-being when it comes to your body that's not included here that you think should be included? Because I think that's the other piece is we want to make sure that we're only measuring what students are comfortable sharing information about. Thank
080you, Trusty Bald. Oh yeah. So I know I addressed this at the last Ocap workshop but I think in relation to body it is extremely important to include social media screen addiction but then also substance abuse issues and I really hope that we can see that involved into the survey because when I think about bodily well-being that is the first two things that come to mind. Um, additionally, this survey is supposed to be universal for K through 12 students. Are we going to tailor specific questions to different grade levels? And what's the plan for that? Uh, that is that is a goal. Um, that's the the idea of holding the for lack of cognitive interviews, the one-on- ones with students is basically if we have a question that we understand what the the content will
081basically be around around sleep, right? We want to think of it as phrasing it in a way that a student will know how to respond or respond correctly. So, um kind of beta testing the the different ways that we could ask that specific question around sleep, having one-on-one conversations with a variety of students who are in a specific age group, age band, to make sure that it is asked in a way that they understand the way that we intend for them to understand um and that we can make sure that it is it is age appropriate. So it would look different. Um something that goes to an elementary for three to five would look different than what would go to six to eight and 9 to 12. But it would basically it would still be
082all aligned, still be covering the same information. It would just be worded in a way that makes sense to that age group. You're welcome. Oh, you got to double tap here. Okay. Trusty Cruz and then Vice President Bur. Additionally, I think when it comes to community, I think a question that would be really crucial is how are like world events affecting you? Because I know in today's society, you know, with politics and stuff like that, you know, it's becoming ever more direct to students and their well-being. So, not me. No, thank thank you for that point, Trusty Cruz. So, I'm I'm thinking about sort of h how we're administering the index and I'm wondering would it be the same adults in school who administer the California Healthy Kids Survey or would we also be thinking
083differently about who is using the index and and where that information is going? So, classroom teacher, counselor, who who's doing this? So I see that question is having two parts. Uh I noticed that if you can in the slide that was there a while ago when it was looking at the assessment inventory you noticed that some assessments are administered yearly some are more twice a year and some are four times a year. We imagine that this wellness index is going to follow in alignment with that and that um and that we're because we're currently using assessments that are already being administered. We're not thinking about changing who would be administering them. So that would stay the same. Who has access to the data is is an interesting question though that actually comes up a lot
084when we talk to parents who are very concerned about um uh um confidentiality. Um there's also a big debate about whether or not assessment should be anonymous or not. And there's actually uh research that shows that there's pros and cons on both sides. So these are all elements that we're trying to assess out. But I believe that the initial implementation of the wellness index is going to be more of a global one at a school level where you'll be able to look at data by the grade level or by student populations, but right now it won't be designed to drill down to an individual student. But there are um conversations about the pros of being able to do something like that. If I was a counselor at a school, I could use individualized information to
085create small groups for say around needs that maybe a certain student might have. Um, so that would then mean that some assessments would be anonymous, some would then be identifiable to a student and we would have to clearly articulate to people which is which so that they would know. You can see that that's there's a lot of thinking needs to go into how that would actually be rolled out. Um, so I think that the best way to think of that would be initially it would be a dashboard at the school or the district level by subgroup of student populations. Trusty is Thank you. and really appreciate the work that's gone into this, the research and the commitment to developing a valid and developmentally appropriate assessment or I guess assessment instruments multiple um that really reflect
086the multi-dimensional aspects of wellness um so that we can understand how our kids are doing and feeling and then how better to support them. Um I'm wondering as we think about this is sort of going back to the question around um tailoring uh these surveys to the needs of different ages of students um what the plan is um to engage our youngest children. I heard that you're going to be testing questions. Um, but I guess I'm wondering for three-year-olds in in preschool or four year olds currently in in TK um if we can get the feedback we need from them um and how we're thinking about that age group um and maybe even um our 5-year-olds um and are we thinking at all about using parents as proxies um to help us better understand their
087students wellness levels and and I guess I would add um we've heard a lot about behavioral support requests and needs for this population. So I think really understanding what's going on and how that group of students is feeling is so critically important. So at those ages, it's typically teacher report the way that most assessments are done, right? So teachers are are writing down how students are performing or you'll have um someone other than the teacher delivering the assessment just because students are not able to typically read respond. um the reliability of the assessment data that you often get from uh students is not right is not you know it's not as reliable as we'd like it to be um but I I mean we have worked with with schools and teachers where they have a
088visual that is a smiley face you know it's their range is not you know one to five or very well to not well it's it's faces so I think it again it depends on what you expect to be able to do with that because I don't I wouldn't I wouldn't feel comfortable rolling that up into like an indicator that would tell you whether a school is doing well. That that tends to be more of the questions that we're looking at for students. That would be more for a teacher to use maybe in the classroom or a principal to have, but I wouldn't feel like it was really reliable valid data to roll up as sort of an overall well-being for that age group. I think there's something that we could think about working with some
089early childhood assessment experts on how we could think about aligning this to the other assessments that are happening in the classroom. Um, you know, the DRDP and and other evaluations that are happening and making sure that there are some questions that are aligned pulled from, you know, aligned to a body mind community. Um, as well as I think at that age it's a lot of parent questions, right? Um, we have a couple different ways that you already ask parents about their needs for body like food and basic basic necessities, but I think that could easily be pulled into a sort of parent survey at that age of how do you see your child doing at this um that might provide us better information. But I'd be happy to to reach out to, you know, early
090childhood assessment people. It's just a very it's a very different sort of process. Um Yeah. Yeah. which is why I bring it up because I think it's critically important and I don't want to forget um about our youngest learners. Um I'm also wondering so we had talked um during the LCAP workshop about sort of this idea of like purpose you understanding your purpose and mattering. Um I didn't see any of those things in here. Uh is there a plan to incorporate? Yeah, purpose item. Yeah, purpose and mattering are parts of the framework. And when you're looking at the prototype index, it's I think a best way to look at that document is a prototype for how we're trying to structure questions and less about is this the question you're going to use. So um I
091think mattering it actually is um one of the subdomains of our framework. Um and I'm wondering and this isn't really sort of within um um a question necessarily that would show up um in the index. Um but I think an important data point as we think about our long-term wellness goals and and the outcomes um that we're seeing um and it's specifically around um suicide, so suicidal ideiation, suicide attempts. Um and I just want to make sure we don't um lose sight of monitoring that. um as I don't know if it's it's an interimm goal or or a long-term goal within wellness um but I know you know President Person talks a lot about you know the most important thing is that we keep our kids alive um and you know we recognized earlier um
092someone who did just that and so understanding how our students are doing um regard to suicide I think is really important. Um and then lastly I would just add and it's sort of related to what we heard um from the price funded initiative and I know we have a new VAPA foundation uh I think social emotional learning initiative focused on wellness um funded by previs um and my hope is sort of irrespective of where the funding comes from um that when there are entities that are doing work that are supporting our students that are focused on wellness. Um, we can, as I asked before, look at wellness outcomes using our district approved instrument or index to understand the difference those programs are making, right? We have multiple different ones. And so I think to be
093able to say of all the students who participated here, were they more well as a result? Those who participated here, were they more or less well as a result? Thank you. Thank you. Oh, Trusty Bowser. Yeah, I was just going to add on um to one of Trusty Hazen's comments is a way to and I know this was touched on, but just to make sure it's clear is, you know, being able to flag if there's something like a suicidal thought or even is there violence in your home? I mean, I don't know how to add how that would be in a question that but um because when I was a um parent volunteer at middle school and we did the PTA reflections contest and we had an essay. I mean, we had kids that wrote
094some really scary, you know, things and I flagged him and had to share that with the principal. So, I guess just saying I don't know how we would do this in this instance, but in case it's something kind of in an emergent kind of situation that we're making sure that we're addressing that as well. Thank you, Trusty Bos. I just saw you with a half little hand. Yeah, trust trusty Hazen. Sorry, I I'll keep it super quick. Um, this was around the last thing around the wellness centers. Um, I'm wondering how the wellness coordinators are funded. Um, and if we expect to be able to sustain the expense of the wellness coordinators in 26 27 given our projected deficit, do we have any concerns about um that funding? So, in general, the wellness coordinators that
095are part of the continuum of care are funded through a program called CYBHI SB HIPP. Please don't quiz me on what that acronym means, but what I and we can provide you additional information regarding what the long-term plan is for that grant. And by the way, I just also wanted to chime in here. Um, Sabrina, the comment you brought up about being able to actionable results that is at the heart of the pros and cons of an anonymous question. I just want to acknowledge that. So, um, we've we've worked this topic intensely, so I'll be very brief. I would say um as a social scientist I would make a case for getting as getting as to having at some level at least non-anomized data and then selectively blinding it based on on where you fall
096in the organization or the use you're going to make of it. The problem is when I know it's challenging to get that data and it's a very sensitive conversation with students and staff and families, but it's really so valuable in terms of us being at the tip of the spear in terms of wellness because you can have a scenario in which if you have the data and you're able to actually it it the [Music] more it's hard to talk about this in I mean I'll just be brief but but if I know that a particular student has a particular set of um a a particular wellness profile let's just call it and I can then tie it to their grades and I can tie not everybody needs to see that but let's say we had
097a researcher who said I really want to get down into this um we could actually blind the name and everything you can just see vertically how how it all lines in that student without anybody ever knowing what that student's name is or any of the other features. You could just so whereas it may be that for a teacher you they don't need to know certain things. So you may have the data very granular here but maybe or a principle or something different levels of organization would need different levels of of of unblindedness you know unan an anonymity but if you collect it anonymously it really strongly limits our ability to make intelligent use of the data ultimately in support of our students and families. So I'm just gonna make the case that'll have to get
098decided that some other somebody gets paid more than I do. Um, and then I think that goes in in terms of this and you alluded to this Scott in terms of breaking the silos because if our belief is that wellness is foundational to everything else, it's it is so important to be able to say we have wellness over here and look what it did for math, look what it did for literature, look what it did for career and technical, look what it, you know, so I I just there's was always a temptation to look at the nodes instead of the connections and I like that you're thinking through how we break through the silos to to to make the wellness data speak to the to our other other data and then and make that other
099data speak to our our wellness. So I appreciate that. And then the final thing I just want to recognize the students and this is an interesting thing when I came into this I was thinking social emotional understanding your place in the whole community and I honestly maybe it's an age thing where you're just you get so busy and you're like I can't even think about my body as long as there's enough coffee in it to get me through the day I'm cool and and I didn't even occur to me to have body as you know that we would have and then again and again the students kept saying body body and that's the kind of wisdom you get from this the ground level student conversation where it's like oh okay body is really important and
100so I just want to thank the students for that and anytime somebody oh did somebody no it was that was the students man 100% we deserve no credit for identifying that oh yeah just briefly if we're going to be moving away from the California healthy kids survey and only utilizing our own district survey do we have any sort of plan to compare statewide side. I know we will be able to compare against specific sites in our own district, but we could get too narrow focused. That's an interesting conversation actually and there's a larger conversation that's taking place and Richard Barer, you've been involved in that regard with the state of California regarding how can our district have autonomy to be able to meet uh to ask questions that meet our individual goals yet still have
101it I think Cody the word uses comparability to other districts in the in the state. And so we're currently negotiating with Sacramento regarding the idea that there will be core questions across all schools that we'll incorporate into our survey and then the flexibility of having the remaining questions be to our own needs. That's our middle ground we're trying to create. Okay. And President Peterson, I agree with you to a certain extent about the anonymized data, but I would definitely be a strong advocate for keeping the survey anonymous. I know speaking from personal experience as a student, if I see a survey is not anonymous, us students are not answering truthfully. And if we do have it anonymized, then we're actually going to get true accurate data. But if it's not, then we have no way
102of knowing if the data is correct or not. All right, I think that's it. Thank you so much. Is there anything else to say or just the last thing last thing I wanted to say is that uh if you were spending sleepless nights wondering whether or not mattering is in the uh index, it's on page three underneath relationships. So rest assured that's incorporated into our index. Nice. Thank you. Well, thank you to both of you. You both matter to us. Have a wonderful evening. All right. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. With that, um we will move to um item Wow, we are grinding through this thing here. Um, we will now hear item E2, Community Advisory Committee for Special Education, semiannual update to the board and data report for students receiving special education services.
