Board of Education Regular Meeting

001watching on ITV and Via live stream and call the October 22nd 2024 regular meeting of the Board of Education to order with all board members present I'd also like to thank everyone for participating in yesterday's budget Workshop which helped lay the foundation for this board's work to improve student wellness and academic outcomes while significantly significantly reducing spending and look forward to our ongoing engagement with the community throughout this process and also really appreciate the hundreds of community members who just in the last 24 hours have already shared their feedback with us on our budget we'll now go to A2 our flag ceremony the Mission Bay High School Coast Guard jrc Color Guard will present the colors please stand for the presentation of the colors col guard oh left face presentors please join me in the

002Pledge of Allegiance I pledge allegiance to the flood of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all ret colors right Face Forward March thank you please be seated now move to A3 our Landa acknowledgement land acknowledgement is a traditional custom that dates back centuries in many native nations and communities our land acknowledgement was developed in partnership with Kumi leaders students from the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts prepared the following video to show our respect for the Kumi people who are the original stewards of the land our school district occupies we respectfully acknowledge that the Kumi people are the original inhabitants and caretakers of these lands now known as San Diego despite the attempted genocide and ongoing

003impacts of colonization the Kumi Spirit remains unbroken and their Traditions continue to thrive as they carry the memories of their ancestors who bravely resisted cultural Erasure and fought to protect their land and way of life in honoring their legacy we pledge to uphold their cultural heritage and right to safeguard their sacred connection to the land for future generations with gratitude and strength we stand with the Kumi embracing the past while forging a brighter tomorrow we'll now move to item B1 adoption of the agenda tonight we will consider a variety of items including our first student outcome goal monitoring report which is focused on the district's problem solving in in mathematics goal adoption of a resolution to raise awareness about the dangers of vaping and approval of proposed 2025 summer program sites and dates is there

004a motion to adopt today's agenda as published thank you is there a second thank you uh let's go ahead and have student trustees please vote and all other trustees motion passes unanimously with student board members concurring Miss stz can you please provide information for public speakers about today's meeting protocols yes today's meeting of the board of education is a business meeting that is conducted in public and board members will not engage in a dialogue with members of the audience board bylaw 1025 sets the time limit for public comment on agenda items at 10 minutes per side pro and con or 20 minutes total speakers will be able to provide testimony at the beginning of the appropriate agenda item or at the end of the meeting for non-agenda comment please listen for your name to be

005called speakers are listed and called in the order received when your name is called please come to the podium to speak speakers participating via Zoom will be asked to unmute when their name is called if you are unable to unmute yourself we will call the next speaker please follow along Ong with the agenda so that you know when your item is coming up for discussion when you begin speaking the green light below my name on the Das indicates that the timer has started when the light turns yellow you will have one minute remaining a buzzer will indicate that your time has expired if you have not yet done so and would like to sign up for in-person public comment iPads are available in the back of the auditorium and in the lobby thank you now

006for one our student Advisory board report our board is committed to measurably improving outcomes for students and recognizes the importance of incorporating student insights and feedback into our governance processes our student Advisory board report which represents the feedback from more than 25 District middle and high schools helps the Board understand the issues that our students say are most important to supporting our goals to improve student wellness academic achievement and College and Career success and our guard rails around improving communication with students and families and increasing student motivation student board members Cruz and baldis uh and student Advisory Board member Miguel Vasquez can you please provide your update then Miguel if you want to come up good afternoon everybody I'm thrilled to introduce Miguel Vasquez he's a senior a fellow JTC Cadet and a dedicated member

007of our student Advisory Board today he'll be sharing the topics and Collective student opinions we've covered in our last meeting good afternoon everyone I am Miguel vasque a senior at Madison High School representing the student Advisory Board today in our last meeting with the student Advisory Board there were a few pending issues that we talked about such as school safety student and staff Relations phone policy and budgeting as all these topics need to be resolved the topic that stood out to me the most and wanted to talk about to you guys today was this uh budgeting issue in our district we understand there needs to be a lot of budget cuts and protecting the programs that students want to go to school is extremely important personally I'm uh motivated to go to school because of

008jotc and archery in the jotc program the are the programs that keep me coming to school and it would be unfortunate to see of the programs cut we also talked about the lcff forms and didn't I me personally I didn't know what they were about until last night when we talked about it we as a student board concluded that the lcff forms need to be effective communicated to not only the parents but the students as well thank you for the opportunity to speak and we will continue to work on the betterment of the school district thank you very much and really appreciate that real time feedback we had a board Workshop yesterday I know uh student board member uh Cruz brought up the lcff forms and just last night you got that message out to

009our student Advisory board so thank you um to all of you and yes yeah okay hello so the lcff form is basically this form where you handed to your parents and they basically fill out stuff like household income stuff like that and you turn it in it gets sent to the district that's which which then gets sent up to the state which helps like figure out this formula which fig outs how much of our school district um is low income and with that um it helps determine how much funding each student get our state gives to each student basically so thank you yes so the more the better job we do of getting those forms filled out the more money we'll be able to get from the state uh and the less we have to

010cut um to address our deficit thank you and thank you for all the students uh who are helping to spread the word about that message anything from either of you additionally about student Advisory Board okay well thank you again for your leadership there we appreciate it uh we'll now move to C2 uh and we'll receive an update on the district's unified for democracy initiative Dr bagula can you introduce this item please yes thank you president Hazen so tonight I have the pleasure of introducing this item with the wonderful group of both students and Educators that are out in the audience today they're bringing our San Diego unified for democracy resources alive in both the community and the classrooms so just to remind you the San Diego unified for democracy efforts are near and dear to

011my heart an initiative I launched with the leadership of Miss Esther Brown to equip our students Educators and community members with the information and the resources they need to be civically engaged as the largest global election cycle it is important to openly discuss these issues that arise both locally nationally and globally our aim was to create a resource tool that would help drive a civically engaged electorate we aren't alone in these efforts though our work we have developed a website packed with resources for family and community members for students at all grade levels for educators and site leaders and I want to acknowledge and thank Our Community Partners as well who are providing workshops field trips lessons and even resources from the registar voters to the Le of Women Voters the Girl Scouts the judicial

012bench of California as well so tonight we're going to hear a few highlights from our school Community I also want to acknowledge the students of the Chavez club and the TOA Academy who organized outside before the board meeting to encourage everyone to go out and vote thank you all for being here tonight and for your advocacy to dat we've hosted five nonpartisan and unbiased learning opportunities and informational sessions for our families and our communities where we provided overviews around relevant topics including understanding ballots how to identify Miss or disinformation how judges get elected and so much more and if you haven't had the opportunity to attend a session we have one more coming tomorrow at Oak Park Elementary School so we hope to see you there so I'd like to introduce um someone that you

013might recognize Matthew korano a senior at San Diego High Jeremy Anderson a senior at Canyon Hills High School and representing the Chavis club and the who's representing the Chavis club and the organizing and Leadership Academy TOA and lastly Carly neek an educator from Morse high school thank you so much and welcome hi hi everyone um some of you might know me some of you might not uh but I'm Matthew karano I did a lot of work with our school district over the last few years and part of that has been really focused on getting young people civically engaged um the piece that I really had a great part in um is this voter registration piece so last year we LED an uh in conjunction with ryome organization that I'm working with now SD unified for

014democracy uh to try and get young people civically engaged and more importantly registered to vote the really big push behind this is we basically said hey the things that we have been doing as a society to get young people registered to vote hasn't been working I mean we've all seen the numbers of how many young people are registered to vote or rather how few young people are registered to vote and so we're trying to look at this thing and we're saying something has to change we have to do something different and so what we did is we convened a group of students I believe there was 20 30 of us um and we actually had a student sign up from every school um including the atypical um and non-traditional ones except for SD met it

015was really really disheartening to know that one school wasn't on the list but oh well um and what we did is we basically said what are some of the barriers that we as adults as leaders in the room aren't seeing to get you guys registered and one of the big things that came up was like really candid answers to really simple questions like can I use my driver's license to register to vote can I use my birth certificate what does it even mean to registered to vote am I going to get a whole bunch of spam mail knowing that I'm registered to vote now like these are really simple questions that no one's actually taken the three minutes to sit down with somebody and so that's what we did as ryome we went out to

016schools and we went to a whole bunch of um Civics classrooms whether that be history um of Juniors and seniors and sat down and we're like hey what questions do you guys have about voting oh you don't even know what a mayor is okay no judgment on you we're going to have take a second and explain that because we as a society and as an organization we know that that's super important and that's willing to take just a couple of minutes to answer those questions that no one's really answered before um that was kind of the my piece with voter registration and who am I handing it off to Carly I'm gonna hand it over to Carly to talk about some of the inclass instruction that's going on thank you Hello My Name Is Karly

017neek um I've been a teacher at Morse High School for the past 20 years um and something that we decided to do at Morse this year was to Pilot a curriculum for for science called open scad with the district um and this curriculum it engages students with with science through real world phenomenon that involves design and decision- making um the point of it is what we've seen is that students in science classrooms tend to think there's a big disconnect between society and Science and so this curriculum tries to tie them together um the first unit of study that we did was about electricity and the power grid and students were able to study electricity how it works safely and effectively and reliably in society and in engaged in decision making on large scale items um

018through the lens of the Texas power grid failure in 2021 so we dive into that we look at what happened in in the grid why it failed um the students do a variety of assignments based on electricity of course learning the physics of it but also learning about decision- making that goes into shutting down certain parts of the grid and allowing others to be on and how those decisions are made um as a part of their final project they had to redesign the San Diego power grid so after um this is a big project these are some of the slides from one of my students projects that I thought was particularly good and uh one one thing that they do is they look at what already is in inside the power grid in terms of

019electricity um how is it in San Diego distributed and then from that they start with a community priorities assessment they interview people in the community figure out what priorities people want in terms of their electricity and then after that they're given the energy grid calculator so that calculator in there um they're able to adjust the different power sources that come into play for for San Diego they can demolish things add things whatever ever that's in line with their priorities and then in the top of the grid it'll tell them different feedback um the cost the reliability the carbon emissions all of these things after they've chosen that then I wanted to make sure that they were also thinking about the fact that you have to make decisions that really affect society and one of those

020is that political candidates have policies based on electricity and a lot of the time what we hear with political candidates is whatever they're saying in you know in social media and things like that and these things that are a little bit more nuanced are not really talked about um so I had the students research the different political U presidential candidates and what their policies were going to be on electricity and find one that matched their redesigned grid and then as a part of their uh grid proposal when they talked about it um in the class and presented they also had to talk about the candidate that they would endorse that also endorsed what they wanted in terms of their energy grid calculator I thought it was awesome because the kids were really able to think

021about how electricity is of course in a science classroom but it really transcends that and there's so much more that you have to think about in terms of physics and Science in the world um at the at the societal level so that was that was what we did at Mor beautiful thank you I don't know what button to push this is Jeremy yes I I don't know what button to push this one oh there that one sorry good evening uh my name is Jeremy Anderson I'm here to represent um not only myself but two larger um organizations that being the organizing Leadership Academy and the Caesar traveis service club which you can see are right behind me so to start off um I wanted to talk about how high school students are more than just

022uh adults in the making we have our own ideas our our own aspirations and our own dreams and through this internship I was able to learn more about that and kind of find what resonated with me so to begin um I was chosen at I was chosen to be the representative of these people of sorts I don't like to call myself that because they have their own ideas aspirations and things that they're doing to make changes in the community but I was chosen to speak here and to hopefully accurately represent what they're all doing in their communities to make greater changes to start off uh with phase one of our project we began in June and me alongside 14 other interns were chosen to go into a classroom and learn about things like um the

023different the differentiation between County state federal um government to learn about things like what a mayor does term limits things about Transit taxes and bonds and how they all contribute to a greater democracy and we had things we had people come in like political Consultants people that learned about polling and people who specialize in these things to give us a more comprehensive look at um how organizing is done not only in um the streets and the community but also in the office and to move on we went into phase two which happened around the beginning of school year and here we all kind of diverged and began to talk about our own uh personal aspirations and what we want to do in the community that we were also passionate about because we think that's really

024important and um I even though I don't have enough time to talk about everybody I do have enough time to talk about three I'm going to start with um two of my colleagues maid and Jaden's project and what they are doing I believe is very impactful because it gives it highlights a lot of people that are overshadowed and gives um voices to a lot of Rich demographics and what they're doing is they're speaking to people in their lative languages they're getting interviews about how why voting is important to those communities how it's different from let's say the Hispanic and the Arabian communities and kind of um going into depth about what these people are doing and um whether or not they're being accurately represented or not moving on we have um Kayla and Cynthia who

