Board of Education Regular Meeting

001welome everyone watching on ITV and Via live stream and call the March 26 2024 regular meeting to order with all board members present we'll now move on to our flag ceremony they are not here so we will not go to our flag ceremony but we will still do the pledge so truste Kor if you could please lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance ready begin I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you please be seated we'll now move on to item B1 adoption of the agenda while we'll consider a variety of topics tonight the primary objective for the board and the public at this meeting is to receive a progress

002report on this year's social emotional learning goal i' I'd like a motion to adopt today's agenda with the exception of item F2 which has been withdrawn and will be re agendized at our next meeting on April 16th is there a motion so moved thank you trusty Whitehurst Payne and seconded by trusty boso and we'll go ahead and vote trusty lavender Williams I truste korano I and all others electronically the motion passes unanimously with the 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

003at 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 public comment please listen for your name to be called 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 with the agenda so that you know know when your item is coming up for discussion when you begin speaking a green light below my name on the dis indicates that the timer has started when the light turns yellow you have 1

004minute remaining a buzzer will indicate that your time has expired if you have not yet done so and would like to sign up for inperson public comment iPads are available in the back of the auditorium and in the lobby thank you we'll now hear item C1 announce ment of the 20242 student board member election process trustees korano and lavender Williams not for sure which one of you were going first but please present the item okay so I'm hearing we have a video that the student trustees would like to share of which they are the stars here it comes what is your name and term my name is Boston lavender Williams I'm a senior at Lincoln High School and my term has been one year uh how do y'all I'm Matthew uh karano I'm a student

005at San Diego High School and this is my second term serving on our school board what is a student board member by definition well by definition we're like every other board member so we go to school sites we're like the superintendent's boss um so we'll we I mean you'll learn more about all the hierarchies but we set long-term fiveyear goals about really what our school district wants to do we um set priorities and we start our own little projects I Define student board member as a student who ensures student voice student opinions and it's just really over on powerful Unapologetic and just speaks of what they believe and what have been some of the most important factors that go into being a student board member I think the most important factors that go into being

006a student board member is the time commitment but it's honestly all whatever you make it rather it's the mandatory board Tuesdays the um special Workshops the School site visits I think it all just comes down to whatever you choose in additional to just having having your own focuses and priorities that you really want to do to impact students day life well I think first of all is to recognize the time commitment it is a lot of time I have very little free time um these last two years additionally transportation is incredibly incredibly important we're going to be everywhere from bario Logan to scripts Ranch all the way like in the same day and so to be able to have that can we pause the video please so we can make sure that we can hear

007our student trustees and I want to remind everybody that we do need the auditorium to be quiet as we're going through the agenda and encourage anyone who'd like to speak to join us during either agenda or non-agenda public comment okay and if we can play the video again Co um but don't worry about pay um all your transportation fees will be covered so don't worry about that what have been some of the best moments of being a student board member rather it's hearing Cody's such adventurous stories or laughing with about TLC and other '90s groups or connecting with Sharon about our love for our community in Lincoln or seeing Richard with his diet coke on him every meeting shaya's thirst for knowledge to support the students the best she can or Sabrina and I laughing

008over a good pot pie I think for me it's just really been about having that partner Matthew who I can lean on whenever I need him I'm going to say one of my favorite is all of our School site visits so part of being a student board member is that we go visit School sites um and like every high school we shout out the ASB president and see kind of what's going on there uh what that school is like and it is really really fun to meet a lot of really new people from across San Diego I've learned so much about myself about San Diego about our schools it's a wonderful experience what should students know if they wish to run you should know that nomination form will be open from March 12th to April

00913th and just expect some Town Halls where it's really just students will come Community leaders different organizations will come and just ask you about what you believe in and what you're about and what you can do for our school district uh first make sure that this is the right position for you it's a lot of time and if you can't dedicate that time that's okay um but maybe this position isn't for you additionally it's an election an open election and so really be prepared to campaign be prepared um to get all that stuff done the campaign is really interesting especially seeing aot you get to meet a lot of great fellow students uh you do need 200 signatures as part of the campaign so just be thinking about that um if you have any questions

010about whether or not this position is right for you uh we have an Instagram at sdusd students and we have uh feel free to contact Siders sandy.net for more information to all the students out there if you're having doubts about running this upcoming election the only requirement is to care is to know what you believe in to know what you stand for to know who you are you're ready and you got this it's okay if you don't know all the requirements of what a student board member is or should know or the language around it I believe in you and I hope to see you run thank you both any I know you didn't have any words to te it up at any closing sentiments no I just uh want to continue to know that

011students should run and I look forward to seeing all the nominations come in thank you I don't have much to say um just I want to thank the team for putting that video together um so so much help in making that possible uh and I look forward to meeting all the great new candidates for next year thank you yes please I would like to encourage us as trustees also to go out on the day when they have the Open Session I think it's on Saturday April 20th my only comment is I believe that's R's day where we have school bands or whatever going to R and we will be in and out so we could have a little bit coordination with that so that I'm sure the schools have already been told when they're going

012out to R and I know we as trustees usually go so will go in to hear some of it the students are doing so thank you thank you all right well we will move on to item D1 uh General Council green are there any reportable actions from closed session no Dr Jackson we're moving on to item D2 any management appointments to announce I do I have one this evening that we will be appointing uh very excited to appoint the director for the Logan Memorial educational campus and that is Sylvia Martinez and uh I do apologize in advance to the Pacific View leadership Elementary Community uh but I know the Logan Memorial educational campus is very excited uh for this appointment uh thank you to everyone who participated uh in this process uh that is it

013for this evening thank you great thank you and we will now go to item D3 our Associated student body president report and I'm very happy to welcome ASB president Nani Kalo hilani aavees from moris high school nalani if you could please tell us a little bit about yourself and what you'd like our board to know about what's happening at Morse and we always find it helpful to understand how our board policies are impacting students on your campus um hello hello again my name is Nani kohani Chavez and I'm a senior and ASV president at Morris High School sorry this year um Morris has proudly became a Community School uh although we have been included with our community before our given label as a community school such as um being part of parades and having activities

014after school for families around the community to come to sorry um speaking of after school activities mors High ASB this year has been focusing on planning more like fun activities for our peers such as dances and after school activities in October Morris had a successful KUSI alarm clock pep rally and homecoming dance at Town and Country Resort currently Morris High ASB is hosting a food fair this Friday um to give a chance for clubs sorry clubs to fundraise and for everyone and not only just students to to buy food and help support Morris's clubs and classes on campus we're also planning a stie Hawkins dance in April since we want to accommodate more to our peers who have been mentioning that more should have more dances than just homecoming besides evenge for Morris has to

015offer our staff sorry our staff has been so supportive and loved by our students um this year such as one of our teachers Mrs Miller who is this year's San Diego Unified School District um High School teacher of the year awesome um along with the awards our small all male dance team recently won first place WCE small all male and we're so proud of everyone who got some sort of award this year also our ASB has made new experiences with fellow asbs in our district at the ASB dance that UC had hosted this year which was really fun this year at Morris we have been we have became a community school and there has been a bigger need to accommodate to not only our students but to their families as well um I am part

016of our school subcommittee for the community school which um sorry which we have meetings with our new um community school coordinator have like basically we meet up to know how we can get more information from families um again to not only accommodate just students but their families as well just so that we can give their students and the community a better like experience especially from our school um our school committees uh our commit school committee school subcommittee has meetings to approved to talk about things that are needed to be approved D such as events that have to do with funding and creating surveys for families to know how moris can accommodate to them to make our school like an umbrella of a resource and that's all I have thank you thank you so much and

017really appreciate you highlighting the Community Schools work I think as we talk about wanting to understand how board policies and in this case State policy um is impacting students [Applause] [Music] at held at UCSD and we had a number of teams that showed up and if I if I don't get them all but I'm going to remember uh Patrick Henry was there cerney high school claramont was there uh Canyon Hills was there and Lincoln High School was there and I did get an invitation from Lincoln High School to go out and um watch them compete I got a chance to go in the they call it the pit right where they're they're designing or tweaking their robotic uh their robot and um I I want to say that I was really inspired by the students

018who were designing and building and programming uh the robot and this is like fresh I just got notification that Lincoln High School actually won the Qualcomm Innovation award it's one award given uh to a high school and it was $110,000 to help them as they go off to Houston and compete in the 2024 first world championship in Houston Texas let's give them a round of applause and and all of our schools and I I really want to share this the spirit of the concentric Circle because this is Lincoln's first year and um when the coach was having uh I don't want to give all the business but he was having a baby his his wife they were having a baby he was out and I want to thank the coach from Patrick Henry High School

