001Oh. Are you Can you hear now? Maria? Yes, I can hear you now. Could you please translate our interpretation? I will be happy to. Good evening, everyone. We will be having interpretation this evening from English to Spanish. If you want to hear my partner and I, please um at the end of um um this uh segment, please press the globe that will appear at the bottom of the screen. Thank you and welcome again. Okay. Uh we will now go to our student representatives. We're so happy to see you and uh we've got a lot to catch up on this time. So, so Zoe, are you are you going first? Yes, I am. Uh good evening, everyone. My name is Zoe Fuji. I'm the ASB president for SLO High School. Uh happy to be back. I
002missed this the last week that we didn't get to come, but uh we're so happy to be back. We have a lot going on at our high school. Uh we're coming It seems kind of far, but we're coming close to the end of the year, so we have quite a bit to catch up on just with a lot of events coming up and um all that sort of stuff. Right. Moving into the slides. Um Sorry. There we go. All right. First up, we have some academic achievements. Uh we have a lot of strong achievements to recognize. We have multiple students recognized in the National Merit Scholarship Program and other um academic excellence awards for sustained high GPAs. Those are not featured here, but these accomplishments really do reflect um the student dedication and the strength
003of the support on our campus. Obviously, these are really great accomplishments and we're so grateful to be able to see these students thrive and succeed and do uh exceptionally well on the PSAT. Um we also had a couple of Elk Student of the Month for the months of February and March. Um again, this is just we're grateful for the Elks for supporting our seniors and uh just being able to recognize them. I was lucky enough to be uh recognized as one of them, but then obviously we have uh Drew House, Mary Kate, and Savannah Crocker. And again, it's just a really great opportunity for our seniors to be recognized. Um we're so grateful for the Elks for giving us this opportunity. Um also not featured, but we have a lot of new course offerings coming
004up next year with our CTE pathways. Some of these courses include things like cosmetology. It's just a really great way to be able to offer more to our students on our campus and um ensure that students get whatever support for their future they may need. Moving on to our athletics. I Since there's just been so much going on in the past couple weeks, I'm just going to go over a couple of the key points. So, we have so many strong programs. Um our boys tennis team remains undefeated and has secured the Mountain League championship. And we have our softball in first place currently in their league competition. Uh we also had track and field recently host a large invitational meet with over 30 participating teams. Um I don't know how many of you know that
005much about track and field, but our team consists of over 200 members. So, I'm sure you can imagine 30 teams on our campus was a lot, but each of them did very well. Our girls team placed first and our boys team placed second. Uh again, this program is really well rooted in SLO High School and everyone who participates in it does so well and so um they're also dedicated to this program. Um it's really incredible to see them all thrive at it. Uh we have a lot of other highlights from boys volleyball, stunt, swim, and other student athletes achieving personal best and maintaining a lot of competitive standings. Uh we see this obviously with we have so many teams in first and second place for our league championships and we're so proud of all of
006them and all the effort that they put into that. Moving on to our arts updates. Uh we have no pictures whatsoever of most of our arts, but we do have um a picture of our honors jazz band. They earned first place at the Fullerton College Jazz Festival. Our honors jazz band our all our student musicians don't get nearly enough recognition for how much work and effort they put into everything that they do. Uh but clearly they are exceptional getting first place at this uh college jazz festival and we are so proud of them. And then not featured, we have student artwork from the Dedication, Purpose, Leadership Academy uh currently featured at a public exhibition at the San Luis Obispo Museum of Art. Uh we encourage you all to go view their exhibition. They have all
007put so much work and effort into this. I know a couple of artists who are featured and it's just a really great way to recognize how much work they put into their own uh arts. Uh we also have a lot of different artistic expression. So, we have Mock Rock being put on by one of our dance teachers, Mandy Mattler. Uh she's working to create a Mock Rock on our campus. I am not really involved in that, but I believe it's just a uh talent show of sorts where students can uh either like fake sing or actually sing to whatever songs they might want to do. Also dances, uh basically any performing art. It's really an incredible thing to put on. Uh we also have a student-directed theater production of Murder on the Orient Express. This
008is a really incredible cast. I know all of them and the student directors, I believe, are Bob Myers and Scarlett Jones. Uh they both have worked so hard on it. Obviously, it's student-directed. Um the show will be going on from this the 30th of this month to May 5th. And so, we encourage you all to buy tickets and go support uh our student directors. Uh we also have cultural performances such as the upcoming world music presentation introducing students to Southwest Asian and North African musical traditions. Again, just a really cool way to incorporate more culture onto our campus and be able to showcase this to our other students. And then just for some other updates, we had our Model UN program have an outstanding showing at the Monterey conference. I believe there was over 10
009awards given to our students. And as you can see in that photo, I think about 15 students went, so it was a really big win. Uh they got research and debating awards. Um our students who went to this, they are all incredibly talented and they deserve to be recognized. They work so hard. Uh this was, I think, the last Model UN conference of this year. Um so, we're really proud of them for doing so well in that. We also have our FFA students demonstrate their uh really good I mean, really good is just such an understatement for them. They do excellent at everything they do. Uh they did state public speaking finals. So, they competed across uh creed speaking, extemporaneous speaking, and prepared speaking. And then we had one student who uh advanced in to
010the final round in prepared public speaking and earned fifth place in the state. And so, obviously both of our teams do so wonderful, but especially this one student being able to excel. Um everyone has done such a great job. Uh both teams, I think, placed in the top five statewide. So, that is really an incredible uh push on our ag department. They all work so hard. Our FFA leadership teams, again, just hard work is such an understatement for them. They all do so much around our campus and put so much effort and dedication into everything that they do. And clearly they are doing so well at it. So, we are just so proud of them. And then upcoming events. We have so much coming up. Just everything surrounding seniors and then we also have prom.
011So, we have our 24-hour relay this weekend. The theme is Slowchella. Our ASB class is putting it on. Our vice president Maddie Purdy is doing such a wonderful job at leading that and showing it off to so many people. We have over 10 teams involved. It's eight to 12 people per team and it's going to be just such a fun event. We have our 50-day dinner the Monday after and then we have a rally I think next Thursday. It's the one that we had done have a Friday at school. But then we have prom on May 9th and then we have a signing day for college athletics, senior recognition assembly, our senior showcase, the last day of school for students and then our commencement ceremony for our graduating seniors. That's all for SLO High School.
012Again, it's just been a really busy time and it will only continue to get busier towards the end of the year. But thank you all for listening to me share about our school. Thank you. Okay. Hi everyone. My name is Jocelyn Ocampo Mateo and I'm the ASB president over at Morro Bay High School. I'm very excited to be back and while I don't have too much to share about, I'm really excited for what I have to offer from the past few weeks and what we have for the next two weeks as well. So, let's see if this There we go. Okay. So, this past weekend we closed our show of Mamma Mia which was the school spring musical. I had the very fun honor of playing the lead Donna in the show. So, just a
013little flex, but Saturday night was very special as it was our closing night as well as celebrating 12 of our seniors who have spent so much time into this program and unfortunately had to say goodbye and graduate soon. But it was such a beautiful moment to share. They all shared their final bow and we had the two very successful weekends and I'm happy to report that our Friday night show for the second weekend was completely sold out. And we all almost every single show No, every single show we had at least 100 people which is something we've never been able to say before from our drama program. And I'm just very proud of everyone that's worked on this. The program has been slowly building up since post-COVID having done shows outside and now in a
014beautiful theater with an amazing set. So, I'm just very proud to report on how far we've come and it was so much fun. And then our Interact Club got to help with our Morro Bay in Bloom. This was a great opportunity for students to come out and give back to their community and be environmentally friendly as well. Our Interact Club does so much as volunteer volunteer work as well as also having positive values as well as our Key Club as well. But this was just a very fun activity and I'm so glad they got to do it. And unfortunately I wasn't able to, but I totally would have if I could. Also not pictured, our English and math state testing for juniors is complete and the science testing wrapped up today as well. And up
015next in the next few weeks our AP testing is going to come up as well in May. And then we also have our Cuesta Bound seniors at Cuesta last week learning about special programs and getting ready to register for their classes as well as just being prepared for the next steps in their life. We are very grateful for the Cuesta Promise and it's an amazing path that so many of our students take. As well as we started our destination wall. This is a chance for students to share where they are committing to and being able to share with their peers and classmates. We have people staying here in SLO County, but we also have people going all the way to New York and it's just so fun and exciting to see and celebrate our fellow
016seniors. Our ceramics class Ceramics 2 students created and donated handmade bowls to Echo Homeless Shelters for their Empty Bowl event. It was a great way for our students to give back and also be creative. I have the dates right there. I believe it was April 8th and April 22nd. So, you can still catch it if you have the chance. I just think this is a great thing for our students to do and it truly is a moment to give back to our community. And then we had our fifth annual film fest. Every single year our school holds a film fest in the Morro Bay movie theater and so many students love to come out and make their own films. And we had two big awards given out. Our best in show was the film art
017assignment by junior Dean Lewis. And then the pirate's choice which was voted on by all the students in attendance was Pepsi Man by Charlie Sperber, Nathan Fuller, Dexter Parks, Joaquin Seller and Cameron Dinh Noy. And we're all very proud of them. As well as we had individual winners for comedy also being Pepsi Man, drama The Failing Student and The Rain by M. Teresi, horror The Hitchhiker by Joaquin Sayar and Beatrice Appel, and miscellaneous which was Slow Burn by Enzo Yevanze. I hope I said that right. I'm sorry. And then lastly for Key Club, our last week Key Club's District Division happened where our junior Lotus Katsoff was officially installed in the position of Division 29th Lieutenant Governor. She is pictured on the left and in the middle of the picture and on the right. We
018are very proud of her and Key Club is also an amazing club that gives back to their community by doing volunteer work and showing positive values and just spreading good among our community which is always very great. And then for sports, our spring sports season just have few weeks left. Most of the teams will have earned a spot in playoffs. It's a little too early to tell, but they're doing just wonderfully. Senior nights are also coming up quickly with our stunt team already having theirs about two weeks ago. And this Friday is the senior celebration for swim and dive. And the rest of our spring sports team seniors celebrations will happen over the next two weeks. And then lastly our intro to law class will be visiting the SLO Superior Court to learn about investigations,
019trial arrangements and adoptions among other opportunities. And they'll be visiting the SLO County office and meet with local government officials including Bruce Gibson, Alania Cannon and state holder and skate holder meeting with Jim Denota. And then next Wednesday on the 29th our MBHS jazz band will also be performing in the theater at 7:00 p.m. Our end of year rally will be on April 30th. And then our drama club is having their end of year trip in Santa Barbara to see Hades Town a week from today. And that is all for today. Thank you so much for letting us share. >> [applause] >> Mr. Paulson, do you have a question? I just want to make a comment. The The two of you have brought these school updates to a new level this year and I think
020you guys just do a great job. So, want to say thank you. Ms. Baltodano. Great updates as always. Thank you. And Jocelyn, you were phenomenal in Mamma Mia. I was really glad that I got to see that performance and what I really loved about that performance was how inclusive the staff this cast was and that was just really lovely to see. High energy and really well done. And then while I was on campus I got to see the beginning of the destination wall. So, that was fun to see as well. But thank you great updates from both of you. Thank you so much. So, as always thank you so much. You bring you bring all the work to the forefront, let us know how we're doing. It's a great touchstone for us to have you
021recognize the achievements of your peers and your campus and it's always great to hear. So, we understand if you have places to go and things to do. We will not be Take it personally if you depart and and uh get on with your evening. But thanks again and we look forward to seeing you at our next meeting. Thank you. All right. We next item 5.02 is a presentation by the Assistance League. Dr. Prater, did you want to make some remarks? Yeah, I just would like to express my appreciation. I'm excited for all that the Assistance League does for our students in San Luis Coastal and each year I really look forward to this presentation. So, please come on up to the podium and and um we'd love to hear the the incredible things that you
022do. As we do Thank you. Each year, this year our Assistance League chapter is celebrating our 30th year as an all volunteer service organization providing school appropriate clothing to students in need. In 1995, our chapter was created and we established Operation School Bell, OSB, with the direct support of San Luis Coastal School District. Our first OSB location was in a classroom that you donated for us on the former San Luis Obispo Junior High School. Our members fixed up the classroom to look like a retail shop with a fitting room in the corner and racks of gently used clothing. Students were referred informally that first year and they came from all over the county to receive their clothing. During that first year, 130 students in grades K through 6 received clothing. Two years later, we added
023a North County location so the North County students did not have to travel all the way to San Luis to receive their clothing. In 2001, we met with Dr. Denton, then superintendent, to request a larger location as we were serving many more students. He arranged for us to move to the boys locker room at that same campus and after a bit of sprucing up, you always laugh at this one, the urinals and showers were conveniently turned into fitting rooms. This locker room location became our home for the next 9 years and during that time we clothed 8,675 students. Between 2010 and 2014, we were asked to move three times and yet each time we received a generously donated space within the district. In 2014, we were able to partner with Kohl's in Paso Robles and
024Old Navy here in San Luis Obispo to switch to a complete retail model and we were now able to serve students in grades K through 12. The students were delighted the opportunity to select from a broad choice of clothing. During these past 10 years, we have provided clothing for 24,539 students in need in San Luis Obispo County, grades K through 12. Through Operation School Bell, we are objective and unbiased in our selection of students. Based upon our budget and a review of the data from the County Office of Education, which identifies the numbers of students living in poverty at every school in the county, we allocated proportionate number of students be clothed in each school. The individual students are then referred by their schools for a specific shopping date. Our member volunteers are available to
025assist the students to ensure they receive appropriate, well-fitting clothes. We could not do this today without the support of your school secretaries and counselors at every school. The cost for clothing K through fifth grade students is $150 and for sixth through 12th grade students, $200. In addition to clothing, each student receives a quality book of his or her choice and a tote containing school supplies. During this school year, we clothed 2,119 students countywide and 494 of those students were from the San Luis Coastal School District. The total cost for clothing, school supplies and books for your students was $97,812. We were happy to spend. Clothing is a tangible resource we can provide. Our program goal is to improve school attendance and participation in school by enabling students to attend school without feeling self-conscious or out
026of place due to a lack of proper clothing. Students cannot succeed in school if they do not attend regularly. For the past 30 years, Operation School Bell has served 42,972 students in San Luis Obispo County and we could not have done this without the unwavering support of the San Luis Coastal School District from the very beginning and we are truly grateful for your continued support. So, thank you Dr. Prater, members of the school board and your incredible staffs at every school. Thank you. >> [applause] >> So, a comment first, which is that um I would encourage everyone to go to the Assistance League and um support them. I have supported them by replenishing my closet uh at times. So, it's a it's an wonderful uh opportunity. It's a great service you perform. I think when
027you were having the retail space in classrooms, I uh visited a couple of times and it was amazing how you made that space look like a store with the circle racks and clothing hung up and the sizes marked and it just was wonderful. So, um we're going to come back to me in a minute, but Mr. Unger. So, first of all, I Sharon, I want to recognize the fact that you are a retired teacher from San Luis Coastal. I am. So, thank you for the service that you gave the schools, the students in our district and thanks for what you're doing now. And I think um I know that Mrs. Shepherd just talked about uh visiting visiting your shop and I it would I think it would behoove the public to hear where the shop