103Dr. Beula, can you please introduce the item? Yes. Thank you, President Person. It's my pleasure to introduce Dr. Ni Watkins, Miss Jennifer Hooerhide, who will be presenting this evening in collaboration with Mr. Scott Sod, president of our community advisory committee or CAC. Each year, our special education team partners closely with the CAC president to identify meaningful goals and implement strategies that support the success of students with individualized education programs or IEPs. As you may recall during the January presentation, the special education department outlined three key goals. First, increasing the graduation rate for students with IEPs. Second, shifting behavior support resources to a more proactive model. and third, increasing parent participation in CAC meetings and events. Tonight's presentation will provide a brief update on the progress made in each of these areas since January. Thank you
104for your continued support and your commitment to ensuring that all of our students receive the services and opportunities they need to thrive. With that, I'll turn it over to the team. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Vagula, and to our board members. Um, before I begin, I just want to say thank you to Mr. Scott Sod. Uh Scott Sod has served uh for the fast, excuse me, he has served for the past five years as our CAC chairperson and tonight is his last official uh board presentation. And so we just want to say to Scott how much we have appreciated the collaborative process um with San Diego Unified and the parent community and just wanted to let him know that his leadership in that role um has had a lasting impact. So thank you, Scott. Like
105Dr. Beula shared, this presentation will offer a current status of our implementation process in relations to the goals that we presented back in January. Um it will also highlight our progress um as of today and then outline our next steps with the work. Again, just to review our goals from January to increase our graduation rate for our students with disabilities, um to shift our re behavior resource supports um to a more proactive process and then also to increase our parent participation at our CAC meetings and events. So, while this year's graduation data is currently unavailable, this update will provide insight into recent developments in the essential diploma data along with projected trends that support our ongoing efforts to increase our graduation rates. While the first class of the that was eligible for the essential diploma
106was originally the class of 2026, per new ed code, students in our class of 25 are now eligible. In partnership with our office of graduation, an audit is being conducted to identify students who would typically receive the certificate of completion and to assess their eligibility for the essential diploma. This data highlights the number of students potentially eligible for the essential diploma and it provides projected graduation rates for all students with disabilities. Of the 801 students with disabilities in our class of 2025 cohort, if 693 graduate with the A to G requirements and 72 who were previously on track to receive the certificate of completion now earn the essential diploma, the projected graduation rate for this subgroup, this student group, excuse me, would reach 95.5%. This is a significant increase in our graduation rate for our
107students with IEPs and it also will positively impact our overall graduation rate for all students within our district. This next slide illustrates the number of students in each upcoming cohort who are eligible and are currently enrolled in our essential coursework to obtain our essential diploma. This highlights the growing impact this pathway will have across all of our grade levels. Again highlighting the collaboration with the department of graduation. Significant progress has been made to date. Central office staff have conducted trainings at the high school level around implementation and scheduling students for the enrollment in the essential courses and classes. They have also provided operational training for school counselors that focused on the transcript auditing process. Our next steps in this process will be focusing our alignment of the essential diploma courses and information at the middle
108school level as well as ensuring alignment and awareness at the elementary level. Additionally, we will be providing training and resources to parents regarding the essential diploma. This will occur in IEP meetings at the elementary level and through the transition process uh planning process at the middle and high school. presentations have already um been presented at our CAC meetings and we will continue to provide CAC uh parent presentations to further engage our parent community um and helping with their understanding in regards to the essential diploma. Mr. Sod Oh, you got me there. You advanced me already. Thank you. Good evening everybody. Um uh again I appreciate the the uh kind words from Dr. Watkins. I do want to also uh thank Dr. Begoula uh Dr. Watkins, Jennifer Hooer Hyde, uh Dr. Watkins predecessors, Dr. Sarah Aught
109as well have always had an excellent working relationship with the special education department as well as district staff as well. So uh thank you to you all and your team for working with me for these past five years which I started during COVID. So this is it's been a I wanted to have a before and after picture, but I don't think that would make me look any good. Um, anyway, so regarding the uh the graduation goal, um uh specifically to the essential uh essential courses, um I I I have questions about why the enrollment in those classes is uh not 100% basically across the board. Like why why are there people eligible but not enrolled, right? is are these are these courses not being offered everywhere that they go? Is there just the lack of
110awareness? Is it what what exactly is it? And I believe that the district's doing an audit to try and uh drill down to those things. I do believe there was also some question of whether or not they were actually eligible but like non-eligible students enrolled in essential courses. A lot of things need to be worked out and obviously this is first year of doing this. Um hopefully this gets uh uh worked out in the future as well as uh with the alignment of elementary and middle school to to make sure that there's a there's a clear path. Um uh I appreciate the board uh implementing the meaningful graduation um recommendations. Um uh I I also agree that more uh more training is necessary for both counselors and uh families in order to uh properly understand
111exactly what you know uh the graduation requirements are. Um, and I have this, which is a multiple choice question for you, which I won't actually let you don't have to answer it, but in the IEP documentation, there's a check box that the uh the family needs to uh check and there's one box and this is the alternative. My child meets all eligibility criteria and is currently in a course of study which is designed to meet district and state requirements leading to a high school alternative diploma. What diploma are we talking about? Is this a an A throughG diploma? A alternative diploma as defined by the board which is not an A throughG but still is the a diploma meeting the state requirements. Is this is an essential diploma or is this a certificate of completion?
112And if you don't know the answer to that, how do you expect any parent uh and to understand what that means? Uh the answer is an essential diploma by the way. So um hopefully you got that correct. Uh I'll give it off to Dr. Sorry. Yeah. No, you're good. Um so our second goal of course was to decrease the number of uh level one behavior support requests to the BSR department um through a proactive plan. Um we know that we will be able to reduce this num number by supporting sites in creating and implementing a continuum of support um based with a focus on uh universal tier one strategies. So this data shows the current school year um on the left hand side uh was data reported um in BSR as of November 30th, 2024.