019who stepped in and supported their team and it's it's truly a community so thank you to uh Patrick Henry as well and uh for all the the schools who were competing um it was if you've never been to a robotics competition I encourage you uh to go out it is quite an experience um the crowds uh really compete um but they're really encouraging and uh the work of collaboration and thoughtful planning and executing with the team uh comes into play and so congratulations to everyone and uh especially the the Lincoln high Stingers um uh we appreciate all of you uh I also want to thank our board trustees um last weekend we had a strong showing yes give it up to uh trusty Williams strong showing in DC as we participated in a conference with

020the Council of great City schools and several trustees uh advocated for full funding um idea um and Title One funding um also fully um funding our impact Aid um to support our um students in the military community and really um seeking reimbursement from uh the storms that we experienced here um thank you to all of the trust trustees who attended and participated uh really appreciate um sharing with our Congressional Delegation uh the importance of the work here in supporting our students and our Educators um and we will continue to Advocate um for more funding and um really recognize our Educators for showing up I see you I hear you we do um we recognize that we need to keep advocating for the funding necessary to make sure that students receive the education uh they so

021deserve and finally I want to give a shout out and what we're going to hear from Nicole dwit a little bit later our senior executive director of thriving School Community uh who uh was able to go up and uh testify um to the assembly budget subcommittee of educational Finance last Wednesday and um she talked about the implementation of expanded learning opportunities uh here in San Diego and really pushing uh the advocacy for mbly Bill and uh thank you to uh assembly person um Al maruchi who is carrying that bill and really thinking about how to help us as we are going to see uh about a$7 million uh hit to expanded learning so thank you uh to Nicole for going up and representing us uh to make sure that our students and our staff have

022a voice um at the state level so that concludes my report this evening thank you thank you and I was so excited when we received an announcement about the uh robotics competition and seeing the award Lincoln gotten for me I think recognizing we don't just schools don't just have to have a winning football team they can have a winning robotics team and so often I think we lift up Athletics or music and those things are really important but there's so many other ways for students to get involved and follow their passion so it was exciting to hear that for the first time ever we now have this opportunity at Lincoln so thank you to everybody um that has been involved in that and and I want to lift this up because I know we talk

023about this often in terms of math and engineering and Science and uh profession that historically is dominant um with with males um there is a young lady leading that Lincoln Hornet team so uh I don't have her name but uh she's leading that that team so uh they're they're all phenomenal so thank you for LIF fantastic even better all right we will now move on to item E1 a progress report on our 20232 24 social emotional learning goal back to you thank you president Hazen and next we're going to receive a presentation uh joining me on the stage this evening uh is Nicole dwit as I mentioned our senior executive director of thriving schools community and um we will be presenting uh jointly I'm going to be joining her in this presentation I know that's

024uh not often but Nicole was kind enough to uh say yes as I I said do you mind if I present with you and she said yes and so uh we're going to provide an update on uh social emotional learning um and really paying attention to uh our response as a collective Community uh as the board has set forward uh their goal and so um I want to begin by saying thank thank you to the Board of Trustees and when I say the board goal I would like to say your goal is our goal um this is about our students this is about our staff and our community so this isn't the board's goal this is a goal that um we all believe in and I want to thank you for the courage to really

025um move forward in putting this as a priority I know we have a focus on um Ela uh English language arts and Mathematics and this board um truly committed to making sure that we focused on the social emotional learning of our students and I want to thank you for that and so I do want to remind us as we um progress on the next slide that um we have an agenda that we will be following and um that agenda includes um reminding us of our board goal and then we want to pay attention to what we need to solve that should ground Us in this work and then we're going to identify some gaps there are some things that we have been implementing over the last few years but we recognize that we need greater

026alignment and so Nicole is going to be uh speaking to that and our current reality and then we'll present to you our next steps our plan ahead uh with some very specific dates uh that you can expect us and that we can expect ourselves to accomplish as we move forward so the next slide is really addressing the board goal and I want to lift up a couple of um points here first is the idea of a very clear goal and research-based assessment we need to recognize that we need a way to identify what our students need we also need to know where we want them to be so that ideal State and we need to be able to evaluate our growth and development this is not just recognizing the end goal but our growth and

027development along the way and recognize and and thank you for lining this to Vision 20 for 2030 uh that's really really important here specifically around resilience perseverance a growth mindset uh these are some things that this board has committed to and I want to I want to lift up the recognition is we're not solid with our assessment we're not solid with our wraparound services we're not solid with um the outside resources that we need to make sure we're serving our students and Nicole's going to talk a bit about that I do want to ground us here um very specifically we're talking about social emotional learning um we are not um talking solely about um well I shouldn't say we're talking solely about social emotional learning we're not getting into this dialogue about mental Health that

028is that is different we're really talking about very specific um states of social emotional learning including uh recognizing this is about a process where all of our young people need to acquire and apply knowledge skills and attitudes to develop healthy identities self-awareness manage emotion like where students can regulate and be in environments where they can um learn how to do that and really Achieve Personal and Collective goals and really feel and show empathy uh for others um we also want them to establish and maintain supportive relationships and really make responsible and caring decisions so I want to be very clear that we're not talking about the broader mental health component of the overall psychological well-being and the challenging of day-to-day functionality as as a human being so I I think that needs to be crystal

029clear here um as we move forward as I mentioned we need to talk about uh what we need to solve and in the center here um you'll see that we really need to pay attention to our ability to support our students that is our our clear Focus now there are some components that we need to pay attention to there's some small clouds um don't yet pay attention to the one that's blinking at you but I'm glad you noticed that that was intentional um thank you Nicole for creating that that that's beautiful that that was Nicole's idea we recognize that student schedules impact are impacted during the school day and this impacts our ability to support our students social emotional learning we also know that there we need more opportunities for students to explore their passions

030and their joy we also recognize that um we have to figure out ways to know our our impact on students we we recognize that we need that assessment right but the Highlight here is as you mentioned uh president Hazen is the one that mentions too many moving parts and while this looks like you know One Singular bubble I want to suggest that it it gives the you know illusion that it's only one component but there are many moving parts and it suggests that um if we were to somehow figure out how to put all these pieces together that everything's going to be okay well unfortunately I want to share that these parts are more complex than just putting these pieces together and that's what we're working on so some of the varant uh intangible components

031like relationships belief systems process and procedures bias and prior experience come into play in terms of these moving parts and then there are some parts that are more concrete components that are also moving and that's like our departments that are working in silos also our communication and our Collective responsibility to to make sure that we're working to make sure we all understand this is our responsibility and the collective support and I'm not just talking about the school system but our entire Community um as we were talking about earlier Morris High School community school is like what are the wraparound services at in the school and in the school Community um that need to come together and so um our Focus this evening is to share um the large picture and now Nicole's going to talk

032about the gaps that exists um in terms of some of the concrete components that we've been implementing but also some gaps that exist in terms of the the lack of links and uh the plan forward so I'm going to turn over to unle thank you Dr Jackson I believe it was your idea for that little Sparkle there so I can't take credit for that one I I wow you were gonna out me just like that just like that so so with that moving into our next piece about identifying gaps we do have a integrated um work group that has formed across several different departments to take a look at what are those critical components of a social emotional learning program um and so what we've identified are really these four components here first and foremost

033there has to be some sort of assessment tool and that assessment tool has to be utilized throughout the year so it can't just be given once we need to give it several times throughout the year in order to monitor progress and growth um the second piece really falls on to care coordination so if we're seeing um based off of that assessment tool that students need more support maybe they need small group umal lessons maybe they need some social skill development who is monitoring those results and coordinating the care for those students so that's another critical area um the third piece is related to our adults um we need to do a better job training up not just our staff but also our families our caregivers around Mental Health First Aid um so what are those

034signs that you're seeing in your young person that maybe might indicate they need a little bit more support um when it comes to social emotional learning and then the last piece and I think probably the most important is the cluster alignment so what is that experience of a child as they move through the cluster and what type of consistent cohesive supports can they receive related to social emotional learning if we only have it at the high school level that's not going to help our elementary students develop their skills if we only have it at the elementary level then how are they continuing to grow those skills well into you know middle and high school school so what is that cluster alignment there uh but we do recognize this is going to be a heavy lift

035um because as Dr Jackson mentioned there's a lot of moving Parts it's very complex and so it would be very difficult to just instantly roll this out districtwide and so we want to be really intentional by piloting this in five clusters um within the first year so that we can learn lessons around you know what's working what's not working and make some fine-tuning before we to implement it for the entire District so it's important for us to know like what do we currently use what's our reality right now and so we wanted to start that conversation related to theal assessment tool so right now we do utilize the California healthy kids survey and there is a section on that survey related to mental health indicators that do ask students questions related to sadness um social

036and emotional distress suicide as well as overall Wellness um but one of the major challenges with the California healthy kids survey is that it does not provide individualized results so you get results that are schoolwide results but it does not allow you to drill down to the specific student so it would be very challenging to be able to provide individualized support it's also only given in particular grade levels so it's only given in grades five seven 9 and 11 um so it is not comprehensive for our entire system and so it really is only a snapshot in time of that particular um grade level and how they're feeling so there are limitations there with that assessment um we also currently this year use something called my Sabers it is part of The fastbridge Suite of