028is, um where in San Luis Obispo your thrift store is because I know you you have a thrift store um on Monterey Street and quite high-end as I understand it as well. Thank you, if I may. Um so, yes, we do have a thrift shop. It is on Marsh Street, um right behind Wells Fargo Bank and uh we have free parking in the parking lot and it is our main source of fundraising. And so, yes, if you'd like to come, we'd love to have you. Uh we consider ourselves a a boutique thrift shop. We do uh all clothing, furniture, dishware, everything and we sort through it carefully and items that we can't sell, we do pass on to other uh nonprofits. So, we don't try to put anything in the we try not to put
029anything in the landfill, that's what I mean. Thank you. Thank you. And I don't think my uh daughter would be embarrassed if I told you that the dress I the mother of the bride dress I wore at her wedding, I purchased from Assistance League. So, um yeah, I was able to buy three dresses and she could pick out which one she wanted because they still below the cost of one dress. So, Mrs. Rogers. Well, just my added comment, um I frequent the the Assistance League store more often than I probably should and I do believe I'm wearing your pants tonight. Um the the clothing is really uh you know, things that are that you send out to the floor are clean, pressed, they're really desirable um and you have you have donors that support you
030um in a really big way. So, I just would encourage anyone who wants to check out your shop at at Broad and Marsh um to do so and uh support your cause. And I thank you. Thank you. And to that end, uh we have a resolution here this evening that I would like to read to you. This is resolution number 17-25-26 expressing appreciation to the Assistance League of San Luis Obispo County. Whereas the Assistance League of San Luis Obispo County has served as a cornerstone of community support and a tireless advocate for student success since its incorporation in 1991. And whereas this all-volunteer nonprofit organization has demonstrated an unyielding commitment to transforming the lives of students across San Luis Obispo County through its signature philanthropic program, Operation School Bell. And whereas since 1995, Operation School
031Bell has provided more than 40,000 students from low-income families with new school-appropriate clothing, ensuring that every child can attend school with dignity, confidence and comfort necessary for academic and social achievement. And whereas the more than 100 member volunteers of the Assistance League contribute thousands of hours of service with no paid staff, embodying the highest ideals of selflessness and civic duty. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the San Luis Obispo Coast that the San Luis Coastal Unified School District Board of Education hereby expresses its profound gratitude and highest commendation to the Assistance League of San Luis Obispo County. Be it further resolved that we recognize the Assistant Assistance League as an essential partner in education whose work with purpose and determination continues to strengthen our schools, uplift our families and ensure that amazing things happen when
032a community centers the needs of its students. Passed, adopted and approved by the governing board of the San Luis Coastal Unified School District this 21st day of April, 2026. I should confirm that this is passed. We need to make this official. So, uh motion by Mr. Buckman, second by Mrs. Roger, Mr. Buckman. Mrs. Roger. >> Yes. Mr. Clausen. Yes. Mr. Mr. Banfield. >> Yes. Mr. Unger. Yes. Ms. Bouldin Dono. Yeah. And I am a yes. So, we thank YOU SO >> [applause] [applause] >> THANK YOU AGAIN. THANKS FOR COMING. YEAH. YOU HAVE student rep student representatives and then this. I think we should go home. It's pretty great. All right. We will return to our agenda and we are now at uh public input 7.01 correspondence. The board did receive correspondence from Gregory Gillette with
033regard to the superintendent search timeline and that uh letter is attached to the agenda. And we will now move on to public comment. And at this time, anyone who is present who would like to speak with us on a um about something that is not on the agenda is welcome to do so. We have yellow sheets in the back. If you would please fill one out and pass it along, that helps us. Uh and if there's something you'd like to address that is an agenda item, you can wait until that item until we address that item as a board. Or if you don't want to wait, you can do that now. Uh you will have 3 minutes to address the board. We do have a strict enforcement of that 3 minutes. And at this time,
034uh it appears that we have a yellow sheet. Mr. Clausen. Yeah, we'd like to invite Ben Lipperd up to speak. Uh hi, everyone. Uh Madam President, trustees, staff, members of the public. Uh my name is Ben Lipperd. Um I have two daughters at Los Ranchos. I'm one of the co-founders of SLCPIN. Really optimistic. I love hearing all this stuff and the optimism. And I get to be a little bit optimistic today, which is not my norm. And so, I'm happy to be talking about some some optimistic things. Um if you all haven't seen SB 931 made it out of committee today, which is amazing and it's a encouraging next step. Um and I wanted to say Senator Laird's closing statement specifically noted how um how this money really means a lot to our school district.
035And and I think it's also important to recognize you know, Assemblywoman Dawn Addis for for supporting this bill, too. Um you know, if you had said we'd be here 6 months ago, I don't know if any of us would have believed that. And so, I think it's really great to think about like what our community can do. And I think we just saw another example of that, what our community can do when we work together. Um now, as always, when it comes to PG&E school revenue, what matters most are the details. And so, we sent a letter to the utilities commission. I shared it with all you. I'm just going to go over three main points for the legislation. Extended mitigation fund payments adjusted for inflation and ongoing as long as Diablo Canyon is open.
036These are things that are going to be I think in play and I think it's important that everyone, both in the community and up there, knows that this is something people are going to be talking about. Um I also think we're in a situation where um it's essential that the community is paying close attention to what's happening in Sacramento. And and that really includes staff and school board members and parents and everybody in this community. Um I've heard it already. I'm sure you have, too. You know, we shouldn't too we shouldn't be too greedy about our ask or we're asking for a handout, this sort of thing. Um what bothers me most about that argument is that when when PG&E fights for money, they fight for every last dollar every year. And and when they
037do that, it's from from the state, it's from ratepayers, and they're called good business people, right? Because they're looking out for their shareholders. But when parents talk about PG&E's responsibility to this community, you know, we've been told we're trying to bully bully the corporation, bully PG&E, me, Emily, Annie, right? Um that we're not being fair. And I think I want everyone to remember that what we're fighting for is the kids. PG&E every year gets more than 100 times what our district got last year from the mitigation fund, 100 times, on top of what it cost to run the plant. Okay? So, remember my slice. I have it in my thing. I forgot to grab it. I've been taking it around to the supervisor, to the city. Don't apologize for advocating for our kids. Don't feel
038bad to ensure that a company that makes 2.5 billion dollars in profits per year is doing their fair share to the community. We tried to reach out to PG&E. You're going to hear about Let's not get into that. You're going to hear about how hard we should have tried. And I want everybody to remember how hard we did try. And we're doing great in three. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to address the board under general public comment? All right. Thank you. We will move on to superintendent's updates. And as always, Mr. Pinkerton, business and budget. Oh. I'm getting started again all of a sudden. [laughter] Um so, Mr. As as Mr. Lipperd said, SB 931, you know, moving forward, right? So, we're excited about that possibility. Um as the budget person,
039I I never want us to spend money we haven't received yet. There's still hurdles. It's still tough to get through, right? Um but but again, I I kudos to Senator Laird and and to Assemblywoman Addis for pushing this forward and putting up the fight to again move it forward. So, there there's still lots of details to be figured out, of course. And yeah, and we want to definitely uh get as much as we can for our kids. Um the last 2 years have been really tough in terms of reductions and moving forward. And so, it would be great for us to to be able to get, you know, as as much funding as possible to uh to have the programs that we have in San Luis Coastal. Um Dr. Prater and I had an excellent
040opportunity to meet with the Los Osos Rotary on Friday morning. And it just what a great group. I mean, kind of like you know, we have a lot of great service organizations in our area. Um but this one in particular um just stands out in terms of what they do for kids at Morro Bay High and scholarships and um you know, feeding the community, just all types of things like that. So, it was really great to update them one on kind of where we're at in the district and all the great academic programs we had. But it was also nice Mr. Scalley was in the audience um as a Rotarian as well. And and it was a nice time for us to kind of pump up Mr. Scalley and and all the great things happening
041at Morro Bay High. Right? I mean, truly academic programs, kids, you know, just great things happening, right? Which is a great way to keep kids on the coast, make kids want to come back to Los Osos. You know, we've had a a ton of the teach kids come back to Los Osos. Not because they want to go to Morro Bay High. Like it's it's changing the frame, right? You know, better academic results than SLO High right now at Morro Bay High School. So, it was it was good for good good for Mr. Scalley to kind of hear that, for the Rotarians to hear that, right? Um as again, cuz they put a lot of support into Morro Bay High School. So, um it it was just a it was a really nice meeting. And important
042for us to do those types of things and get out to the community cuz um there were definitely things that we touched on, like the number of kids and homes and families in the community, right? And declining enrollment, things that maybe they didn't know. Um and so, it was it was good to kind of share that information with them. Thank you. Uh Ms. Machado. Yeah, good evening, board. Lots uh it's an exciting time of year after spring break. A lot of hot irons in the fires. Um I got to meet with some of you and Dr. Prater with our foundations board today, talk about planning for two of our excellent programs, Athletics for Achievement. You'll hear more about tonight and also our next gen programming and the improvements and iterations in that world. Continued my
043chronic absenteeism meeting with several principals. I got to participate with a interview. A Cal Poly journalism student had reached out to me to discuss working alongside Dr. Prater in his um work in our school district as he's stepping away. Met with DLI planning group. Uh Shannon McFadden Sullivan, Mr. Neff, and I, Mr. James, were talking about as we're expanding that program. There'll be another board um presentation coming up shortly. Worked with the board policy subcommittee, bringing to you tonight a mental health policy for your review. Uh attended four different elementary staff meetings, the student senate. Um they were working on their smarty goals with Dr. Prater and our presenter from Youth Truth, as well as working with the chamber and Christine Robertson on giving their vision and feedback about what they'd like our community to
044look like in the future. What amazing students, thoughtful students we have. Thank you to the many board members that were able to attend that day. I got to visit Laguna's open house. It was again a packed evening. Mr. Minor did a fantastic achievement session to a group of about 50 middle school parents. It blows my mind how many parents want to be engaged in their, you know, 13-year-old lives and it's exciting to see. Dr. Prater and I got to visit with the Common Ground Advisory Task Force. They developed their list of recommendations that will be coming to the board for next year shortly. Site visits to CL Smith, we, Ryan, myself and Dr. Prater got to go to the WASC accreditation visit for Pacific Beach High School and we got to sing the praises of
045Mr. Dowler, his entire staff and their students and you'll be hearing again more great feedback from the WASC WASC accreditors. We held a DELAC meeting. There was a counseling presentation shared with our parents about how their them or their students can reach out to for mental health supports. I led the AI Task Force meeting regarding staff use of AI in our district. More to come on that later. I was a part of administrator of interviews, onboarding our student services new director, Petra Reynolds, who's going to be joining us. Janet has met with her two or three times. I got to join them for one of those meetings, so we're helping her get ready to land on her feet as she joins us and finally attended some principal meetings. So, kind of a foot in each
046world, ending this year full of celebrations while also planning all the things for next year. Thank you. Back to Mr. Pinkerton for Measure C update. >> Yeah, on the bond front, we're um in terms of Baywood, we're going to put together some information for the parents and staff and kind of principal just update. You know, we've been going through this extended CEQA process with the county, which has kind of pushed the whole project off about a year going through that process because we're building a new school, not modernizing the school. It's you can't go through the categorically exempt process. You have to like go through the entire CEQA process. So, it all looks good. There was no comments um coming out of it. A few a few minor changes overall, but I plan on updating
047again the Baywood staff, parents, principal. Um hopefully in May, kind of here's where we're at now. This is kind of expected timeline, those types of things. Um we have our first kind of phase two bid coming out. So, CL Smith is going to we'll get those bids on Monday afternoon. And so, that's going to be a an interesting kind of time cuz this is going to be a a you know, design bid build, right? So, it's a low bid, you know, job. We had a ton of people at the last bid. It looks like um contractors are hungry for work right now. So, there's a lot of you know, DSA has been so slow, the Department of State Architects getting pro- processing jobs and you know, through architects plans, those types of things that I
048think it's slowed things down for a lot of districts and to us. So, you know, it's always a it's a good thing when contractors are hungry and we're looking for bids. So, we'll see how this goes on Monday and then we have several phase two projects coming directly after that. Sinsheimer, Del Mar, Los Ranchos, you know, so there's there's a lot happening on that front. So, excited to see kind of what what happens with that. Um we had our uh San Luis Obispo High School new turf field open on Wednesday. So, Manal Construction unbelievable. You know, they had this date set, right? They had the their first big track meet at San Luis Obispo High School and he pulled it off. They worked all weekend. They got the fencing down. They got all the plates
049off the track. I mean, they they they did everything they needed to do to make that event happen on Wednesday and and again, I can't kudos to him. It looks beautiful. The rain actually, they said is terrific for it afterwards, but we have again as described, we've got a couple events there. Everyone's blown away. It's great. A lot of training, a lot of talking. Um there's going to be a lot of no dog signs around, you know, things like that, right? So, we're going to have to train people up, right? Cuz it's important that we maintain, you know, this facility so that we can keep it open for people, right? We we want that people to be able to walk the track and use the field and those types of things there. And so, it's
050really important that we those guidelines and are followed as we go through it. Morro Bay High, we walked that Friday. It's it's kind of about a week away in comparison where SLO High was, so they're really close. The lights are in at Morro Bay High. They haven't kicked the electricity on yet, but they're in. So, the poles and new lights, which will be great. I'm I'm really expecting him to be completed by graduation. So, the new bleachers both sides, light lighting, those you know, the field itself. It's going to it's going to be really nice. Um my hope is to do kind of an like maybe the first big event, football game in the fall. We'll invite the board. We'll kind of do some grand openings for those two complexes and and celebrate, you know,
051what what the board has been able to accomplish and again, thanks to the public, right? For for the passage of both Measure D and Measure C. So, but it's nice to it's nice to, you know, have these things come to fruition, right? And to move forward. So, we'll we'll definitely do that as as the as the fall approaches. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we will move on to our discussion action items and first up is 9.01 special education eligibility and services update and I see Ms. Gould approaching the podium. >> Good evening. I'll wait for just a moment until we have our presentation up. Okay, good evening. I'm Janet Gould, executive director of student support services and it's a pleasure to be here with this evening along with our coordinator special education, Joyce Hansen,
052to talk to you a little bit about the special education program in San Luis Coastal and the students that we serve. So, when we talk about special education in San Luis Coastal, we are talking about children from the age of three. And these are students that young children that we find out about from students that were involved in early services through the County Office of Education who notify us that about when the children are two and a half years old and say, "Hey, we have a student who likely will be coming your way." And so, we collaborate with them to assess the students and find out what appropriate placements are. We work with community organizations to refer children to us as well as parents to refer student students to us and we start providing services
053at the age of three. Obviously, we go all through our TK through 12th grade year. And then for some of our students with more significant disabilities, we provide services to all the way to the age of 22 as we prepare them to be independent in our community. And as we work with all of our students, it's just we really value working with our families to develop IEPs that are individual and really will meet the needs of each of our students. So, it takes a very large group of people to do this very important work. So, as you know, in student services, we focus on special education, but we also have counseling, wellness under student support services, but this is really just looking at the individuals that support the special education side. So, in all, we