113And as you can see, the total number of level one requests at that point was 40, which constituted about 12.8% of the total BSR requests. And then compared to the data on the right, which is as of April 14th, 2025, and you see an increase in the level one request to 66, which constituted about 10.4% of the total requests for behavior supports. So we are increasing continuing to increase but slightly. So we have begun implementing the proactive plan of behavior aimed at strengthening universal tier one practices and creating a cohesive continuum of behavioral care. Key components include we are currently working with one elementary school per area network team and you're going to hear about those schools in a moment. We have a district level team where we're integrating departments at the district level and
114we've begun working with these specific sites and developing uh strong universal behavior instruction. But it started with data and we'll talk about that in a moment. Eventually we will look at reorganizing the behavior support resources team into two different teams working side by side. one that focuses on the proactive plan and one that will continue to respond to those challenging level two and level three behavioral requests. So, um appreciative of uh trustee Hazen bringing up the UTK um data because that is the reason we started with elementary is because the BSR data continually shows that the need is in our UTK to2. We prioritize the outreach and partnerships with these schools. um Sanberg Elementary in area A, Linda Vista Elementary in area B, Cababrio, Sherman, and Boone. Um and some of these schools actually reached
115out to us to implement and some of them were self- selected um based on talk with BSR, talk with area superintendents, with the area program managers, etc. So, we have focus, our focus will be with these five schools. So to begin with implementation, we have focused on strengthening both strong teams at the district and the school site level. Our district team includes um representatives from the uh folks on the left hand side of the screen. Uh restorative practices, BSR, special education, youth advocacy, um mental health, family engagement, counseling and guidance. We wanted to ensure uh broad alignment and expertise that focus on those behaviors, social emotional uh learning, well-being, etc. because we all have the same goal and that's really to build community um and to ensure that our students feel welcomed and safe at
116school and belong. At the site level, the teams have varied. Um they all have a of course the site leader is on the team. They have general education teachers, special education teachers, some have school psychologists, some have school counselors. We also have para educators on those teams and in some cases parents and students. Um although most of the teams don't have a parent or student, they are considering those because they know that their input is vital as well. Implementation science if you look at the research underscores that effective teams are the cornerstone of any program policy initiative and so we are building with that principle as the forefront. So we are in the very very early stages of implementation um and we've begun working with sites on data gathering both system data and student level
117data. In the system level we are utilizing the tiered fidelity inventory which is an assessment through the positive behavior intervention and supports. Um and it's broken up into three different parts. Part one is focused on universal, part two is focused on tier two and part three is focused on of course tier three. So we are focused on administering only the tier one universal um assessment and some of those questions include how what does their team look like? What's the membership? How do they function? It's looking at how do teams use data to drive expectations or to drive areas that they want to focus on. It asks questions such as uh how do how do we define behavior expectations at our school so that staff, students and families are aware of what are the expectations. It
118asks questions about how are we professionally developing our staff um and families. It asks questions about classroom procedures. And then finally, it also asks questions on how staff is responding and acknowledging both positive behavior and challenging behavior as well. From there, the sites are simultaneously also looking at student data around behavior, specifically around where those behaviors are occurring, the time that they're occurring, the types of behavior, and how staff are responding. From these, we're going to from this data, we're are going to be able to guide priorities which will lead into action steps. So, two schools have fully completed the tiered fidelity inventory with scores of 30% and 23.3% implementation of those universal tier one practices. While those scores indicate very early stage implementation, we talk about that at the when we're administering the assessment,
119we're not really looking at the scores. We really want to talk about what you're doing well and how to grow that. Um and so while they do indicate early stage, both of these site teams have focused on identifying existing strengths and are actively discussing ways to build on those foundations. This strength-based approach sets the stage for meaningful sustainable growth in their behavior support systems. So once we're completed with the data analysis, these school teams will be identifying two to three key priorities developing and developing targeted action steps to strengthen the universal implementation. Focusing on a small number of priorities is critical to ensure meaningful progress and sustainable change. And then once these priorities are identified by the school teams, it's going to activate our district team to support them with coaching, implementation, whatever they need
120to build up these um this continuum of support with regards to behavior. So we're excited about it even though it is in their early stage. So I'm g hand it over to Scott. Um yeah, so I wanted to start, this has been a personal issue of mine for several years, but it only felt the need to bring it to the attention of uh superintendent and the and the board. Is the ter the term of the use sped by the district? This has been a term that is for whatever reason, you know, because you acronize everything, I guess, but um but it's now become a a a slur, a substitute. It's a it's you know there I was recently at an LCAP workshop and one of the parents said that uh referred to uh students were
121referring to oh those are sped kids or that's a sped classroom or that's you know this is an insulting word that has literally been developed by the district right like this is this doesn't come from language anywhere else this is ed you speak that's turned into an insult and so we really need to stop using this term to that point there needs to I I've said this every time I've come here I think is there needs to be a culture change of general education teachers and staff. This is there behaviors is not a special education issue. Uh having accessibility for uh a student with special needs is not a special education issue. It it's used in collaboration with special education team, but it's up to the general education uh teacher and staff in order to
122actually implement those changes. And until there's a widespread culture change amongst the district staff in order to incorporate it, uh we're not going to get um the changes that we're looking for. Um regarding the Department of Education, I didn't know where else to put this in. I just felt like I had to talk about the elephant in the room. Um I I I was asked by a reporter recently like what are the implications of the Department of Education shutting down? And I like I had no idea. I I I don't know. I don't think anybody in this room knows. I don't I wish I do. Um I I don't know what cuts are coming down the road. I have no idea. Um I do know I I my personal concern is about compliance mostly. Um
123the Office of Civil Rights uh recently was already overworked at 12 offices nationwide. They're now down to five. um and uh as well. So, Office of Civil Rights is obviously a one mechanism of um oversight uh provided uh provided to parents and families uh to for the district that's out of compliance. I would hope that this district is not however things are things happen. Um the and then the other piece is just uh title nine enforcement as well. That would be the other uh compliance piece. So those are the the the two main things that are troubling me at the present moment. Uh I think I I hit everything. Oh um the sorry going back into the the buyin and training is one uh things that we're using is spotlight students to to monitor things.
124However, that's not necessarily implemented uh uh let's say evenly across the board. It's up to principles to determine what a spotlight student is. And we've heard reports of some uh principles are excluding students with disabilities from being spotlight students because they're tracked in different ways. And so really need that guidance uh from the top area superintendent uh in order to no we're we need we need to include all students in spotlight students. It's all it's spotlight students is anybody who's not succeeding in the district. Um that's all I got right now. Thank you Scott. And lastly, in true collaboration with San Diego Unified and our parent community, our goal is to continue to increase parent participation at our CAC meetings and events, fostering a stronger engagement and shared advocacy. So, this next slide illustrates our
125up-to-date data um for this year. As reflected in the numbers, we still have a lot of work to do with increasing parent participation, consistent parent participation. Um, we are still offering both in-person and uh virtual options. Um, and we are looking at ways that we can make sure that our parents are still able to engage in that process and the information that's being presented even if they are um uh engaging with us via the online process. So, some of the ways that we um have started to uh make changes to uh have more parents come out and participate in our meetings is we have revamped our public-f facing website um to make it more parentfriendly. We've also expanded our communication methods to include text messaging, robocalls, emails, flyers, peach jar, and um partnering with the
126communications department um as well as districtwide messaging. We've also reconstructed our CAC meetings to where we're trying to offer more engaging and interactive learning experiences rather than um the special ed team just sitting and presenting to families. All of these efforts um reflect our shared vision and strengthening our partnership with our families to better support our students um with the inclusive process across our district. And lastly, Scott, uh, one thing I wanted to mention briefly was, um, I I spoke to Dr. Watkins just recently that there was a there was talk about, um, that the dis district would only present once a year to the board. Uh, and how and I was, well, how does that affect the the advisory committees? You know, usually we present to the board uh, twice a year. So uh
127you know they if the anyway it needs to be worked out of like if the district's presenting once a year fine but then you know still decoup like have have at least another presentation from the advisory committees. I think it's important to have those uh voices before the board. Um uh and so there it is. And then we have um just a reminder we have our above and beyond awards uh next week next Thursday uh Lincoln High School at 6:30. I know that some of you have been there before. It's always an excellent event. We had around a hundred nominations uh this year and we were giving away uh 15 uh awards. Um and I am uh wanted to introduce most of you I believe have met Sarah Kefir. This is our incoming chair. Uh
128she has been elected chair for uh the next uh school board and she has uh goals and ideas about how to uh implement the goals for uh the CAC next year. So I turn it over to Sarah. Thank you, Scott. Scott will be getting an award at that uh ceremony. It wasn't on. It was um so my name is Sarah Kefir and I will be the next chairperson for the Community Advisory Committee of Special Education or CAC acronyms. Um I've spent this past year listening, learning, and reflecting and I want to share what I hope to focus on in the year ahead. Um, first, parent and community engagement has to be front and center. That means expanding outreach and revamping how we use social media to share resources and making our online experience during meetings
129more inclusive and accessible. I'd like to restructure our public awareness and outreach committee to help make that happen. Next, I want to launch a mentorship program, something that pairs experienced parents with families who are new to special education. I also want to build out a parent leaison system that gives families support when navigating school challenges. And I'd love to work more closely with ECSE uh committee on this. They've already been kind of doing some work with it. Um supporting parent groups at school sites is another big priority. A lot of parents want to get involved. They just don't know where to start. So I want to make sure they have toolkits, templates, and stories from groups that are already doing the work. Um, and we'll be looking for ways to celebrate and uplift the success
130stories that we already have. Um, we also need to work more closely with ELAC and our translation partners to make sure non-English-speaking families have clear, accessible information and feel included in every part of what we do. On the accountability and transparency side, I'll continue to advocate for clearer reporting on funding, staffing, and student outcomes in special education, and for stronger follow-through on public comments. I also believe district leadership should stay through public comment and engage with families directly. That's a small change that could make a huge impact. Um, one of the biggest systemic things I want to push for is allowing ABA providers inside into classrooms. This could help with staff shortages and reduce costs while ensuring kids get services they need. I also believe we need to keep addressing systemic issues affecting our DAH
131students um that can't be left behind. And just as important, I want us to highlight schools that are doing it right. Schools where inclusion is happening, where staff is going above and beyond, where students feel seen. Let's celebrate those schools more often and use them as models for others. Finally, this is personal for me. I want families to feel like they belong here. If we want parents to show up, we have to make spaces more kid-friendly. I want to start every meeting with a simple did you know or a reminder just for parents and keep finding ways to make them feel seen, heard, and thought of. And that's where my heart's going into next year. And I'd really love to collaborate with all of you. So, thank you. Thank you to all of you. U
132Miss Doultz, do we have any members of the public who are speak signed up to speak? Okay. Um do any trustees have questions or comments? Uh I see Vice President Barrera's hand up and trustees. Thank you, President Person. So um the graduation rate seems hard to believe. So what's going on? Because because even if you take out the 72 um I still think that gets us to like an 86% rate. So how how are we possibly raising rates that fast? So it is projected um rates. And so what we did was we looked at our current number of students with um IEPs that are on track for the regular uh excuse me regular A to G diploma and then we added in the projected 72 um currently and then we divided that by the total
133uh 801 and that's where we came up with the 9 95.5%. But it is a projected rate. This is if um all of these things align. Do we have a sense looking backwards when we see data at this moment, do we typically not get all the way there? Uh it it's just there's there's either something incredible happening or the data is so I think the thing that's incredible that's happening is the new essential diploma. So those 72 students um in the past would not be receiving our regular diploma. they would not be included in our grad graduation rate because they would be receiving our certificate of completion. And so now um if those state students continue to be on track to receive the essential diploma, then they are now um included in our graduation rate.