025are also behind me and um what they're doing is also going to um also going interviewing people but their um focus is on um people that are more mature and how they are involved with youth uh youth activism and how they believe that it can be more acurately represented and um empowered and then um finally I'm going to talk about ran Ali's project and um even though and what mashed and Jaden and uh Kayla and Cynthia's projects are doing they both went to social media in hopes of getting higher turnouts um ran opted for more more domestic approach and she hosts a book club at her school that talks about um the sidewalk strategies which is a book uh by our founder of TOA and what they do is they talk about things like Youth

026Empowerment how to get people to um vote more and um how to get youth activism more um more common in today's youth because it's not super common in um what I've seen and then to summarize things I feel like throughout this program I learned a lot about our democracy and how much power civilians have I learned things like how to be uncomfortable um how to fight off uh nervousness like I am right now and to do things like speak up about um changes uh that's all for me thank you so much thank you so much so thank thank you to our three speakers that are here today representing this work um I don't know about you but I want to go take a look at that um class that you're teaching it sounds so exciting

027so thank you so much for being here but this is and we should be as a public education system we should be a democracy and so this is an example of all of that work so thank you for letting me share we have some public speakers on this item right we have five public speakers on C2 so each of you will get two minutes Samuel Paro impra hello everyone um like uh Mary stz I believe said my name is Sam I Am a freshman at San Diego high school and I'm also an intern at the internship Jeremy was talking about and I'm here to report on my project so um what I was thinking with this project was targeting the demographic this the Community College Bond the bond we've been working on uh impacts the

028most and that very obviously is the students of community colleges of San Diego so taking the fact that San Diego high is right next to City College I got to got some San Diego High volunteers which I believe are in the crowd and together we've been making a presentation to present at city college to the students of City College these the students should know about this Bond because often people don't know about local bonds people don't know about things that are happening in local elections which is truly a shame because these are normally the things that affect us the most it's how you see your sidewalks to become nice clean and paved and how you see your schools have better funding so getting these people to know about the um things that will affect them

029is majorly important to us so that's why I chose to present to the students of City College so they could know about a bond that will be very important to them thank you for your time Kayla Tor Tolentino hello my name is Kayla Tolentino I'm a senior at Patrick Henry High School and I'm here to talk about more about my experience with the TOA organizing Academy this summer at the beginning of this internship I didn't I wasn't involved with my community in any way and that's not to say that I didn't care about issues it's quite the opposite I had so many things that I thought were important that I thought that I should have got involved I just had no idea how and now that I'm standing here uh I think that now I

030know how to help others get involved how easy it is to get involved and how I can make a change in my own community and while I'm here in this position where I can't vote but I want to make change there are going to be people in the future who will want to do the same and we have to make change and be able to provide resources to those people who will come after me after the person after that who will want to make change and I think it's so important to have programs like these available and accessible to so many different groups of people thank you gas movi uh good afternoon my name is Darius mccovy and I'm a representative for Caesar Chavez service clubs and the TOA internship and over these past couple

031of months uh I worked on a project for phase two of my internship and my partner Aiden and I collaborated on a list of 10 important things that we think new voters or uninformed voters should know and uh some of these things were ran by our mentors such as Maya Kota lry chamola and even uh Richard Vera and uh I personally have been making videos and releasing them social media media to try and reach our Target demographic which is younger voters around the age of 18 to Spain to the age of 25 and uh I feel this is really important because these voters sometimes are not confident or feel like they can't vote or there's reasons why they shouldn't vote and they don't know why they should and I really feel like everyone's voices should

032be heard uh this is important to me because I feel like equal opportunity is something I really care about and everyone being able to vote and their voices be heard and have an impact on whether it's the larger ballots like for presidentials or vice presidents or even our community because our community ballots have so much impact on like maybe money funding we get for school or for like sandmen like our sidewalks so I think everyone's voices should be heard and I just wanted to advocate for that thank you Aiden Perez good afternoon uh my name is Aiden Perez so like my partner Darius just came up and said um over the past couple of months we've been working on putting together a list of 10 items that we think young voters should know about and

033um I think our project is important because it's I think our generation has a very strong voice but they need a platform where they can use it and they know how to somewhere there where they can share their ideas thank you and Nadal Ali good afternoon my name is nid Ali I'm a senior at craford high school I'm here to talk about my experience with the internship like at the beginning when I joined I didn't like learn a lot of I did not know a lot of stuff about like tax or like measure for me like I have a lot of like experience with like leadership roow with uh with my club for organization but like what I was missing was organizing and this like intership really helped me with like learn how to like

034be be an organizer learn how to approach people um just like putting my foot into like other people and one thing I like about this um internship is like they um gave us a book a guide book that could like help us like learn a lot of stuff when we do like canvasing and when I go back and read the book like I read the stuff like we actually do so I hope like this intership will be continue on because like teach a lot of students about like how to like being an organizer speak um confidently I'm building their leadership row a lot of people have like other stuff to improve and like this thing is really like cool and some of the other project I did within this um internship like um doing a

035tiny workshop with like my school a CER from my club like teaching students how to like um be confident fighting their voice and next hopefully I'm going to do a small workshop with like M middle school students this is greatest learn how invest in thems and communities it would be cool to just see like a senior there working with Lexus grades they'll um learn they will be motivated to like continue doing great things in the community so I hope this internship continues on thank [Applause] you thank you all for sharing your experiences with us and to all of our students we're so proud of the work that you are doing doing uh anything else okay and any questions or comments from trustees I have more of a comment I feel like all three of these

036amazing programs they truly align with one of our goals which is career and college readiness as a district when we're preparing students to go off into the world all of these programs they're getting students to be engaged members of our democracy which is truly what this District should be doing thank you all thank yes again thank you for this presentation Matthew your seat still feels weird Miss neek thank you for not failing me last year but yeah what you guys do is truly amazing you know teaching young people why do these things matter what are these things and more importantly how can we improve them how can we get involved you know local state you know this type of legislature it's really important thank you thank you and I would as you're talking about alignment

037with goals one of the things that stands out to me as we think about our Wellness school which we're still trying to clarify is how important selfefficacy is um and how transformative it can be when it comes to Student Wellness we were at Kerney high school today and saw the same thing um but this is an important reminder of that as well uh let's now move on to D1 uh General Council grp are there any reportable actions from closed session no okay and in D3 there are no management appointments to announce I'm sorry under D2 there are no management appointments to announce um but under D3 Dr bagula can you please provide your information report yes thank you so much um last week I had a really beautiful honor of visiting Hawthorne Elementary School but

038one of my favorite things that was happening there is again the democratizing of knowledge so teachers were choosing what their problem of practice was alongside with the coaching of the principal and so I was able to see how personalized professional learning was at that site so it was really beautiful to see that student outcomes were driven by teachers own um ownership over what a problem of practice was as you know yesterday we held our first budget Workshop much earlier in the year this is the continued spirit that we'll engage in um we also sent followup information to communities um the PowerPoint the slides the the video link of survey form we've already received over 200 responses but that'll be the continued spirit that we engage in we want true dialogue we want a calendar of

039events we want to make sure that people can come to these sessions in the spirit of problem solving and I'm going to say democracy right for ideas um I I know that last Thursday our students culinary experts and I'm going to call them experts because people are still talking about this um showcase our new student L Sunset Bites Food Truck at the inaugural Taste of San Diego unified event I was not able to go uh students from Mo San Diego Hoover Mar Mesa and Garfield put on an amazing event with the support of our CCT Department a special thank you to congresswoman Sarah Jacobs for stopping by and meeting with students and a thank you to trusty B and WHUR Payne for stopping by and enjoying the culinary Creations from our students I look forward

040to visiting more Cru and bald oh yes and Cruz and baldis as well thank you so much um and then an update on our love notes initiative and again I want to remind us that love standing for living our values every day wanted to offer different opportunities for anyone to recognize and give thank you to our Educators um we have over 600 love notes to date over 300 this month but what I particularly love is that it's everyone so we had people from counselors to stock clerks to contract Specialists to teachers and so they were nominated by a student or by a colleague or by a family member and I just appreciate that we're noticing each other and and making sure that we're expressing gratitude for for our colleagues but also the people that we

041work with and work for so thank you so much and that's going to be my update thank you and I can say when I've gone to do the surprise love notes visits it's always just filled with joy and really appreciate all of the appreciation we're sharing across the district uh we'll now move to item E1 progress monitoring report on interim problem solving and mathematics goals 3.1 through 3.3 this is our First Progress monitoring report since the board adopted our six-year progress monitoring calendar at our last board meeting the purpose of this report and all progress monitoring reports provided to the board between now and 2030 is to share measurable progress against four specific District goals that reflect what our community wants for our students and what our students want for themselves these goals are designed

042to guide the work of Educators School staff principes central office leaders and trustees and inform financial decisions in our budget development process one thing we know is that student outcomes don't change until adult behaviors do or said differently when placed in the context of governing patterns of behavior exhibited in the boardroom can reasonably be expected to be found paralleled in the classroom tonight begins a regular Cadence of progress monitoring which is designed to provide a predictable schedule for the board and superintendent to review agreed upon data in order to see what's working and what's not as we work to measurably improve student math achievement over the next six years Dr bagula can you please introduce the item yes and as I welcome Julie Garcia senior director of stem Jessica Walsh program manager of math and

043Michelle Irwin area superintendent of middle schools to the Das I want to provide some context to this First Progress monit in report that the board is about to receive and I also I have some talking points that I want to make sure that I go over but I want to express just how much responsibility I feel with this particular item and with all of the academics because we are here in order to ensure that our students are learning and so this is um a way of doing that so I want to begin by expressing my deep gratitude to the math team um the work that they do both through learning sessions and coaching with Educators across our district is critical to our progress they're actively working alongside our new academic Partners to design structures of

044support that are tailored to the individualized need of each school and geographic region their commitment to ensuring that every school received the specific resources and strategies necessary is truly commendable as we look at the data though together I must emphasize the urgency of improving math instruction while we did see an overall growth of in Proficiency in our standardized test scores it was under 1% and so I want to couch that like there was moving forward but it was incremental um so 7% proficiency growth in this past year in our standardized test and we know this is not enough encouragingly we saw stronger growth in some populations our low socioeconomic students grew by 2.02% our students with disabilities 1.84 our white students by 2% however our growth amongst our English language Learners was only half a

045percentage point and we saw declines with our homeless students additionally while our third graders showed a decline we were encouraged to see that the largest increase in achievement was at the seventh grade level as you can see this is a very mixed picture and it reminds us that even as we work we have significant work ahead so in terms of progress I know I begin this piece by discussing proficiency levels which is a very traditional way of looking at an overall data set however because we want to hone in on growth we're focusing on distance from standard um this is essential because it's going to be a little bit unusual you're going to see some negative numbers and the negative numbers is there to help us with a more accurate measure of where our students

046are in relation to the proficiency standards this will help us see progress over time so again this data is crucial for closing achievement gaps and ensuring Equity helping us assess how far each student has come and how much more we need to do but this is new and we need to continue to develop our distance from standard lens we still don't actually that doesn't roll off our tongue as as easily it is critically important that our students develop strong mathematical understanding in numeracy these skills are foundational not only for academic success but for their future endeavors however it has taken some time since we have it's been some time since we've taken a unified approach to mathematics instruction um so the infrastructure that was there for literacy was not necessarily there for mathematics the creation

047of our district goals brought attention to a longstanding gap we've lacked a districtwide ass assessment and monitoring systems that allow us to track our students learning in a consistent way without these systems it is difficult to pinpoint where students need the most support or acceleration or how to scale successes I want to be clear that these data sets are not intended to shift blame but to inform our strategy for lesson planning intervention and acceleration and I will always use both we need to think about intervention and acceleration as well with the children in front of us so as this is a new Endeavor for us and because it's the first time we're engaging in this work we need to develop some key pieces such as establishing Baseline data um we need to establish those Baseline

048data that will allow us to set growth targets and engage in a consistent monitoring schedule so as we continue down this path we'll refine this approach just as we have done with English language arts we are also faced with a challenge of variation in curriculum and math practices across our very large District which impacts our ability to monitor progress uniformly so as we move forward it's critical that we bring coherence to our math instruction to ensure that all of our students no matter where they are learning receive the high quality instruction that they need so we know the road ahead is not easy but we also know that there's work to do and there's people here with very beautiful purpose to engage in that work um our the dedication of our math team our academic