054have about a little over 250 FTE and when you consider adults that work part-time, we're really at over 300 people that support our students with disabilities in our district. And one of the things that we've focused on over the years is retention, recruitment and retention of these very valuable people and pleased this year as we look at next year, over 94% of our credentialed and licensed, which are OT staff, are planning to stay with us into the next school year. So, we're really excited about that. When we look at how many students we serve in San Luis Coastal for special education, we have data that comes out and it's taken on the in the fall and what's called census day. And it looks at the number of students that we serve from the age of
055preschool all the way up to 22, including students who are on individual service plans, which are students who are going to private school, but would qualify for an IEP if they were to attend a public school. So, what we saw is that pretty significant increases in the year of 21 and 22, very likely coming out of our COVID years. And as the years have gone by, we have continued to increase. However, the rate of increase is slowing down. So, in the fall of 2024, we had 1,316 students and in the fall of 25, this past fall, we were at 1,318 students, so a growth of just two students year over year. And I'm going to invite Joyce to come up and talk about the eligibility areas of our students. Good evening. Um so, students are
056found eligible for special education services in one of 13 eligibility categories. And the data that's on the screen right now is again from our fall census and we had the 1,318 students that Janet was talking about that were eligible and the majority of those students were eligible in speech and language impairment, specific learning disability, other health impairment, autism, emotional disability, or intellectual disability. And then we have a small number of students that fall into that other category, and those other categories are listed at the bottom of the slide. Um So, this division of special education eligibilities is consistent with our eligibility breakdown from last year. So, it looks about the same um as our numbers last year. And our total numbers reflect our entire student population. So, this is again from 3 to 22, like
057Janet was talking about. And you can see that we have a high number of students that are eligible under speech and language impairment. Um that's because the majority of our preschool students, that kind of that entry into special education um as 3-year-olds, the majority of them come in under speech and language impairment. Again, a lot of those students get the early early intervention services that they need, and we see that they get exited throughout their elementary school years. So, that that number kind of of speech and language students declines as you go up through the grades. Okay. This slide is again using our fall census numbers, um and it compares them to our numbers over the past 3 years. And something to note is that the overall number of students with disabilities has decreased about
058by about 79, but we have had some eligibility categories that have had some kind of significant increases. And that's our um OHI, which is other health impairment, and under autism. And those numbers are similar to increases that the state and county are seeing also. Um so, uh in San Luis Coastal, autism is about 16% of ours. In SLO County, it's about 17% of students in sped. And in the state, it's about 23%. And for other health impairment, it's about 17% of our students, and in SLO County, about 20%. So, we're slightly below that average in the county. But then the state average for other health impairment is about 15 and 1/2%. Okay. This slide now is shifting from our fall data to our spring data. So, this shows our special education program enrollment as of
059April 1st. So, we've shifted a little bit. Um every year we start out with a number of students, and then that number changes as more students are qualified. Um and or and students also exit. So, this number looks a little different um in our breakdowns. But you can see um that the total number of our special education students compared to last year at this time is about the same. We're 1375 now, and we were 1376 last year. This number does include 17 regionally placed students. And regionally placed students are students that um come from other districts in the county, and are placed in one of our programs, typically in our special day class programs. And the And those districts pay us for it um having their students in those programs. And the the 1375 students
060represents about 16% of our total student population. And it's slightly higher than the statewide average of special education, which is right around 15%. Um And the while the difference between the 1318 at the in the fall and the 1375 now is about 57 students, um we've actually identified 152 students this year as being eligible for special education. So, that shows that we are exiting students along with um finding students eligible also. And this slide is looking directly at our school age programs, so TK through 12. Um so, on the in the on the top half of the slide, we're looking at our resource programs. And we have resource programs in all of our elementary, middle, and high school campuses. And these programs provide special education services to students that spend the majority of their school
061day in a general education classroom. And that's for about 53% of our students. The chart on the upper left shows the number of full-time equivalent teachers, the total number of students, and the student to teacher ratio. And it kind of looks like in the from this that our elementary student to teacher ratio is higher than our um high school, which it is at this moment in time. But if you looked at that same um ratio in the fall, at the beginning of the year, our elementary number would be look lower um because during their elementary years is when we qualify more students. So, they start out lower, and then by the end of the year, they kind of fill up. And in high school, they're exiting students, and so those students are leaving. So, they
062start out higher, and by the end of the year, their numbers look a little bit lower. So, it kind of balances out throughout the year. Um The bottom half of the chart is looking at our special day classes. And our special day class programs provide services for students who spend the majority of their school day in a classroom with a special education teacher. So, they're not in that gen ed setting most of the time. And this accounts for about 19% of our students in special um in special ed. And you can see the list of the five different types of special day classes that we have. We have less intensive special day classes, more intensive special day classes. Uh this year, we have a new program called a social emotional academic learning class. This year,
063it's for TK through first grade. Next year, we are expanding that to TK through second grade. Um Then we also have counseling enriched programs in our elementary, middle, and high school. And then we have a medically fragile class, which covers actually 3 through 22 in one classroom. Um And you can see again the chart on the lower right corner shows the number of students that we have, um our and our the number of teachers that we have, and then our class size range for our special day classes. And just to note that Assembly Bill um 560 has stipulated that by July of 2027, the state is going to be posting recommendations for the adult student staffing ratios for special education classes. At this time, we don't anticipate that that ratio recommended ratio is going to
064look a lot different than what we currently have, but we are keeping an eye on it just to be safe. I think. Yep. My turn again. Um compliance is a big part of the world of special education, and each year we um receive a report that gives us uh an indication of um some of the areas that are monitored in special education, and how we are doing on them. Um I was very pleased with uh our in compliance improvement monitoring that came in this year. I looked at multitude of different uh areas, and asked um it sets a state target, and then it says, "Did we meet that state target?" So, uh the first four are um related to the dashboard. And I know you're all familiar with the dashboard and the different um colored
065levels of proficiency with blue being the kind of the top top tier performance, and red being the bottom. And uh with uh the ELA assessment and the math assessment, uh even though our percent proficiency were high and above state targets for percent proficient, um so, when English language arts was 32.44%, um and I believe the state targets was 17 to 19%. Uh and in math, we were almost at 24% with the state targets considerably lower than that. Uh because the dashboard also looks at change year over year, and we did maintain in English language arts, but we went down a little bit in distance from standard in math. It put us in the orange um area of the dashboard. So, we did not meet the targets in ELA and math. Uh and in the area,
066the only other target we did not meet had to do with preschool, and it has to do with the percentage of students who spend um who receive the majority of their special education services in a general education classroom. And we as a district uh don't offer general education preschool, so the majority of our preschool classes are special education or special day classes. Um we do have an inclusive preschool uh at C.L. Smith. And uh we are looking for uh additional ways to um increase uh inclusive opportunities for preschool students. I'll talk about in just a moment. Uh the state uses these compliance improvement monitoring reports, and says, "Hey, districts, any district that is uh found not to have met more than one areas, we would like you to put together a plan for improvement." And
067you have the opportunity to select what area of that improvement that is going to be uh through a needs assessment, and then you have 3 years to implement that plan. So, you may remember 3 years ago, we were focusing on one related to suspension of students with disabilities. Uh the interesting thing is we don't have to tie our plan into one of these three areas. We need to we can look at our whole program and say what do we need to address. One of the things we've been talking at talking about and looking at is attendance and I know you've heard that for all of our students as well. So that is one of the things that we are intending to look carefully at is the attendance for students with disabilities and potentially making that
068the focus area for our compliance improvement monitoring and then next year a plan would be developed related to that. Um and finally what is kind of as we look forward into next year, what are some continued or new areas of focus? So in the area of preschool, one of the things that we did this year is we moved one of our preschool classes from the coast into San Luis Obispo due to the number of students that were living in San Luis Obispo in the preschool area needing up the class. And we moved it onto the Seal Smith campus where we also have our inclusive preschool. And one of the things that we noticed was with having our less intensive special day class right next to our inclusive class, it just provided opportunities that we didn't
069have before for our students who are placed in an SDC classroom to go and visit our inclusive classroom which has a 50/50 of students with disabilities and students without. And what we saw is students who previously would not have had that opportunity to go into inclusive classroom or who we might have thought aren't ready to be in that classroom, we just were able to include many more students than we had previously. So we're going to change up our model a little bit next year. This year we had one less intensive classroom and one more intensive classroom that they split the day. And so next year we're going to have both a morning and an afternoon class session of less intensive along with that inclusive classroom to just expand the number of hopefully the potentially the
070number of students who can move into an inclusive classroom. We also have the Child Development Resource Center. It's a state preschool and it's located very close to the district office where we have our speech services for age 3 to 5. And what we found is I believe they have over 50. I know they have over 50 students that they serve and a number of those students we have identified as students with disabilities but we're finding barriers to get them to speech services due to transportation more than anything. And these are working families that are having trouble with transportation. So we're looking altering the way we are currently delivering service with our existing SLPs providing speech to see if we can push in and support students in the CDRC program just to expand services to students
071that do qualify for services but are having difficulty currently accessing that. Transition planning is another area. When we look at transition planning we're specifically talking about in every IEP there's a point where we start talking about what is life going to look like after high school for this student and it varies from you know I'm I'm going to college to Yale to I am you know talking about what work experience is going to look like for me when I turn 22. So it used to be that we put those plans in place when students turn 16. Ed code changed to say we should to say we should be talking about those plans much earlier so that they're in place by the time a student enters high school. So we've done a lot of work this
072year with our middle schools who've been amazing at like starting to have conversations with students and start putting the base of that plan in place by the time they end eighth grade. At the same time we've been working at more robust transition services or college and career readiness for our students with disabilities in high school once they get to high school because then they actually have services towards their transition plans and aligning those with the college and career guidance initiatives which are used by our counselors. So just more robust learning opportunities, goals for students to support them once they graduate from high school. So this year we welcomed Spectrum and Spectrum is a non-public school that is located in Cambria on a formal alternative high school campus. A non-public school are for students that are
073not finding success in the programs that we offer and previously we did not have this continuum of special education service anywhere in our county. So we were very excited to work with our SELPA and bring Spectrum to the Central Coast and we want to continue to foster that relationship and that program with really the goal of being able to expand our continuum of services and meet the needs of all of our students here locally. And then finally it has been such an honor to serve as your director of student support services for the last 5 years but this is my last year in in this position. So I am as Lisa said working closely with Peter Reynolds who I'm excited to welcome into the department and will be taking over next year. So with that
074thank you very much and we'll Joyce and I will take any questions that you have. Is there anyone from the public who would like to address us on this? Yes. Hello, I'm Marisa Gomez and I have a question for you all. I'll caveat it first, two caveats. The first is I just want clarification of information if this is false and the second is maybe you can't comment on this publicly yet but my understanding is that the PREPARE program for students with disabilities age 18 to 22 is at the El Moro Elementary site at the moment which has sold. So I was wondering if you can speak to the plan for that program next year and in the future. Yes, we are definitely going to be in need of moving the program and we're looking at
075what would be a suitable long-term site for the program. We're currently exploring an option of Morro Bay High School as a place where we can continue to keep the program here locally and support the needs of our 18 to 22 year old students. Thank you. All right, I see anyone else from the public? I I see we I'm going to go Mronger, Mr. Clawson, Mr. Buckman. Sorry I couldn't keep track of I was paying attention, didn't watch lights. Sure, I'm curious about the non-public school Spectrum. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and and what the hope is that that will be able to achieve that we're not able to achieve in our special day class programs right now. So what kind I just like to know more about that. Who's operating
076it? Some things like that. So Spectrum is a non-public school that has the ability to serve many different classroom types and they're actually kind of a national program or what we have or they have locations now you know throughout the nation. What we have contracted with them to come in and work on is a student is a classroom for students that started out of the high school and now actually goes down seventh grade through high school but for students who have trouble accessing a comprehensive high school campus. So we're seeing a lot of attendance concerns or maybe some behavioral, mental health concerns, emotional concerns where they're just not finding success within our programs. And when we started it was students that aren't rising to the level of emotionality or counseling, therapeutic support that we have
077available in our Chris Jespersen program. More school avoidance. Some behaviors. And um so we we started the program with that or extending it down to seventh grade and we're finding that a lot of the students are continuing to need more of our URSA's which is our mental health counseling support. So next year we are embedding some counseling supports into that program. So how is that different from the program we have here at Los Osos Middle School and at Morro Bay High School? Can you talk to me a little bit more about that? I would say a big part of it has to do with it's not on a comprehensive campus. And it's able to be more individualized. Like right now they have eight students total in the program. So students that are for a variety
078of reasons not making it to our programs here. It gives them another option for their education. So so these are students that would either receive probably some kind of educational services at home through some vehicle or might be placed out of county in in in residential programs. Yes, definitely potentially. In the fact In the past, if we were seeing that students were not making progress or not coming to our programs, our only option at that point were for a non-public school was to be a residential placement um where they have to leave their family and live at their school, but because we now have this program in our county, we can offer uh this non-public school and students can still continue to live with their families, which is fabulous. And And last question, um I
079realize that what happens at home is not our responsibility, but are we seeing um Are we seeing that that school is able to work with other agencies to provide the kinds of support that students might need at home? All indications are yes. Thank you. Yes. Mr. Clausen. I have one question. First, I just wanted to thank you for your exceptional leadership over the last 5 years. We'll We'll miss you. I'm sure everyone shares that sentiment. Um my question's about the total numbers and the fact that they flattened out this year after growing fairly significantly over 6 years. Do you have a way to forecast the future or are there indicators either in statewide data or local data? I mean or maybe just put simply, what do you expect the next few years to look like?