134So I think that's the phenomenal thing that's happening um that we're now um providing that opportunity and that pathway for more of our students in our ESN classrooms um to receive a diploma. Yes. Trusty Wyers pain. I see her. I want to thank Scott um personally and professionally for all that you've done and I know it's been a sacrifice. Um really appreciated the ceremony we had on the lawn and um your daughter is fabulous. She may be the president one day the way she's going. But they really appreciate your persistence in trying to move us as a district and I think you've been successful and I want to thank you for stepping up. I know he must have uh bought a leg or an arm or something, twisted something to get you to step up
135and take on this responsibility, but I want to thank all of you because I know it's difficult work. Uh and thank you for saying that we need to eliminate sped that does not exist anymore. Right. That's right. No more speds. You can say that. A fine for everybody who does it. So get your dollars ready. You're going to collect it. You've heard it from her. Um Trusty Baldis. Yeah. First, I just want to say thank you all so much for your amazing work. Having just gone through the college application process, I'm always thinking about college and career readiness. So, I think it's amazing that our goals are to increase the amount of students with special needs who are getting our diploma, but how can we work to support them going forth into the college application
136process? Do we have a plan for that or is this a goal that we want to look into? So, that's actually a good question and I'm actually going to defer that question to our graduation department, but we definitely can take that question down and then represent um here at the board, but I do know that our graduation department does have a plan of how they are currently supporting students with the application process as well as uh getting into colleges. So, yes, great question, Trusty Asen. Thank you. And thank you, Scott, for all your service and for asking the tough questions and continuing to push us um to make progress. And Sarah, really appreciate uh your ideas around improving communication with families. So, look forward to working with you. I'm wondering going back to um Vice
137President Barrera's question around graduation rate. I'm still left wondering what's going on. And if I did the math right, even if we take out students who earned the essential diploma, it looks like we went from 67% to 77%. Um, which is a huge jump, a 10% jump. So, I'm trying to understand like what do we attribute that to? What is going on? the essential diploma is incredible and obviously contributes to, you know, a portion of of that, you know, getting to 95%. But what's going on um with the other um group of students? When you say the other group of students, those that didn't earn the right like so we talk about um right so you share data on um the proportion of students of the total graduation rate the proportion of students who earned
138an essential diploma um and those who earned an A throughG diploma um and it looks like the growth just within that A throughG diploma um group is significant at a 10% jump unless I'm not understanding correctly but I'm trying to understand there's something noteworthy presumably that that it happened in the last year to support um our students and I'm curious as you've analyzed this data with what's going on. So I think what I'd have to do is go back um and take a look at our data um as well as our graduation data um for our our students that are on track to receive the A to G and then we can get you more information as to what that possible anomaly is. So the team we don't have a we don't have a sense
139of why it's confounding but look forward to hearing more question. Yeah I mean if yes goal is go 67 to 70 and we got essentially to 77 something really great's got to be happening so look forward to hearing more. Yes. Um I I'm wondering um we heard um when we were talking about um alternative um graduation um requirements, we heard from deaf and heart of hearing students um and I'm wondering um how they're reflected in this year's graduation outcomes and what progress we're making to address the concerns that the community brought up um when we last spoke about this. So that is one piece that we are still working on. Um I know that we've had a meeting with um Dr. Beula and some others and that is a piece that we are still uh
140working on. I see Dr. working on that piece. Um I will be talking about it when I do my introduction for the next item. Absolutely. I I just I'll add that the DHH program is a very low it's literally a low incidence disability. So they there might not even be someone graduating from the DHA in this cohort. So it's entirely possible, right? It's just like not even reflected. My suspicion with the the 960 693 uh diploma, the the people graduating with the diploma, I have no idea. My suspicion is that they're not A throughG. It's actually because you unlock the alternative courses that But we haven't done that yet. Oh, you haven't done that? This year. for next year. Well, then I'm wrong. Honestly, it's it's just projected and I believe when we project that
141that we just assume that all the students are going to pass our courses. So, this is this is projected data. Okay. Um and then lastly, and you didn't speak to it, but in the past, uh Scott, I know we've heard from you and um the committee about this around um the district being out of compliance with regard to completing initial assessments. Um, and I'm wondering um if the committee is continuing to monitor this um and if staff if the team can talk about how we're doing, how we're tracking compared to previous years I think particularly with the new staffing, excuse me, model we've implemented implemented for exi. Do we expect to get caught up on the backlog? Um, all of those. So, great question. So, I believe you're you're specifically referring to uh exi assessments.
142Yeah. Yeah. I think I mean those initial primarily exi but those initial assessments where we have been historically significantly backlogged and out of compliance. Yes. So I do have a little bit of information on our new process with regards to the exi assessments. So as you know we shifted uh uh to 10 part-time teams um that do assessments three days a week. We are already noticing that we are able to assess more students in um the same time frame that we previously were assessing students. Um what we are also noticing that is very significant is through the new uh diagnostic classroom um environment in which we are assessing our students compared to the one-on-one assessment, we are being able to uh for those students that do qualify for special ed services. They are we have
143more students that are going into the gened environment versus the separate setting. So um we've reduced that from 33% going into a separate setting to 25% and that is a direct correlation to that uh diagnostic classroom um process. Um the other thing that we're also noticing is when we look at our four-year data um data across four years, we were kind of stuck at about 8% of our students not qualifying for special ed services. But through this new model, we're actually up to 13%. meaning because we are able to see students in a true environment, classroom learning environment, the assessment process, we're actually noticing um that there are some students that actually do not qualify um for special ed services. So that's that's also a key. I also want to say go back to um
144those students that are being um uh placed in our gened um environment through this process. That means we now have more students that are on track to be um to graduate versus those students that were not on track for for graduation. So, that's a plus. Um we also have a lot more information that we can share more detailed information if you'd like. Myself and Sarah can actually set up a meeting with you. I know we did that last year just to kind of go over more holistically um and give more details as to the new assessment team, but we are seeing uh improvement. We do still use um after hours assessments um teams to to also assess students and we are seeing progress in the number of assessments there also. So we do plan to
145continue that work. Um but again with fewer assessment teams working part-time, we are seeing higher numbers of assessments being completed um which is a plus and so we do believe that this new change um is taking us in the right direction. So, I really appreciate that and appreciate all the extra additional insight into the process. I guess my big question is um in terms of the backlog um and you know the number andor percent um of assessments where we're out of compliance, we're not completing them within the appropriate time frame. Um are we seeing a positive trend line there? I'm hearing we're getting through them faster um which is fantastic. Are we shrinking the number that are past due? Absolutely. So, um yes. So, we started out with about 1,600 this year. Um, 600 of
146those were carryover from last year. Um, as of today, we've resolved about 939 of those. We still have about 677 to um to complete. And yes, because of the new processes that we put in place, we are decreasing that number a lot faster than we were. Um, do we still have work to do? Absolutely. But we are actually going in the right direction. Thank you. Oh, trustee Bazo. Yes, thank you. Um, I first wanted to say thank you so much especially to Dr. Watkins and uh Sarah for talking um really addressing um parent engagement and community engagement because a lot of times when I ask those questions I get kind of like vague answers. So, I really feel like you're, you know, pushing in and and really, um, or diving in, I guess, um, to
147really try to address that and because I think that's so important to all the work that we do. So, thank you. I just had a question about the um, the goal around the level one BSR data. Um I wasn't clear but I'm assuming like level one it level two level three it's like increases in severity of behavior I'm assuming right aligned with yeah so was there a particular reason why we chose to focus just on level one because there's a lot of you know reports in the level two and level three areas. So I was just curious why that was the specific area that we chose to focus on. I think the reason we decided to focus on those because they're lower level behaviors that we think sites can support those students on their own
148without BSR and then BSR's attention can be focused more on helping sites with proactive work and those severe challenging behaviors. Um, we oftent times see those level ones such as disruption, defiance in classrooms that we feel that if sites had a continuum of care at their sites, they may not need to call BSR for that those levels of support and take time away from the students who might need it a little bit more. Thank you. Yeah, absolutely. From my understanding, I mean, the the operational principle is there's an assumption that an adequately trained and prepared site should be able to handle your level ones and BSR should really only be called in for level two and three. I think that's all right. Um, well, with that, I believe we're at the end of our question
149here. Thank you so much to everyone, particularly you, Scott, and welcome aboard. Thank you so much. All right, we are humming along here. We're only 40 minutes behind schedule. Um, we will now consider item E3, adoption of alternative sequence for high school graduation. Dr. Bula, can you please introduce the item? Yes, and we do have um staff here. Uh, I have some lengthy comments, but I think they're necessary um because this is implementation of a critical change in policy. On January 28th, the board took an important step forward by approving board policy 6146.1, reaffirming our district's unwavering commitment to rigorous A throughg aligned graduation standards. At that time, the board also called for the development of an administrative regulation and an implementation plan to ensure that any alternative graduation pathway would be framed by clear
150guardrails with students futures at the center. This evening, we're proud to present those documents for your approval. The proposed administrative regulation and implementation plan chart a new path forward, one that honors resilience of our students, taps into their potential, and affirms our shared belief that readiness for college, career, and life must remain our northstar. This shift reflects the best of who we are as a district, a district committed to excellence without exception and equity without compromise and the unwavering pursuit of success for the 100% of students 100% of the time. Through this plan, we are creating flexible yet rigorous pathways to re-engage the 11.8% of students who are currently off track to graduate on time. And rather than say dropout, I want to be clear that we're referring to the 3.2% of students who are
151pushed out by systemic barriers, not personal failure. That's why we're especially mindful of how this pathway is implemented. We must guard against any unintended tracking or overidentification of student groups. This is why the plan includes a phased approach and a strong oversight. In phase one, the office of graduation will audit data, align transcript reviews with CCI readiness, and facilitate meetings with students, families, and staff to plan graduation pathways. In phase two, we will pilot the process, monitor student progress, and begin building school site referral systems. In phase three, responsibility will transition to school sites with continued district level oversight, post-secary counseling, and disegregated reporting to ensure equity across all student groups. This is when full implementation occurs when the guardrails needed to ensure we what we do to ensure we do not disproportionately impact historically
152marginalized students. While we will continue to uphold A throughg aligned graduation requirements that set a high bar for all students, we must also recognize that a one-sizefits-all approach does not meet the needs of every learner. And to be clear, tonight's approval is just the beginning of this work. We're asking the board to approve the policy as presented, but you can expect that we will return to request refinements as we learn more during this implementation stage. For example, Trusty Hazen, thank you for your thoughtful questions. Phase one includes meetings with both students and families, but I've asked the team to explore what happens when there's a lack of alignment between a student's preference and a parent's wishes. Should exceptions be allowed and under what conditions? I've also asked them to review specifically and consistently for grade