049Partners our Educators across the district we're confident that by centering our strategies on Data Care and Alignment we will achieve meaningful progress for all of our students and what I also appreciate is that this team discusses the importance of joy in the math classroom developing a very healthy math identity is crucial and so ultimately the health and also the health and cognitive struggle in order to problem solve so I appreciate that you always remind us like there's joy in mathematics as well and so how do we develop a healthy math identity so even though we have work ahead um we also know that we have the right team before us so thank you so much for presenting this morning great so uh good evening president Hazen board trustees and student board members my name is

050Julie Garcia and I'm the um senior director for stem joining me this evening is area superintendent for middle schools Michelle Irwin and program manager for mathematics Jessica Walsh tonight we are going to ground ourselves in these student outcome focused goals that have been discussed um we are going to start with looking at preliminary data from the smarter balance assessment along with data from our First Progress monitoring administration of fast and I ready next we will highlight a bright spot school and last we'll identify challenges um and upcoming projects in the area of mathematics on September 10th 2024 the board um adopted the student outcome focused goals on this slide can read the annual goal and interim goal for problem solving and Mathematics our annual goals will be measured by distance from standard on the smarter

051balance assessment and our interim goals will use our new progress monitor to monitoring tools the fast and I with those assessments we will be using distance from low risk so let's start by looking at some results on this slide we are looking at Smarter Balance assessment with the average distance from standard as a reminder zero represents standard or at standard level so a student score might be above standard a positive number or below standard which is a negative number we take every student's distance from that zero and average it to find our average distance from standard the chart on the right shows our average distance from standard of certain groups and their scores from the 20124 preliminary data next to it shows their change over time from 23 to 24 the line graph in the

052middle and the chart on the bottom show our growth in as a district on average distance from standard from 22 to 24 and then shows the progress we intend to make to surpass our annual goal of -6.1 by 2030 moving on well actually on this slide we do want to highlight that we are showing growth in a positive direction and heading towards that standard level this next graph identifies our average distance from standard by grade level this is not uncommon to see the fourth and fifth grade drop below standard and continue as the grade levels progress I would like to highlight though that our green bars are moving closer to standard uh the orange bars represent 2022 data yellow is 23 and green is 24 let's focus a little bit on one group I'd like

053you to look at grade six please and let's look at grade six in 2023 which is the yellow bar that yellow bar shows the those six graders scored - 33.8 they were 33.8 points away from zero now let's follow that cohort of students to seventh grade go over to seventh grade and look at the green bar that's 31.3 so these sixth grade students who were seventh grade students last year actually moved up closer to standard which is different than we see in a lot of our data so this is something really to focus on with the middle level where we have adopted a common curriculum and we're looking at how we can um continue with that work this next slide shows our average distance from standard for our um Spotlight students and as you can

054see there's a the green is all students and the orange represents Spotlight students and there's quite a difference between the two as a reminder Spotlight students are identified by by site leaders they're asked to select 15 to 20% of their students that are furthest from standard and they might use other factors such as attendance discipline um social emotional development but that's how these um Spotlight students are selected and again this is Baseline data so we're excited to show growth over time of these Spotlight students all right so while the um Smarter Balance assessment gives us data for a year at a glance we are excited today to share our first uh data set from um the first administration of our progress monitoring tool fast and I for fast and I ready we're going to be

055using distance from low risk which is very similar to distance from standard okay um we have also um tried to ensure that we are reviewing uh comparable data from fast and I ready so our data in Insight system and support team has actually created a conversion calculation for us so that I ready and fast data can be looked at through the same lens you're also going to notice that we do not have K through one um assessed in the fast at this time last year we started a focus group to help us identify this progress monitoring tool and it was the recommendation of this focus group that we hold off on this K to1 assessment because it's a one-on-one proctoring with the teacher and a student and they recommended that we spend this year understanding

056more about the assessment and support teachers might need before requiring it for that age group we do plan to administer in K1 next year this particular graph shows um average distance from low risk very similar to average distance from standard but by grade level of all students in our Spotlight students we see similar trends in this graph as the grades go up our distance from that standard level tends to decrease we also have this next slide which shows the um all students dis average distance from low risk and our Spotlight students by stand um our Spotlight students by cluster excuse me so we see some interesting data here that we uh are planning to go and investigate further on some of those clusters that have the larger distance um between all students and Spotlight students

057it's important to note that this is the last time we are going to present all students with Spotlight students this is the first time we've given this progress monitoring tool when we present to you again in February we will be comparing this fall data with the winter data and hopefully we'll be able to show growth with our Spotlight students at the end of this year we take all three test administrations fall winter and spring and we use the criteria from I ready and fast to identify those students um who are showing aggressive growth or those students who have reached um their um uh stretch goal in I ready we'll take that percentage of of Spotlight students that show that accelerated progress and that will be our Baseline data from there we'll then create the targets

058for our interim assessments and with that I'm going to go ahead and pass it off to Michelle who is going to take us into discussing our bright spot school thank you Julie um so as we look at the data there are areas to celebrate currently Middle School is in their second year of our districtwide curriculum implementation and as we are seeing signs of growth in some of our schools we are proud of the work happening at the mid level the initial Smart Balance assessment data or ESC data indicates that our students are maintaining consistent performance overall earlier Julie shared that we are seeing gains of 3.3 and 2.9 percentage points at or above standard in grades seven and eight which is a significant achievement for the first year of curriculum implementation however today we'd like

059to share about persy middle school persy middle school has emerged as a bright spot School demonstrating intentional design and growth the data shows here specific groups at persing and as you can see persing has improved overall and also SE several of our subgroups have also improved our overall students have gained in a 5.2 percentage points our students with disabilities at persing has gained from 10.9 percentage points our socially economically disadvantaged students have increased by 10.5 percentage points and our black and African-American youth have improved by 18.2% this is a significant uh achievement at persing there's been a focused effort across the school to identify ways to improve our student groups Persian has identified four inputs that have contributed to their growth first is principal leadership second teacher collaboration four third using Core Curriculum with Fidelity

060and dedica specific supports for our students with disability principal leadership matters principal cray is leading and supporting her staff and they are improving student outcomes to support this effort the school has has many opportunities for teachers to collaborate even more effectively teachers were scheduled or given common prep periods allowing them time to plan together and regular minimum days set aside uh for for data analysis and lesson preparation through their plc's also teachers be informally discussing plans on a daily basis with a newly adopted curriculum the team has also made deliberate decision to teach it with Fidelity ensuring that everything has been covered thoroughly in addition our teachers have embraced the challenge of working through complex problems with difficult numbers that might have been overlooked in the past an additional part of the school support system

061was the attention given to our students with disabilities the leadership team ensured that every grade level has a dedicated educational specialist providing consistent support across all classes this consistency is the key and it is ensured that our students with disab abilities received the help they needed regardless of their teacher Persian is is demonstrating Positive Growth as a result of these strategies and there's much to be celebrated so let's see what Persian has to say I would like to now play the [Music] video um I kind of like like mostly like the people in my class because I enjoy hearing um new ideas from like the people around me but also like hearing like my own ideas so I feel like I have a similar thought process as my peers um I think like a lot

062of the Math teachers enjoy building bonds with their students to encourage them to share um another thing that like I like that Mr Garland really does is that he'll like pause in between the lesson and like see if anyone needs help or see if someone's not understanding but he also allows us to like stop and have our own moments to chat among peers and share our ideas so one of the things we were focused on as we made the shift to standards based learning and Grading is we really wanted to use data to inform our decision-making and help us ensure that students were getting uh the best out of their time in the classroom so as I've mentioned persing is a high performing school but when we dug into the data what we were noticing

063is that there were certain subgroups that were not doing as well as others and that led to us thinking how can we restructure our math program to better serve students on IEPs and our black youth and part of that became talking about in the past we would have students get um tutoring and reteaching support outside of school hours at lunchtime or after school and in talking with students in empathy interviews and in doing a deep dive into the data what we realized was we needed to build that time into the school day uh some of the differences I've noticed is that students are completing more of the retakes we tried to capture with them after school or at lunch in previous years and we'd get the highly motivated ones but we never captured that middle

064or the just below the middle of that group that needed it the most the Desmos curriculum is helping us tackle the fractions and decimals more which we think is helping the students um with that end of the year State Testing with their scores going up oh I like the curriculum because there's nothing that's like too difficult but there's also nothing that's too easy so I feel like we're really being like taught something new from what we're used to I'm really proud of my math team because it's not always easy to look and be reflective when something is not working there's often this feeling that I need to be defensive our math team looked at what the data showed and said you know what what we're doing isn't working for all students and what can we

065change and what can we do better to make sure that all students are having the same opportunity to learn I am so proud of the staff here at persi middle school and what they've accomplished this year they're an incredible team great job [Music] Panthers thank you purging middle school puring has much to celebrate under the leadership of principal cray um where instruction is a priority and I just want to name where uh the student had called out connection and relationship because we know that matters the strategies the team shared has led to notable Positive Growth at persing providing valuable insights that can benefit our district as a whole however we recognize that there is still significant work to be done across the district to ensure that all our students are growing in their math achievement

066so this leads us to our district areas of focus this slide highlights areas of focus in plans that will benefit all our students as well as additional areas for our Spotlight students there are four areas that will be addressed the first is the elementary curriculum coherence and we know that this is so important that all our students have access to a high quality curriculum no matter what school they attend and we know this currently this is a challenge multiple curriculums used across the district even with the school site and even within a grade level and So the plan is to do the elementary adoption this year so that there is one Core Curriculum across elementary schools moving forward into the 25 26 school year our data indicates students need to improve the procedural fluency in

067problem solving skills as a district we want our students to leave San Diego unified with the knowledge and the math skills needed for life to support this gooal we are focusing on developing teacher practices where teachers utilize math games to support support students and their procedural fluency we are offering professional learning which is also preparing Educators to plan for family game nights so there is an event coming near you so stay tuned next we will focus on the implementation of the new middle school math curriculum as it's been reiterated throughout the presentation to support our tier one instruction it is in the second year so we'll continue professional learning uh to support our teachers student centered data informed decision- making is another key area of focus and we'll enhance our D data literacy skills and

068effectively utilize data within professional learning communities to inform and improve teaching and learning practices while these Focus areas apply to all students we have identified three additional areas to support our Spotlight students this year we will identify and monitor specific growth goals for spotlight students with professional development for our principles and central office staff so we can grow in our data literacy to understand the data As We Gather Baseline data this year we will identifi bright spots where Spotlight students are making progress and gain insights into the strategies being used at SES similar to what we've done with persing and lastly we'll emphasize the consistent use of curriculum to meet student needs with our academic Partners our network teams and all the other uh people that support our school sites we aim to support our

069sites our teachers to better understand the available resources that we have by focusing on these areas we aim to create a more Equitable and effective educa educational experience for all our students ensuring they have the support and resources to thrive next I'd like to just highlight what we're going to be going into um in the next updates uh in February and July we're going to continue um monitoring our data using the bast and I ready um we'll also be identifying bright spots where bright students are making growth we'll keep you updated on the elementary adoption process and we are super excited about the work that we have ahead with our data our math curriculum our games bringing the joy and the Wonder the Curiosity in math but I just wanted to let to call out

070that it's really the heart of our students which is most exciting for us because that is where it matters thank you thank you thank you both really appreciate uh the report being our guinea pigs and doing our First Progress monitoring report I'm sure it was a little anxiety inducing so thank you for being the first um and thank you for lifting up student voice I think it was a year ago as the board um was thinking through how we want to shift our agenda how we want to shift how we hear from students right one of the things was around student Advisory board but also hearing about how hearing from students in alignment with our goals and so this is the first time we've been able to do that so appreciate that and I think

071before we open this item for trusty discussion I'd like to recognize that Ben Mackey from the Council of great City Schools is with us on Zoom hi Ben Ben has been coaching the board over the past year on our implementation of student outcomes Focus governance and he's here to guide us as we learn and get better at asking strategic questions about our monitoring reports and Ben is there anything you want to impart to the board uh before I open it up for discussion yes thank you so much president Hazen good evening board and superintendent it's great to be here with you all um I'm so excited and heartened uh to see the work that you all have put in I know and I've seen all of the work that Administration has put in to put

072this monitoring report together um I want to just ground us with one question and then one thought to consider as we move forward um and we kind of touched on this a little bit but this is an open question for the board why do we believe at the Council of great City schools and why is it shown in best practices that consistent monitoring is critical to achieving a goal and I can't see so anyone can chime in see a look on Jesse bald's face is that is there an answer about to come out of your mouth there was not but I can answer I think without monitoring I mean we don't know what's working well we don't have any progress reports or any metrics to see that the things that we're implementing and the goals