080Um my expectations, what we've seen is that again that rate of increase has been decreasing. And so, I I I I expect it to be fairly stable. I'm seeing in the in the county that we're seeing similar things. Most are pretty stable this year compared to last year. When we look at the fall data compared to the spring data, and I'm seeing that you know, this we started out at It was 1316 last year. It was 1318 at the fall of this year. And then now in the spring right now, last year it was 1376 and this year it's 1375. So, I'm seeing kind of similar levels. So, I would expect when we come to fall of next year to see very similar levels that to see again that flattened level of I don't see
081it dropping dramatically. Um one of the things is it's it's not only students that It's hard to a number to grasp because it's not only students that we identify, but it's students that move into our district. It's students that move out of our district when students are ready to exit. So, there's just so many variables um that it's it's hard to really put your finger on any one thing. Thank you. So, I'm going to echo some of your thoughts. First of all, it's been amazing working with you. And it's been amazing to watch you move from a principalship into this directorship and just embrace it and just It's been wonderful. Thank you. Um on slide four, I think we were just talking about that. Um the rates of the rate of increase has decreased since
082the high of 2021. So, I appreciate the the question ahead, but is there something that you can attribute to this? Is it Are we identifying less? Are things changed in the in the homes? Well, I think there was a you know, post-COVID, kids were not in very good place. We all know coming back that it was hard for students after living at home for a number of years. So, there were likely more referrals. We've again seen other health impairment, which is more you know, based on ADD increasing. Um I I I think that a lot of that rate of increase is directly tied to COVID. So, as we settle back in years after, I I would expect it I'm not surprised to see that we're leveling off now. Um I think we've also done a
083lot of work with our staff and um our teachers and uh you know, I think that that contributes to it, but I can't like say this is the one factor, but I I do think a lot was related to COVID. Okay. And then on This isn't more general question, but I thought about it when I got to slide seven. And And I know we ask you this every time. So, this doesn't include 504 students as Maybe I'm reading it wrong. It does not. Okay. >> They are different. Yes. >> And can you explain the difference again for me? Yes. So, students Really, students with a 504 and students with disabilities, they both have a disability. In order to have a 504, you have to have had a You have to have a disability and it
084has to have adverse impact on your ability to succeed in school. With a 504, we're able to put accommodations in place that help you be successful. So, if you think of strategic seating in a classroom, additional time on an assessment, the ability to have text to speech, all of those are accommodations that can be done for students with disability and fall under 504. Okay. >> When you think of students with disabilities who qualify for an IEP, they need to both have a disability that but it needs to require specialized academic instruction. So, the difference is that the accommodations alone aren't enough. A child requires specialized academic instruction from a special education teacher with the one exception being students with speech impairments from a speech-language pathologist in order to make that progress. And so, what I'm
085hearing is 504s cost the district some money to make the accommodations. I I'm I guess the the overall question is why are they not included in our in our in these kind of numbers? Because this this They're not included in the They're separate. They're two separate I completely the federal Americans with Disabilities Act ADA 504 and then students with disabilities IDEA, two separate and distinct things. Okay. Thank you. Uh Mr. Unger, Roger. One other question I I was wondering about. What's What's been the effect of TK in terms of our special education numbers, particularly speech and language? Yeah. I I think one of the interesting things is like when we look at preschool, we haven't seen a We've seen very little like change. I think we were maybe at 91 last year and 88 this
086year. Like we haven't seen a lot of change in our preschool numbers even though we essentially have preschool special education numbers even though we essentially have one less grade level that's in or one less year of kids that are in preschool. We are actually seeing a large number of students in preschool um that are finding eligibility. But we are definitely um seeing TK students, K student or TK students that we're finding eligible mainly for speech and language. Um It's speech and language or it's autism in our TK population. Do Do you think that will eventually level out as you know, as as as we go along and it becomes a a typical grade level? I Mhm. You know, that's a good question. I I think Yeah. You know, we'll get to a point where we
087where we're seeing the increase in number of students and now we're just kind of coasting along because that's that's where we're at. >> Yeah, it's interesting because uh previously I would say students um you know, parents were getting students assessed when they were 4 years old before coming to TK you know, before coming to kindergarten. So, students would enter with a speech and language IEP. Uh where now maybe more students aren't entering with a speech and language IEP because TK may be their first experience. So, we are um uh we're you know, we're looking at screening that we can do if we for the whole class to really be aware of which kids we need to um keep our eye on. Uh uh We're looking at within our TK classroom, we've done work on what
088are strategies, tier one strategies for speech and language that can be done by all teachers to support the language development of students, which students need more of a tier two related to their communication, and which students we need to assess. Thanks. I I I guess where I'm going with this is um Is this another Is this another hidden cost for us having to provide transitional kindergarten and not being reimbursed for it from the state? Yes. I mean, we're providing the services. I don't know that we I mean, we we have the obligation and because of their age, we had the obligation to provide the service anyways. I would say we are providing more services. So, yes, there is more cost with more services because the students are with us now. And so, we see them
089and we hear them and we say, "Hey, we we need to provide you with service." Where previously, if the parents weren't Previously, the parents had to reach out to us or be referred um in order for us to provide services to them between the ages of 4 and 5. Where now they're on our campus, they're on our child find obligation, and yes, we are It's It's It's costing us more, but it's really beneficial for children to be able to have them in the system, identify them early and hopefully remediate what we need to remediate early >> Yes, we all know the benefit of early early early intervention. Thank you. Okay, returning to what is this? Slide three. Um when we look at the flattening of identification or the the flattening of the number of special
090education students that we have. Um I'm wondering if I were to look at this chart against a chart of declining enrollment in the district over the same number of years does this really accurately reflect a flattening or might I see an increase when I looked at the number of students overall that were leaving. That's a really good question. As far so you're looking at you're asking about the percentage as opposed to the numbers and I if you would like me to I can look into that information but it's it's not something I have prepared to to share tonight. >> Janet. No, it's just But no, that is that is that is a that is a wondering so if we have Yeah, if we have 500 fewer which I don't think we do. If we were
091to have you know, I I don't think we have over the last three years significantly fewer students but if we had significantly fewer students yet our number remained the same then our percentage would actually increase. Certain schools have declined some have grown but we're flat >> We're flat in enrollment. Okay. All right, great. That that answers that question. Then um moving on I wanted to look at resource. Um because I know that our resource teachers are working very hard. >> Yes, they are. And when I look at the elementary numbers um we have 350 students to 14.2 full-time equivalents and so the resource each resource teacher would have 25 students that they're serving. Mhm. And I'm wondering are those students served on a daily basis or does it uh does it depend on their It's
092the number one answer in special education. It depends because it is so individualized. So some of the students receive daily service or four times a week service for 30 minutes. Some of the students have push-in services where paraeducators go in and push in and support them in their general education classroom. Some have 15 minutes a week of services. >> When that occurs it would be in lieu of the resource teacher Yes, and under the direction of the resource teacher we do have paraeducators supporting our students. Okay, so 25 students it seems like a high I don't know if you call it a caseload >> Right. to me. >> the state the state the kind of the number we always use in the state limit for resources 28. Is 28? >> So 28 to one. So
093we don't start the year with 28 to one because we know we're going to have kids found eligible over the course of the year. So we start them lower and then they grow over the course of the year. With high school some yes, they exit and some they move and sometimes we'll project students we'll project a certain number of students who are coming in with IEPs and then things change over the summer. Um I know we have like five to 10 more students that we know are coming to SLO High from private schools that return like are returning to high school so sometimes we catch we try and catch that as much as we can and work closely with the registrars as they're you know, preparing for next year. So some of it we can
094account for some of it we cannot. Once we give a high school their allocation it's different than elementary. Once we give a secondary school their allocation for special education teachers they build it into their master schedule. And they you know, develop co-taught classes and and intervention classes. So then if my numbers don't come in exactly as we projected it in the fall it's challenging at that point to grab a teacher and move them somewhere else. So sometimes if the projections don't come in as as as high as we had expected them to be they may be a little lower staffed. Sometimes we can make a switch sometimes it's really challenging to make a switch or I may need to do it you know, at a semester break as opposed to right then at the year
095at start of the year. Well, in the case of elementary resource teachers if their caseload um exceeds 25 approaches 28 or exceeds 28 then who can be brought in to support them since they are specially qualified? >> It's it's a great question and we know throughout the state of California that we need more special educators. We do. It's really it's challenging. It's where it's why Joyce and I work really hard and you know, we have a amazing support that lets us not start our you know, through our district staff that lets us not start our classes really high in our resource. We start them lower to give them room for growth but sometimes we do have case managers appoint approach that 28 number. When they do we work with them individually to decide like what's
096our plan. In some cases we may look at someone who has a lower case case man you know, case number and have them support them with assessments. Sometimes we do have to move things around and add a little bit of FTE if we have the flexibility to do that. Sometimes we have um substitutes come in for like you they get a regular person who comes in for half day once a week who works you know, with a real specific task freeing the resource specialist up to do some of the work that they need to do. So we have a variety of different solutions to meet that need when it happens. Okay, that's that's a great comprehensive answer. Thank you. You're welcome. >> And then my last thing just is um in response to what Mr.
097Buckman asked about the difference between IEP and um 504s I just share a little personal insight that might um explain a bit is that most of the people here know that my son was born missing a hand and he never required anything um he just went through school fine. He adapted. But I guess it was third or fourth grade I got a call one night from the music teacher who said I'm wondering do you think he might want an adaptive recorder? Well, I didn't even know he was learning and playing the recorder with one hand that's a little difficult. Yes. So I said, well, maybe I'll just let's ask him. And so he he allowed us how he thought yeah, maybe that would that'd be a good thing. So the school provided an adaptive recorder
098and that was the extent of his need and I think that's if not a typical 504 um accommodation it was the accommodation that we received. >> Yeah. So and then he didn't need any kind of special education services >> need the academic instruction. He needed an accommodation. And really that's the difference. And that >> Accommodation cuz with IEPs we definitely have accommodations but layered on to the accommodations is that specialized academic instruction. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation. You're welcome. Um I know that one of the issues that you talked that you mentioned was recruiting qualified teachers and I know that it's been difficult for us to do so and all the school districts to do so and for in fact my understanding is that the special education program at Cal Poly has seen
099significant declines in their student enrollment. What can we do? You know, Greg Janet Chris, you can probably answer this question as well as I can. But I'm curious, you know, what what kinds of things what kinds of things can we do are we able to do to recruit qualified special educators? Well, we gave all special education a 5% raise last year. Um we uh we work hard to plan meaningful professional development for our special educators. Um we work hard to make them feel like they are supported in this really challenging job that they do so that San Luis Coastal is a place where they want to work and they want to land. And uh we work hard to find people from throughout our county. We're not always the favorite amongst locals districts that we are
100poaching their people but we we we try and um get qualified uh special educators to uh work in our district. There's also a lot of great programs now for paraeducators. Yes. To be funded to go back to school and get your BA and go into special education. So I know there's several paraeducators educators that we currently have that are going through that process with the county so there's a lot there to kind of bring you know, bring people in from that front as well. Excellent point. Yes, we definitely want to look at our para professional staff and those that are interested in the teaching profession and how we can help support them in that. And is that that's a cooperative venture with the County Office of Education? This is my turn. Okay, and then I
101I just would add that although we gave the 5% um what do we call it? I there's a name for it, but above scale. Um to our special educators and I'm sure that was really appreciated. I think that special education is a calling. And either you're called to do it or you're not. And no one is going to decide, oh, I'll be a special educator in San Luis Coastal cuz I can make 5% more. Because that's not what it's about. It's about people who are called to do that work and are willing to get their personal satisfaction from very small increments of of growth sometimes with their students. Um Agreed. 100% agreed. >> Yeah. And I think that's why in this position and with Joyce who's so amazing it's making these people feel appreciated and
102validated and supported in the work that they do. And you know, we may not succeed in that 100% of the time, but it's where our heart is and it's where our you know, important part of the work that we do. It's really admirable work. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I have a couple of questions. Um so everyone else is everyone else is good. Okay, so I I do think that the the high rate of retention that that reflects the the responsibility add on what we've done. But I am curious. I know that that number admirable though it is does not reflect the para positions. And it's my understanding that we do have kind of a continuous high rate of turnover and difficulty um maintaining those positions to the level that would benefit kids and the
103district to the greatest extent is that still that remains the case. Joyce, I know it's County wide. Yeah, Joyce is it it is and then you look at that position, but Joyce I'm going to ask Joyce to speak to that one cuz she really takes the lead with our paraeducators. Yeah. Thanks, Joyce. So in the eight years that I've been in this position, this is the first year that we've had the problem when a para calls me and says, hey, you know, I'm not sure that I'm fitting in at this site. Do you have can I transfer to another position? And I've had to tell them, I don't have any vacancies. So we are retaining our paras this year really well. And we are and it is you know, we're we're we're actually have when
104we flown positions, we've gotten applicants and we've been able to fill our positions. So yeah, thank you. So so yeah, again, for the first time in eight years I'm seeing that. And the paras that we're losing predominantly are going into sped programs or teaching programs or school psychology or OT or PT, you know, they're continuing on the special ed um um career pathways. So um Well, that is fabulous news. So I think we're doing a good job. Yeah, that's great. That's I'm really happy to hear that. >> If if I could just add from the the human resources side of the house um it may appear that we have a um if you look at the personnel report on a month-to-month basis, yes, that classification is typically the highest with regards to resignations and or
105hiring. Um but it is it is important to recognize that they are the second largest group of employees in the school district behind our classroom teachers. So you know, roughly 400 classroom teachers and a little bit over 200 paraeducators. So it's a large classification and to Joyce's point um I am finding that a lot of the folks that are coming uh in in saying, hey, I'm going to resign because they're they're engaging in a special ed teacher program or they're going back to seek some additional uh professional development. The other item that we did partner with the County Office of Ed as well as San Diego County Office of Ed this year to implement our first cohort and we ended up San Luis Coastal being the only um district who took the County up on
106this offer for uh professional development and we had um I think there was about 12 of our paras participated in a it was a eight-week training through the County. Some of it was and I always get the synchronous asynchronous, you know, thing mixed up at this point in time. But um related to a number of topics behavior management, you know, supporting teachers and in instructional um programs, etc. And the feedback that we received from those paraeducators who completed the program was was outstanding. So we do continue to work on maintaining both our classified and our certificated staff and we do know that particularly in this county where we're in a bit of an island um when it comes to to the availability of people, we do our best. And then I also recently participated in
107a um human resource hiring fair over at um uh Cal Poly. So that was again an opportunity to to meet a lot of emerging teachers and we've got a number of them are you know, I would say at least half of the kids who came up and talked to me, they were like and they introduced themselves. It was very you know, it was interesting. They were already student teaching in our school district. So you know, we we have a nice pipeline and a nice relationship with Cal Poly. And we'll continue to to foster that as well as getting our paraeducators into programs if they like to pursue career opportunities as certificated educators. Joyce Joyce indicated that right now we are at three agency paras. So in the past we've had not been able to hire
108on our own enough paraeducators to support the needs across the district and we're relying quite a bit on hiring agencies to bring in paraeducators to us. Um 30 40 a few years back and three this year. So that's great. And I and I I'm sorry, I do have to give my staff a plug on that. Brittany Schultz does an amazing job with that. She Her area is the paraeducator recruitment. And it is ongoing. It is um it is a grind and so she is constantly working at that, but super impressed with her effort and her collaboration with the team. So it is a team effort, but we do continue to find our we're we're not again we haven't had hiring issues in certificated or classified realm at this point. >> Yeah, I see Ms. Rogers'
109light's back on and then I'll come back to me. Yeah, I just wanted to ask. I know the paraeducators are CSEA employees. With SEIU we have um money available for professional development. I wonder if they have that as well and if those paraeducators who availed themselves of that course were able to be compensated that way. We did work with the County based on the dollars that they share with us and the the partnership that we have to give the the paras who worked on that. It was I think it was a $750 completion bonus. Yeah. So it was somewhere in that range. So we did compensate them for the time, but more importantly they had access to really high-quality learning that ultimately goes back to our classrooms and has a positive impact on our kids.