153levels that are offered an alternative sequence. While it's standard practice, including in state legislation, to phase in new policies by grade level, we will examine what long-term alignment should look like. And yes, I agree that a mid-year report is essential. Monitoring must be more frequent than once a year, especially as we launch something so critical. There is also important work ahead. We must ensure that our deaf and heart of hearing students have equitable access to a meaningful diploma. I don't know about you, but the last time we heard them um during public comment, I've been carrying their stories. And I know we have to do something differently. So many of these students receive instruction in core subjects such as English, math, and science from educational specialists, fluent in sign language, but who do not hold
154single subject credentials required to grant A3G credit. As a result, these students may complete coursework, but are still not eligible for college. Solving this requires partnership. Our offices of graduation and special education are working together to explore solutions, and the flexibility provided through the AR you are voting for today will support these efforts. once we address the credentiing challenge. Finally, behind every data point is a student. There's a young person with dreams, talents, and enormous potential. A student who deserves a pathway that opens doors, not closes them. Through this new approach, expanding dual enrollment opportunities, strengthening career and technical education, and offering personalized support are what we are reimagining what it means to prepare every student for the future they deserve. One of the things I want to speak to and then I actually really
155appreciated the team on this is the part of the intervention with these students is to re-engage them into school with either college or career. Normally these students are not given the the opportunity to be in dual enrollment credit. They're um that's going to become a requirement and also a career pathway. So I appreciate the level of intervention that this is taking place. So with your approval tonight, we take another step forward toward towards a future where every student graduate crosses the stage not just with the diploma but with momentum, purpose and possibility. Thank you team for being here prepared to answer any questions. Thank you. Okay. Is there a motion to approve? Trusty Baldis and Trusty Cruz with a second. Uh we will now move to discussion. Uh are there any public speakers on this
156item? Yes, we actually have two virtual speakers who are together. Uh Jeff Sabins, if Jeff is available, please unmute. You have two minutes. All right. Thanks, Marty. Can you hear me? Yes. Go ahead. Hi everyone. I just wanted to take a moment to remind uh the panel that the meaningful graduation work group does not stand in opposition to college readiness, but in reality, we just stand in support of student choice. Uh really just like Fabi said, a one-sizefits-all diploma doesn't fit all students. The UC A to G requirements were designed for those planning really to apply to UC and CSU schools, but they've kind of become the default path for every student, whether or not that's where their passion or talents lie. Um so really for me, speaking plainly, I believe college is one of
157many paths to success. For some students, it's a four-year universities. For others, it's a technical trade. It's that really cool apprenticeship. Maybe it's the military or heading straight into the workforce. And yet our current system is designed for all students to kind of have a similar goal after graduating, but often at the expense of what truly motivates them to come to school in the first place. You know, I often think about CTE, VAPA, and college courses. When I think of different paths for students, these courses offer like real life hands-on realworld learning that ignites passion. It builds skills. You know, it connects students with the industries that are hiring right now. CTE programs in like health sciences and construction, digital media, culinary arts. I mean, and we have a ton of them across all high
158schools. I just I want everybody to know that these are not less than. These are super vital and they are rigorous. But when we force students to trade those classes for another year of, you know, maybe foreign language or a lab science that they may or may not see as being aligned to their goals, we risk kind of like de-engaging them and robbing them of a meaningful preparation for their chosen future. So, it is my goal that hopefully this moves forward and we have the opportunity to empower students. Let's trust them to chart a path that reflects their goals, not just college admission checklists. I want to be clear by moving away from the UC A to G diploma as a universal requirement. We are not lowering the bar. We're simply widening the path to
159success. So, I just wanted to share those thoughts. I I I trust the board. I'm excited about what we're going to do moving forward. Um, but this is a big deal for our students and and we're here for them. So, that's kind of all I had for tonight. Thank you. And Erica Renfrey. Oh, hey Marty. We were together. That was kind of a statement for both of us. Oh, okay. Thank you. All right. I see Tim Farson, but I guess he's he dropped off. Okay. Got it. Okay. Um, trustees comments, questions, trusty, thank you. And thank you um to the team who worked on this and all of the principles and and counselors. Um, I'm glad to see that um this now includes um a third year of math. um wasn't in there initially and
160I think that's critically important if we want to set students up for success in apprenticeships at community college or or other careers. So really appreciate that. I do have um a clarifying question. Um I want to make sure so as Superintendent Bugula mentioned um that we're aiming for flexible yet rigorous pathways. Um want to make sure we aren't lowering expectations. Just for clarity will the ex our 2.0 GPA requirement still apply for the alternative sequence um diploma. I just want to make sure that that's there because I didn't see it. Yes, it will. And we plan to address that the moment that the board endorses the implementation plan. We have a meeting tomorrow with our counselors, our principles to go over not only the graduation requirements that were approved back in January, but also tonight's
161implementation plan. But so nothing's changing in terms of our expectations in terms like what is correct remains the same. Okay. Our standard is 2.0. Got it. Thank you. Um I do think so. I heard um superintendent you speak to um sort of clarifying um our engagement with students and parents in terms of applying for this alternative sequence. Um I am not particularly comfortable with the fact that it it isn't clear yet and that um that it gets worked out. I think when there's variability and when it's well it could be a student or a parent um that you may you know have a scenario where you know someone says oh well the student said they wanted to do it and we can check that box and maybe parents don't support it or or vice versa.
162And so I I do have concerns that we aren't clear about what the expectation is. Um I recognize that students don't always have um parents or guardians who are actively involved in their lives. And then can we describe an exception that would be made in that case instead of saying well it could be one or or the other and that's really what we're trying to address. I mean our hope of my hope in general of course would be that all students have positive relationships with their families. Um, but there have been cases when that is not it and the child has to fend for themselves and we want to make sure that they have that ability. If you want to speak more to that slides. Um, I think that's one of the reasons why we
163want to look at um this year's graduates and do a case study to see at what point um the conversation should and could happen. Um, so we're actually taking a look at this year's graduates to do a deep dive into answering that question of engagement and bringing parents along. I think that's also why we have a three-year implementation plan is to work through what that would look like and not just an adult, but bringing having the conversations with the families and meeting with the students. So all of that is still working with the committee and with our counselors and schools. And if I could draw your attention to page three of the exhibit at the top it's important to me to note that it says site counselors and administrators will meet with eligible students. So
164our first plan of action is to do an audit and work sidebyside with our leaders and our counselors identify eligible students. As we talked about this evening, it's a small percentage of students that would even be eligible for this diploma sequence. Once they've been identified, then our site counselors, administrators, office of graduation will meet with the eligible students and their families to solidify a post-secondary plan and select the appropriate graduation sequence. All of that will be done together in a meeting format um where in fact we would have signatures of a student, we'd have signatures of fa of a family. But it is also to important to note as Dr. Dr. Bugula mentioned we have unaccompanied minors who who do not have parents and guardians and so we will work through that process as we
165normally do. I mean my hope would be that we would call that out right as an exception right when there is an unaccompanied minor um because again I think the room for variability it makes me uncomfortable as as we talk about equity but appreciate the work that's going to happen and you know I hear the level of intentionality um that you describe. Um and then also so you mentioned that there would be you know more than an annual report but again it's not mentioned here and so we're being asked to sort of codify you know both the the AR and the exhibit and here that like there's an intention to do these things but they're not necessarily described there. Um, so I don't know if there's an opportunity um next year to come back with
166a refined um exhibit, but I think because I'm hearing alignment um in terms of some of my concerns and and what you're saying, but but they're not all um reflected here. Um my intention isn't to derail this process, but just to ensure that all of the things we intend to do are actually reflected in this document so that we can ensure um it's implemented the way we all want to it to be implemented. I see this as a as part of the graduation goal that we have. Um and so the the way that we're coming back, you know, a few times a year, I want to say about three times a year to look at that monitoring, this is actually a part of that strategy. So we would be hearing more and keeping track of
167that along with it. Trusty Whiters and Trusty Bus There's something called an emancipated minor. Am I right? Yes. Which means that parents don't have to go in with them. They emancipate themselves. And um you would need to work with them for graduation requirements. And this is nothing new because we've had this I I know about it 10, 15, 20 years ago where students would come in just to one individual vice principal. I know that because my sister was a vice principal at Gumpers and she'd have to work oneon-one with a child to get that child through graduation. And now at least you've developed a process where you're looking at it centrally. You're also putting in place a process that would work at the site that would involve more than just one person so that we
168can look at each child. She'd have to work with um the adult school to try to help that child to get through graduation. So, I'm thankful of the fact that now the district is looking at it centrally and you also have a site process that you will be monitoring what's going on. So this is nothing for us to get all excited about other than the fact that now you're assuming some responsibility here at the ed center for doing something about it so that we can look at it collectively data wise. Thank you trusty bubbles. I first just want to thank you all so much for the work you have done and for getting that student engagement. I think it is such a key part of this process. I have almost like a little hypothetical that
169I was wondering about. I just want to start by saying I'm a very strong supporter of student choice. If there was a student who decided they wanted to go down a different pathway and didn't fulfill all the A throughG requirements and they went into trade school after they graduated, if in five years they decided they wanted to go to a 4-year university, what would happen with them? would they have to go back to high school and complete that course that they didn't or what would the process be like for that student? That's a great question. So upon graduating, they would have earned a diploma, right? Um when we see students who have gone through a trade school or earned certification, then they have also college courses under their belt as well. So, more than likely
170they would have been uh a transfer student from a community college to a 4-year university. So, they would then apply accordingly. I just have to respond to that. Also, uh some of you have heard of the IBEDW uh union. Yes. Um guy who was in charge of it talked about the fact that his son graduated from high school and he had to put him through college, four years of college. his friend's son went through the IBEDW program, three years of trade. He only needed two years. He He was working getting his training for the first three years. He had all the additional courses he needed. He only needed two years of college to get his bachelor's degree. And so, and they helped to pay for it, I think. So, that's one of the beauty of
171what we're trying to do now. There's there should be no stigmatism for folks who want to go through a trade because they can finish that program and then go on and get their uh bachelor's degree and go into engineering or whatever it is they want to do. That's what we're trying to do as a district to open up the process so that folks are not taking on a couple hundred thousand dollars in debt, but they can find other ways to get through what they want to do without having to go through and take it on. I mean, it's it's horrendous what we do to folks in this in this nation. But I mean the simple answer to Trusty B's question is lots and lots of high schools give diplomas without being A throughG and you