073that we're working on are truly affecting student outcomes thank you anyone else please trusty baso yes I think uh trusty bald is hit it on the head but I was also going to add that this is the way that we can also determine if we need to make any adjustments to um what we're monitoring if we're you know if we're way off and we need to adjust uh what what we're doing and kind of what our priorities are going to be absolutely and as we think about monitoring it there's three big components first clearly agreed upon data the board and administration went through this process and set goals with clear data that we say we're going to see if that moves second is reviewing that data at predictable outcomes as you saw at the end

074of this presentation there was what was coming next and when you can expect the next updates here and then finally as um both trustees so eloquently said to understand what is and isn't working and how to adjust if we think about a football or a soccer game we we clearly agree upon the data that we use to determine if we win the game points on the scoreboard we also understand the predictable cadences at which we will take pauses and look at it we'll have quarters or halves it would be ludicrous to have a football game or soccer game where you didn't know how much time was going to be in the game that day and then finally that allows you the opport opportunity as a board to monitor progress along the way and that is

075exactly what this is for and so as it was eloquently stated at the beginning this is really an opportunity for the board to lead by example if we want teachers principals staff and our entire system to be thoughtful reflective and open about both the challenges and successes this is the board's opportunity to demonstrate this in an active meaningful dialogue around what the board has determined is most important which is the goals so I'll give you with this and as we will Center and this is a long process there's a lot of continued uh changes and improvements as we move forward but as we think about the questions I I believe board members received this presentation at least a week in advance and were able to review it in advance hopefully um there was an opportunity

076to submit questions and get those questions answered often times they might be technical questions about how something is measured um they might be Tactical iCal question about how did we find out this or how did one school get better results than another and where we'll work towards is really coaching around how do we have a strategic conversation here that third type of question around the board leveraging it's very precious time together with the superintendent to really have a conversation about what we've learned and how it is impacting our strategic direction as an organization and so I know we've kind of talked about that a couple different times but I wanted to ground Us in that as I turn this back over to the board to engage in this conversation I likely will not chime in

077a lot during the conversation but would like to debrief towards the end but I will chime in if necessary so with that I will turn it back to you president Hazen thank you Ben and I would like to remind everyone um as Ben described that we want to focus on strategic questions and I know this is included in our folders so if you need a reminder um of what those strategic questions are right those are the questions trying to understand how something aligns with our priorities right examples of those are something like looking at the data in table one which strategy was most effective with our Target student population um and again all of that is included in our folders because this is new to us um do any trustees have questions or wish to

078discuss this item trusty whiters Payne thank you and good to see you Ben thank you all I I'd like to go to persing because of course that's where I had the most questions uh what strategies jumped you from 11.11% to 29.27% and what was the N how many students was were these an anomalies um one or two students I I'm just looking at we're talking about progress as we're going through the conundrum for me is to know that you have people like in Hidden figures who were considered as computers and then you get here and they're not at that level at all I mean it's kind of like what's happening in between and what strategies did you use to to deal with the um the students who did achieve even the students with disabilities in

079order to finally see that jump in one year I know that the teachers the teacher and others address some of that but uh as we look at other schools and extrapolate Beyond parishing then uh I think we need to just be upfront and look at what happened there kind it be um replicated in other sites um what were the issues that would help us to move that group thank you um so at persing to go a little bit into what they spoke about with the um having a dedicated education specialist for each grade level um so that was the one thing that they noted that um no matter what classroom the student would go to they mixing you know with six different teachers they had one teacher that was dedicated for the student to have

080that go to too um the other thing just before you go on is that possible at every school that is possible at every school yes that is scalable and I think it also depends all all well one thing it depends on student population um and the number you know number of students with uh disabilities but that is a possible uh strategy the other thing is they looked at um really the the revisions and getting support in class time within the school day that's also scalable um a lot of times teachers don't want to take that time away from class but they notice that students were taking those opportunities and they were skipping out on it so offering it in class um within their home rooms or within their math CL classes that they were able

081to connect with students better that way that's also another strategy that can be that can be scaled it's just working out what that math schedule is going to look like I'd like to add also um they taught the curriculum to Fidelity and we see in a lot of our classrooms that teachers um sometimes think like my students can't meet standards they're not Advanced enough talking about our hidden figure right like teaching the curriculum to Fidelity holds students to high standards and then um the teachers need support and how you scaffold all students to reach those standards so I think the curriculum piece is really huge for us because we want to hold all of our students to those high standards and when we interviewed the teachers and the principal they even talked about like we

082finally like embraced the hard numbers we did the fractions we did the decimals we did we made ourselves teach it we didn't eliminate it from the curriculum and that taught them how to teach all students that and so I I think the curriculum piece and that is something that's absolutely sustainable right like everybody teach this common curriculum but let's use our PLC time let's use our collaboration time to figure out how to do it right they also had common assessments so across the board yesy B this yeah I want to preface what I'm about to say with I think everything the strategies this is all amazing this was a great presentation I just don't know how accurate this data is from the fast assessment because truthfully there's no motivation for students to do well or

083to try when we look at the data in elementary school this fast test it was a big deal for us we would take the day off from school our teacher would give us snacks we would try super hard this was like the biggest test of our lives and we all tried so hard and the data shows that we were close to the standard but as we get older in middle school and high school I mean we all become very acute aware that this test means nothing to us and it has no bearing we don't even know what this test is for and I feel like going forward we need to find ways to motivate students or just educate them on how to take this test and before we can get that Baseline data where students

084are truly trying their hardest I don't know how well we can use that data as a metric going forward I I agree with you with everything that you're saying because ultimately the data needs to be um not only actionable but needs to be relevant to both the person taking it and the person receiving the data set right so it needs to be relevant to you as a student like this is going to make a difference in what what I do or my outcomes but also for the teacher like the teachers need to get those reports and go oh I understand now what's my next step with these students and so I think both users or receivers of this um data set are are going to be really important in in moving forward of the direction

085so thank you for for noting that yeah and I would just add actually so la unified saw a similar Trend in 11th grade and it actually came up um at their board meeting last week when they were reviewing the data that 11th graders just don't have that motivation and particularly for colleg goinging students they're more concerned with the SAT than the Casp and so I'm wondering how in collaboration with other districts and with the state we can think about um the assessments and making it more meaningful and valid so trusty Barrera yeah thank you president Hazen and thank you trusty baldis I just wanted to pick up on that a little bit because I I do think there's something um really misleading when we include 11th grade data with fast or Casp maybe even more

086so with Casp and and I think when we so one suggestion might be that when we present out our uh data that we um and and we're talking about sort of you know the district as a whole that we show one picture with 11th grade and one without it uh and I and I think that'll you know I think that'll be kind of um revealing the other thing is I don't know if everybody's had a chance so Linda darling Hammond wrote a piece uh a week or so ago about interpreting the data and I think one really important Insight that she made was on the Casp level two which is you know by definition below standard but represents foundational skills that students typically build on over the course of their you know time in school

087and so for instance one data point that she um shared was for 11th graders who score level two in math 50% of those students end up going to college and not needing REM remedial classes so again you know I've got all of my you know thoughts about you know Statewide standardized tests and why those are used and and I and they're not positive thoughts in general but I think one huge huge um issue that we're missing um every time we identify success or failure is level three is that really what we ought to probably be focusing on especially for our Spotlight students is getting into level two um because that's the indication that you know gives us the most confidence that students are going to then you know be able to to to move forward

088and be successful so you know it's not to redo our goal but as we as we think about what we're focused on and what we're monitoring and we're saying distance from standard to the extent that that's distance from level three um I'd be very interested in how we're doing in terms of um achieving level two you know especially with our Spotlight students and then tracking students who in the early grades are achieving at level two what happens to those students you know by by the time they they graduate so it's a again it's um everything that we're doing and by the way your presentation was fantastic really clear I would ask that um when we feature schools like persan you know which is so exciting that we and I know you will going forward that

089you know we we look at the spotlight students you know in those schools as well but with everything that we're doing um to try to you know be clear and as a system you know um monitor our progress if we've got a couple of data points that just don't make sense and we've got better data points you know and this is I think to trusty bald's um you know question or suggestion I I really think that we should push ourselves to get to those better data points what what is it that is going to give us confidence that a student is going to graduate and be successful in life um it seems like those are the data points that we wna we want to focus in on you trusty baso thank you president Hazen um

090I wanted to go back to I think it was the let's see the combined average distance from low risk by cluster and I really appreciate this this uh diagram because it shows like you know the top three the difference that's highest I mean there's a real extreme I guess in some of the schools especially in my area um but you know the top the ones that have the most extremes are scripts Ranch like La Hoya Patrick Henry um and I know it's because you know they have such high performers but it's really making those Spotlight students at those schools stand out and I think sometimes we don't look at those schools as much for our Spotlight students because we're you know we're just assuming oh everyone's High performing so I was just wondering if there's

091differences in strategy um when you have such an extreme between you know kind of the high performing students and the ones that are are still struggling um like what are they those schools doing that might be different than if they than other schools I don't know I'm just trying to think that through in my head about that really the cont contr at those particular schools so we also were very surprised by that right and and we we started with okay is it because there's more higher performing students so that that Gap is bigger or is it that there is more attention on the high there's there's a lot of questions we don't have the answers to but in our work with uh teachers and sites we're really working on um problem-based math and tiered math

092approaches so that there's that low floor high ceiling everybody has an entry point and then students can reach the math at varying levels depending on the tasks that they're given and so I think that might be our strategy with some of these um some of those areas that have that larger discrepancy is that what kind of math are we providing that's accessible to all students right because some people will even say you're focusing on Spotlight students what about the students that already understand the content so the problem-based um curriculum and problem based tasks that we're looking at really have that um the easy access and then the tiered approach to reaching Proficiency in those math levels so I think our continued focus on a new viable curriculum that provides that entry easy entry point and

093then areas for growth for all students I think I'm hoping we we might see some some change with some of those um groups thank you vice president Pon thank you president haisen thank you for for this um I um I have a few questions they're probably even more I like metacognitive they're above strategic maybe even but they're kind of thinking through some of this which is you know in trying to get goals that are you know one of the ways in which a goal can be utopian is if the output is is if the inputs are so inadequate in scale relative to the output that it's like so I look at this thing what our goal is have we ever in a seven-year period as a district increased what is that uh I don't know

0943% a year over the course of of I mean we new to distance from standards so I mean it's it's it's a hypothetical question and I'm concerned that you know the board gives you a directive to like what's achievable and you present like a best case scenario because if you didn't we'd say like well get something more ambitious you know and so there's this weird you know um a relationship that threatens to be a fully you know where it's just like okay we'll give you more and more and I'm and I I get concerned that we in fact don't have the inputs to move move that um that like conceptually I guess if you had a tutor in every you know a a piff I guess we call in every classroom you could do that

095but we just don't have enough inputs to do that so I'm concerned about our our goal setting process and that that um the tendency to for it to to be unrealistic relative to the inputs I'm also you know one of the challenges and I understand in terms of focusing we we have as a board said focus on our unduplicated students focus on our Spotlight students and but in excluding the data in the in the chart on I don't have page numbers or whatever but in the uh the same chart that has a graph there with student group it I I like to see where our traditionally higher higher achieving or however you conceptualize it students are so that we have an idea of where we need to get to what is what is are are

096those student groups moving in an opposite direction or a similar Direction and if so it helps us to understand what our overall strategy is and how it's impacting all students and whether there's just a differential Improvement or whether they're actually tracking in separate directions or what that is so it would be great this kind of to get actually where are I mean you you you know where are all our student groups uh why Asian um Pacific Islander I mean you know I don't man have we implemented Mina yet I don't know if we've implemented Mina yet but um to get that better aggregate idea and then um and I and I would have the same um I have the same it goes also for the same point goes for this and now that I'm saying

097this I realized we had a some conversation about a previous iteration of this in in executive office so I apologize because now I'm reverse engineering my PRI my prior argument I'm I'm reproducing it but I but I I now realize so when you can infer from this data and now I realized that actually knew this so I'm false inferring it um that clearly given that you have 30% of the population roughly 30% of the population at persing is Latino and all of these are higher than all students I can infer but I actually know again now that I realize I know um that the Latino students are actually stagnating relative I mean they have to be dra to drag that number to be to average out um and so that would have that part of