110It's a win-win. Thank you. Right. Then I have a question about Medicare reimbursement. Okay. And that is I know >> [laughter] >> Joyce sits down. Um I know that for several years early on there wasn't really a just was not the ability to seek that reimbursement was not um was not being followed or was it really it really wasn't didn't exist to the point where it made it the trade-off was good enough to sort of seek some of those dollars. And I'm wondering I know that we're doing that now and I'm curious as to uh the impact that has on the services we offer. I will say we are very aware of things that we can seek reimbursement for and that our people that can are speech language pathologists or occupational therapists our nurses um
111our school psychologist all bill through paradigm and we receive 100 hundreds of thousand dollars a year to you know, from the billing services. We've done a lot of work towards like we that's how we've hired contracted therapists that we've had with County Behavioral Health. It's how we've offered additional materials for our OTs to trial in the work that they do with students. It's how we've supported our movement rooms across the district. Uh we've it's how we've done a lot of trauma-informed training um across across the district with teachers and para educators and just staff we've been able to use the Medical money for that. Thank you. And then one last question when when students attend our programs from other districts how does that I know that we are reimbursed but is it to the cost
112of the particular student or is there a structure in place and and why do students come from other districts and especially speaking to some of the issues raised about class size and Right. >> all that sort of thing how to how does all that um do are we benefiting are our students no are our students of residents I want to make sure not paying any kind of uh price or you know that for by accepting other students. Well, I feel like we have a responsibility to serve students. And primarily our students but there are students within our county who do not have the program that they need available where they're at. Um most of our regional students come from Cayucos and Cambria where they don't have more intensive special day class so classes for their
113most disabled students. They don't have a counseling enriched program so students who are have emotional disabilities and are struggling with anxiety, depression, some you know mental health issues. Um they don't have that continuum of service so we are a location in that continuum of service. All of this is done in partnership with our local SELPA. So we were you know when I believe this predates me but when we took back classes from the county and we started providing services that were previously provided by our County Office of Education we wanted to make sure that the smaller districts still had a robust continuum of service to provide their students. So the way that was done was by creating these regional programs. Um each year the cost of these regional programs is determined by the district's fiscal
114department and we set out a cost for how much it cost to participate in our less intensive special day class, our more intensive special day class, our medically fragile class. Um and then at through our SELPA we have a committee that meets every month and looks at potential um resident or regional placements and the directors the special education directors from throughout the county have conversations about the student and options for the student if they need a placement that's not available and we work kind of as a county team to find the best placement for that student and then while there is a basic cost structure then if a student requires a one-to-one that is outside of that cost structure and we do bill the student I'm sorry we bill the district for where the student
115lives for the cost of the base program as well as any additions to that program. Thank you and that was something I just primarily wanted to make clear to our vast public audience that we are able to provide services in our district to meet the needs of some of the smaller districts and then I also know that we are the only district that has the medically fragile um classroom throughout we're the only school in the county aren't we? Does >> I don't I don't think so. I think I think there's one in the CMR in Paso. Maybe yeah. I didn't think Paso had one still but I could be wrong. But I I think that's um many people aren't aware of that we have classroom that is basically set up like a hospital um that
116serves a very select and and deserving portion of our student population. Um so um Mr. Andrews One more. I I know that we're endeavoring to work with private insurance companies to help pay for some counseling services. Can you talk about how that's going and what we see the future of that? Well, it's outside of the scope of special education because the CYBHI schedule is for general education students or it's a general education program. But we do work to bill insurances if we have permission from parents we do work to bill insurance for counseling services that we provide in our district. Um we have the potential to um be reimbursed a significant amount of money with Medical with special education services. We're just getting reimbursed from Medical but with CYBHI for non-special education services we can
117be reimbursed for private insurance as well. Um we've been reimbursed $25,000 which is a you know it's it's a decent sum of money. We hope to increase that significantly over the years. Thank you and thank you for all the good work you and your department do. Thank you Joyce for coming this evening. This is an important component of the uh of our school district and the services we provide. Thanks so much. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. I and now we will move on to safe and engaging sports progress report. >> [clears throat] >> Mr. Black Mr. Neff welcome. Okay, good evening. Thank you for having us tonight. Mr. Neff and myself are here to give a little update on the progress of our athletic programs across the district that includes our school sports programs along
118with our partnership with the foundation with our athletic achievement. So we have a few slides kind of go through and we'll be talking a little bit about them as we go. Can I direct from up here? Okay. I want to start off tonight with our mission statement. This was our athletics mission statement you've seen it before. It was developed last year with the committee from parents, students and staff just focusing on you know an educational base that's a collaborative process environment for our students with the guidance of excellence and qualified staff and teachers and coaches that are working to enhance the physical, social, and emotional health of our students for their life. Today's strategic purpose and what we're talking about a little bit today are these three points here. You know our goal is to
119engage student athletes in a safe and inclusive program. We want them to make sure that they are belonging and feel a part of their school. And we are intentionally finding and identifying students to participate at the youngest age of fifth grade of our El Cap student groups. Those are our strategies that we are taking to include these students into our athletic programs as a driving force for their engagement with our overall schools and feeling belonging. We broke down some of the different steps that we've been working on with different committees and with ourselves into three main pillars. The first pillar is obviously about student safety. That's including talking through some different changes and policies working with our student services department for mental health resources and some management event game management protocols for our school sites.
120We'll hear more about specifics of what we've been doing with those here in a second. We've also looking at elevating our coaches trainings working on establishing accountability systems for our coaches having set standards for them and also building in some academies for professional development for all our coaches staff and walk-on coaches. And of course the last pillar is giving access to our students and working partner partnering with our foundation to really work hard to give these kids these opportunities and these chances to be a part of something across our district. So starting off our basic playbook Mr. Neff's going to talk a little bit about some of the different parts and pieces details that we've been working on. Thank you Mr. Black thank you board for hearing us tonight. Uh so overall as you see
121kind of these chronological order of things we're doing before the season during the season and then kind of ongoing. I'd say overall the piece to remember is very similar to what effective coaching effective teaching does is set and communicate clear expectations right? And so that's what a lot of this is about. At the high school level as you know we have a governing body CIF that provides a lot of our guidance for that and so that we've done some of that work and as CIF has come out with some new policy or bylaws we've adjusted some of our things as well and so you see that they came out this year. It's it's sad to have to say but unfortunately this isn't phenomenon that's happening across the nation. It's not in San Luis where spectators
122are not behaving sometimes how they should be and so something CIF came out with a new new bylaw that had to do with kind of setting spectator expectations and how to and supporting schools and districts and how to deal with when they aren't behaving maybe as well as they should be. And so we we use that to as you know modify our board policies looking at civility and how we support our spectators and our parents at athletic events and so doing some of those things to help set that safe environment for our athletes, parents, our community members. As you know sport events have large large amount of people coming to them, right? We want it to be a fun and safe event for them. Environment and so doing some of those things looking at our
123safe sports and extracurricular policy. Previously we had multiple handbooks. I think those were kind of in existence before the development of the safe safe sports and extracurricular policy handbook and so Mr. Black and I Mr. Black primary has done a lot of work to merge them all so we have a singular document that captures these things and makes it much clearer easier to use. So we've been doing a lot of that work and working with our ADs at the middle school and high school and then Aaron's obviously implemented into athletics for achievement at the elementary level. But trying to take multiple sources put them in the streamline and make sure they're aligned against communicating and setting clear expectations, right? We did a training this year it'll be an ongoing training for administrators and athletic directors
124on how to best deal with situations during games that maybe they aren't going as well as planned as well as setting expectations ahead of time so we have set pregame announcements that are going out during games as well as at the like you know second half starting to remind everyone. We've hung CIF produced basically a banner that has those stated expectations and so we made banners and put them out in all the gyms and all the fields this year doing that and then kind of addressing the mental health side of things knowing that that's a big component to support students with. So created with the help of um Janet and her team and Angel Riles created some flyers distributed out those to parents and students as well as now during our parent season meetings. We
125have counselor do a presentation on mental health so parents are aware of the resources available like the wellness centers and those flyers that are going out and then we've also incorporated when the ADs meet with athletes kind of the start of the season. They now are doing it meeting with all athletes so SLO high school will do it maybe during the fifth period Morro Bay maybe do it during the tutorial but making sure that all students are all student athletes during that season are receiving the same information in terms of expectations as well as the mental health support. So we've added some of those things in there as well. And then moving on to additional sort of expectations on this part. Some of the other things we've done is creating and communicating out with the
126ADs at all at both middle school and high school levels and having those common tryout guidelines as well as kind of expectations communicated on the front end so parents and students know what the tryouts look like having that be the same process or similar process throughout the school so it's equitable experience for students at the middle schools and high schools across the sports. We've updated some of ours you know and gone through our ARs on coaching expectations so we're trying to be up front with our coaches around what are those expectations. In fact we have them now basically they fill out a Google form and test it that they've read those coaching AR ARs around coaching expectations so there's clear understanding of that as they go into the season and then as well as as
127you know club sports are a big part especially at the high school level off season and so we've done some work with our ADs as well as communicating with our coaches having clear expectations for what coaching club looks like. We make sure we know if a coach is coaching club what they do making sure it fits. Obviously there's guidelines around CIF that have to be followed but then also within our our district ourselves and our expectations for what coaches are doing aren't doing in the club scene as much as we can work with them on that. And so I'll Aaron talk a little bit more about some of the ways we're helping coaches in professional development and then also providing feedback during the season. So a big part that came out from last year's athletics
128committees that we had was to develop some professional development for our coaches especially our off campus coaches to really streamline what we're doing how we're treating students how we're treating our players how to build good culture on their on their teams how to work effectively with their parents things like that so that we are kind of more uniform across the board. We've been working closely with Dr. Hogobian from Cal Poly's kinesiology department. She's also a parent in our district involved. She's actually coached for us as well. She is working with her sports psychology department. They created a Cal Poly or sorry a San Luis Coastal coaching website from Cal Poly so our coaches can ask questions to them. They can post things. They can give feedback and get research based studies those things for our
129coaches to develop on. We did host four different coaching academies for our athletics for achievement program which I held right prior to each season the four seasons for the fifth and sixth grade ages where we developed the the coaches. We met for half a day. We walked through strategies how they can support kids how they can work with kids. We also are planning now with our safe safe sports policy you know requirement for all coaches to go through that training. We are tying that all in together now on June 1st so we have scheduled out an all district coaches training which we will go through four different sessions. This information is coming out to coaches in the near future here. They'll learn about the safe sports policy and the handbook there. They'll also go over
130effective communication with families and parents. They'll go over building a positive culture on the field with your athletes and we're also adding in cultural competency and implicit bias which is something that we're going to be working in with a lot of our coaches and our staff. As far as our systematic feedback we also worked with Dr. Hogobian. She she reviewed our our parent and student athlete feedback systems so their feedback on the season how it went got feedback that way so that we could support our coaches. She modified a few of the questions. She added a few questions so we have that as a universal now so both our all four schools are using that the secondaries right now. We're working on implementing that and using similar but less for the A for A for
131the elementary. And then we also developed an athletic director to coach feedback loop kind of like a walk through system for a classroom teacher so as they're walking through in a practice they can give immediate feedback to their coaches after what they saw as athletic directors to kind of keep that feedback going that conversation going. So there's a lot of the different things that we've been uh working on throughout the year. This one kind of lays out a little bit about at the different levels. We'll start with the elementary school foundation level. We restructured the fifth and sixth grade athletics a little bit this year. We added our power 30. I know I spoke about that before. That is the last 30 minutes on Tuesdays and Thursdays at the end of practice where we're putting
132more of an academic focus a mentorship focus a check-in focus for our coaches with those athletes. On Tuesdays the power 30 was a structured lesson. We worked on co-constructing team expectations so the kids and the coach work together of what they're expected to be like at practice and being a part of this team. They worked on setting team goals so they set up a team goal and what they were going to focus toward together as a group and then they taught them how to set up individual goals for themselves both in the classroom and out of the classroom. That could have been academically it could have been behaviorally and then what they want to achieve on the field or on the court that way. Dr. Hogobian's sports psychology class actually put together different videos on