172would then remediate a community college typically. Is that typically the answer is you would you would then take additional courses in community college before going to a four-year college or so that's typically what you would do. Yeah. Okay. I just want can I it's not when we go into a community college it's not to remediate right it's different different paths so I think it's really just important when we use language it's not more in the deficit lens because we do when students go to a community college they're earning their associates degree which puts them at an advantage and a lot of our community colleges right now have um transference automatic transference into a four-year university and many of them right now are building that that bachelor's pathway. And so that is a goal of the
173state of California and our work with our community college um partners. But sorry, the language remediation was maybe wrong. I mean, if you didn't have A throughG, typically what a student would do is then to get get that course at a community college. Is that typically what would happen? Yes. Okay. I'm a believer. I did have an associate of science at diesel automotive mechanics in another lifetime. So big believer in community college. Um okay I think we have had ample discussion. Uh we will uh move to a vote at this point. Um student trustees please vote. Uh all other trustees please vote. That motion passes unanimously. With student trustees concurring. All right. Uh we will now move to collective bargaining personnel matters and student discipline uh items F1 and F2 student discipline with AASD regarding
174staffing process for summer school and ESY programs. Is there a motion on these items? We have a motion from Trusty Wires Pain. Do I have a second? Trusty Hayes and with a second. All right, Miss Stouls, do we have any speakers on these items? No speakers. Uh do any of the trustees uh have questions or wish to comment on these items? Seeing no comments, we'll move to a vote. Student trustees, please vote. Oh, wait, pardon me. I'm got ahead of myself. Uh student trustees will not be voting on this item because they involve collective bargaining. Uh trustees, please vote. Hold on. Scratch that. We had a Okay. Student I mean all trustees, please vote on the item. We have unanimous support from all five members. All right. Uh now we will consider board consent agenda
175item G1, authorization to excuse board member absence. Is there a motion on this item? I don't know if you should make the motion on your your own absence, but Trusty Baldis, Trusty Bazo. Um all right. Uh student trustees, please vote. Here's your chance to to vote on You can vote. Yeah, let's All right. All other trustees, please vote. Uh we have unanimous uh support for that item with student trustees concurring. All right. Um wow. Okay. We're sort of in the final stretch. I see that um we'll now consider items I through I44, the superintendent's consent agenda. I think you skipped H. Oh. I'm sorry. Page 11. It's not on my It's not on my I'm not sure what's Oh, I see what you're saying. Okay. Yeah. Good. Okay. Sorry. We got a Got it. Oh,
176this is actually an exciting item. So, I'm glad uh I'm glad we circle back to this thing. I was on KOSI this morning about this item. Okay. Um we will now consider board consent agenda item H1, approval of revisions to existing board policy BP and adoption of new administrative regulations or ARS. Is there a motion on this item? Trusty Bazo. Is there a second? Trusty Hazen. We have a motion and a second. Um, you have one speaker. We have one speaker. Okay, let's hear Ricardo Medina. You have two minutes. to stop. Hey, um I want to say good evening. Almost said good morning. Thought it felt a little past midnight here. Um but I I want to say, you know, it's good to see everyone. A lot of times I get to wear um the
177hat, no pun intended, uh with ethnic studies, but today I'm here um really um in in relation to the Indian education program um as a parent advisory committee member. And I want to speak specifically to um the board policy in the AR around renaming and naming. And I want to even be more specific in relation to um Claremont High School's mascot. And um and so I I guess I need a little clarification as if state law with AB 3074 with a racist mascot act um um is having some requirements around the name change with Claremont. And so um I'm wondering if we kn we need to go through the processes of this board of this policy or proposed policy um um do we need to go through that um despite the law and other thing
178the other thing that I want to hit which is really critical is is if we do go through this policy and there is this public engagement process how do we protect our students our native students our native comm communityities community members because I was able to see what happened at Canyon Hills where we saw students there was physical threats on students and and faculty as well. Um and the big concern that I have is is that um um the protection of our community as we participate in this engagement process in a space where potentially voices are um are a minority. And um and so I'll you know I just I'll I'll add that in this in saying that um ensuring part protection of our students, parents, community members so that they can share freely their
179beliefs, stories of harm without facing physical threats, further isolation and retraumatization. And so it's the concern within this policy around public engagement and the protections that are needed within there. Thank you. Thank you. [Music] Um, so I will entertain a comments from the board. Um, Trusty Bazo, you can open discussion. Thank you, President Patterson. And yes, I've been uh doing some media interviews around this issue, too. And I I want to thank um our communications director, James Canning, for getting out ahead of this issue and really um trying to share with the community that, you know, we are we want to do this right. um we want to do this process um you know in a way that we're supportive of this process but we are also going to be listening to our community making
180sure that we are taking into account input from all sides you know um I think we kind of had learned the last few name changes um we've had a little learning curve but um you know Claremont is a fantastic community um and Claremont High School's you know a fantastic school. We have great leaders there and the student voice is amazing. So, um you know, I'm confident that we're going to uh come through this well, but we just wanted to make sure to share that we're going to be, you know, make sure that we are going to be taking into account um various input. I mean, we are going to be changing the mascot that that's decided, but um what that's going to look like, we'll uh we'll be looking at from all sides. Um but
181wanted to also share that we've taken into account almost I think it's a hundred tribal leaders um input on this to support that this is a important uh move in the right direction because we want all of our students to have that sense of belonging and we don't want any of our students whether they're Native American or not to feel you know like they're entering a school where they're not um represented and they they don't feel that sense of belonging. And uh I see um our the Claremont uh principal Carly's here tonight and uh I thank her for her leadership and um you know looking forward to the discussion on this issue. Thank you Trusty Boso. I'll just say briefly I mean there there is a nexus between this and AB374 obviously although this is
182the about our board policy and our administrative regulations with regard to the chieftains. Let me just say about AB 374. Um it's a bill from um Assemb, uh it is a a bill designed to um prohibit uh disparishing disparaging Native American names. And I think it's it obviously informed by the genocide of Native American peoples in California, which is for whatever reason, and in part our district bears some responsibility for what we've done in the past for not communicating to students that that in fact happened. In fact, California had the most aggressive genocide of any native people of any state in the union. Uh over the course of probably 30 years from 1849 when the gold discovery of gold and the massive influx of settlers, uh the population went from around 150,000 to at 1900
183was about 16,000. So almost 90% of the population was eliminated um by disease, starvation in addition to outright murder. Um there were definitely uh broad, you know, ill river uh rangers massacring Native American communities. There were uh scalp bounties on Native Americans, uh communities paying for Native American scalps. Um and when that was done, they then passed laws. California passed laws to enable um Euroamerican uh settlers to have Native American women and young women serving as domestic servants in their homes. Uh it happened in California. There's no question that it happened and I think it's obviously on its face inappropriate to have um the victims of a genocide be the name of your mascot. Uh now I will say so I the law explicitly um prohibits certain names and leaves open others that are disparaging
184Native American communities. I will say chieftains happens to fall squarely in the list it gives. It includes braves, chipawas, chieftains, chiefs, uh squas. Uh so there's really no question uh in order to comply by July 2026, we will have to change that name. Um what I will say is the ARS with regard to that will apply to the extent that they will govern the process by which we engage with the community in order to make that change. The part that won't apply is in in regard to community initiating the process. this state law will impose that proc essentially impose that process upon us. I will also say the truth is although we are I'm personally supportive of of the law and we are going to comply with the law even if I weren't personally supportive
185of the law. Um we also acknowledge that communities have an attachment our school communities have attachments to their mascots. So, we don't want to take lightly the fact that generations of Claremont students um and we I I'm under the belief that this is the last of the names that that to which this law applies in our district. Um so, we take it seriously. You know, the background of this name to to the side, we know the community's attached. I'm a I'm a Vike. I'm a Viking and and we're attached to that. And frankly, building community is part of what we do here. So, we're cognizant of the fact that that's can be painful to folks and they're sensitive about it, which it makes it all the more important that we have this AR um both
186the regulation and the board policy that creates a process whereby at the outcome of this whole thing, you're going to have a mascot name that uh people in that community feel invested in. They feel like they can coalesce around. And in fact, future generations of of of students either either at this school or schools that we do this um that petition us to engage in this process with them later feel invested in. So I think the net outcome will be positive for all all parties. And part of why I'm supportive of this um this item is for that very reason that that that through the difficulty of some of these name changes um we will come out with a tighter community, a community more invested in one another that we build relationships through this process.
187So sorry to go at length, but this is an important item to me. Uh uh Vice President Barack. Yeah. Uh thank you, President Peterson. I just want to make sure that we're paying attention to Ricardo's statement because what you're saying about the what happened with Canyon Hills is very true. And so I just ask Superintendent Bul and you know to work with the team to make sure that we're putting uh the right protections in place for everybody in our community, especially our students that are participating in this process. Thank you. Trusty Hazen, I just want to uh reiterate the the gratitude that's already been expressed and the support for this and I know uh that it is the equity and belonging department that are going to be leading this work and I have every confidence
188that they're going to ensure it's done in a way that is inclusive and supportive and creates safe spaces um for all of our communities. So, thanks for all the work. Thank you, Trusty Hisen. Okay, with that, um we will move to a vote. Uh student trustee, we got the motion right. It's getting late in the night, man. Um okay. Uh student trustees, please vote. All other trustees, please vote. Hazen, you want to press that again? Didn't catch you for whatever reason. We had that is unanimous support from the board with student trustees concurring. All right. Now we are at the superintendent's consent agenda. We will now consider items I1 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
189be no separate discussion of these items unless the board, member of the public or staff request 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. Does the board have any items they would like to have pulled from the consent agenda for discussion? I don't wish to take a separate action, but do you want to comment quickly on an item? So, you tell me if it should be pulled or not. I'll I'll look the other way. If you look the other way, I just want to recognize uh the adoption or recommendation that we adopt a new math curriculum for our elementary school students. I think this is very exciting um and is going to go a
190long way to achieve the outcomes we seek for all students um through a really engaging curriculum. So, it's really great um to see that that's happening, that we have plans for professional development for all of our educators over the summer so they can hit the ground running uh in the fall. Uh so, looking forward to this and just want to flag um that we may not see the gains that we're anticipating in year one. So just want to let the entire you know staff team know as we think about math goals for next year to you know to think about um whether we need to reccalibrate interim goals um in alignment with this adoption. Okay the our parliamentarian come back online pretend that didn't happen. Um okay I do know that we have the public
191has pulled several of these items. Yes we have speakers on I1 which is grass surfacing projects at Mirram Mesa and Morse high schools. I7 which is ratification of amendments to grant agreements related to the community schools program and I6 which is a first amendment to agreement with global impact. Okay. So I have I1 I7 I6 pulled for subsequent consideration. uh which means we will move forward on all remaining items other than I1, I7 and I16. Uh all right. Uh is there a motion on the the u the consent agenda other than those three items? I have a motion from trustee Wers Pain and a second from Trusty Boso. Um seeing as that was a consent agenda, we will not have any discussion on that. We will move straight to a vote from our student trustees.