098the story um is to understand how all of the student groups are Fairing and so that we understand is there a differential input here that we're is is something happening there and because I would also say like part of the story here is whoa we have really been at 11% for a black or African-American students exce meeting or exceeding we have part of the story here is we have traditionally been under delivering for that population clearly I mean to go from 11% to 29 God Bless persing but that we were at 11% is is a kind of indictment there and I would say um finally in looking at the dashboard because I was like oh what what are the percentages here you know um you realize and this is my my last comment is about

099our social emotional and how important it is that social emotional Wellness is is our first goal because if you look at this there's a tendency if you look at math at a certain District or you look at science or you look at the scores you think well this is clearly a reflection of what we did at this school in relation to math curriculum now part of the story is actually 70% of that outcome or whatever is happening outside of the classroom number one we all know that that's clear from the data um but even within the campus if you look one of the things that's unique about persing is their school climate is off the charts it's blue lining on on on the dashboard in terms of very very low less than 1% of students

100have been suspended for for a day whoa for a middle school holy moly um and so it has a very positive School climate and so part of what we're seeing in terms of this is as being an outlier a spotlight for this discussion of bright spot rather part of it may be what's happening in math but part of the story is also what's happening in terms of the principle in terms of uh uh professional development and learning professional learning communities and um and teaching tolerance and you know what you know so I just kind of want to always bring us back to this thing yes this is an update today on math thank you for the update on math but a lot of this is also about the kind of school climate and social emotional

101Wellness that this leader and the entire staff and the students are fostering and the families are fostering at this site yes goad sorry well on yesterday you talked about KNX school and how we have to get it right socially emotionally and all of that and KNX is my school I've been tracking it over years not just even pre pandemic and I appreciate what you said uh trusty Barrera about the fact that we need to identify what it is we're really trying to measure because to me they've been working on social emotional stuff for years years and I'm not going to comp out and say whatever they're doing academically can be excused because it's not something that just started happening and yet they still have issues with with whatever data we're measuring them on academically but

102you pointed out well if now the students can go and uh perform well on on going to college and graduations and all of that but I think we really have to get at that because I can remember as a rotarian many years ago um many years before the pandemic asking the students who went to the lead conference which the Rotary Club has what's a dis disconnection here between what I'm seeing on paper for academics versus all the other things and we observed you you came to our club and you presented and it doesn't match what's going on and uh some folks got really upset because we were asking the students what's going on and so I think that we can't just say well maybe that 1% uh they have 1% Good Vibes at the school

103principales doing whatever because I think all that's happening at Knox I think that there's really a lot of stuff going on there that's pleasing but we still haven't gotten to the spotlight students so that we have the academics that I want to see and that's the community ask me about all the time why do we have this disconnect between we this social program that's going on on and on and on but we're still not seeing the turnaround academically unless as Richard said we use some other measure so just letting you guys know I that's why I asked a question about can this be extrapolated passed on to other schools because whatever is happening to show that kind of rapid growth we need to see in other schools other schools that are struggling with the academic

104piece of it and then as a math teacher I I get really frustrated with the fact that they only take math through eth grade and then you can get anything beyond that point and yet we're testing them at grade 11 so it's not really a true indicator of what's going on that's why you talked about level three and so forth because math is not taught every year as it is with lit uh English classes so that's why we have mean it's not assessed every year it's it's not assess but it's not also you don't necessarily have to take a math class every single year school year as you do usually with literacy you may be taking geometry then you can take a break students are are not really into the content that we're testing them

105on I don't know if either of you want to comment on that or if we should proceed with questions uh we do have right now we do have our high school students taking integrated math so integrated math one two and three and so one of the shifts between algebra geometry and Algebra 2 is that it's integrated so they don't just skip statistics or geometry it is through all three years um but there is a another um challenge is that teachers don't always get through the curriculum so there's gaps in the curriculum so they may not get to that geometry so to your point they're skipping pieces of it so it's important that we do have a solid curriculum and pacing and for clarity uh clarification there is uh students do need to take math all

106through middle school and three years in high school for a through G requirements they don't have to take it the fourth year thank you and I have a few questions and then I believe Dr bagula has some closing remarks and Ben I don't know you have a few things um I think one of the things I really appreciate uh is calling out the importance of curriculum right that if at least what I uh understand from this is that if we invest in high quality tier one instruction um that likely we will save money on remediation and potentially other supports kids need when they're disengaged um from their coursework uh and so it seems like in Middle School we're seeing that potentially start to take hold um as you called out some of that se 7eventh

107grade data um and that your belief is a lot of that is tied to the curric having a viable curriculum that is used with Fidelity when that happens kids tend to do better um and presumably are more engaged and I guess I'll just share anecdotally um having a sixth grader who came from an elementary school where the curriculum wasn't so great wasn't taught necessarily with Fidelity and now being in Middle School um I see in my own child someone who hated math all through Elementary School loves math in sixth grade loves the curriculum loves that it's interactive loves that she gets immediate feedback through the curriculum all of it um so as you're describing this like oh now I understand why um but I guess is that accurate to assume you know as we think

108about this within the context of budget right what I'm hearing recommended is potentially adopting a new Elementary curriculum which is costly but could that actually um result in some savings um in other ways if we can get tier one right um as somebody that also manages a technology department I know there's a lot of money spent on software on like supplemental supplemental software right and so we're spending it's it's not vetted it's not um there's really not a lot of control as um a math department or even technology department so um some of this curriculum is amazing in that when you do use those digital tools it differentiates it gives you feed I mean like when I was in school if you know if we could be sitting there doing all 25 problems wrong and

109unless that teacher's walking around the room to tell me it's wrong I might not even know but with this new curriculum and with access to like the technology it's the realtime feedback um it gives teachers feedback so they can pull small groups um it just there's a lot of potential to yes eliminate um that extra spending and really improve tier one instruction to add on to that it'll be important to to um have professional learning for our teachers so they can utilize that technology because that technology piece and what we're seeing in the curriculum is pretty amazing the AI little tutors that give that feedback um to be able to do the grouping but it'll be important for our teachers to know how to use that so we're going to be thinking um like how

110to support uh going forward this coming spring and until the next year so we look forward to working with you on that thank you and I think the other thing you know that I'm curious about as you continue to bring reports to us is how our guardrail around motivation overlaps with the results we're seeing um and the outcomes potentially tied to some of this uh new curriculum adoption um right are students more motivated to learn as a result um so if we could think about how we might be able to collect data on that um I'm curious I think it's slide four um it looks like we made and I know this is Baseline um but about 1 Point Four Points gain in distance from standard compared to last year and I know we're our

111goal in order to achieve our goal we need to get to three points a year um how are we going to do that is it doing the strategies you outlined I mean how do we get there what are the most efficacious ways we we move the because we're not accelerating that growth fast enough I think one thing is really utilizing our PLC work at school sites and looking at the data and being able to um look at strategies that are working or not working um but I think that the PLC is going to hold that uh that work together um and then planning time with teachers making sure that they're using common lessons common assessments uh but really it's going to go around the pedagogy um something I also would like to work on is

112um supporting our principles and understanding what good instruction looks like in a math classroom right like what does what does good use of the curriculum look like what should students be doing are they talking to each other and I think you know um it makes me sad but math is scary for some people and I just want well I want people to love math as much as I do because I'm a nerd but but it's you know help principles see what a math classroom can and should look like how to support their teachers because they're the ones that are there with the teachers every day um I also feel like we are um on getting our academic Partners up on board and the academic Partners in alignment with area superintendence we have this nice nice

113through line that we're working on um that that I think that's one way um we're we're still working there's no I don't have the I I want to add one piece because I think it's important I mean we talked a lot about how um we haven't really focused on math but the fact that we now have a monitoring system with common assess with assessments that are coming I think just even having that report as a teacher would help me go whoa I didn't know this before I have this new information what can I do with it now the piece here that's going to be really important is having strong leadership to say yes let's explore what this document means let's explore what this data means and then how might we again intervene or accelerate um

114depending on the data report so I'm actually very thinking that having the information having knowledge is power and so that's going to be one of the very big key sets in that too so thank you and I really appreciate that we're highlighting uh positive outlier schools right the way we've done pering I would also encourage us to look at other districts I mentioned La earlier but they grew um 24 points I think in dist distance from standards so what can we learn from what other districts are doing in terms of their policies their spending their practices um and think about how that could shape some of our investments um because we don't have to reinvent the wheel um and I'm also wondering if you think it would be valuable if in the future we can

115see data grouped by the use of strategies right so if we can look at schools sort of looking at the student outcomes potentially overlaid with the strategies Andor funding being used there um to help give the board a sense of what is making the biggest difference um I know as we look at the middle school data and we see significant growth you've said you know it's probably the curriculum um but being able to see those other things where some investment we've made at a certain number of schools is yielding um certain common results would be helpful to see um um and I guess the one thing you know and I'm a broken record on this um that's frustrating and challenging for me is understanding um where our youngest Learners are um I think there is

116a common belief um amongst this board and based on Research that when we invest um in high quality instruction and creating a loving supportive environment um for our te TK and kindergarten students um that it yields positive results um over their time in the district and really over the lifespan uh and I was excited that we were finally going to be measuring um outcomes for TK and Kinder um or at Le in first grade and and we aren't so I guess my question is what can we know what knowable data do we have about kind TK Kinder first grade students this year so that the board knows how they're growing um it's been a blind spot it continues to be a blind spot so what is available to shed some light um on that population

117I mean we do have the district curriculum and vision and majority of our schools are using that curriculum but there are assessments built in no matter what curriculum schools are using we don't have access to that data for if it's not in Vision um but that it would be I mean could be by cluster it could be by High School site um but that would be something we would have to and it's right now optional for teachers but it is available I would ask you know and I don't know what's right or wrong but you know we're going to be seeing fast data and being able to see progress against fast data for the other grade spans so if you can come to us with whatever you think is the best proxy you have for

118Kinder in first grade this year um be really helpful for us to see and maybe it's not all students but something is better than nothing so that we can see are those on track to be where they need to be by third grade trusty barera yeah just on that point I I think we all hear anecdotally all the time um at elementary schools that teachers and principls immediately know the difference between the students who were in kindergarten first grade who went to utk versus who didn't so what is that difference you know what are what are they what are they looking at that tells them yeah boy there's a and and maybe it's kind of pre-academic data you know um but I just to president Hazen's point I think there are um things that educators

119are looking at and it would be good for us to understand what those are yeah yeah and before we leave that point that because that transcends just on not only math but literacy it's a whole thing with us saying we want every child reading by the fourth grade third grade whatever third grade I believe is but the point is that half our students may come in after third grade and they haven't gotten that so what are we doing to have as they started talking about in deep a portability um module that can help students because if we're not going to use match data throughout then we're still going to get the same results because if kids are coming in later how are we going to bring them up too hopefully with this Spotlight model will

120have some portability data but that's a critical piece of it can I just I want to add a point also um and speaking you know we're talking about the younger students but I'm also thinking about the older students the high school students and what trusty baldis said earlier about like why does this matter I think that's also true of a lot of students just around math in general like geometry why do I need this in my life like you know I mean having two kids that are in their 20s and um so I think it would be nice if we could do a better job not only with the teachers and the principles but really with the students like understanding like why am I what am I going to use this for and I think

121that would go a long way too for them maybe caring more about it and uh my my oldest daughter who was you know an honors student but she she took the minimum amount of math she needed to to graduate and she but then she went to college and struggled in math and I feel like the counseling department probably didn't do a good enough job of saying no you really need to take this next math class I think a lot of high school students will just take what the you know the minimum that they need and won't you know go beyond that so if there's ways that we can also kind of create that you know understanding better amongst the students I don't know how what that would look like but and I got one last

122question um so I guess one of the things I'm thinking about is at the end of the year we're going to evaluate our progress against this goal um and one of the things that is important to us and we've identified in terms of interim goals is how Spotlight students are growing but we don't have targets for spotlight students this year um and so when we're sitting in July and evaluating the district's performance and the superintendence you know by proxy performance against these goals how are we going to know if we did what we set out to do um and so I guess I'm wondering if you can come back to us next time with some recommended interim with some targets for interim goals I know it's not going to be perfect in the same way

123we don't have a perfect um assessment say for Kinder first but what can we use this year to know if students are growing the way they need to because we're not going to have Casp data and we agree it's not our favorite data point um until this time next year and we need to know in July how we did uh like you know this this was a bit challenging for us right because this is the first time we've looked at fast data and like uh full disclosure I'm like okay this aggressive growth stuff and it takes three shots to get there like I'm like I think I thank you to Roman I finally you know I I think I got it but definitely we'll sit down and we'll get the two um because there should