037Assessments so what we currently utilize for the fast Ela and the fast math assessments this is another um assessment that they give that is a screener so it is primarily used as a screener in partnership with our County Behavioral Health uh programs that we run I'm I'm sure some of you have gone in and seen uh what we call lovingly the dinal program um so they are social emotional lessons that are given in our Kinder through third grade classes um in 17 of our elementary schools and then this year we launched our screening to Care Program um in partnership with County BHS which is at our middle schools and so that's also utilized as a screener to help determine students that need tier 2 supports or referral to tier three services um the challenge with

038my Sabers is that it does require active consent so what that means is that the caregiver does have to actively consent to allow their child to screen because it does give individualized results and so that has been a barrier for us this year um in utilizing that screener we've had very low return rates on consent which has made it hard to get a holistic um picture of what the individualized needs are of a particular um campus so that has been a challenge for us um there's also not necessarily a progress monitoring tool built into the screener currently in its form we are working with our vendor to see what the possibilities are in the future but it really is meant to be more of a screener than a progress monitoring tool and then the last

039piece has to do with our observational uh referral so obviously staff have interactions with students and they may notice something that indicates hey the student needs a little bit more support um and refer them to more tier two or tier three supports but we're finding and that's a big struggle for us is that lack of integration and coordination of care so sometimes you may have an interaction with a counselor who refers the student to one thing and maybe that same student has an interaction with a nurse who may refer the student to something else or the student has an IEP and it's someone connecting with the case manager to see what the needs of the student are that lack of integration is making it challenging to really pinpoint the service that's needed for the child

040and to avoid duplication of services right and so that is a challenge and a struggle for us so the good news is that we have been selected to be part of cohort one of both the student and youth Behavioral Health Initiative as well as the child um youth behavioral initiative uh programs lovingly called SB hip and cbhi know we all love alphabet soup up here um but what that's allowing us to do is to tap into a revenue stream that previously has been underutilized so for SB hip we will be able to leverage the medical Belling system to um build tier 2 uh services that some of our staff members are providing and then with cbhi this actually opens up a billing a support system for managed care so up to this point we've only

041been able to utilize medical um dollars to do cost reimbursement for tier 2 and tier three services will now through the new SB hit program be able to leverage that for managed care as well so that will help us in our efforts um in launching this pilot for the upcoming school year so for our plan ahead specifically what we're looking at is we are planning to identify an seal assessment tool by July 2024 um so that we can start to look at the different components of that tool and start educating um our schools will be participating in this in the tool itself and what the consent needs might be um so we can and do an active campaign to get as many consent forms as possible um in addition we'll be identifying Pathways for care

042coordination prior to the start of the school year so that again we can bring our schools alongside us on here's some options um for care coordination and help you put those systems and structures in place we're also working with our partners um at the county level at the state level and with our local universities on Mental Health First Aid training what options can be available for both caregivers and staff and getting those options to our school sites prior to the start of the 2425 school year and as I mentioned we want to select five clusters um to participate in this first cohort of sbhp and cbhi to really focus on that cluster alignment of services so that's kind of our plan ahead um like I said we know it's a heavy lift we know it's

043going to be very complex and messy um but we also know that all four of these components are very critical um to the suex six of oural development for our students thank you Nicole and um I will say um our learning from our um our pilot clusters will then uh be able to drive our plan going forward so we'll be able to come back to the board with a more um specific plan in terms of addressing uh greater numbers of students um and and communities so thank you very much do any cheses have any questions trusty white pay thank you president haen u in terms of your first one the the assessment tool are you thinking that there would be a fixed time that a teacher would say to all of her students or will

044students be able to decide when they want to take the assessment or I mean how free is it going to be so what we would like to do ideally is at least three times per year have that window of assessment defined to have like a pre a mid and a post there could be opportunities to do the assessment in between those times um if that's what the school or the educator would like to establish within it but we do want to at least assess three times and have like a standardized uh time frame for doing that and I realized I didn't ask if we had any public comment on the item we do not any other question questions or discussion from trustees oh okay try Barrera thank you president Hazen thank you so much Nicole

045and LaMont um yeah really uh very very clear uh very clear presentation but I I know that that represents a lot of complicated work that you're um that you're trying to pull together so um could you talk a little bit more about the I forget our acronyms but it's it's accessing medical and managed care what that means in terms of resources coming uh to our ability to support students that are um from not our traditional you know sources of funding for education and and and what that could potentially provide to our stud yeah yeah absolutely so up until this point um a lot of our services have been provided through um our County Behavioral Health Partnerships um and which have been a little limited um in what the offerings are and so what the SB

046hit program allows us to do is actually hire staff um our partner with other services or other organizations to best serve um students in those tier 2 and tier three supports and then those folks that are providing those services will be able to add those Services into the billing system for cost reimbursement so our hope um is that by leveraging these two new systems that it will be a sustainable funding source for us to be able to have a full spectrum of tier 2 and tier three services actually on our campuses um which I think is the most critical because we do know that there's a lot of barriers and challenges for students to access these resources within the community um or within their provider offices and so the more Partnerships that we can bring

047onto our school sites and leverage this funding source the more access students will have I think what we're seeing is that the wait time for um off-campus Services is very lengthy um it can be anywhere from six weeks to three to six months for them to see someone whereas the community providers that we brought in um during the pandemic they're able to see um students in just a week or two um depending on their case loads and so we've been leveraging that almost as a stop Gap like this is a a shortterm um uh support if we're seeing that a student needs a more longer term support than they do that warm handoff to the provider but we just want to make sure that if a student saying they need help that we get them

048that help as soon as possible and so it's much easier to do that when the services are on site so we will still maintain our County um contracts with County behavioral health so that will still be part of the offering um I think one of the things is that the focus in for County Behavioral Health has mainly been on tier three and so this and so these funding streams are saying let's focus on tier two if we can really build up um you know skills strategies um coping mechanisms for our students they may not need to access tier three but we've only been f focusing on tier three so let's now also Focus attention on tier 2 and really provide a lot of tier 2 services on our site so that is reducing the near

049the need for the tier three um offsite it ties what you're saying about St can you turn your mic on I'm sorry it was just saying that we know with the special education students they have case managers by definition but some of the newer students who may not be defined under that definition of special education this whole issue of case management who's going to monitor all the various pieces so that you don't have a worker coming here or someone from here and there and nobody's talking to anybody knows what's going on hopefully you guys are going to figure that piece of it out because that's that's critical it is and we already have some existing structures in place we use something currently within our nursing division called um school health network um that all of

050our nursing staff logs in um any services that are being provided to students and so we're actually looking to expand that to be inclusive of our Behavioral Health so that everything is in one system and folks will be able to see all the different services that the students um are leveraging on our campuses that is something that we're looking into trusty baso thank you and thank you for this much needed presentation I know you put a lot of time and effort into this I really appreciate it um I just had a question about and I know this is going to come later like the actual results and data but you talked about theal tool and that's something that is more of a screening tool that we're going to be looking at like three times a

051year right and then also the California healthy kid survey was the other one and that's a one time a year tool um so I'm I'm trying to get an idea of like when when we're when would we be able to see kind of see some of the results from some of that information and like how because you mentioned you know obviously for confidentiality we're not going to look at it by student but would it be grouped by school or by cluster or Elementary Middle High and then what are those data points like can you give me just an example of what those might look like I'm just trying to get a better visual of what to kind of anticipate and to think about as we move forward yeah absolutely so um as I mentioned that's

052our current reality that doesn't mean that has to be our reality moving forward um so I do just want to recognize that there are a lot of limitations with the California healthy kids survey um and so we may need to look at other options um because I think one of the things that we've discussed as a planning team is we also don't want to overs survey our students right and so is there a way for us to have some sort of screener that can serve multiple purposes right like can it be a screener to show those that need tier two and tier three supports but could it also monitor progress in the development of some of our social emotional skills and could it potentially um replace the California healthy kids survey as our school culture

053and climate those are all questions we're still grappling with um with the different vendor that we currently um contract these surveys so more to come on that we're still in that exploration we still have a lot of questions to ask to see what's possible um but but really need to do a deeper dive because we just don't want to give too many surveys because if you inundate folks with too many surveys then it just becomes something where they're like well this doesn't really matter or this is just another one and so we don't want to water down the importance of the assessment tool so just trying to figure out is there a way for us to capture everything in one or how do we really limit um the amount that we're utilizing and that makes

054sense I'm just trying to get a sense of like what are we measuring though like we measuring like their mood or I mean like can you give me an example like some of the questions that are they I'm just trying to get W my head around like what we're looking at and how we can make sense of some of that so that's something else that we're also looking at right now um in particular with the mys saers each question that's part of the mys saers screener right now actually ties back to a particular trait um so for instance there's one question that does tie to resiliency there's another question that ties to Independence um but we do need to do a deeper dive on like what is that correlation um between the question and the