133those various topics. I know I've shared this already before I'm just kind of going over again. Sports psychology how to overcome failure that mental piece of the game sports nutrition and also exercise that will be hopefully lifelong benefits for them to understand what they're doing with their bodies with exercise and physical activity. And then the Thursdays was a check-in day where students can get some support in academics. They can do their homework. Um the coach can do some check-ins with their athletes. They can check in on their with their accountability partner on their goals. How are they doing toward it? Are they working toward it? So we're teaching them a lot of those life lessons there. The executive functioning piece not just rolling the balls out letting them play the game. We're teaching them how
134to focus on working toward something working as a team being collaborative those life skills that can support. We are looking at redesigning next year a little bit with the season and the purpose of that is to increase participation. We're not trying to compete with the outside organizations the local youth leagues and things like that. We did find that when we do offer a sport during the same season as them our numbers are lower so we're trying to offset that when off season times to offer the sports that they love that they could be a part of and be a part of this program and they can be playing multiple sports throughout the year that way. So we are looking at juggling where those different individual sports are offered during the school year. And I want
135to share a little bit that and I'll get to this in in a minute here but athletics for achievement our athletic participation for our fifth and sixth graders mirrored our fifth and sixth grade demographics almost spot on. It was awesome. It was great to see. So, I'll get into that a little bit more here in a minute. We also expanded into the middle school with our A for A, so for our seventh graders and eighth graders at both Looms and Laguna. Um we added the power 30 academic and mentorship piece of that as well, so they were getting the same the same lessons, the same videos, they were having the same conversations with their coaches just to keep that piece going. Um and then one of our expectations to see is our athletics at our
136middle schools should mimic and mirror our district demographics. We don't see that at this time. You'll see that in a minute, but that is our goal is trying to work toward that, okay? And then our high school we are exploring um offering a Sunday league type of activity next year where high school students can develop their own kind of intramural leagues. We can have support there, they use our facilities, they could be a part of it, and we're working on building that um mirroring of our demographics through the high school levels. Here's some of the demographic breakdown. Um if you'd like to see elementary district um Like I said, it would it pretty much mirrored. We pulled some. I have more data if you'd like, I can share that with you as well. So, remember
137the elementary is just fifth and sixth graders, it's just eight athletics for achievement, okay? And I broke this down in different ways. So, the elementary is fifth and sixth, if you can see our different ethnicities are pretty much spot on right there. They mirror our demographics for who participated in the blue, and the green is our districts right there. Um I will share some other data points that I found very fascinating. We had 58% of our fifth and sixth graders participate this year. We had 660 something students participate, which is a great number, and that's not a duplicated number. So, those are individual students that played one sport at least one sport. They could have played more, and most of them did. Um I do want to share also that Baywood had 93% of their
138fifth graders participate. Only two did not. Del Mar, who by the way had zero for the last 4 years cuz they never could fill the team, had 84% of their fifth graders participate. They only had five not participate. So, that's great. So, we're getting kids engaged, we're getting them involved, and personally I can see a difference at Del Mar's campus how they interact with each other cuz they've been on a team together. I've watched at lunch, I've been out there, I've been supervising. I you can see them gelling as a group. That's only making the culture on their campus that much stronger. So, I just want to share a little bit of that. The middle school on this document here, um the blue is the participation and the green is uh the district demographics. So,
139the top one is Laguna. So, you can see that there is a decrease in our Hispanic population participating on the schools team, okay? The team that is you know, they go through tryouts, that's the Laguna team that travels and plays the other schools. Same thing with Looms down below. You can see Looms has 25% Hispanic and 23 participate in sports on their schools' teams. So, I want to make sure you know that. That is not the athletics for achievement. I can give you that at 40% of our athletics for achievement students in the middle schools were Hispanic compared to a 28% average in both schools. So, that's a good number of of students that are participating in our program. Um that is not on here, but I can share that later with you. These the
140middle schools are just the athletic teams that are from the actual school that go and compete against outside schools. And then you can see the same for the high school. Um SLO High School is 30% enrolled with Hispanic and 19% um are participating in athletics, and Morro Bay is 27 and 23. So, we have some work to do. That's what takes us back to that strategic goal of how are we identifying these student groups and how are we getting them involved at an earlier foundational level, and how are we going to move them up throughout the ranks to be a part of things as they get older and older year by year. Uh this is our socio-economic disadvantage data from that similar to what we just saw regarding ethnicity. Um 54% of our fifth and
141sixth graders socio-economic disadvantage students participated in athletics for achievement. I thought that was a great number. Um a lot of them over half the students are playing, they're a part of it, they're being they're being involved. Um in the students that participated, just to share the comparative, right? Um participated in athletics for achievement, we had 39% were socio-economic disadvantage, and our district average for our fifth and sixth grade is 42. So, we're right there. We still have some work to do. Um Mrs. Baltodano and myself um met the other day, and she had some great ideas of how we can really target, and that's that that's that strat strategic purpose, right? We are identifying students individually, and we're deliberately going to try to get them involved to be a part of our program so that
142they're engaged in school. The middle school you can see on the left, um is the enrollment, 40% um is SED, and for their school teams, 30.4% of the students are SED that play for their school teams. And Looms is on the right there in the middle, 44% is um SED is enrolled, and 46% participate in in their school teams, which is great. You can see the same thing with San Luis Obispo on the left, slower percentage compared to the enrollment, and the SED participation at Morro Bay High is right on par, if not higher. So, it's a good starting point for us to identify and to target and really kind of start working toward how we're going to identify our students and really get them involved. Um some of the key insights that I took
143away from this year that um from some of the all the work that we've been doing uh for athletics, um really working hard on on aligning our systems for the support of our athletes, our fans, and our coaches. Um we've had some issues this year with some some frustrating times, and we're really trying to get this in line so that everyone feels safe to be a part of the programs on every campus. And so, we're putting those different things as as Mr. Neff talked about, those game day operations, how are we making announcements, our tryout uh protocols, communication standards, those types of things are across the board at all sites. The one on the right I was very proud of. We've gotten multiple responses from officials in our league just commenting and commending San Luis
144Coastal about how our fans have been, how our coaches have been, how our players have been. So, like that Mr. Neff said, setting that clear expectation and holding that accountability, we are outstanding. They're comparing us to other districts and saying, "You guys are doing the right thing." They love the pregame and halftime announcements about civility, how we're supposed to act, how we're supposed to carry ourselves, and who we are. So, that that's been that's been positive. I was very proud of those. Um directly to Dr. Prater real fast, check it out. Here's another one. You know, it's really good that we have those kind of comments and that feedback from the officials. Um we had a high um athletic participation from fifth and sixth graders proving that the foundational program is supportive of these kids
145to kind of get built in, get started early, be engaged at their school, and be a belonged. Um we had a positive initial turnouts for the middle school um A for A program. We are looking at making some structural changes to make it more of inclusive for all students, not so much anymore as far as they try out, they make the team, they don't make the team, A team, B team situation [clears throat] that we had going on this year. Now, it's going to be a roll up of 6 weeks of playing with A for A prior to the the school teams' tryouts. So, all kids will play together, we'll play in a league with ourselves, we'll play uh Laguna and Looms, and then they'll have their tryouts, and they can and the school team
146will will do their thing. I think this this this ramp is going to be a lot better for overall inclusion. And then we are deploying the home campus system. Home campus aligns with CIF, the central section of CIF. We are actually utilizing it for all three levels of our athletics program. Um this is going to streamline a lot of work for our athletic directors as far as coaches onboarding, athletes onboarding, um scheduling. It does communication from school to school. So, if I made an adjustment on our schedule changing a game time, it automatically notifies that other school. It can track our coaches, "Hey, you're missing this document, we need this in." Rather than picking up the phone or having a text, it's auto automated for us. So, it's going to streamline a lot of work
147in that paperwork stuff for our athletic directors. It also has injury trackers, so our trainers at the high schools can track all uh their injuries throughout the year. It's all in a one-stop shop um that we can utilize. So, we're really excited about that. We're finalizing the pieces now to start actually pushing that out um at our physical nights coming up here in a couple weeks. And then on the horizon, or I like to say on deck, um some of the things that we're working on. Um we are kicking off a swim initiative. Woo. Um and all kids >> [laughter] >> all kids can swim initiative. It's going to be great. I love the idea. It's awesome. Um elementary principals are they're good feedback. They're all on board about it. It's awesome. Uh we are
148meeting first time tomorrow to initiate our committee um with a lot of folks that are involved in the the aquatics community in our in our district just to kind of get some brainstorming going on of how we can do this when we have the kids in our with us. Once we let them go after school, it's hard to get them back. So, how do we give this this offering this this opportunity for kids, and how can we build that in when they're with us already? So, that's to come. More information to come. Right now, we're starting tomorrow night 7:00 and we'll see how that goes. Um next year, we're looking at expanding potentially for the elementary A for A program. Um looking at expanding and splitting our co-ed flag football into a girls flag football
149and keeping boys flag football. Flag football for girls is becoming a major major ordeal. They want to play. Um and then we're also looking about adding possibly boys volleyball. So, I'm currently working with our partners at the foundation to see if this is an opportunity that we can fund to give kids more chances of being involved. Uh middle school expansion, we're looking at continuing what we're doing with that changes of schedule, that that ramp-up system, and then also looking at adding boys and girls flag football at that site as well. And then I talked and hit on the high school expansion of a potential um intramural Sunday league where students can sign up. Um you know, they utilize it, they make their own teams, we have fun. We don't need parents, we don't need coaches,
150let's just play. Okay? And then get those kids involved so that they're engaged with their school that way as well. And then the home campus implementation I just spoke about, the all coaches academy which we're doing on June 1st this year, just spoke about. And then, you know, start exploring additional ways for a a united athletics league um for all students in our district as far as inclusion with some of our special needs students and figuring that out how we can start implementing that. And that's it. Thank you. Um I'd like to go to the public, see if anyone has would like to address anything on this. Yeah, thank you. You can Okay. >> [laughter] >> Hi everyone. Uh Emily Goodman, I have a sixth-grade daughter named come with me who did Athletics for Achievement
151at the Lompoc this year soccer. I have fifth-grader at Monarch who played basketball and flag at Monarch this year. Then I have upcoming first and TK who will eventually be utilizing these programs, which are amazing. Uh I am all for um inclusivity for all people um and finding space for kids to uh be a member of their community on the playground. I really liked hearing that. With that said, the question I have and the thing that was not in this presentation were dollar signs. How much does this cost? Because I know there is a current budget coming from the foundation. If we are expanding these things, I'm assuming it costs more money. And if we're choosing to spend more money on this, what are we not choosing to spend money on? As an example, I
152just went to Camp Ocean Pines with my son's fifth-grade camp. That is very expensive and there are a lot of families that fall between the zone of not getting covered and can't afford to pay it. The foundation used to pay for that coming out of COVID and they phased it out. That would be a really great place to spend an extra $10,000 instead of expanding Athletics for Achievement, which I think is great as it is. I'm not saying get rid of it, I'm just saying choosing to expand something is choosing to spend money on places that we're not spending money like innovate. We don't have a staff member at elementary campuses. We are sending boxes to teachers to put in front of their children. I know this has nothing to do with this budget, but
153it's really hard to hear expanding Athletics for Achievement when I don't have a full-time librarian at my elementary school. I know the foundation can't pay for that salary, but there are ways for the foundation to support other areas that we're cutting while maintaining really great programs, but maybe not expanding those programs. So, I would I know also you are not the foundation, but many of you are either on the board or acting as liaisons. So, that's just my feedback from the public and things that I also hear other parents saying on the playgrounds as we're watching these fields, you know, on Friday. You know, actively out there. So, what you see on the strategy is great. It's great in real life also, but let's think about the dollar signs. Thank you. All right, Mr. Buckman
154then Mr. Banfield. All right. This is It's just awesome and to see it keep growing is absolutely amazing. I have a question on slide seven where the high school and the athletic participation just falls off dramatically. Yeah, the high school one? Say it again, please. The high school one? Yeah, the high school one. It the rest I mean, even at middle school it's it's falling off um at Laguna, but at the high school it's really dramatic and I had some community members talk to me and this this sense is among some folks, but I'd really like to know from you, is it the children or students are not making the cut? And is there a reason why there's such a disparity between the the total enrollment and the number of students because hope we this
155won't happen. In 5 years this won't happen. I know it won't because the kids will all be on the same plane. But right now that it it's just a huge huge gap. Yeah, and ultimately that's what the whole purpose of the program to initiate in fifth and sixth grade is to provide those students with the opportunities that don't have the resources to be able to develop their skills at a younger age that are the ones that are playing at the high school at this time. Well, and it it also will develop So, a lot of folks have their kids in club sports or even AYSO and a lot of as families can't afford it or don't have the time. Yep. So, this this program that you're doing is just it's filling just a major gap
156in families' lives. We're trying and that's what we're hoping our expectation is to see that change over time as these kids roll up through the ages. Yes. Okay. And I will I just want to comment on the the expansion. That is not a done deal. I just want you to know. Um it's just a pitch to the foundation board. It has not been we're not expanding at this moment. So, just want to make sure you know that. >> So, just my just my hearing that wanted to hear it. The other thing is we built these two uh world-class swimming [snorts] pools. And we have some community use and we have our team use and they sit unused a lot of the day. And I am just so excited that we're going to actually put it