124be some ways to show growth love to look at Ela and see how they because they've been through this a year before us um we are just starting with the data Insight system and support team and meeting with them regularly and so they're bringing what data do you need now so we're like Jessica alluded to earlier we're really improving our data literacy just as a central Office Team and really bringing these departments together um so the UT or TK and one assessments and um starting to look at growth with fast will for sure bring up in I think it's really important right it's really important for the board to know how our students progressing and not to go another year with without knowing um and then I think to sort of the point I opened

125with which is our hope is to be able to model you know what our expectation is in terms of how we use data um in the classroom as well right so what are the goal how are Educators how are principles tracking if if they met their annual goals as well if we don't even know I do uh so I'm I'm optimistic because we are still going to have those assessments so we will be having you know the fall assessment with the winter assessment and the spring assessment so we will be able to see some of that comparison pieces so so I think it's just letting us know sort of what's a reasonable Target okay yes yes yes about this oh yeah and then one final point I don't just want to say what I said

126before again but I want to note do we have a plan going forward how we can motivate students to actually try on this test well I think it starts with the student Advisory Board I'm just kidding I I you know I um spent 20 years with 14 year olds and you know it's a challenge it's it's a real challenge um and I I I think it's something that as we're going out and talking to other schools um two two schools we can ask some some strategies but I I I'm going to say I don't know and I'm okay with that um and so if your Advisory board has some ideas we would love to uh come and present the topic to them and maybe we talk about it as a student I was kind of

127kidding but not really I'd love to come chat with The Advisory Group and and let's talk about it let's work it out as a student group and see if we can come up with some ideas that was an idea he just presented he heard he spoke they came they understand not us talking them talking and I think as I mentioned earlier it's not just about the test but like why is math going to matter to them you know and that I think that's going to be the hook more for high school students yeah I I agree I think that conversation that trusty boso is talking about you know why math matters and why that should be motivating I would not want us to put time and energy into going down this Rabbit Hole of trying

128to convince a student who is correct that this test doesn't matter to me to try to talk them into this test matters to me that just feels like not a a you know a good use of of our time as a as a system so let's come up with a better me you know metric than a a metric that doesn't mean anything to a student yeah and I I think you know the other thing I wonder about and obviously none of us are experts I don't think on the dis around assessment but are there things that students are already doing like the SAT and ACT in statistically significant numbers um where they really are trying because they really care and we can simply use that data in math um to give us the information we

129need um so because I think also we don't want to over test right none of us want that um so what is the most meaningful way we can get the information we need which is our kids growing um Ben I think you wanted to maybe share some feedback how speaking of assessment how did we do um and and then we'll have Fabby close um well I I would actually defer to Fabby to close out the conversation here and then I'd like to have a conversation with the wider board and Fabby as well so I don't know Fabby if you have anything you want to add about the monitoring itself and the the specifics that were covered today before we go meta I wanted to highlight what we heard um just to make sure that we

130wrap up and we're all together on the same page as as we move forward so the first point of clarification is 11th grade is not using the fast so we're not using it we understand we heard blesson we're moving forward um some of the positive impacts that I want to highlight that were named over and over again as best practices and so what I'm thinking about is how do we replicate this but also coach and mentor to make sure that this exists at all our schools is consistent use of viable common curriculum common assessments strong leadership teacher efficacy because I heard you say that even teachers were a little hesitant with that but then they said we're capable of doing this and we're going to try um and then also having public goals with ongoing

131monitoring and data sets um are very important I do want to think about next steps um I want to make sure that data reports that we provide for the board always have the end number you shouldn't have to ask us um trusty whiters pain it should just be there on the reports I'm going make sure that happens um there is a clarification on Spotlight students and who they are and I know Dr Moreno created a slide deck for principles to use with community members and with parents so that they understand this as well so that will be easily available I'm going to try to figure out how to put it on our website so that anyone can see that um I'm going to push us when we talk about student groups that we include all

132of them um and then I'm also going to push us on our language that we don't call them subgroups um they're people they're groups um let's just be mindful of our language um as we noted we want to know um we say that common curriculum is very important I'm going to figure out the cost and put it on one of our budget workshops um to see how much is this actually going to cost moving forward and then I'm curious about the process of adoption because the process of adoption should include students looking at curriculum parents giving feedback before we actually adopt and so I'm not sure what our process is but I'll look into it good thank you um the I appreciate um Dr Pon the interest section of Wellness in academics and I think

133it's really important because all I keep thinking about is I know um to your point Julie we develop a math identity right um and so how are we developing a math identity with joy how are we and I heard today at um Kerney a student that said I got joy from my struggle I love like when things went wrong I actually would like really like to work towards a solution and so to teach that productive struggle and that joy and wellness that comes in I think is really important um I also think I need to call Dr estada over La unified um because to your point uh Dr Patterson you said how you know has this been done before with this growth well it sounds like La did it in one year so I want

134to see what what happened there um how might we access Envision data I'm I'm not sure if that's easily available but how do we also understand utk through F through first grade um progress so I just wanted to close up and wrap us up to make sure that we're all on the same page for next steps but also thank you to Julie Jessica and Michelle before we um get our coaching from Ben thank you thank you Dr bagula all right Ben all right um well first of all thank you for engaging deeply in this and really diving into the presentation and the report thank you to the administration for working and putting that out there and having this conversation I want to First just open it up and just get your Reflections board and our

135superintendent you know how did this feel and what Reflections do you have having gone through this um this month for sure and in some form and fashion last month as well so talk to me about your Reflections and what you were thinking as you go into this my biggest piece is I struggle between um some of the places where we have structures already in place like an English language arts um progress monitoring is going to look very different because the infrastructure is there we worked on it last year and this being brand new um of having those pieces it's going to look different and so I'm trying to come up up with a way of how is it Universal so that we're all working towards the same direction and we are but there's also just

136different pieces so that's always been a struggle for me of how do I make sense of this when this is kind of a few steps behind yeah thank you for that I'm hearing you know this math one is in a very different place than some of our others there's a lot of questions this is the first time we're really going through it and I think this was this really came out as the board adopted these goals with a lot of TBD we didn't have the data and so thank you for sharing that um superintendent other thoughts or Reflections I think I'm sitting in exactly the same place so just want to add a me too to feeling challenged and frustrated because we don't quite have what we need to um be able to understand where

137we are building the plan where we're flying it thank you I guess part of I'm thinking less about how I feel about it because I mean I at any given time I can be thinking predominantly about damn that was an awesome comment I made or that was a boring comments I made or you know what you're in your own world sort of but I guess the ultimate question is whether the conversation per se I mean we're elected officials doing this in public This Is Why We Exist this you know so part of it is is this effective and giving both leadership an understanding where the board's at um giving the board understanding where where the district's at giving the public an opportunity to observe this and feel like they have a meaningful say in it

138uh you know we don't have a lot of people in the audience but you know um is the audience feel I mean I we sit up here staring at the audience going God these poor people are waiting for you know non- agenda public comments or something and they're just sitting through this like is this Naval gazing so you know ultimately I don't know whether you have any mechanisms for it but it would be great to have some way of us escaping the solipsism of the board to understand whether these conversations are useful to staff useful to superintendent and useful ultimately to the to the public so that's what I'm thinking thank you Cody other thoughts or Reflections uh I would say that my mind is still open about it a couple of weeks ago I

139got feedback from one of the elementary schools about this whole math piece and the questions that I raise I I don't I think my community is really like let's do the thing we've done in the past more talk and let's see some real action um because no matter how you cut the data still wind up with the same kind of outcomes and I want to have a positive spin on it but it just not apology spin on what can I ask for clarification on this whole whole process that we're going through as I said about the literacy we're there we can see it but for math it just feels like I don't know I I'm just thinking about the comments that have been shared with me from my community because although they're not here a

140lot of them some said they're watch eating dinner and they're watching hearing what we're saying um giving me feedback as I run into them in community grocery stores or wherever and uh bottom line is they want their kids to learn they don't want to see these kind of data where we're at the bottom and allegedly improved 18% all of a sudden and then um I don't know it's it's just not feeling it right now I'm not feeling it at all and I just trust that we'll get there as we go through I'm willing to take those steps but with an open mind that um hopefully I can be very positive in the future okay thank you thank you for sharing Sharon um a couple thoughts and I want to pick up on exactly where you

141left off there Sharon you said something very preent that was you know folks in my community they want their kids to learn and I come I'm elected I'm at the school board because we want to make sure that all of our students learn and that is the heart of these monitoring presentations it's not enough to talk randomly about what good things are happening here and there it is about truly building the systems to understand the reality of where we are currently where are our students all students each student group uh Spotlight students and what progress we as a system are making because we know there's not a silver bullet a quick snap of the fingers to to fix what has kept us from achieving these excellent results with all students every year and that this

142is a long process and monitoring is a way to maintain that focus and so the heart of these reports is really to understand the reality where we currently are in San Diego unified so that we can address and understand what steps we're taking as we move forward to move that needle and who is charged with really thinking through and determining the strategies to achieve that the superintendent the superintendent and by extension the team that is hired that comes into school each and every day to do this and so one reflection I had in looking at this there's a lot of conversation a lot of really good points and a lot of questions I really enjoyed hearing each of these and the passion in each each of each of you um one reflection I had is

143that out of all of the conversation there were only seven questions that were asked to staff about the data and what we're doing and how we're thinking through this and as we continue to think about this work you have the folks in the room that we as a system have hired and placed in these positions to really move the needle for kids that we trust to do this work day in Day Out how do we leverage and use our questions to really interrogate and understand what's happening in our system and what our experts who we've hired in here are doing to move forward as we as board members hopefully understand the realities of our system so we can best communicate it back out to the community to share into your point um about parents just

144want to know that their students are learning the heart of these monitoring is to really get to the the the heart there of our students actually moving across our system I think about another note here and Cody you brought this up which is you know are these assessments are do we have the right assessments I think uh trusty baldis you also mentioned you know if kids don't care about it why are we doing this and I want to remind them I think these are excellent questions to interrogate these goals were set based on what the school board heard as what do we want to accomplish for our kids we want kids to be able to be strategic thinkers and be able to do math and through a discussion came that this was the best proxy

145for understanding it with our students if that is not the best proxy for understanding it that is when we would coach a board to go back and rethink what is the best proxy for understanding whether or not our students are learning math at what our community expects um to interrogate do is this the right amount of rigor and challenge that forces a system to change um and so I think those conversations are very strong and worthwhile to have but we also need to determine you know if we are going to commit to these goals we need to commit to to the goals and seeing these move over time and if they are not the right goals we need to address that now but I think the key here is that there must be a clearly

146identified goal with a way that we all understand what we're going to try to measure it even though no measure is perfect so we can understand the direction we're going so those are two um overarching thoughts I had in this process um but let me just pause there and see if there's any thoughts or reactions or questions from that doesn't look like it all right then the last um piece that I would say here is we always and while we're not doing anything official yet and there will be ongoing conversation we always coach boards to consider accepting a monitoring report or tabling it for another time if it doesn't meet certain criteria and while we have no action and there's not any action planned at this time I wanted to talk through what we do

147and why we think about this the questions on whether to accept a monitoring report from the administration is not about whether or not we like the data we think we're doing great work we've achieved our goals or we're not achieving our gos it's not anything about that it is simply first of all trying to answer the question did this REM monitoring report give the board a sense of how the district District's reality is matching the vision as set by the goals so did this monitoring report give more insight into how the district's reality is ma matching the vision for the district any thoughts or answers to that I mean I think as we look at the Casp data I have a good sense of how students did last year in terms of math achievements I

148and I think you know I've shared some frustrations that we're collect we have to get some baseline data in terms of you know interim measures we're not there yet but yeah I think it satisfied that for me anyone else trusty baso I don't know if if it's I I think it's a start in the right direction I think it has um provided a little more clarity um and actually looking at the data this way is and the discussion we've had allowed me to understand it maybe a little more deeply than I did before um but I think yeah it's a work in progress so I think it was a good first step all right we I'm hearing yes I have a understanding of whether the reality is matching the vision even though there are still

149things to learn and improve upon any other different thoughts the second question is are we seeing growth towards the vision based on what we saw here I mean I I think again you know because its Baseline it we're not able to measure growth yet so unsure it's a baseline data we know that for most of these although there was one slide up front about showing growth from 23 to 24 by a factor of one point yeah I mean that obviously did not match if the expectation is that we grow three points towards distance from standard a year we did not do do that this last year but the goal wasn't to do it last year it's to do it this year to next year right yep thank you so I am going to argue that