055trait and are there some foundational traits that we have to build upon first before other traits um can be built up and so those are some of the things that we're still doing discovery on in our workg group vice president peton thank you president Hazen um first of all I just want to acknowledge uh how much work has gone into this with Dr dwit um we've had the President Hayes and I and the team have had a lot of grueling sessions and um one of the things I want to honor uh in terms Nicole's work is just how vast the purview she's been given and how diverse the challenges associated with that are and so I want to I want to honor that that work that you're doing it's very challenging and frequently in our

056previous conversations pre-con conversations about this I I I I feel overwhelmed for you so I you're you're navigating this with a lot of Grace and and resilience yourself so um and in relation to that uh uh Dr Jackson alluded to or superintendent Jackson alluded to the distinction between social emotional learning and and wellness and I would just flag that the board has not necessarily because we have not yet adopted the third goal we we've set a certain challenge for you you are having to work toward a third goal when we really haven't given adequate instruction in terms of what that goal timely would look like so and this is a bit to uh trusty bazo's question there given the constraints of our our governance work with um Council of the great City schools that we

057need a goal that measures what students know and can do there's an argument to be made that I mean we can certainly deviate from that this is they're not you know our religious leaders um so there is an argument to be made that there's something more fundamental to what students can know and do and that is what they can be I mean what they be and um and so I think I would just flag right now put a pin in it we do still need to have a conversation about what do what does the measure look like yes you could we can measure have they learned to be resilient I mean the things that they can learn to do in relation to the challenges of their life are important in terms of what of our

058work here but creating Wellness is is is to me just as if not more important for us and our work in terms of creating a student body that spends 13 years or 14 years in our in our um organization being well you know as a measure of our work uh so that is a student outcome that they are well and so I would just say in terms of that Continuum we have worked to do still as a board in in consultation with you and your team about that um and so um so that I I do think this there is the and we didn't talk too much about there layman in the audience or maybe someone's watching at home I don't know um and who don't necessarily understand tier one tier two tier three multi-tier

059system of support so I'll just say tier one are Universal supports they all students this is both academic and socio emotional but we're talking about emotional here Universal supports curriculum instruction for all students everyone gets some tier two targeted small group correct me if I'm wrong small group um for students that maybe experienc some challenges or at risk of for social emotional unwellness or whatever and tier three is for students that are Beyond at risk they're they're they're experiencing troubles and difficulties and so those are those involve differing levels of intervention and so I would transition to and I'm only have three points here I'm transition my second Point here which is one of the things that came through to me in our conversations and which to which you alluded in your description and I

060appreciate you not getting or I I I can recognize the value of you not getting bogged down in the staff work on that but is a system that is disintegrated discontinuous uh and inadequate at the level of identification meaning there are students we are where it is those three things for identifying it's it is those three things in relation to to referral that is even when we do identify it's coming from different referers in different context and then it's it's it's feeding into interventions that are themselves disintegrated disc continuous inadequate and so I just I guess I'm not I'm just saying I want to be clear to like the public and to our staff and to the board that you have a lot of work before you I I and and there's no reason to

061bog us down into conversation of what that is but I want to recognize that integrating that making continuous making adequate is a massive effort and we're fully behind you in that work and I would say finally in toward making that question of adequacy to pull back into the work you're doing with um SB hip my acronyms my acronym game is weak here but our two acronyms that is fundamentally about acquiring recognizing that we cannot with our with our unrestricted funds honestly adequately serve this need and so in in in the process of improving our identification and referral system we actually need to go after additional funds from all levels whether it be the county state state federal government all levels um in order to to take the burden off our unrestricted funds and have properly

062soci emotional intervention funds for that and so I want to honor the work your staff is doing I want to recognize the Towering challenges you face and whatever you need from us we stand here ready to Lobby in Sacramento or DC and talk to our constituents and um and uh yeah I'm just I appreciate having you on this team thank you for that I really appreciate that it it's a journey right and so it's a journey that we'll that we'll do together um I think one thing just to make the board aware we are part of cohort one which means there will see be some bumps in the road because we are going to be the Pioneers in this and so we're already starting to see a little bit of that being such a large

063District we are the largest District participating in cohort one for San Diego County there are some systems and structures that we need to work through um with the state when it comes to the system itself because we need to maintain both furpa um and Hippa compliance um and just maintain the privacy and safety of our students and our families um and so it may be a while until we can build into the system because we want to know um with security that when we do enter information into a system that it's never going to go any place else um and so that is something that we'll continue to work through and and Nicole you you bring bring up a good point I I want to I want to make sure to go back to this

064piece because this is where it gets fuzzy we start moving into this Mental Health Arena and we're really talking about social emotional learning so I just want to I want to flag that because as we go through this we have to stay diligent in in this component um and when we start talking tier two and tier three we start to move into that Arena and I just the board is really focused on social emotional learning and so we're going to have to think about how we are assessing and what we're reporting out from a social emotional learning standpoint so I just I want to bring us back to that but you can see how quickly we can start to get fuzzy there trusty korano thank you first I want to say a huge thank you

065for this presentation I think a lot of this work is really exciting and I'm really really ready for to go places not like it's already going places but to see it um really take off I had a really quick question when you talked about um you know the current reality of the the assessment systems that we used um repeatedly there was this challenge about how do we measure growth right and this wasn't just in one it was in fact all of them I want to say had issues about how do we measure these growth of students what do you really mean by that I'm not really understanding that term that's used here yeah absolutely so let's take for example if I as a school leader wanted to focus on building up the resiliency of my

066students right I need some way to measure progress for that so if I do some sort of pre-assessment that shows how their feeling as far as their resiliency I then would want to use um that information to do very targeted lessons and instruction um around resiliency and then do the same assessment again to see if there was growth in their resiliency level so that's what I'm talking about like right now we don't have a tool that's uh measuring progress in that way um the tools are mostly used as a screener um and not sort of used for Progress monitoring so we're really trying to work with some of our vendors to see what are the options for that um because we're looking at you know even past the vendors that we have and it doesn't

067really seem like that is something that's widely utilized right now um in current systems but that doesn't mean it can't be something that we develop in Partnership right and then I was also kind of wondering and I know that these like we're recognizing the current reality is not at all where we want to be from what I observe and and please correct me if I'm wrong is that a lot of these don't particular they're screeners they don't particularly measure social emotional learning they measure mental health which we trying to move away from from what I understand can you kind of paint the picture about what an ideal system would look like because I think we spent a lot of time talking about how right now we're not doing that but also like I feel like

068I don't really have a great understanding of what we're striving towards yeah absolutely I think that goes back to um some of the things that we've called out in the learner profile right so there are some components in the learner profile especially the piece on emotionally intelligent thinkers um where we are talking about resilience we are talking about growth mindset we are talking about adaptability those are social emotional learning traits so in an ideal State we would have like some core characteristics that we're teaching into for social emotional learning and be able to have an assess assessment tool that monitors um how students are growing in those skill sets as as we deliver those targeted lessons that would be the ideal State got it and then I heard that there's a work group going on

069sounds amazing really excited to see where it goes I pray that there are students on it if not let me know uh and then also so currently we have staff on the work group because we literally just started meeting once we heard about the board goal so I'm going to be very honest about that um so we're coming together how however um there are uh staff members on there that are the co-advisors for the students swear committee um so there is a lot of recommendations and information that comes from the students swear committees that we are considering in the work of them thank you and then and this is kind of more a philosophical question but I think the rhetoric that I'm hearing time and time again is that right now it's not a service

070that our vendors can provide right now it's not a service that our vendors are having a hard time providing why don't we just make it ourselves that is a great question it's one we actually discussed today um as a workg group we are not experts in developing assessments particularly when it comes to social emotional learning that is a very very unique skill set and so we want to be really cautious about creating our own assessment because it actually could do more harm than good um we want to make sure that what we're using is research based and that it has been vetted um by experts within the industry because we could run the risk of not having a holistic picture of a child's social emotional learning and where they're at or we could run the

071risk of developing something that may indicate one thing about a child that may not be accurate depiction of where they're at so we just want to be really cautious I mean I will be the first to admit I am not an expert in assessment development nor you know any of the social emotional learning tenants so we really want to lean into do those research-based um assessments that have been vetted to help us um carry this out I really appreciate it and then my last question is if you can kind of give I know it's hard just because we're you know in cohort one is it possible to give like a a number um of the funding support that we're going to be receiving or is that not so um for sbhp they actually um have

072given us million to utilize over the next three years to help establish these systems and structures um for the cbhi we're actually waiting um to hear what kind of funding support that we'll be receiving we should find that out within the next few months um right now they're just looking at how many districts will be uh participating in uh the three cohorts because that one will have three cohorts so they can figure out how they will be Distributing funding to help establish the services on the front end before the system is up and running awesome thank you what you were talking about groups and so forth when I think about this um seal social emotional learning this kind of gets at the question that we've been asking for those students who are expelled and there's