157to this kind of use. Um when I was working at Santa Maria Bonita, we had children that were what, 5 minutes from the coast that had never seen the ocean. Yeah. Never never been in a swimming pool. This kind of this kind of use of the pools to close that kind of gap just just warms my heart. It This is just amazing. So, thank you very much both of you. >> I think it's a great idea. I love it. Um safety for those kids is number one. I'm giving them some of those basic skills. One of the I can't remember the exact numbers, but one of the one of the largest reasons we lose um children is drowning. Um and I used to have those numbers in my head, but I don't, but it this
158is going to take care of that as well. This will help that as well. Mr. Banfield. Hey, you mentioned tracking injuries. What's that all about? So, the high school athletic trainers, anytime there's an injury of one of their athletes, they have to track it and monitor those athletes for their safety. So, this is instead of a the current system that they're using, it's built into Home Campus. So, they're just going to jump over to Home Campus and use that system now where we have everything all in one spot rather than having multiple softwares, multiple programs, it's all under Home Campus. Is that for statistics? No, it's for the for the the medical or not I can't say medical, but the tracking for the athletic trainers so that they keep their notes, they know what they're
159doing, how they're working, communication with families, things like that. For the treatment of the athletes. It's per athlete then. Okay. Ms. Balsdonado. Thank you. Um thanks for the presentation. I appreciate the I just see a lot of intentionality and I see a lot more of a holistic approach to athletics across the school district. Um I feel like we used to hear just a very small piece, Athletics for Achievement, and it wasn't in this larger context. So, I appreciate the increased context and then also just the focus on those the um forget what you call the 30 minutes, but the power 30 and life skills and executive functioning and um goal setting, all of that is is so important and really the crux of the whole program. I mean, we from in in my perspective, we
160shouldn't be talking about athletics unless we're talking about academics because we need to I mean, that's why we're here. So, um so, I think that's really great. Um I I did hear I have a question. You mentioned trying to juggle schedules to and I think I heard you say to avoid conflicting with existing club programs or something like that. And so I just wanted to know more about that because I thought that the purpose was to provide opportunities for kids who can't do club. Sure. So, I'm not exactly so concerned about a con- Just tell me more about that cuz I >> Yeah, so So, just trying to look at our enrollment, like I'll give an example, boy's soccer. We did not have a large amount of boy's soccer this fall because they're all playing
161AYSO. And that's all kids, not just certain kids, not just club kids, not just whatever. It's It was all kids. So, we're trying to boost those numbers up. I'm moving boy's soccer away from when AYSO is and not compete with them. And give give up our opportunities for the kids at a different time of the year. Okay, so I guess my I guess the focus I would like the focus to be on and ensuring that you know, kids have an opportunity for one or the other. So, if everyone can financially and and otherwise access AYSO and that's providing an outlet for all kids that want to do soccer and it's and it's providing that opportunity, then maybe we don't need to provide soccer. We can be focusing on other programs. But I I I just
162think that the goal, in my understanding, is to provide opportunities where where they can't be accessed Sure. >> for all. So, um So, thanks for for clarifying that. Um And then And also thank you for We had a really nice meeting brainstorming some of these, you know, creative ways to maybe ensure that we're reaching everyone to close some of those representation gaps. Um On the Home Campus system, which sounds just sort of like a manage- management tool, it sounds like software. Um I heard a lot of great things and we talked about the injury tracking and school-to-school communication and scheduling. Does it also um allow for uh coach evaluations uh so that we're having that constant feedback observation feedback evaluation of coaches and um holding them accountable to their job descriptions? So, like from the
163athletic director or from families? Uh athletic director. >> Okay. So, we're using a Google >> whoever. Sure. Sure. So, we're We have the feedback evaluation forms that we give out to all the athletes and the um parents at middle school and high school. At both, they're all the same now. Um elementary we do from the parents. We get feedback from the parents and from the teachers. Um and we need to reach out and figure out how to get from the students. But as far as the athletic director, they we created kind of a rubric form that mimics our Danielson framework for our classroom teachers. Um over the um various skills that we are looking for from our our standards for our coaches and they're using a Google form for that. So, they I don't know
164if it can work in Home Campus. We're meeting with them in a couple weeks here to really go through all the details of the functions of it. Um it might be able to. That'd be great if it's all in one stop, that's even better. But they right now that it's all on a Google form that the coaches can use or sorry, the athletic directors can go from their phone as they're at practice or their tablet and they can give feedback directly to the coach in the moment and they can have follow-up conversation with them as they're walking through. It's just like a teacher walk-through. Right. Like if I was going through and just walking through classrooms, I would have a real quick feedback form that I can submit and give them that immediate timely feedback.
165Yeah, and those those um kind of you know, on the spot evaluation opportunities are really important and I don't really care which program you use to do it. I just want to make sure that we are doing that kind of evaluation and um because that's the big accountability part that I think is really important. Um and so those, you know, on the spot evaluation opportunities are really good, but are there also comprehensive evalua- you know, annual evaluations like every employee should be receiving? >> Yes, they do. Yeah. That's the annual. That's what they've always been doing. We've added this extra piece in. >> Got it. Okay, good. Cuz that's where we learn That's where we can identify, you know, strengths and objectives to work on for improvement. >> And yeah, in the moment and then
166annually. Yeah. Great. Thank you very much. Thanks for all of your work on this. You're You've been a great leader in this in this effort and I also really appreciate cuz I remember being very confused by the multiple policies on the website. And so just that alone, just consolidating into one concise program. If you go to the website now, you're either looking for Athletics for Achievement or School Athletics and it's one document and it's um much more user-friendly and I think that's more effective. So, thank you. >> Great. Mr. Clausen. Yeah, so first uh thank you for the transparency on the data you shared about uh participation at different levels. Um I really hope we can carry the the parity at the elementary levels forward and we'll be very interested in how those how we
167implement those programs to see if we can achieve that. Um Couple questions. Uh You talked a lot about the strategic framework for enabling coaches to be successful. And that framework makes sense. I guess I'm curious, what is your assessment of how prepared our coaches actually are, you know, specifically at the high school level to handle the complexities of parent, students, community and I mean, maybe on a scale one to 10, how would you kind of rate our preparedness against that framework? High. Eight, nine. I think I think the high school varsity levels running programs, I think we have some high-caliber coaches. That's why we're trying to utilize their expertise and their talent to train the rest of our coaches. Okay. >> And then I got to build that up. So, that came out from the
168the coaches academy where we actually had four of our top end coaches come and talk to our new elementary coaches and give them feedback and ideas and they're the ones walking out going, "We need more of this. I want to sit around the table with other basketball coaches and discuss what we can do to get better as a whole." So, that's kind of where it came from and then we started talking more with the athletic directors. That's why we've established that instead of just doing the the the man- mandated one of the state sports policy, adding in additional topics to really beef up our coaches using the expertise in-house that we have. So, we're not bringing anybody out, we're not bringing anybody from the outside or paying them. We're using the expertise that we have
169at our sites to build up all levels. Are there specific areas of leadership skills, communication skills, culture development that that you think we need to focus on? So, that's why we picked those three topics. Yep. Okay. So, you know, cultural competency, um communicating effectively with parents and families Okay. and building a positive team culture. Okay. Yep. Um my second question is you mentioned the Power 30 at the middle school level. Is that for the athletics Is that for all programs? >> No, just for the Athletics for Achievement. >> Are we considering the Power 30 for our middle school I what I don't non-athletic for achievements that are the school teams? Um yeah, we can That's a great idea. We haven't thought about that, but that's a great idea. It's all part of it, right? They're
170all the same kids. Okay, um then one other question you I mean, you clearly are putting a lot of thought into making the middle school Athletics for Achievements timing structured to encourage as much participation as possible, which I think is really great. Are Are other districts Do any other districts in the county have anything comparable or we're we're the only ones out here with this program? Yes. And um Okay. This doesn't exist in our county outside of here that I know of. Okay. And at this level and scale. No. It's very much what you what we had previously, it's traditional. The middle school >> I I hope we take that as our opportunity to lead and not our a sign that we're we're that that just seems really positive. And so I'd say we're also
171we're also very fortunate our partnership with the foundation. Mhm. That helps support a lot of this work, too. Yeah. Thank you. This This is a really great presentation and uh exciting to see the progress at the middle school level. Yeah, me too. I think that's that's the ticket. Mr. Buckman. Thank you. So, it's another thought. Um I think it's we throw around the term SED um and I don't think we really talk about what it means. So, in my mind, it means kids that can't um that fall below the income level to qualify they qualify for free and reduced lunch. So, these are the kids that are um whose families are struggling to make ends meet. And I think it's it's really important when we look at these numbers that um the enrollment at Laguna
172is 40% SED. The enrollment at Los Osos is 44. The enrollment at San Luis High School is 38% and the enrollment at Morro Bay High School is 47%, nearly half our kids in a in a county in a school district where we think um this is a wealthy community. Yeah. These kids are not coming from wealthy wealthy backgrounds. And if I can also address um uh having having run the AYSO pro- AYSO program in the in the county, it we were we were able to cover the costs for kids to belong to teams. What we couldn't cover was the costs for a a pair of shoes. We couldn't get them all to practice, so they needed to find a way. We couldn't get them all the right home and particularly we couldn't get them rides
173to games. So, it's it's it's It appears to be a free program, but it's not. And so I really appreciate the fact that you guys are doing soccer. And it means that a kid can wear his shoes to school, he doesn't need to get a ride and um he's just there to play soccer. Um so, I really appreciate it and these numbers, if we could share these around the rest of this city, it would be great. Thanks. Yeah. Mr. Unger. So, I guess I'm thinking about this in terms of our of our intervention. So, would it be fair to say that this is a tier one intervention? Yes. Okay. And And the other thing I'm curious about, when do you expect that you'll start to see whether there's a correlation between athletics for achievement and
174attendance increases? It's a good question. First group was I think they're ninth grade right now. It's the first year that we implemented it. So, we're going to have to see. We're going to have to be deliberate and intentional and and really keep find those kids and pulling them out there to make them play. Like I shared before, what I've been doing, right? At Smith and Del Mar and Hawthorne and we're going to take them by the hand and say you need to come out and be a part of this. So, we'll see. That's That's the That's the focus. That's the That's the strategy. And then as it rolls up the middle school and you have that greater continuity over grade spans, this will become more of a norm behavior for students participate in it, which
175then will drive their you know, it becomes what they kind of normal what they do. So, as it as we continue in the middle school and that becomes just as normal as doing in elementary. I think we'll that will help as well. Um And And, you know, offering during the summer experience program various sports as part of their class periods that they can choose from, that's another additional piece that they can get training with and get development with so that they're working walking in each grade level higher and higher more skilled. So, that's another piece too that that I did not hit on, but that's a part of it as well. Do Do you expect that we'll see some some increases in student engagement scores on um on our youth truth surveys as well? Yes.
176I know you mentioned that you felt that there was an increase in school school culture at Del Mar. Yeah, I I can see it. You can sense it. You can feel it when you're on campus there. Absolutely. Being out there at the beginning of the year for 2 weeks and watching how the kids were interacting and now going back out and seeing how they are after playing together for four seasons on the same team, it's pretty it's pretty good. It's real good. Okay, thank you. I just have a couple of of questions. As we move up with introducing athletics for achievement at the higher grade levels, is there are you working at the high schools with the in middle with the athletic directors for kind of a alignment um the way the trainings work, the
177way the coaching works to make sure that, you know, it's a that we're all doing the same thing. That in terms of um how the coaches are trained and that kind of thing. For the high school coaches? >> Mhm. Yes, they're all going to be a part of the June 1st. That's what we're pushing out there for all the same type of training and just continue every year do this and keep building. Maybe different topics each year so that they learn different areas and categories of coaching, different parts of it. Um that's the ultimate goal is to kind of build this into we kind of wanted to turn it into like a conference setting where they get to pick and choose, okay, I really need to help on that you know, that topic. I'm going
178to go learn from that coach in our district cuz they're doing it well. I want to hear from them and get ideas. Kind of get to that point where they get to choose so they can develop themselves and kind of move from there. Could work out that ADs say, hey, I need you to do this this session and during this coaching academy. I need you to beef up on this and let's get stronger here. Um that's kind of the idea of getting it there. Right now, we we set three topics that we know we can be better at. So, we're trying to work on that to to be common across the board for elementary all the way through varsity. Right. And then as we're thinking of this, I guess I've thought of it since the
179since the onset, in my mind it's kind of a pipeline that we're we should see increases in involvement all the way through as our first group as our first early cohorts then advance to middle school and high school. So, I'm curious about how or if there's anything in place to measure their involve their involvement as they move through. Are the kids who started in fifth grade, are they still involved in athletics for achievement as they move as they continue through the middle school and then the high school? Yeah, so this year I went back from last year and this year, there's a field in Aries called activities and um I can't remember the Activities. >> I can't remember activities and awards. Activities and awards. And we're able to mass upload all the rosters onto there.
180So, every student you pull that up, you pull that page up, it shows what sports they played and what years. So, we're able to track that now. I went back and put in all the kids from last year, all the students from this year have been put in. And then when they get to the high school, we can pull rosters and classroom period rosters and figure out which kids are there and kind of compare as we go. But yes, we do have that system now where we can track for years down the road. So, then if all of a sudden there's I mean, I'm curious. I don't know whether I can express this very well because I didn't do sports. Um but if kids if there is a drop-off, say we're doing the swimming now.