192Please vote. All other trustees, please vote. The consent agenda passes unanimously with student uh trustees concurring. We will now move in order uh in the order in which they appear on the agenda to I1, I7, and I16. Um let me pull my paper out. Uh, it looks to me like on I Oh, I don't You have I1. I didn't have that. I Brenda Taylor, you have two minutes. Is this one? Yes. I am here opposing Artificial turf on school playgrounds often stems from concerns about potential health risk, environmental impacts, and the lack of natural safe play environment. These concerns include elevated temperatures, artificial turf can reach, exposure to potential harmful chemicals, and the environment impact of manufacturing, installation, and disposal of synthetic turf. Here are some additional breakdowns of the reason. There's no comprehensive studies
193exist on turf's long-term impact on children who may face years of exposure. Given the latency of chemical related health effects, the precautionary principle avoiding unproven risk should prevail. Artificial turf can become significantly hotter than natural grass in direct sunlight, posing a risk of burns and heat related illnesses. Artificial turf can contain PA, PFAS, heavy metals, and other potential harmful plastics and chemicals that can lead to soil, water, and air potentially impacting children's health. Why are you continuing to allow environmentalists to prioritize their agenda items over the health and safety and well-being of children? In conclusion, artificial turf installation where children play is unwise due to chemical exposure, heat dangers, risk of injury, environmental harm, and unsteady long-term effects. Prioritizing children's health demands, natural grass, or safer alternatives, ensuring safe, sustainable play environments over cost-driven convenience.
194Thank you for allowing me to speak on this item. Any other comment? Is there comment from the board? I will just say briefly uh since the item has been pulled um we as a district would really like to put natural more natural turf on our sites. It imposes very very steep um fiscal consequences on our um unrestricted funds in terms of long-term maintenance. But we would love to work with the the public and advocates to figure out how we could potentially find some state legislation that would allow us to have, for instance, some some restricted funds specifically dedicated to it in terms of maintenance. Um, on some sites, we're able to have joint use fields with the city of San Diego who are able to help us with that maintenance. Uh, but again, we recognize
195your concerns. Um, and I for one uh share them, but for the time being, we have not physically been able to overcome some of those challenges. So, um, any additional comments? Okay. Uh, seeing no additional comments, we will move to a vote. Motion in a second. Come again. You need a motion. Oh, I I have a motion. Um, looks like I have a motion from Trusty Hazen and second from Vice President Barrera. Seeing as we have a motion in a second, we will move to a vote. Student trustees, please vote. All the student trustees, please vote again. All other board members, please vote. All right, that motion passes unanimously with student trustees concurring. Uh we will now move to I seven. It looks like we have a number of um folks testifying on this. Yes,
196we have seven seven people. You'll each have two minutes. Rosio Leon, if you are here, please come forward. Followed by Shamso Ahmad. You have two minutes. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Procio Leon, lead organizer with the Center and Policy Initiatives. I'm here to ask you to not move 2.65 million away from the community schools program. We recognize and value the work that the San Diego Unified School District has done to address social and economic factors that impact student success. Now, we ask that you use this moment to listen to the parents, students, and community members here today and make sure your decisions protect students and families with the highest need of support. Cutting funds away from the community schools program undermines the progress that this program has achieved. We all need to demonstrate that we
197are ready to stand up for our schools and fund programs that match our values and provide the muchneeded resources to our students and their families. The community schools program is giving back agency to our students, parents, and school staff. agency that is usually stripped away by systemic inequalities such as language barriers, food insecurity, housing access, among many other factors that affect a student's ability to prioritize their education. Community schools are still relatively new in our district, but in just a few years, they have shown immense promise toward betterment of our communities. Partnerships with community organizations through community schools have brought on incredible holistic services for students spanning from social and emotional learning support groups to school supplies and after school programs. These types of services care for children beyond school hours and provide support for
198their long-term academic and overall success. Community school coordinators, parents, and school staff are showing up to do the work. We need the district to ensure students basic needs are being met during a time when their government is belittling how important it is for children to have access to not just an adequate but a great education. It would be neglectful at this time to reallocate funds from a program that is working to close so many gaps. Thank you. Shamso Ahmad, Dola, D O L A, Dan Namonga. Good evening. My name is Adan. Um, Board members and superintendent Dr. Fabi, I'm here to ask you to preserve the more than 2 million for the community schools budget and directly to parents and community engagement by collaborating with local community organizations to pro to provide translations and parents
199community engagement at it should be. We believe that every student regardless of background or language has the opportunity to thrive. We also believe that every parent regardless of of language or background should be involved and engage and be part of the school community and contribute towards their kids academic and social success. As a community, we were very active supporters of the community schools initiative. We believed in its promise to the diverse community parents and students that community schools will be finally be schools for the community especially for the parents and students who have been historically left out when it come to communication to the parents and and the comm their communities. If you go to any of the school sites that are community schools and you go to any of the events or meetings, you'll
200realize that uh the parents were not contacted and the reflection of the parents that were maybe are present there is not of that of the community or the the student population. This failure uh to provide linguistic and casual access uh contradicts the very spirit of what community schools are supposed to be. It discourages parents and communities from participating in their kids education and undermines the academic potential of our students. We are not asking you to take away the funding from the school but instead we are urging you to redirect these funds with the intention of accounting towards the meaning of what community school is and also to involve the parents and the community and work with the community organizations that are working with these parents that speak different languages from those that are communicated to
201um doing the school meetings. Thank you. Musa, Michelle Krug, Adam Amas, good. Okay. Hi, thank you for hearing me. My name is Adam Armas. I am the Lincoln High School Community Schools coordinator and I first want to acknowledge the difficult task that you all have of balancing all these important priorities with a limited budget. I also want to acknowledge your dedication in visiting our community schools, keeping objective with data and also being sensitive to our famil family's stories, being on site to hear and see the work that we're doing. And what I'm asking for you all to consider is to give us more time and whatever you can keeping that money for those first 15 uh coordinators in the district budget so that we can still give capacity to our new schools who don't have
202a foundation like Lincoln. And that's something I want to emphasize is we have a strong site governance team of educators, administrators who believe in collective voice. We have a community that backs and loves our kids and wants the best for them. And what this community schools funds does is provide capacity, right? Thankfully, again, we have a foundation at Lincoln where we're able to we started a student senate. We're using student voice. We changed we're proposing to change the bell schedule just waiting for it to be approved. Um so that students have more time to get from one end of the campus to the other. Um, we added a salad bar at our cafeteria because students advocated they want healthier options. Um, and we provided like we talk about right our basic needs. We have to
203meet those first before we can get to those higher level measurables and and change them. And these community schools dollars is just going to accelerate the time and give us time so that we can focus on building those structures. When I think of our parents, they, hey, we want to be involved. And when we get dive deeper into it, they're like, we're just parents. You guys are the educators. And so, we're giving capacity where we're giving classes to our families so that they can build capacity. And just last thing I wanted to just say on on the that buzzer really threw me off. Um, a lot of our other sites don't have the foundation that Lincoln has. And if if we move these funds, it's just going to put a lot more barriers to access
204to move those satellite data that are those measurables from the state. So again, I I appreciate and thank all the work you do and thank you for hearing me out. So okay, Do we have any board comments on the item? First of all, we need a mo we need a motion. Do I have a motion on the item? Vice President Barrera. Second, Trusty Whitner's Payne, I believe. And I think that's also that finger is doing dual duty. You're that's making the motion and you're about to say something, I believe. Thank you. Uh I I want to comment on this. Um, I've been very pleased about all of my schools that have been involved in the community schools and I know uh even at the elementary level, Choy is it just goes on and on things
205that they're doing over at um Chavez and um Lincoln of course Adam is here from U Lincoln High School. They're doing a wonderful job there. Um just Dan is here. Our schools are taking the funds and doing what they need to do. And one of the things that I really commend them for is engaging the parents because the reason why you have kids emancipating themselves that can't get parents involved. But when you have someone on the staff who is working with them, who's willing to get the community involved, then you get outcomes that we talked about it uh from Lincoln where they went from eight students in the band to 150 students on stage um down at the radio shell uh in just three years because the parents, the community is involved. And I know
206that Dan, I'm glad you're back state side so that you can help us to continue the work that we're doing over at um Clark School. They have parents involved there and the community is getting involved and engaged in what's happening. I 100% support the community schools and I want you as a community to know that because it's not our school, it's a community school. And when you have people there on the site working with the community, that's when our students shine and they want to be a part of it. Thank you. All right, we have a motion and a second and we have had discussion. We will move to a vote. Again, we're on item I seven. Trustees, please, Student Trustees, please vote. All the trustees, please vote. That motion passes unanimously with student trustees
207concurring. We will now move to the final item that was removed from the consent agenda, which is I16. Uh I believe we have a member of the public testify. Yes, Kyle Wenberg. I'm sorry. What was your name? My name is Mon'nique Barrett, vice president of SDA. Oh, okay. I saw you later on in the list. Yeah. For a public comment on some other stuff. Okay. I didn't know I was going to do this. Um, this is actually for I7. He put down the wrong number, but I'm gonna read it anyway. That's okay. Okay. Member of the community school steering committee or education justice committee. Since 2018, educators and allies in the education justice coalition have been working together to bring about transformational community schools in our district. The this vision was supported with the millions
208of dollars in state community schools grant funding that the district secured to strengthen this vital equity strategy. The outcomes for our students that we fought for and that the community schools have started to demonstrate after just two years of implementation are now jeopardized by the proposed budget cuts for next school year. While the district currently pays for the cost of the site coordinator positions out of the district budget, it is now being proposed that these positions be paid solely out of the state grant funds that each community school receives. This drastic measure would decimate site budgets for community schools. These cuts would hamstring the efforts of our school communities to implement solutions that have worked so hard to develop in working groups and adopt through our SGTs site governance teams. We respectively advocate for the
209district to not balance the budget budget on the backs of community schools with these proposed cuts that would set us back on meeting our shared mission and goals. Our schools need the board to continue your leadership on nurturing our path to establishing the sustainable practices and resources that our students deserve. 21 community school SGTs site governance teams and our district community school steering committee have signed on to these demands. Thank you. Okay, so there was no comment on I6. We still have to vote on it because it got pulled, but okay. Somebody at Global Impact's like sweating bullets right now thinking their item got pulled. Yes. Okay. I have a motion from Vice President Ber to move it and a second from Trusty Hazen to second it. Um we will move precipitously to a vote.