073some kind of measure on there about how are they doing they have to be screened at certain points to be sure that they're learning we to me it looks like you have a group already that we know that we look at and we requested additional things but it should be a part of your discussion to at least take a look at some of those data that are coming out and what ways that we can look at that to expand the tools that help students that help us understand where they are and what they need I think yeah absolutely so we do have um representation from our restorative justice um program as part of our work group so that we're we're also looking at that data as well when we're considering all these different pieces yeah

074go ahead sorry so sorry Shan I I just again I want to flag I understand the discourse in relation to this presentation about the distinction between social emotional learning and social emotional Wellness I still do not believe we have had a conversation at the board level that makes that distinction furthermore it's not exactly that distinct in this presid presentation given that SB hiip and sbhi are about tier 2 and tier three in mental health so and the care coordination is clearly about tier two and tier three so this presentation both combines the two and we have not we have not ideologically or in terms of mission established it I think social emotional learning is a tool to achieve wellness it's is a tool that's enduring once they leave this so there's a certain justification in

075targeting learning because it's enduring but again I maybe I'm too much of a behaviorist in regard to this but the reason why let's say students when you if you look at behavioral challenges at an affluence School versus behavioral challenges at a school that's so soci economic disadvantages I do not believe it is because the students at the at the affin school got social emotional learning and the ones on that that were were impoverished did not get social emotional learning they they were when I say we have haven't yet talked about whether or not the target is learning or Wellness per se when we say it's about learning it is it implies that we believe that the behavioral and mental health and wellness deficits we're seeing are because they haven't learned enough whereas whereas I think

076we need to be as or more focused on all of the other elements in our students lives that mean honestly my children don't have to be taught resilience because they're not being challenged every day by the challenges associated with poverty or bias or racism so to say their resilient is like yeah I guess I mean they had to decide whether watch Young Sheldon or you know some other show but so I really want to honor the fact that so much of the of what we're seeing in terms of mental health challenges in terms of Behavioral challenges are not emergent because they haven't soci emotionally learned they're predominantly in my belief and again this is why I say we haven't yet reached a consensus on the board about what we believe is a board the leadership

077team I just I I I just want to put a pin in it I understand for the for this we're trying to distinguish it but I want to put a pin in it because I do not believe we have reached consensus on this board yes and I'm I'm going to speak for us I believe we would agree with that some of this as I want to go back to the the I know the flashing Cloud but but the the one in the center is how do we support our students we need to figure this out we don't know how I I want to be clear with that and I think Nicole did a great job of articulating some of the challenges that we have faced that we have been focused on trying to support tier

078two and tier three but there are some complexities in that so we're we're telling you the the real story that we haven't figured this out to your point uh vice president uh pson and I I I believe that's where our focus on is there an assessment to to articulate this other than you saying hey my kids don't know resilience and I'm saying okay I guess we could do a parent survey and find out what their parents think of them but that's not the best way either and so I I believe that's what our if you look from left to right in terms of the Gap the identifying of the gaps the first thing is this assessment piece because we don't have a good tool to really look at and to ask students the questions that

079we need to know and so I would agree with you I think we've identified components of social emotional learning for us we we have identify whether we agree with it or not there are some components of vision for 2030 there are some things that we have identified in terms of um what we believe are the skills right but we don't have an ability to assess that and I think that's a critical component so I think that's why the the presentation looks like this is because we're saying we need to figure this out we don't know yet and by the way here are some things we've been doing but that's not really getting us where we need to go so I I agree 100% in your analysis trusty wait her P you have one more thing

080I I just don't want us to go down that rabbit hole of identifying kids because they're not from an affluent Community or whatever that that may be the reason that we're seeing I I just let's just not get caught up there you know let's not get caught up there because maybe it's kind of like a round peg in a square you're trying to fit somebody in that peg in that hole that doesn't really work and maybe it's not bad that the round won't go into the square but we just need to figure out how to make it all work and I understand what my colleague is saying about how his children don't have to think about this or or that but I I just don't want us to get the mindset that because you're from

081Richard's school or my school that that may be the and I think we actually have data to back that up right if we look at the aces study so adverse childhood experiences which was actually done by Kaiser here um a few years ago it shows that irrespective of household income um the rate of childhood adversity doesn't discriminate right so as we think about um divorce as we think about Mobility as we think and there are variety um I think 10 different things that you can assess um with that Aces test right that lots of students are experiencing trauma and I think we all agree our work is to help build in them the skills to overcome that right this idea that uh we can really think about posttrauma traumatic growth not just post-traumatic stress and

082I think I want to Echo everything that uh vice president Pon was getting at that it feels like maybe we don't have consensus on this board and I don't know if we as a board were clear enough about what it is we're hoping to see um at the end of the year so I know we have this goal which says by July we're looking um for staff to share with us some specific social emotional skills we don't know what those skills are right so in the goal it says for example resilience perseverance gross growth mindset I think it was important to the board and I'm sort of looking for head nods that it align with vision for 2030 and some of what is identified in the learner profiles but we don't know we're not experts

083and so I think one of the things I was hoping to hear today is as staff we've talked to researchers we've talked to educators we talk to students and we think these are some of the things we want to be able to measure and so I think it's challenging and I think we have a few more months and we'll take all the time we need but not even knowing what it is we want students to have and possess and what those important skills and traits are um so I think the sooner that we're able to get consensus around that the better um and then I do think I don't want to lose what you're saying around me mental health and mental Wellness um and that piece of work is really important um but again I

084think a lot of what we're hearing in terms of tier two tier three intervention like those are solutions once we've identified what it is we are hoping students possess and then where that's missing how we help to Shore that up and so I don't want to get stuck in the interventions before we get clear on what we think it is that will best help students um to thrive not just while they're in school but over the long term because we all experience trauma and stress like life throws hard things at you and irrespective of those hard things we want you to be able to thrive and so I just don't want to get too far down into Solutions and interventions before we get clear on what we want those skills or traits to be um

085and I think Ian I was hearing you know we're talking to vendors um and I think as trusty korano said you know he asked is there someone internally who's an expert and it's sound like no we are like we know our lane we are not in the business of developing um an evaluation around some of these um social emotional skills or traits but have we talked to researchers have we talked to psychologists are there other people outside of this District who aren't our vendors who aren't trying to make money off of us um who can help guide the work and so my hope is that we're starting to ask some of those questions um because I think we want by I don't know when the day July um to have answers to what are those

086traits what are those skills we want for all students what is the plan to evaluate those things I think one of the things and I'm looking to fellow trustees that we had talked about is there seems to be consensus that a survey probably isn't the best way to evaluate that so hearing that we're talking to people about surveys I don't I I see trusty barera nodding his head that ask asking students are you resilient isn't really going to tell us if they're resilient um and so one of the things that was included in um the goal was does it make sense for us to think about you know maybe not evaluating everyone if it requires a more in-depth evaluation but looking at a statistically significant portion of District students um and then knowing if that's

087representative of the entire population how do we target interventions universally to support everyone while still thinking about tier 2 and tier three interventions so I've probably said enough um but just hope I guess one final question is before July will we get a glimpse into a little more specificity on sort of what's come out of the work group um and then what the implementation plan will be for rolling out whatever the assessment is I and I don't know if if I can answer that I'm not in the work group but I what what I'm really appreciating from the board is this question of what is our recommendation to the board for what we would like to see in our students I think that's a big takeaway and rather than getting into uh what the staff

088work is um to say hey board I think these are some some traits that we really want our students to know and to be able to um be proficient in whatever that looks like and um I think that's a good takeaway for us Nicole for us to think um about that that big component um as uh vice president uh pson alluded to and and to be really clear I think we need to um and I'm going to really urge us to keep that component of um social emotional learning and this component of mental wellness and wellness um somewhat as as best we can um and I also heard the second component um of who can we tap into to help us with because as Nicole says we are not the the experts and so um

089I'm going to suggest that while we gave you the plan ahead um there's another box in there that I would suggest that we consider um and are diligent about and that's identifying the identification of of traits um that we're really thinking about um in addition to the the assessment because we have to identify I mean we we should be working hand inand so I I want to say thank you to the board this is uh an example of the difficulties and the challenges of this and as I began with a thank you I'm going to say I appreciate you um for identifying this challenge I think a lot of people don't take this on right and and then we're not meeting the needs and um while they didn't say a whole lot I I see

090our students nodding their head that we do need to identify some traits and um think about the tier one component of this as well so um that's that's my takeaway so I appreciate the feedback in the dialogue thank Get Trust Vaso yeah just coming have having come off our meeting with the Council of great City schools and I'm sure committee will look into this but beyond looking at even you know Beyond San Diego or Southern California I mean have are we partnering with other like large Urban school districts because there may be this work going on um and so the council would be a great uh group to talk to um or you know just because I'm we're dealing with a lot of the same things so I'm sure that this is work is going