150there's pieces of this puzzle that needed to be laid out absolutely having a monitoring system having an assessment tool that's that's not an easy feat so I want to say that those elements were very necessary and so I see that as progress because we have to celebrate it as much of work we have ahead of us I also do want to celebrate the team for actually putting that together yeah thank you superintendent that that is absolutely key here is if we haven't ever looked at data in this way it requires a lot of system building to even get to the point where we can look at data in this way and make decisions based on it um and and the reality is sometimes we're seeing growth and we're seeing what we want other times we're

151not so the final question is based on the report do we see a strategy or plan that is sufficient enough to cause growth for towards the vision so in all the discussion and hopefully through the questions teasing out what did we learn and what are we doing as a result of what we learned we're starting to get a sense of the strategy and the plan to achieve that growth and so that would open that last question to the board in terms of based on this did we get a sense of the plan sufficient to achieve the growth towards Vision I mean I think if we look at at uh slide 11 in in the report right it specifically calls out um areas to focus right Elementary curriculum coherence procedural fluency um so yes it looks

152like specific strategies were outlined to increase math achievement and and to achieve the goals thank you Shaina any other thoughts is it relates to this the reason we ask boards to consider accepting these reports as they become part of a running record over time of our District's progress towards achieving our goals um they tell a story especially as we move out of the Baseline phase and start to add more and more monitoring reports in years so we can see and maintain this Focus over time these monitoring reports become foundational in a superintend attendance evaluation and how the district is doing and how we think about the progress that we are making as a district because we are clearly on the same page on what we're saying is important and how we monitor it so with

153that I just want to thank you to the board um for engaging in this conversation this is a big shift um it's one of the largest shifts boards make especially as it relates to their time together but it is the most important time at the meeting often times is really understanding and inter erating what is our system's progress to achieving the goals that we have set out for our students um and also just want to thank Fabby and the whole team for the work to really um dive in and put together a report even with all the uncertainties and unknowingness of a starting a new monitoring system and building a data system where we might not have had one before so thank you for the time and I really am so thankful to work alongside

154you thank you Ben and thank you to everyone for your questions and to the team team that presented really appreciate it we'll now consider item F1 approval of job descriptions is there a motion on this item thank you we have a motion is there a second we have a second from trusty boso uh are there any speakers on F1 okay any questions um or discussion from trustees I will just add quickly that I am very happy to see a director of Grants Administration included um as we talk about really taking advantage of opportunities to generate new sources of revenue bring in more grants having an FTE someone who is focused on that all day every day um is terrific so excited to see that let's go ahead and vote um trust please go ahead and

155vote okay the motion passes unanimously we'll now uh move to F2 and we'll conduct a public hearing and consider taking action on this item which is the district's initial proposal to all bargaining units to bargain a supplemental early retirement plan for eligible employees um also known as a Ser the public hearing is now open for this item Miss Sals are there any speakers on F2 okay thank you um I do know that we have begun to receive feedback on this through um the budget form um that was shared yesterday so I appreciate the feedback um that's been shared through that and we'll be sharing um that publicly as well uh having no speakers uh the public hearing on this item is now closed and I'm looking for a motion to approve the San Diego Unified

156School District's initial proposal to negotiate with all bargaining units a supplemental early retirement plan a Ser for eligible employees in accordance with section 3457 of the California government code and section 1031 of the bylaws of the Board of Education I I see a motion from trusty Whitehurst Payne and a second from trusty baso any questions from trustees or discussion okay let's go ahead and vote trustees please vote the motion passes unanimously we'll now consider items G1 through G4 approval of minutes of regular and special meetings and resolutions recognizing lgbtqia plus History Month Filipino American history month and the district's commitment to raise awareness about the danger of vaping is there a motion on these items thank you we have a motion and a second uh are there any speakers on section g yes we have

157several speakers on G3 you will each have two minutes d g sorry gisa Deng if you come forward followed by Robert shaunessy hi good evening thank you for having me my name is Zang and I have the privilege to address you today as a member of Defending equality we're a team of Volunteers in Service of making sure our schools in the greater San Diego area are ready and prepared for ab1 955 the safety act which goes into effect in January I applaud you not only for reaffirming this important resolution but also for having an Associated implementation plan we see that your words are not just words we see your actions too others do also San Diego unified received high scores in the 2024 equality California safe schools survey we're here to support you in keeping

158this commitment going continuing to make sure that actions follow your word is of the utmost importance to make our San Diego Unified Schools a place that is truly safe and supportive for all students you have at your disposal an impressive team at youth advocacy and your office of equity and belonging you have inspiring gsas Educators and parent groups this work saves lives earlier this month the Trevor Project published research results that showed that in the first year after anti-transgender laws were enacted there were St statistically significant increases in rates of past year suicide attempts among transgender and non-binary youths aged 13 to 17 in states that enacted such laws relative to states that did not in light of your budget Workshop yesterday please remember this resolution will only matter with Financial Resources attached to it

159so that our schools can implement it fully thank you for reaffirming your commitment today thank you Robert shaunessy followed by Cameron Jackson thank you uh my wife and I are the parents of two children uh who both attended School in the University City cluster from Sparkles Elementary to Stanley Middle and through UC High School my youngest son clay came out as transgender just as he was beginning his high school experience and my family is very grateful for the district's lgbtq affirming policies and the UC cluster's amazing administrators and teachers for making his and our fam's educational experience a positive one it isn't an exaggeration to say that this District's affirming uh policies saved Clay's life but they did more than save him they allowed him to thrive academically socially and emotionally lgbtq affirming policies like

160this one on the agenda tonight do absolutely make a difference I know it the reason I know it is because Clay is not here tonight he is a freshman at the University of Southern California where he's a member of the Honors College and he's majoring in physics thank you clay helped with the creation of the district's 2022 safety resolution to protect lgbtq students and that safety resolution allowed me and my wife Claire together with a group of parents of lgbtq students and our kids to work with the UC cluster committee and the principles of the five schools and the district's youth advocacy Department to make a real difference for lgbtq kids we worked with principles to identify gender neutral and safe spaces at all five cluster schools we installed safe gender neutral changing areas at

161the middle school and we worked with the UC High School to provide safe gender neutral restrooms and we look forward to continuing that work together to ensure that the safety resolution is thought fully implemented it's your ongoing efforts like tonight's agenda item that have allowed lgbtq kids in this District to feel safe and respected and included thank you thank you camer Cameron Jackson hello my name is Cameron Jackson and I'm the GSA president at the San Diego met High School um we're really small school we only have around 115 students but we're also a very queer school um a bit of a safe space and a safe haven just over 20% of our students are transgender non-gender conforming or questioning their gender identity and about 52% are queer or questioning their sexuality so the majority

162of our campus is queer Youth and we like to Pro provide a safe space for them um but we also did a survey last year with the Jed Foundation to get some data on our mental health related things at school I wanted to go over a couple of Statistics related to suicide rates at our school um and warning they are a little stter startling but um 46% of our student body have seriously thought about committing suicide 31% have made a plan to attempt suicide and for those who have attempted suicide 20% said yes that's 23 students who have attempted to take their own lives 23 of my peers 23 of my friends um statistically around 12 or 13 of those were queer but I'd argue that number is much higher like it was pointed out

163before the Trevor Project says lgbtq plus teens are four times more likely to take their to take their own lives sorry um and I want to be very clear they have a quote on their website lgbtq plus young people are not inherently prone to Suicide risk because of their sexual orientation or gender identity but rather are placed at higher risk because of how they are mistreated and stigmatized in the society so uh I think that the rate at our school 23 kids who have attempted to take their own lives I think it's because before they came to our school they were in that dark place um but then they transferred oh sorry should I stop okay uh they transferred to our school for a bit of Safe Haven and I think lgbtq plus History Month

164can help every school get the um recognition and support that queer students need thank you Robin Randon hello my name is Robin renden and um I just here in gratitude for what your what the district does to support our lgbtq plus kids and um I have two trans kids and my 17-year-old attempted suicide a couple years ago so didn't have the support of his father but school is a safe place for him so I appreciate this so much thank you thank you we have two virtual speakers EJ simac are you available EJ I am here can you hear me yes you have two minutes thank you uh first off I I I want to say uh I'm I'm a father of two kids 12 and a 10 year-old uh who both attend UC cluster uh

165schools uh one of my kids is non-binary and I I want to first thank thank the school board for what you're doing and especially thank the UC cluster principles uh for what they are doing and I just want to let you know what we're getting into in the UC cluster um as we're doing great work uh by both with the and without the principles of the school to do the following we are working with the schools uh to be sure that we're following the 2022 uh safety uh resolution to include curriculum that is inclusive of the lgbtqia um studies where identifying current bullying prevention items uh measures that are in that are in place and potential holes that are needed to be filled we're helping out our schools set up set up the lgbtqia clubs

166to offer kids of the trans community and their allies a place to feel included we're confirming School uh we're confirming School staff has the lgbtqia training opportunities uh for themselves and we're helping to create a temporary gender affirming restrooms and locker rooms throughout the schools um while the schools are undergoing the the REM their Remodeling and again I just want to thank the school board for what they are doing it helps our trans youth um uh feel safe and um and hopefully Thrive thank you thank you Pam go ahead you have two minutes Pam hi history is being made in 2024 with the egregious Bill ab1 1955 signed into law recently by Governor Newsome infringing on parental rights the children in this District do not belong to the district or the state the states want

167schools to enter into gender support plans and transition children at schools sadly and absurdly this board supported ab1 1955 and are happy to keep secrets from parents when their child is in a crisis this is far from the role of schools to educate thank goodness a lawsuit has been filed against this law gender affirming care is not evidence-based it is an experimental ideologically motivated pseudo science gender affirming care will go down in history like labotomy the tusi experiment and the opioid crisis June 6 2024 the American College of Pediatrics called on prominent American Medical institutions to Halt current harmful protocols promoted for children and Adolescent to express discomfort with or biological sex August 14 2024 American Society of classtic Surgeons currently understands that there is considerable uncertainty as to the long-term efficacy for the use

168of chest and genital surgical interventions for the treatment of adolescence with gender dysphoria history will regard this agenda as a social epidemic and the largest child abuse Scandal ever seen in America parents pay attention talk to your children go to the schools look at the books the curriculum the paperwork your child brings home parent protect your child from this agenda thank you that concludes public comment on section g thank you and do any trustees have questions or wish to discuss uh the items in section g please so speaking on G4 specifically I just wanted to say speaking as a Filipino ameran and seeing as how half of the student board members that have served on this board our Filipino Americans thank you you know to truste Barrera and baso for proposing this resolution but the

169district in general for putting so much effort into recognizing these cultural things flag raising events Etc it truly is uplifting but beyond that right how can we extend the this recognition acknowledgement and celebration to the curriculum more than just ethnic studies history and language classes how can we incorporate the this to classes like English science and even math much like uh how Miss neek Incorporated democracy and stuff like that to physics you know how can we do the same with our cultural things a personal anecdote I could give is that during my sophomore English class um we read a book that followed a Filipino American narrative and all the Nuance all the nuances that came with that reading it I was able to connect with it much deeper than I think I would have with

170like something written by Shakespeare or Hemingway you know we should extend these efforts so that students can feel more uplifted and acknowledged as they are educated in our schools thank you thank you all this yes I would quickly like to speak on behalf of the resolution passed towards vaping from trusty Cruz and trusty boso and myself many years ago before trusty Cruz and I were born cigarettes plagued our nation and to fix the damages done by cigarettes as a nation we binded together and we helped our nation and we helped the people and our citizens in our country but truthly with vaping products that have been an epidemic in our country and in our school district it's reversed the good that we've done I can honestly attest that every other time I use the restroom

171I'll go in and I'll see a group of five to 10 students V in the bathroom every single day and the truth is as a district this needs to change one of our goals is wellness and mental health and truthfully vaping harms students well-being this is the first step in a long journey of fixing the damages done by vaping and I'm glad that as a district we're tackling this thank you trusty baso thank you president Hazen and I'm actually honored to have co-sponsored all three of these resolutions I guess I was was over enthusiastic this evening with my resolution sponsoring but they're all very important and I really appreciate the speakers that came as well as our student speakers who spoke tonight as well as our staff for all they do um to support um