210Student trustees, please vote on item I16. All the board members, please vote. That item passes unanimously with student trustees concurring. All right, we are rounding the final curve here. Um, we've wrapped up all that. Okay, I'm just going to do some housekeeping. Make sure I didn't make any final final errors here in the Um, okay. We will now, thank you for waiting on us tonight. Um, we will now receive public testimony on non-aggenda items. Miss Doultz, have we received any requests for non-aggenda comment? Yes, we have seven speakers on non-aggenda items. Each speaker will have two minutes. Kathy Collins, followed by Adrien Malis. Hi, I'm Katherine Collins. I'm a parent at Benshley Weinberger Elementary School in District B and I have two students at the school. I also serve as the president of our school
211foundation, a parentled nonprofit that works closely with the school to support students, staff, and programs that go beyond what the district funding provides. I'm also here on behalf of many families who couldn't be here, including those with younger children who will be joining our school in the coming years ahead. We understand that a third UTK classroom has been confirmed for our school next year. But heading into the new school year, we will have the same number of classrooms we have this year, only without a confirmed VP in place. We've come to find that our VP has been reassigned, and that's a big loss to us. We're losing a rich history of relationships, process, familiarity, and things that are important to the fabric of our school. Even if we're reassigned a new VP, it means starting
212over. That kind of transition takes time. The possible shifts affect the whole school. Without consistent leadership, support, teachers, and staff have to take on even more, which can impact classroom dynamics, student behavior, and the overall learning environment. For UTK families, some of whom may be reassigned to a different school next year. It creates additional disruption during an already important year of transition. We recognize that UTK enrollment is complex and the planning can be challenging when timelines and placement rules shift. But that's exactly why our school needs flexibility when numbers change. Stable leadership cannot be optional. It's essential. First, we ask that our current and part-time, excuse me, first we ask our current part-time VP be reinstated. She knows our community has built strong relationships and provides the stability our students and staff need heading into
213next year. Second, we asked the district to take a broader look at the UTK enrollment and staffing process across all schools. When leadership is reassigned before enrollment numbers are fully understood, schools are left scrambling and families, staff, and students are the ones who feel the impact. This is not just a benchley issue. It's a systemic issue that affects many schools, especially those serving our youngest learners. We hope the district will revisit the process to allow for greater flexibility and stronger support when enrollments shifting. Thank you. Adrien Mallis, followed by Taran Gross. You said it right, Marty. Um, you guys have been here a long time, so I'll keep this quick. Good evening, members of the board. I'm Adrien Mallis. I'm speaking tonight as both a parent and a committed member of the Benchley Weineberger community
214to express my deepest concern over the recent leadership change at the school in our San Carlos neighborhood. In addition to being a parent, I serve as the vice president to the Benley Wineberger Foundation, as she said, a 501c3 nonprofit established in 1993 by parents and community members. Our mission is to fund programs and projects and enhance the educational experience of all students at our school. Recently, as you heard, our vice principal, Lindseay Aldo, was reassigned as part of part of the district's response to enrollment shifts. We recognize that staffing decisions are influenced by enrollment, but it's clear this change was made before the final student numbers were confirmed. In fact, as of last week, as she mentioned, our enrollment hit the threshold required to retain a vice principal. Additionally, we have a number of students
215on campus who have additional learning behavioral needs, including, as we heard earlier, IEPs and 504 accommodations. And while our board fully supports serving those students as well, it's undeniable that the staff needed to support has to be capable leadership. Vice Principal Aldo is steady. She's visible. She's always on campus. She supported our teachers, deescalated challenging situations, which has happened numerous times this year, and provided the kind of day-to-day stability that keeps the school running smoothly. Keeping her in this role allows us to maintain momentum toward our goals without the disruption of having to bring someone in new and start from scratch. It's also worth noting that she has personally invested in our community her own children attend Benshley. Just last month, our school was named 2025 California Distinguished School, one of the one of the
216only one of three schools in the entire district to receive this prestigious honor. To be recognized in that way and immediately experience a leadership cut feels contradictory. It sends the wrong message to the staff and all the families who have worked so hard to achieve it. So, I respectfully urge you to reconsider this decision and reinstate our vice principal at Benshley. She is a trusted leader who knows our students, supports our staff, and is deeply invested in the success of our school. Thank you guys. Taran Gross Hi, good evening. My name is Taran Gross. I too am a parent at Benshley Weinberger Elementary School and a member of the Benshley Weinberger Foundation Board. I'm here to advocate for the return of our associate principal, Mrs. Lindseay Aldo to Benshley Weineberger for the 2025 2026 school
217year. While we understand her reassignment was based on anticipated lower enrollment, that decision was made before final class counts for the upcoming school year were confirmed. We now know enrollment will be back above the threshold that qualifies our school for an associate principal. With that in mind, I strongly urge the district to consider reassigning her to our site. Mrs. Aldo has been an exceptional support to our entire school community, especially to students who need a little bit more help navigating anxiety, learning challenges, and emotional regulation. A parent friend of mine shared a story just tonight. After the recent earthquake, her son sought out Mrs. Aldo directly to calm down because he knew her to be his safe adult. That kind of trust doesn't come easily. Mrs. Aldo has shown compassion, consistency, and skill in meeting
218our students where they are. She's deeply invested in the individuals who make up our community, and losing her would be a huge loss. It's no secret that elementary schools are stretched thin, trying to support every student, teacher, and family. Mrs. Aldo and our principal, Mrs. Erenss, work as a highly effective team. They bring balanced leadership and care to our school. Transitions are hard on children and stability and leadership is especially critical coming out of the challenges of the past few years. As a parent of two young children myself, I've seen firsthand how much they thrive when they feel a sense of trust, routine, and predictability in their learning environments. When leadership changes frequently, it can disrupt the sense of safety and support that's essential for their growth. Bringing Mrs. Aldo back would not only maintain
219continuity, but it would also show the district values our vibrant community and is willing to invest in its long-term success. Mrs. Aldo has laid a strong foundation at Benley Weineberger, and we'd love to see her have the chance to continue what she started building here. Thank you again for your support. Arlene Newark. You have two minutes. Linda Linda Evangelista, a model, once famously famous famously said, "We don't wake up for less than $10,000 a day." You know what blows my mind? that we trust our most vulnerable kids, kids with IEPs, behavioral challenges, and communication needs to pair professionals and then pay them like they're babysitting. News flash, they're educators, too. If they have degrees, certifications, or job specific training, that should be reflected in their pay, not ignored like it's optional flare. You can't expect
220professionals to change diapers, manage meltdowns, and teach communication skills while making less than a barista. PIFFs need a real pay scale, one that respects experience, education, and the fact that this is not volunteer work. If you continue to refuse to consider their pay, don't be shocked when they finally stand up on mass and say, "You couldn't afford me anyway." Brenda [Music] Taylor. Okay. I am Brenda Taylor and I'm an elementary school teacher in San Diego Unified. On the topic of school modernization and construction in general, I'd like to provide some positive feedback given that the school that I'm at is undergoing work and also provide two opportunities for improvement. First, a big thank you for investing in our schools in general. Our older beach area school is looking much better. Second, I have two recommendations
221for improvement, both related to health and safety and the environment, that I'm hoping you can discuss with architect and planners. First, the plans call for windows that do not open. This means 100% reliance on AC all the time. We're literally two blocks from the beach and have an abundant supply of clean, fresh air coming off the Pacific Ocean. Running AC full-time is bad for the environment and limiting the amount of fresh air for kids and staff to obvious is obviously bad too. Just so you know, parents and staff have brought forth concerns but have gotten nowhere. Second, the plans call for replacing an existing emergency exit with a genderneutral bathroom for students. So, literally, an existing emergency exit was eliminated. Just so you know, the school already has ample bathrooms, including a neutral bathroom in
222the office. I'm all for adding another bathroom. However, removing an emergency exit to do so looks like a really bad trade-off decision. And to be frank, people have said it looks or sounds like something out of a salt park episode. Just saying. Personally, I'm in the opinion we can both help people and to prioritize the safety, too. The bathroom is currently being under modification and the windows have been removed and the wall is being in place of the window. This will allow no natural air flow to reduce the odors or the airborne contaminants in the bathrooms. This can lead to mold growth posing health risk to young children developing respiratory systems. No windows means reliance on artificial light which can strain the eyes and create a less welcoming environment. In closing, I want to thank
223you again for investing in our schools. Hopefully, the opportunities for improvement provided will be considered and will improve the helpful and well-being of our students. Many thanks for your time and have a great rest of your week. Zanab and Monnique Barrett. Hi. Okay, this has to do with um some of the stuff that we talked about in sped because I didn't know how to pull anything when the sped committee was talking. So, as far as DHH, these areformational items. I am an ed specialist at Madison High School. We house the DHH program. So, being a co-teer of mathematics, I have seen and experienced many of our DHH students graduate with A throughG requirements diplomas just like everybody else. Why? Because we as a school do a lot to make sure that their our students are
224included and we support them along the way. BSR, if we um would tighten up our restorative site discipline plan starting with our SGTs, we'd have a lot less behavior issues that are coming from classrooms. But in order for that to happen, we have to really invest in restorative practices, which really means you really need to invest in your restorative cluster leads. Um, the essential diploma, not too sure about that because at high school level, we're all kind of confused about how the essential diploma works because the essential diploma is used basically for the old adage of mod severe students. And so it was the pathway for um our students to leave school to be able to get a job where it requires to have a diploma. That is our understanding. Parental involvement. We s we
225see parental involvement being low for parents to come out um to be involved in CAC. Well, if we look at who we're really serving here, it's our marginalized students, black and brown mostly. And with the state of how our climate and political climate is, you're going to see a very big decline in parents coming out to support what they want to because they're afraid. So, we have to figure out something better for that. Um, if you want to see a good model, you should stop by Madison High School to see a good model on how DHH is done. That concludes non-aggenda comment. Well, thank you to everybody who stuck it out. Um, it's been a lengthy but informative evening. Uh before we before I strike this gavvel, I want to take the moment to um
226to wish a very happy birthday to our superintendent, Dr. Fabola Bagula. We don't always do this, but if your birthday falls exactly on the day you there's we make a special exception. So before I drop this gavvel, um if we can all sing along. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday dear Fabi. Happy birthday to you. [Applause] All right. Well, we'll yield the floor to your festivities. Um with that, um with that, this meeting is now adjourned. special meeting recognizing teachers of the year will be held on May 6th, 2025. The next regular meeting will be held on May 13, 2025. Thank you so much. This meeting is now adjourned.