091on somewhere and so we can look at Best Practices of um from other large Urban school districts as well and and by the way I I want to lift this up up to this because it's a it's our work right the framing of feedback and questions very helpful just very helpful for us to think about this because it's um recognizing that we don't have all the answers and Nicole thank you for acknowledging the challenges um one of the things that we can we run the risk of saying hey we don't we don't know this we don't know this and then it's like yeah I'm going to I'm going to show that you don't know it it's like enough I'm good so thank you thank you all we should also have the um the medical people

092involved just like we do for I know in the math department we align with the university and on down when I was a math teacher yeah and every Department should be aligning with the assessment folks and and there I'm sure there's a group of them out there who you could tap into to get some advice on how to go forward just make sure they're not asking for money that's right well we already partner um with a very large mtss Network so we've done a lot of work um with our San Diego County Office of Education but also tapping in across the state and so we are leveraging some of the research that they've done um for different tools again as Dr Jackson mentioned um sometimes definitions just get uh kind of in intertwined right so

093there's like Behavior assessments there's social emotional learning assessments there's mental health assessments and so really trying to figure out what what is it that we're trying to measure so that we can be really clear about the tool thank you and I do want to left up one last time I think what trusty korano asked about how are students involved and I think you know as we talk about and think about Street data you know is there an opportunity to connect with students who have overcome adversity and who do have the tools and skills to do that who can for guidance into those things we want to see in all students um but I do want to make sure that we don't lose student voice in the process all right well thank you everybody for the

094robust discussion and thank you Nicole for for all the work and for listening and I guess the last thing I will say is thank you to everybody including superintendent Jackson for telling the truth even when it's not pretty I think it this is how we make progress um is by being honest even even when it's card so I really appreciate that and we will now move on to section F the board consent agenda which includes resolutions recognizing March 31 as Cesar Chavez Day of Service and learning uh also uh another uh resolution recognizing a local environmental crisis and approval of a proposed Ed ballot measure is there a motion on these items thank you trusty Barrera is there a second oh thank you H trusty Whitehurst Payne and do we have any speakers on F1

095F3 or F4 all right do any trustees have any questions or wish to discuss the item okay just want to make a comment tomorrow Chavez is having its March so CH suppl very good all right we have a motion and a second and now we'll move on to the vote trustee lavender Williams I trustee korano I and all others electronically all right the motion passes unanimously um with without trustee BOS um and we had student board members concurring and now we will consider uh items G1 student expulsions and G2 ratification of a tentative agreement with the school Police Officers Association is there a motion on these items thank and may we take a motion from student trustees thank you thank you okay so we have a motion from truste lavender Williams is there a second

096Thank You seconded by truste korano and do we have any speakers on these items any questions or discussion from trustees all right we have a motion and a second please vote electronically right the motion passes unanimously and now we will go to items H1 and H2 final Proposition 39 offers to Charter Schools and update to the homeo school transportation plan is there a motion on these items thank you trusty whitear Payne is there a second oh thank you vice president Pon are there any speakers on H1 or H2 okay any questions from trustees I like to comment on uh H2 about our um our home program I I really do appreciate that the transportation and I know there were some issues the first year with Lincoln and so on but find my not here uh

097but I do appreciate them offering that and I'm sorry it hasn't worked out well but I think they said that they've served as many as a thousand students and I I just want to compliment our transportation um department for trying to be flexible I know there was an issue recently with the Hoover Crawford and seems like it was another school getting to point LMA um university for a a session and I thought staff did an excellent job of explaining what it happened and how they're willing to make amend so I know it's not easy all the time to get it right but that one day we had a comedy of erors with uh the lines going down and nobody could contact anybody but uh at least they are willing to work with our students and

098this is another example of them trying to accommodate our students in this program so kudos to you guys thank you any other discussion on these items I did also want to um add around home to school transportation um appreciate the work that we're doing uh to try to get make make it work better um I know that we didn't meet the goals uh that were shared with the board last March um but that the team is trying to get closer uh to school sites and principles to really meet the transportation needs of students um and I think you know as I think about what we just heard in the last item around piloting um and really thinking about how we can get things right on a smaller scale before going bigger um encourage us to

099think about what are realistic goals um as we're doing something we've never done before so now let's go ahead and vote um we have a motion a second trustee lavender Williams I trustee korano I and all others electronically all right the motion passes unanimously with our student board members concurring we'll now consider items i1 through I40 the superintendent consent agenda the following items were previously withdrawn by staff I4 I6 i8 i12 i16 i22 i27 i34 I feel like I'm calling Bingo I35 i36 and i37 Dr Jackson do you want to highlight some of the items from the superintendent's consent agenda for us I do and this is uh somewhat new and uh I do appreciate uh the idea as we think about our work around uh student outcomes focused governance sometimes items in the superintendent

100consent item agenda get approved and we don't really make that connection and I would say they're not always going to be direct connections but I do think in terms of our outcomes there are some things that I do want to lift up so I do want to flag and lift up item I5 uh which is an extension of our Middle School athletic program and I want to thank Lonnie Jones and his work uh Scott juicy the entire team we are expanding our Middle School athletics program and um we're going to be adding 30 um or cheer at 30 of our schools so cheerleading and we're also going to be expanding yes doc uh Dr lavender Williams I'm going to give it to her right now trusty lavender Williams and uh we are also expanding wrestling

101at 30 of our schools and this is going to be an increase from uh 20 uh 2200 students uh last spring um to roughly uh adding 1,200 more students um this spring so from last to this spring so I want to lift that up as we as we start um really focusing on our outcomes uh these are indirect service or direct services that indirectly tie um to our outcomes the other um one that I'd like to flag is item i1 and is this this is the I can program improving chronic absenteeism network uh which is a year-long Improvement uh Network focusing on Solutions around chronic absenteeism and I know this is not a specific board goal but this is a goal for us as a staff uh to increase that as we think about language

102arts we think about mathematics we think about social emotional learning uh this is certainly going to help the more we can get our students into uh school on a regular basis um around their peers with our Educators and so we are proud to partner with the San Diego County off office of Ed um very specific schools um very specific strategies uh where the staff will receive coaching um on this continuous Improvement effort uh around attendance and so I want to lift those two up and um as we go forward I will be lifting up a few more items uh that are connected to our student Focus governance uh thank you trusty Pon for the the recommendation appreciate the partnership here agreed all right thank you Dr Jackson and trusty pson I think it was really

103nice to hear a little bit about about some of these important things is there a motion on items i1 through I40 thank you vice president Pon do we have a second thank you Tristy ciano Miss stz do have any speakers on Section I okay any questions from trustees okay we'll go ahead and vote trusty lavender Williams I truste korano I and all others electronically motion passes unanimously with our student board members concurring and we will now receive public testimony on non-agenda items Miss stz uh have we received any res requests or should I say how many requests have we received for non- agenda comment is we have looks like 12 13 14 about 20 speakers so each speaker would receive one minute to speak on their item um we will call the speakers that are

104present in the auditorium first if you would come please line up at the uh Podium as I call a group of you to come to come forward uh the first speaker is Todd Madison the second is lon CH and the third is Linda Williams can we pause just for a second so I heard 20 but I it looks like we have significantly more than 20 okay all right and just to make sure uh we're clear to everybody so first we are glad you're here and look forward to hearing from you and um our board bylaw uh sets a limit for public comment at 30 minutes so again you'll have one minute uh if you're here in the auditorium you will see lights go to yellow and then red letting you know it's time time to

105wrap up uh and then we will thank you and we'll move on to the next person go ahead please all right thank you so we're not laying people off because the state cut funding increased by 3% we're doing that because the board made a deliberate decision they knew would lead to these Cuts last year the board approved a 15% bonus raise for employees whose pay was already over $102,000 a year the county warned you it would need to make $182 million and cuts as a result of that the board approved that anyway and didn't disclose that warning at that meeting parents and employees didn't deserve to know about the pain that the board was planning to put them through the union spent almost a half a million dollars supporting board members during their campaigns bonus

106raises for the union was the obvious payoff and cuts for kids and those making a lot less now is a predictable consequence this is not some kind of unforeseen circumstance it's a deliberate Choice made by the board in front of us they should be apologizing to the employees whose careers they've chosen to destroy and the kids whose programs they've chosen to cut this is an election Year everyone needs to understand this and vote someone else into our board thank you thank you good evening time started um good evening my name is Lan chai I'm a director of altern to incarceration and re-entry initiatives at the agent sary Collective and also district 6 uh City Commissioner on gang prevention and intervention I'm here to uh uh speak on behalf of the uh teachers that are being