172you know our lgbtq students our Filipino students as well as this um work that we're doing around vaping and uh I just want to share a couple statistics as well um I think we all know this is a huge I'm talking about the resolution specifically problem um so again I'm very thankful that we were able to shed some light on this critically important issue here for our district students ecigarette use among youth in the US has dramatically increased to what the Surgeon General and the FDA have called epidemic levels in fact a study by the American Heart Association found that nicotine vapor used among people ages 13 to 24 increased the risk of devel in depression anxiety and also Suicidal Thoughts the US FDA and the US CD the CDC released a report in November

1732018 that showed more than 3.6 million middle and high school students are using ecigarettes that was 2018 which is an increase of 1.5 million compared to 2017 and almost 13 times higher than the number of Youth using e ecigarettes in 2011 so so um some very alarming numbers uh teens who use these cigarettes are nearly three times more likely to go on to smoke combustible cigarettes than their peers the kind that were start around when before you were born right um I remember when I was in high school I'm showing my age a little bit when kids had to go outside to smoke and this was in Chicago so it would be snowing and they would be outside smoking so it shows you what a amazing addiction it is even for our young people and

174sand die unified received part of this multi-state settlement with Jewel if you don't know what jewel is that's the people that make the vaping products um and we are going to use some of those funds we wish we could use more but some of them to to lead some student Le engagement um it's going to include public awareness and education initiative to promote education about the harmful effects of ecigarettes vaping devices and flavored tobacco products and it's going to be launched this week along with the red RI Ribbon Week and if you don't know what that is it's a drug awareness campaign that takes every takes place every October across the US so um very proud that the district is taking part in this and thank you to our students thank you for your leadership

175on this uh let's go ahead and vote student trustees please vote and all other trustees motion passes unanimously with the student board members concurring we'll now consider items each one through each three propose 2025 summer school sites and dates emergency waiver for physical plant repairs and revision to annual resolutions that allow the superintendent and staff to conduct District business on behalf of the board is there a motion to approve these items thank you have a motion from trusty white her pay is there a second thank you trusty Barrera uh do any trustees have questions or wish to discuss these items okay student trustees please vote and all other trustees the motion passes unanimously with the student board members concurring we'll now consider items i1 through i36 the superintendent consent agenda items I5 13 15 16

176and 20 were previous iously withdrawn by staff Dr bagula are there any items on the consent agenda you'd like to highlight for us tonight yes tonight I'd like to highlight I6 it's an agreement with Girls Incorporated of San Diego County which will provide the district with a whole girl health and wellness program that will helped underserved District students to overcome gender economic and social barriers specifically this program is designed to help girls ages 8 to 18 see College as attainable resist peer pressure while learning essential life skills and explore professional fields in stem in which women are underrepresented the program provides relevant field tested and research-based curriculum that confront the serious needs of girls while building the knowledge skills and attitudes to enable girls to be competent confident adult women this will be a districtwide

177agreement open to all high schools wonderful thank you all right uh do any trustees wish to pull any items uh for discussion from the consent agenda I just want to recuse myself from I3 okay all right so is there a motion on items i1 through 36 we have a motion is there a second oh thank you trusty Barrera I know my pereral what did you recuse from which number I3 I3 thank you thank you okay we have a motion a second uh are there any speakers on Section I yes uh we have a virtual speaker on three of the items it is Pam T and we'll have her speak on all three of her items I3 I6 and I9 and she will have three minutes hi this is Pam I'm just really calling uh G

178to comment on number number six the whole girl health and wellness program this is a great idea especially because it's to address barriers and we all know social barriers can be quite um overwhelming so I'd like to encourage this to continue but to it should not include boys pretending to be girls as boys pretending to be girls can be quite the barrier for girls feeling confident in themselves their own self-esteem and self worth in their own identity so I hope that boys pretending to be included in this program thank you so much are you also speaking on I3 I6 and I9 oh she's done thank you that concludes comment on Section I all right uh let's go ahead and vote student trustees please go ahead thank you and all other trustees motion passes unanimously with

179the student board members concurring we'll now receive public testimony on non-agenda items do we have any requests for non-agenda comment yes let me get that list we have six inperson uh commenters each person we'll have two minutes Linda Williams thank you and good evening superintendent Dr vagula and esteemed board I'm Linda K Williams retired after teaching K through six for 38 years and this evening I strongly urge you to please do two things things first and everybody up there has a copy of this and also some of the people back here have a copy of this I energetically advocate implementing this Dynamic poster a day in a Beloved Community which I know both you and I love Dr bagula and many kudos to our own Dr Michelle ferer and her restorative justice practices team for

180the creation and then it kind of took on a life of its own and was added to by people in Oceanside and it's quite exciting the potential that it holds and when these foundational aspects of rjp are implemented they will go far towards preventing and addressing bullying of any and all students in our district and the second thing on at the April 16th board meeting and that's on the other side here you all uh promised to take action in a number of ways to prevent islamophobia and to address the bullying specifically of Arab students and to meet their needs in other ways and please we want to hear from you about the status of those actions and their results please put that topic on the agenda for the next school board meeting thank you and

181I will add that I had some words of wisdom shared with me by um Richard berera a number of years ago that there can be many beautiful words that get passed as resolutions but it all comes down to the implementation thank you thank you Pamela Merill hi I'm speaking on the behalf of my mother she is the Building Services Supervisor for John Mir and I want to bring to the board's attention the distri the district's illegal retray policies that have resulted in the theft of my mother's wages in August 2022 she was informed that John M's expansion at the time that had met the square footage for the change of her position from a BSS one to a bss2 she was informed that it would take some time but her the position would actually be

182paid out retroactively she recently received an email I didn't know I could send this out to you guys ahead of time um which I have copies for everyone here that she would actually not be receiving the two years of retro pay for her position even they acknowledge that she did qualify as a bss2 as of August 22 but they're only going to be paying her out as far as August 23 we have consulted with a legal counsel and if she's not paid for the two full years by December 10th we are prepared to take this to Federal Court we want to give the board the chance to write this wrong my mother deserves to be compensated for the work she has done steal the wages of employees is not the way for the district to

183solve its budget issues I'm not sure if it I'm not sure if it's permitted to actually hand this over thank you Eric shamen shamen shamine yes so to the last speaker the superintendent will look into to that item thank you uh Omar good evening board members uh my name is Omar abush and I'm representing K the Council on American Islamic relations so thank you for the opportunity for allowing me to speak today I'm here to advocate for the enhancement of Mental Health Services forab and Muslim Students across San Diego unified uh and to push for the inclusion of their voices on the district's ethnic studies curriculum our Arab and Muslim Students face unique challenges including islamophobia discrimination and C cultural cultural marginalization which impact their mental health they deserve access to counselors and professionals who

184understand their cultural and religious experiences what uh what's missing in our schools is culturally competent mental health support we need cers and professionals who not only understand the specific experiences that and Muslim Students face but who can provide care that is sensitive to their cultural and religious uh values by hiring staff trained uh trained in or from these communities we can create safer spaces where students less uh are seen and supported additionally it's critical that adup and Muslim voices are included and represented in the ethnic studies program I strongly urge the board to push for their inclusion of aible and Muslim voices in the ethnic studies curriculum our stories contributions and histo and histories deserve to be shared in our classrooms care ADC and the school district can work together to create a school environment

185where every student feels valued and supported thank you thank you and baron all right Samar good evening my name is Samara Ismail I'm with the Council of American Islamic relations as the community organizer and just like rad I'm here advocating for the inclusion of Mental Health Resources what our students are going through whether it be Palestinian adab or Muslims is you can't even put into words along with the genocide and happening in philistine grappling with that watching it unfold on their phones while also having teachers who aren't equipped with the proper tools to help assist them and guide them through this really difficult times we really need mental health resources that not only help our students feel safe and heard but to uplift them because again as someone who I just graduated from UCSD and

186I can tell you that the their Mental Health Resources really did help out a lot allowing you to feel grounded allowing you to feel understood and heard because for so long we feel as if we've been ostracized in these school systems it's imperative for us to have resources that help them feel seen and help them feel as if they belong because again unfortunately the education system is just now making the turn to recognize adabs and Muslims and Palestinians and a step further that we can take is to properly teach about it whether it be through the inclusion of ethnic studies to talk about our beautiful system City's diversity San Diego is made up of multiple people of different backgrounds and the Muslim population is very prevalent here it is our job to properly teach it

187so that way we can cultivate that safe Society for everyone to belong so hopefully with the help of care and ADC we can help assist you in providing those Mental Health Resources for our students along with creating an educational curriculum to ensure that every single student whether it be Palestinian otor Muslim feels as if they are seen heard and that they belong and allows their peers to better understand them thank you thank you and I believe we have one virtual speaker Pam T go ahead Pam you have two minutes hi some very concerning issues occurred and are occurring due to this board's actions lack of actions or just directly in front of your noses thank goodness Lamont is gone due to his confirmed questionable Behavior but should he have gone sooner this board supported a

1881955 signed into law by Governor Newsome this law permits schools to keep secrets from parents about their minor children regarding sex and gender issues sad test scores based on Ed Source in the overall San Diego unified test results for 2024 54% of students only 54% met or exceeded state standard in English in math very sadly only 43% of students met or exceeded the state standard the numbers of that did not meet standards are slowly increasing from 2023 in 2023 this District's graduation rate was 89.9% it sounds great doesn't it but this number would include many students who did not meet standards many colleges are now claiming new students are not able to reap there are many good teachers who want to educate and many students who want to learn but there is so much crap

189incorporated into the curriculum this interferes with their learning finally the district is projected to hit a major budget gap for the 2025 26 school year of 176 million and 230 Million by 2026 2027 how did this happen probably spending a lot of money on the non-education agenda what are you going to do this looks like a a runaway train parents time to go private or homeschool and Doris barar I believe has joined as well you have two minutes hi thank you so much I actually had to leave and came back and you were still going sorry about that um I'm uh with the American araban discrimination committee and I'm the West Coast coordinator and uh I wanted to just present uh by the way I enjoyed all that discussion about you know I I enjoyed

190the level of conversation about the math scores and all of that I just wanted to let you know I appreciated that conversation um so I would like to offer to the board and other entities uh in the San Diego unified to um allow me to create a presentation about arab-americans their history history their legacy and all of that I really feel like we are so far behind in our understanding of it because there's been an eraser and erosion that's been going on for 50 or 60 years if not more about arab-americans and there's a lot of ignorance it's just a mountain of ignorance and um this presentation has been given to KPBS San dieo un Union Tribune uh Democratic party um various other organizations uh such as radi uh Children's Hospital staff uh it discusses

191things in a very Broadway in terms of the kinds of uh not just the contributions to uh American history and history overall but the special needs of arab-americans their health issues a lot of data and it's called um Arab Americans who are we it's a 17 to 20 slideshow presentation that takes you all the way back to the beginning of this country when uh Arab Americans came here as slaves and it it just sort of reflects upon their journey and various issues that are very relevant to us now so I would like to propose that this slideshow which takes about half an hour and then with qu Q&A requires about one hour of your time to be given to the board administrators staff Etc it's I want to make that a formal request I'll follow

192up with a letter as well and I'll give you a link to the slideshow it's a Google slide thank you thank you well thank you all for taking the time to provide your comments to the board and the superintendent today we appreciate your input and please know that your perspectives help us to better serve our students parents and the community this meeting is now adjourned our next regular board excuse me excuse me sorry sorry but I applied as a speaker and my name was not set are you Eric no I'm ahed oh I didn't see your name but go ahead two minutes please so sorry about that go ahead okay um I'm a student that came graduated from the Sano board the or the Sano Union district I came from Tory Pines High School I'm

193now a f Community member that is concerned about our Middle Eastern Arab student support we come from a district where there there was Administration and faculty that supported our voice that helped us bring it out and were inclusive but our faculty and our administration were not informed they were not educated and to see how other peers other students reject our ideas and reject our education and our educational awareness because they're not hearing it from an adult is horrifying to see and horrifying to hear we need adults we need teachers we need faculties in our districts that are educated that are that are intelligent in these perspectives that understand those feelings that understand these beliefs these mem Memories the history that underlies our culture and our Origins and that's why we need Middle Eastern ethnic studies

194within your curriculum to apply that curriculum to get professional educated mentors with these ideas with these thought processes to get counselors that can support those people those student memories is important to students and their success throughout our high school throughout Middle School throughout elementary school if we don't receive that support you are losing a student's life you are losing a student's emotion their souls are are being lost to the devastation so we have to stand to that thank you thank you and again thank you all for your feedback the meeting is now officially adjourned and our next regular board meeting will be held on November 12th 2024 for