181So, uh if we start doing swimming in fifth and sixth grade and then it drops off swimmers in at who had previously been in athletics for achievement drop off, can we determine if that's because they're now on the water polo team or they're on the swim team at the high school, so there's a different that's a different sport. >> And yeah, it's a different sport. They're They're They're still swimming. They're still participating, but it's a different avenue. Yeah, that's fine. We're looking at trying to get >> is that something that we would do to know what happens to these kids that they didn't just drop out of sports? >> Yeah. They're just pursuing it in a different way. Yeah, that'll be just that tracking piece in that in that field in Aries. So, if we're
182uploading every roster in there and showing what the kids have played year after year after year, we can easily track that. Because when we've spoken about the impact of club teams or other, you know, students who have the ability to participate in sports in a different way outside of the school setting, um and we want to have kids who aren't able for whatever reason to to participate in a club team or something that that they will feel more comfortable and have a greater ability to perhaps try out and get on a high school team when they're competing against in tryouts kids who've had a leg up by their ability to participate in a club sport. >> That's That's the ultimate dilemma. Yeah. the ultimate dilemma that we're in. So, we're we are trying to give
183these kids these opportunities, give them the best coaching we can at these ages. Hopefully they they keep coming back and playing year after year. Um it's hard to compete with. It is really hard. >> It's hard to compete with for kids have resources that are playing year round. They have a lot more exposure to the sport, to the game and that's what we're trying That's the ultimate dilemma. Well, I really appreciate them having this opportunity because I think one of the things that I would like to would hope for is that we're in instilling just a love of the sport. Mhm. It doesn't mean that the only way to enjoy a sport is to be on a club team and to travel around and do all that, but that they are can participate in a
184sport that they've developed we're introducing them to a to an opportunity to develop a passion about something. Sure. And continue to see it through. And And ultimately, in my eyes, I want them to be a part of their school. I want them to gain social benefits from working with other kids. I want them to learn the skills on how to work together as a team for a common goal. All that's going to translate a lot more into their life than how far they go in a certain sport. >> That's right. It's the character building. It's the character building. It's not the sport itself. We're just using that as the vehicle. And to that end, I think the power 30 is really important because it it's providing another opportunity that uh they wouldn't otherwise have that
185will contribute to their team building and their academic uh academic life. That's the goal. Hey, well, I know this is something you've worked really hard on for a long time. I really appreciate it. Thank you for the presentation. Okay. Thank you. All right, we're in the home stretch. Um our next item is proposed revisions to board policy 51 41.5 mental health. This is a first reading. Good evening, board and community members. Um I'd like to bring forward policy 5145.5 mental health uh to you tonight for a first reading consideration. This was a recommended update by Gamut, the policy committee. Um there was new Ed Code about including referral protocols in the school setting to address student behavioral health concerns. This policy is not meant to specifically be related to suicide prevention. We have a separate
186entire board policy and AR related to suicide prevention. Instead, this is meant to address the broader mental health issues facing students. Um Also, there was a new Ed Code in the year 2026-27. We are required to include instruction in the dangers associated with fentanyl use and opioids, so that is called out in the new policy. >> [gasps] >> Also, um the new youth mental health first aid uh training for anyone working with youth um and we are required by the July 2029 to certify that 100% of our certificated employees and 40% of our classified employees who have direct contact with students in grades 7 through 12 have received youth behavioral training at least once. Um, this policy actually had a lot of input from many different sources. Um, so as usual the red is the
187gamut changes. Also, Janet Gould and Angela Royales worked tediously on this policy looking at some of our surrounding districts' policies as well as a model update to consider. Um, and then our own board policy subcommittee worked on it twice as well as reaching out to Josh Whiteside, our our attorney, for some advice and feedback on certain sections of the policy. So, I'd like to bring it forward um to recommend it for the first reading. I'll go to the public. Is there anyone from the public who'd like to discuss this? Thank you. I see Mr. Unger's light on. Yeah, I I have a question >> [clears throat] >> about something on page number four up at the top. Um, it's it's the the heading mental health counseling and referrals. Um, we say a mental school counselor,
188school psychologist, or school social worker may provide mental health counseling to [clears throat] students in accordance with their specializations uh authorization on the individual's credential and you redlined out or license. I'm curious why you redlined out license in that. That wasn't our redline. That was gamut's redline and I think it's related to um people can only work in the area that their credential allows them to work under and so they were focusing on the school setting employees. Of course, we contract with county behavioral mental health for other types of mental health supports like MFT therapists that may have a different kind of license that allows them to perform some of that. Um, but we are primarily contracting for those services. Anyone else? Um, I had a suggestion on page two, line three, where it says
189uh including common psychiatric conditions and substance use disorders such as opioid and alcohol abuse and I appreciate that opioid is called out, but I would suggest stating something to the something along the lines of um opioid and any other drugs and alcohol abuse, something to that effect, so that it's more inclusive of uh not not may sounds as though only has to do with opioid, so I'd like to see it include other drug abuse and as well as alcohol abuse. Would the board like me to take it back to board policy subcommittee or would the board like to approve or the change at this time? So, Ellen, are you thinking it would say such as opioid, alcohol, and other and other drug abuse or something like that? >> Yeah, something along those lines. Just to
190include I I don't think it needs to go back to the Personally, I don't think it needs to come go back to the committee and then come back for a first reading and you know, if if there is consensus on the board to agree to just adding in drug abuse as well as I Like I said, I don't mind calling out opioid at all, but I don't want it to be exclusive of anything else. I'm fine with that and um I think um such as opioid comma alcohol and other drug abuse. Yeah, that's that's fine. Something like that is fine. Okay. All right. Thank you. Then um it sounds like it's the board's wish for me to bring it back as a second reading as amended with that change. >> on the consent agenda. Very
191well. >> Thank you. I don't want to delay. I know the board the committee works hard. I don't want to muck up the works here, so. All right. So, we will move on to the action consent agenda. Please let me know if you'd like anything pulled. 10.01 approval of certificated and classified personnel item. 10.02 approval of foreign exchange organizations. 10.03 approval of minutes. 10.04 approval of surplus. Pull, please. 10.05 acceptance of donations. Uh so, I'd like a motion, please, on 10.01 02, 03, and 05. Uh I'll move approval of 10.01 02, 03. What did you say? And 05. >> And 05. Thank you. I'll second that. And then Mr. Buckman, you pulled 10.04. Yeah, I I just I want to thank staff and um Mrs. Ms. Holly um just Oh, yeah, we need to vote
192on our first motion. >> You're asking me for my vote? >> Yeah. No, I'm Yeah. I do. I go I try and go up and down. Mr. Buckman? Yes. Okay. Mrs. Rogers? Mr. Banfield? Yes. >> Mr. Unger? Yes. Ms. Balderas? >> Yes. See, next time I'll go the other way. And uh so, our vote is 6-0. Mr. Clawson is is absent. All right. Mr. Buckman, you pulled 10.04. Yes, thank you. And you were in the middle of your thanking people. So, first of all, I want to thank um staff and um especially Ms. Holly, our district librarian, um for the time and effort they put in to answer my questions. Um, I just I just still have a few questions I just want to bring them forward. So, when I looked at this list of
193books it jumped out at me that these are books that um groups across the country I'm sorry, about more than 50% of these books are books that organizations across the country are trying to ban from schools. And it was such a high number of books the titles that it just it just struck me as is I don't know interesting. And um so, I asked about it and um the staff and and Ms. Holly told me that these books were damaged and you know, some kids had marked them up and that they they were no longer usable, which I understand and um it's almost um it's almost something positive for me that these these titles were so well used by students. An interesting um mix there, but I also am surprised that staff didn't notice that
194the majority of these books were books that from across the country that people were trying to ban and that um that that just kind of shook me. So, um and I don't know if we should have been asked about that before. So, my biggest question now is uh these books are now going to be disposed of, are we going to be replacing these titles in some way um across the district? Maybe not as classroom sets, but maybe as just books on the shelf um because obviously our students really are interested in reading them. Yeah, the books [clears throat] that are surplussed are not necessarily the titles are not leaving our collection, just that individual actual physical book is leaving our collection and and I I want to say, Mark, that I don't know which staff
195you said didn't recognize many of these books were banned books. I I did notice right away that that many of these books were banned um somewhere across the country. Um, and we did talk about it in our cabinet meeting on on Monday as a team to make sure everyone everyone knew that. Um So, the Slow High English Department chair, predominantly these are from Slow High, had worked um which titles in the department they were ready to surplus in order to make room for other new titles that are paired and matched to our currently adopted curriculum HMH. Um, and and I think none of the reasons you mentioned related to content or context or any of the reasons that the books that are on that list are on that list. Um, it's simply a matter of,
196you know, the age of the books, the personal preference of teachers, the connection to our own adopted English language arts curriculum, and also we do have a district-approved supplemental novel list for our English language arts courses that do feature many titles with sensitive content and address mature themes. Um, some of those include Canterbury Tales, Kaffir Boy, Girl in Translation, um, and the list goes on. Um, we we will ensure that that students have access, um, to the books they need and want in our schools, as well as our educators having access to the books and novels that they feel like are most important to their work. I would encourage any of you, as well as any of our community members, um, to come visit our school libraries and see the diverse collections. And it's it's
197important, um, a library cannot be judged just by the number of volumes that it contains, but they need to be volumes which are, um, beautiful and appealing and will draw readers into them. And so surplussing, while it is a a a sad and concerning wasteful process related to the trees that have been killed to kill the books and the people across the globe that maybe didn't have access to those books. And and all of those elements are important and know that we're taking due diligence to make sure that we're treating that all with the respect it deserves. And I I I'm so happy that that's what's going on. And I I just I just want to ensure that some of these books are still on the shelves and maybe not 75 or 575 copies of
198um but that the to Kill a Mockingbird, some of the classic classic books, um, will still be on the shelves. And these will be replaced. So thank you very much. Again, as a school district, we are highly transparent about our libraries and the volumes held within. We are happy to share with the community at large as they'd like more. We also had a Tribune article done, if you remember, about last fall with Sadie Dingfelder about our libraries. Um, so you can go back and reference that article, as well. I have to say, cuz we were in this room, oh, gosh, it must have been 8 years ago, 7, 8 years ago, before uh, COVID. Um, and we invested, our district invested over a million dollars in diverse literature. And you see evidence of that in
199this library. And it came out of that work we've been we did with uh, Trudy Arriaga in Windows and Mirrors. And we want to make sure that all of our kids saw themselves in these rooms, in these spaces. And I'm proud to say, um, that our libraries reflect that. Uh, elementary through high school. And will continue. And and and I would tie into So again, when our I think when our English teachers go through and they're selecting novels, they do have a lot of the classics, as Jane kind of pointed out. We're keeping those. We're just buying new versions of those books, cuz even the books themselves come out with new versions, how they're written, the words, those types of things. So, um, several of titles we are, but there's also great new literature being
200written. My daughter just wrote just read a book in her AP European history class, um, that Trevor Noah had written about a part like that just fantastic, right? So, it's great that our teachers have the opportunity to again reflect, look at new literature, too, and kind of add that mix, right, of both old and new as we as we go through. So, there's some know that it's a it's a big process, right, that the teachers go through and and really trying to tie in kids, um, as they do that. And and and and this is what, um, uh, this is what Ms. Holly told me, and it's great. Um, and I'm just maybe I'm not accusing anybody of anything. I just found it it just extremely that most of these books were books that in
201other places parents are the public is saying, "Take them off our shelves." So, it And they're still all available in our libraries. Well, that's what I >> Even if the That's great. class may not read them, they're still available. Right. And we'll just every time there's a new book, we're just going to have to find another inch or some place in our Thanks. I appreciate it. Um, I'd like to make a motion to approve 20.04. Or 10.04. Uh, um, and and I just want to add that we have a real champion in Jane Holly, who is a huge, um, supporter and champion for uh, literature and include diverse representing all sorts of diverse points of view. And she would, um, that's that's her belief system. It reflects that of our district, and we're very fortunate
202to have her. Yeah. So, we have a motion by Mr. Buckman, um, I'll second that. And uh, Ms. Baltadonno. Yes. Mr. Unger. Yes. Mr. Banfield. Yes. Mrs. Roger. Yes. Mr. Buckman. Yes. And I am a yes. Okay. All right. Um, board reports. Anyone? Um, Mr. Unger. Well, I just want to say, I, as I think Mrs. Baltadonno, and I'm not sure who else went, uh, I went to Mamma Mia. And and it was it was so heartwarming and so impressive. Um, I think Mrs. Baltadonno, you talked about the diversity of the students that that that played it. Um, we we saw we saw every every student being involved. And I and I thought that was wonderful. Um, it's obvious that the students made their own sets, um, that they planned it, that they directed it.
203It was it was an amazing work from the amazing students at Morro Bay High School. High level of energy, too. Yes. Anyone else? Um, Mr. Buckman. Yep. So, I had the opportunity to talk to some, um, classified staff, um, and it was just it was it was really amazing, eye-opening. So, one of the things I learned, this is sort of potty talk, there's 60 bathrooms at at the high school. It's 60. 60 what? 60 bathrooms at San Luis High School. That's that's a large number of bathrooms to keep clean. Toilets. Whatever it is, it's a big number. So, that's my potty talk for tonight. Um, I also got to meet with uh, speak to Brian Garrison, whose father owned an electric business here in town. He worked on electricity from the time he could walk,
204and now he works for us, and he's very happy. But the other thing I learned is last year he took nine of our students around, and he was a mentor to nine of our students, which is just I mean, everybody's a teacher. And his sister is our principal at Baywood. And his sister is his principal at Baywood. Um, I I had the opportunity to do I think it was Hawthorne's first fun run. They, um, took out on their little bit of grass, they put some white circles, and, um, it was amazing. The it started to rain, and we all knew it was going to rain, and the kids just kept running, and I looked around at the adults, and I'm standing there kind of dressed like I am now, and there was one umbrella and
205one person in a raincoat. And I was thinking, "What a great example." We didn't even uh, let's see. I got to go to the student senate where the chamber was there asking our kids for input on how this town is going to look in the future. That was majorly exciting. Um, and a a big kudos to Dr. Prater for the whole student senate thing. I got to go to D DELAC, and, um, just came back from, uh, being in Sacramento with the NAACP, where we did some lobbying right next to the Association of California School Administrators, who were also up there. So, that was a good mix. Um, so, it's been a busy time, and I I just my my sympathy's with the teachers and the staff, because this end of the school year is
206just like one really steep ski slope that never stops. And it's just amazing. Thank you. All right. Concludes our meeting for this evening. Thank you for coming, and, um, see you next time.