107laid off I have here a petition from students at Madison High in a support of Miss Reyes Miss Reyes has made a huge impact on these students as you can see by these uh signatures by students these are teenagers that that are are uh this is a petition they put together so that's that's a huge impact that Miss Reyes has had on these students and uh I find it interesting that $1.3 billion is going to school officers I've never heard my daughter come home and and and tell me how much of a difference of impact that a school officer has made on her academic uh success Miss Reyes has mentored my daughter and got her to join Sports and uh uh uh bring a gra up thank you thank you [Applause] hi good evening all

108I'm Linda K Williams retired from the district after teaching K through six for 38 years and regarding the uh board's handling of the Arab American Heritage Month resolution I'm flabbergasted I'm dismayed I'm incred incredulous and I'm angered I cannot believe that any board member would believe that they have the right to remove or change language in any approved document which was written by and approved by a group of which they are not a member I consider those actions to be deeply disrespectful to our Arab American students and Community this is not acceptable they and we all do not deserve to be treated this way I hope that we can expect much more integrity and professionalism from our elected officials in the future I was also incredulous that now it is rescheduled for April 16th in

109the middle of the month thank you thank you the next group of speakers are Janine erat Dina hameda and Nur nura excuse me sulaman hi good afternoon my name is Janine I attended San Diego unified school districts K through 12 and as a student I felt constantly erased and denied my identity as an Arab and Palestinian student and which is why I was excited when I first heard about this resolution and quickly disappointed with the lack of protocol and transparency with regards to the Arab American Heritage Month resolution in light of the 30 ,000 Palestinians that have been murdered and the rise of hate crimes against us in the United States and in our own County specific against Muslims and Palestinians specifically the board's actions tell us that Arab and Palestinian students that don't matter

110and that we can be sidelined and postponed as we're watching the genocide of our people this is having deep psychological mental health effects on our students in K through 12 and a resolution that's meant to uplift and Center our communities needs to be representative of our input and our values and we expect to be included in the editing of the resolution starting now until it comes up on April 16th and that we have a resolution that is reflective of our community and centers our students because that's what we're all here for we're here because we care about the our students and our Palestinian Arab students especially now our most vulnerable to attacks on campus thank you thank you hi thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today um my name is Dina amida

111I am a concerned Aunt I am I was part of the board I mean I went to school here my whole life um I'm a scientist as well so let's speak some science trusty hazan you brought brought up adversity and I'm talking about the resolution that Jenny just brought up and you are contributing to adversity by removing the anti the Palestinian sentiment there Palestinian people are Arab people arab-american heritage month is recognized by President bided is recognized by Governor n and it's a shame that you guys can't even acknowledge the Palestinian sentiment the Palestinian people Palestinians are Arab people and moving it two weeks from now is basically a disgrace and it's contributing to really like sorry I'm fasting so I'm so exhausted but in general it we don't need checkbox moves to say that

112you acknowledge us this is not acknowledging us because Palestine is the heart of Arab Nations so I'm letting you know that we are a collective Community as a science my data shows that and if you remove this we're going to continue going until you guys do the right thing thank you thank you next group of speakers would be Alexis Gamboa Zoe Fuentes and Yasmine elme El Maan sorry can I go hi I'm speaking as a student from scspa we can hear you is that mic on my teacher my beloved teacher my adviser is on the list for layoffs she's a beloved teacher at our school I stated and I don't agree with the layoffs at all I think there are a lot of teachers at other schools that feel this way as well as well

113as students I don't think it's right I don't care about the science if I go to school and I feel happy in that class it's also an art school she brings art to that class I think that's important I don't think that St layoffs should be decided by years or experience I think it should be decided by students because of the fact that we're the ones in that classroom not by adults who aren't in there if I have to experience what I'm learning I believe that I should have a say and what teachers should be laid off and how that works thank you thank [Applause] you good evening um I'm here today deeply concerned about the recent decisions regarding teachers layoffs as a student who has witnessed firsthand the impact of teachers that teachers have

114on our lives it pains me to see talented Educators including some of my favorite teachers facing the threat of losing their jobs teachers are not just Educators they are mentors supporters and often the ones who Inspire us to reach for our dreams I have seen the dedication and passion my teachers bring to the classroom every day they go above and beyond to ensure we receive the best education possible often sacrificing their own time and resources to lay off these teachers especially during such uncertain certain times is not just unfair it is a disservice to the entire School Community losing these Educators means losing valuable resources and role models for students who may already be struggling I urge the board to reconsider these layoffs and explore alternative Solutions our teachers deserve better and so do we

115the students who rely on them for guidance and support thank you you good evening my name is ym Miz and I am a student of the San Diego Unified School District I am deeply concerned and disappointed by the lack of protocol and transparency with regards to the Arab American Heritage Month resolution a resolution meant to uplift and Center our community needs to be representative of our input and values as a community to me this resolution ensures that Arab Muslims and Palestinian students are seen and acknowledged by the school board let me ask you all a question is this a part of our Sano Unified School District values to silence us is it as a Palestinian student in in the in the district I expect from the district to live up to the values it claims

116to hold diversity equity and inclusion this District right now is silencing our voices and contributing to Erasure this has been a demoralizing and deeply disappointing process you all talked about today about how to better support students well this is how to better support students to provide education and to not silence us it's simple as that so I really urge you guys to do better because this is getting out of hand and this is not the first time we've been silenced so please do do better thank you thank you the next group the next group of speakers Doris barar fadwa festine Rama Awad hi I'm Doris betar I'm a longtime educator 20 years of 25 years of teaching at the college level my my two sons went through the school system here and so when they

117were children the the ethnic studies wasn't a a thing and it was pretty backwards how they described the Arab world um now it is just really important that this is done correctly and I suggest those of you that want to filter it through your own ideology recuse yourselves because you have completely failed in this removing even Arab world or Arab countries is egregious we are not Middle East when economists collect data it's the Arab world and those countries need to be listed Palestine must be included or take yourself off of this assignment thank you thank you hello my name is fwa festine this is my child I want her to learn about Palestine and all of the beautiful and Rich Heritage and culture of the other Arab countries of the Levant region we are not

118Middle Easterns that is a political term used to suppress and oppress us and that is what has led to the 30,000 death of Palestinians over the last six months I never got to learn about Palestine growing up I am born and raised in San Diego Palestinian American my father was born in historical Palestine in 1934 and that always left a big hole in my heart so I want my child to learn about it in addition to including our voices in the drafting of the resolution which I hope you move up to the first week of April um I would like you to explore including education on Palestine in the curriculum because it is a beautiful uh it's a beautiful country beautiful culture um and that is it thank you thank you hi good evening my

119name is Rama Awad and I'm uh the director of the uh Arab Community Center of San Diego in in okone um we've been really eager to work with you all on this resolution and over the past many weeks we've been offering input and helping shape the the resolution itself and we saw that throughout the process there were specific edits made uh that singled out any mention of Palestine and erased any mention of Palestine and this includes erasing the 22 Arab Nations that were listed includes um removing the names of Palestinian intellectuals um as well as um uh removing mention of anti-palestinian sentiment which impacts all Arab students regardless of nationality regardless of of religion um and so for us this seems very politically motivated uh by an agenda that is explicitly anti Palestinian and explicitly

120anti-arab and we're seeking Clarity but more importantly we expect that our community's perspectives are taken in full and not just in part and not just the parts that are politically expedient or convenient or palatable we expect to be taken as whole not in part thank you thank you next group of speakers safia chadri acram khed Farid erat hi um my name is sofhia I attended elementary middle and high school in the San Diego Unified School District um and I also have a parent and many family members who work and attend schools still in the San Diego Unified School District so I'd like to express my support for the Arab American Heritage mons resolution um and address some concerns that I've seen unfold um throughout the processing of this resolution so um to start it's very

121concerning that that there has been this um strangeness when specifically in regards to Arab American Heritage months and I feel like other organ other communities haven't faced the same um editing and changing of things in the same way that the arab-american community has um the process of getting this resolution P has just been super concerning and I think it's very clear that the change was an effort to remove the mention of Palestine in particular from the resolution and that's de deeply troubling and underscores the anti-arab racism that's at play in this process um and I think we all need to take note of that as well and it may seem like we're removing just mention of Arab communities but it's very clear that it's targeted toward Palestine thank you good afternoon my name is akam

122khed and I'm a Community member of the San Diego Unified School District and I want to express my support for the America of the Arab American Heritage Month resolution while also iting some concerns regarding its withdrawal and recent last minute changes firstly it is imperative to acknowledge and celebrate the rich diversity within Arab American communities exemplified individuals such as Raji cook listed in the resolution whose Palestinian Heritage has significantly influenced his remarkable achievements however I am deeply disappointed by the recent removal of Arab Nations including Palestine from the list of the nations in the resolution this action goes directly against the stated claim that Arab American an are not a monolith and a diverse in race and undermines the diversity and richness of Arab Heritage it is essential to include Arab Nations including Palestine to

123truly honor the beautiful and diverse Arab Nations furthermore when drafting a resolution that pertains to a specific Community it is essential to engage that community directly I urge the board members to reconsider changes and ensure that the resolution is representative of Americans Community inputs and values thank you thank you my name is farita erat I work at the Majel Arab Community Center of San Diego and to be honest we were really excited a few weeks ago to be included in the process to uh draft this resolution and so you can imagine we were incredibly disappointed let down and honestly disgusted to see that our community is being treated in a way that no other community has been treated in the proposition of a Heritage Month resolution we have to ask why our community is being

124excluded why our voices are not being centered why we are not allowed to Define our own narratives when our students are facing islamophobia anti-arab racism anti-palestinian repression when we've seen an increase and spike in violence and hate crimes against our students for their identities when our students are perceived as a threat when our students are called terrorists it's an issue we take issue with that we thought this resolution was a step in the right direction we demand you all we demand that as constituents you all represent our voices our communities support the original version of this resolution and include us in the process of developing future endeavors that are supposed to speak on the history of our community thank you thank you the next group of speakers the next group of speakers subin zakara C

125Allah and Susan Thompson uh my name is Susan Thompson um I've taught um for 37 years in San Diego unified I I was um I'm speaking in favor of the Arab American Heritage Month resolution as it was released to the public on Friday March 22nd and I opposed the edits that were made at the last minute and were released just yesterday to people who had signed up to speak on the topic um then I was notified just this afternoon that the item had been pulled from the agenda that's rather Preposterous I'm deeply disappointed in the way that this resolution has been handled by our school board and hope that we can look forward to a much more respectful way of moving forward soon and I'm hoping that we can trust that each board member will

126keep in mind and respect that any resolution regarding Arab Americans must includ include Arab American perspectives and voices as the board has done with other communities thank you thank you my name is Saban and I'm a polican Arab who attended School in the San Diego Unified School District I'm now a community organizer who works with youth who attend schools in the San Diego Unified School District I'm extremely concerned and disappointed in the lack of protocol and transparency with regards to the Arab American Heritage Month resolution in recent months we've seen unprecedented censorship of Palestinian and Arab students and community members we expected this resolution to be implemented as an opportunity to learn about Arab culture about Arab history and further students understanding of each other and rather we've seen our narratives being sidelined this resolution

127was meant to uplift and Center our community and instead you all pushed it to the side we expect this to we expect to be included in the editing of this resolution and starting now so that come April 16th that our voices are reflected in this resolution and we're not sidelined as we were today thank you thank you yes we have three additional iners and that will be the last um iners speaker when I call your name Lily orster Daniel Mesa and Elana Turner and that's the last of the U iners are those three here good afternoon Shana Haan you've made your position very clear by adjusting and and changing the language and the Arab American resolution uh Heritage Month resolution and initially erasing the pal the mention of any palestin you've made your position clear

128about how you feel about Palestinians both in your community and the students that you were are suppos to be serving you are erasing them and contributing to their eraser you are making especially at a time like this when our students are under attack under danger clear uh frankly and feel increasingly ostracized by Boards just like this by doing that in response to feedback in response to push back you've gone completely the other way and and and erased all mention of any uh Arab countries and in order to in order to hide uh in order to accomplish your eraser that You' that You' attempted to um begin with uh it's very clear to us that uh you don't care about your Palestinian students it's very clear to us that you don't care about serving or protecting

129or or making them feel welcome in this day and age um as those students are dealing with uh seeing everything unfold in in their home country it's very clear that they are also facing the same kinds of exclusion here um and we're very disappointed that you again seeing the feedback have uh pushed the vote back to uh several weeks back to April thank you thank [Applause] you hi my name is Lily uster I'm a Jewish Community member um and I'm also a pediatrician here in San Diego and care deeply about our community's children I'm frankly extremely disappointed in this school board for your failure to adequately represent and honor arab-american Heritage efforts specifically by members of the Jewish Community to erase Palestinian history and censor the contributions of Palestinian thinkers and writers are contrary to

130our deeply held values of diversity freedom of speech and inclusivity by falsely claiming that teaching an accurate history of Palestine is anti-Semitic our school board members are falling prey to a lie that Jewish safety and dignity comes at the expense of Palestinian safety and dignity erasing Palestinians from the Arab American Heritage Month resolution and from our curriculum is blatant censorship that has no place in our schools as Jewish people we must reckon with the historical realities of the nakba the displacement of Palestinians from their homes and land and the ongoing occupation of Palestine we should not abuse our positions of power to censor the history that is taught to our students and thereby further promote anti-palestinian racism thank [Applause] you good evening my name is Daniel Messa I'm a for former special education teacher and

131now pediatrician I know our children Thrive when they are in supportive communities that value diversity and the Dignity of each person for this reason I enthusiastically support the proposal for aab heritage month for and this is a long time in coming um I actually am an uncle of a niece who's partially of Arab Heritage and I hope that her identity will be valued and celebrated in our school system unfortunately I like many of the other people have spoken feel a bit hurt and have had my enthusiasm dampened um by the disappointing decision of schoolb members to erase the recognition of Palestinians from the resolution this censorship will only further divisions in our communities and fuel racism not just for Palestinians for but for others as well I hope the school board can fairly recognize our

132many Palestinian students and community members and the important and Rich history of Palestinians and the Palestinian American Community thank you thank you hello my name is Alana Turner I'm a Jewish parent of two students in San Diego Unified Schools and I was coming here tonight originally to speak and strong support of theer Arab American Heritage resolution I'm really disappointed that um the board chose to water down the resolution and specifically to remove the names of Palestinian Americans who've made contributions to this country and also to remove any mention of anti-palestinian sentiment as an issue that needs to be addressed through arab-american Heritage Month um I want to be in a school district where all of our students heritages and contributions are uplifted and recognized I want my student my I want my children to be

133able to learn about all of the community members who make up our community and have contributed to our country and I want to see this school board also uh respect the Community Partners that it brings into a process and so going forward I encourage the I strongly urge the school board to make to make good on the promises that you've made to the Community Partners to involve them in a process of writing a resolution as as were involved in it thank you thank you now we'll Now call our virtual speakers the first virtual speaker is warsan arton are you available is Warson can you hear me yes you have one can you hear me yeah go ahead oh sorry hi good afternoon my name Isen although I'm not Arab I am Muslim and a Community

134member I have also taught and tutor at schools like Hoover and Crawford I want to voice my support um for our Arab brothers and sisters specifically our Palestinian brothers and sister brothers and sisters to silence them by not including them by not including their voices in the resolution is a travesty please do better by including their voices um and the voice over community that you were elected to um represent it is quite ironic to be honest that there in the resolution you acknowledge that the reason for the resolution is to address anti-arab sentiment yet by not including our community's voices and by silencing specifically Palestinian voices you're doing just that it's quite ironic isn't it please do better thank you so much thank you the next virtual speaker is christe stza is Christie available on

135Zoom no Christie Christie if you're there can you unmute please well we'll move on to the next speaker Dan pritsker is he available on Zoom please unmute Mr pritzer okay we can move on to our another speaker on Zoom Sophia s is Sophia available you're there Sophia please unmute hello can you hear me yes please go ahead good evening my name is Sophia and I work for the Council of American Islamic relations and I represent well over thousands of Muslims and Arabs within the county of San Diego and I'm here today to please ask you guys that with this intention of creating a resolution to uplift Arab voices American voices you must include Palestinian voices you cannot water it down as you are further silencing and contributing to the hate and the onslaught of violence

136that these students endure it is your job to protect them it is your job to uplift them and rather you are perpetuating the same system that is hurting them on top of that it is our job to uplift their voices especially during such a hard time some of these kids are going through some imag unimaginable mental hurdles right now seeing what's happening to their very own people no matter how hard you try to silence Palestinian voices their voices will prevail we will continue coming and asking you to do the right thing which is to uplift all of our voices and to make sure every one of them feel safe on campus thank you try one more time for christe stoa Christie are you available on Zoom or Dan pritsker hello can you hear me yes

137go ahead please you have one minute hi uh my name is Christy stza and I'm the parent of two young children at San Diego unified I had expected to feel pride in our district tonight as I plan to speak in support of the passage of the resolution recognizing arab-american Heritage Month however I am extremely disappointed that the resolution was abruptly pulled from the agenda earlier today a slap in the face a slap in the face to the community members who put so much time and work into its creation honoring Arab American Heritage Month recognizes the importance of educ access and inclusion for all of our students especially in this era of islamophobia racism and anti-palestinian repression yanking this resolution at the last minute is a shameful decision that reflects poorly on the district and its

138leadership I urge the board to remove the offensive last minute edits made to the resolution and to Center arab-american voices as this conversation continues thank you thank you last call for Dan [Music] pritsker Mr pritzer is on available that concludes our public comment 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 concludes our agendized business the agendized business of the board and our next regular meeting will be held on April 16th 2024 this meeting is now adjourned e