001They Good evening. If everyone would please take their seats and welcome to the regularly scheduled uh April 15th meeting of the St. Louis Coastal Unified School District Board of Trustees. The board met previously in close session. We discussed a student personnel item uh re We did one item of personnel review and we conferred with our labor negotiators. Um as subsequent to that also in closed session the board um uh worked on and completed uh the superintendent's evaluation. Let me uh really begin by saying that we have translation services available. If you require translation and you are here in the room with us, if you go to the back of the room, you'll see uh that there are headphones available. If you're watching us via Zoom, um, and press on the, uh, globe icon and you'll
002be directed to translation. Thank you. With regard to the student discipline matter, the board will be voting in public session. I'm seeking uh a motion, please. I move approval of the uh stipulated of the student the stipulated expulsion. I second it. So I have a motion by Mr. Anger, a second by Mr. Banfield. Mr. Unger. Yes. Mr. Banfield. Yes. Mrs. Balttono, yes. Mr. Buckman, yes. Mr. Schaffer, yes. And I am also a yes with uh Mr. Clawson absent. Do we have consensus on the order of business? Seeing that we do, we'll move on to our student representatives to the board. We'll begin with Linda Igger Roas from San Lucabiso High School. Well, hello everyone. It's so great to see you all again. Um, so many things have been happening over at the Sloh High campus
003and I cannot wait to get you all caught up with the amazing things our students have been accomplishing. So, starting off with Model UN, um we had 54 San Louis Viso High School Model UN delegates attend spring conferences at both USC and UCI. At USC, Helen White earned a research award for outstanding preparation and contributions. Nine students received scholarship support thanks to black and gold and family donations and UCI awards are pending. Delegates have shown strong dedication, so final awards are still to be announced. Um, a new subcommittee is planning a model UN simulation for local middle schoolers who are interested in joining future travel teams. You can see um some of our students having fun at that model UN conference. Um, our students are constantly achieving great things, breaking records, and making a difference.
004But today, I want to highlight one student who's gone above and beyond representing not just our school, but the entire state of California. A huge congratulations to Braden Penron for winning gold in automotive service technology at the Skills USA California Championships. He previously won gold at the regional level and will now represent California at nationals in Atlanta, Georgia. He competed in a 5-hour 12station event covering hybrid and EV tech, brake systems, AC systems, Pico systems diagnostics, automotive sa safety and electronics, as well as interview panels and more. Braden earned multiple scholarships, snap-on tools, and other prizes for his top tier performance. We are super proud and stoked for Braden for Braden. Moving on to some more amazing Tiger happenings. AP Art History and Advanced Film students had an incredible experience during their trip to Los
005Angeles on Friday. The day was filled with exciting opportunities to explore and immerse themselves in the world of art and film. It was a fantastic opportunity to witness the intersection of history, culture, and creativity firsthand. This trip was not only educational, but a memorable experience that helped our students grow as individuals and deepen their passion for the arts. Moving on to athletics, spring sports are in full swing with teams deep into league play and several already positioning themselves for the playoffs. Baseball has defeated Templeton twice, propelling them into first place in their league. Softball just won their their both of their league games this week, continuing to perform at high level. Boys volleyball just went 1 to2 during their three home games this week. Beach volleyball fell to Sanz, but still had a memorable event
006honoring their one senior player who is um on the top right there in the slide. Stunt triumphed over a Roy Grande and track and field had quite the time at their dual meet. Girls the girls team beat both Npomo and AG while boys beat Npomo but ultimately lost to AG. Boys golf beat AG by one stroke in the fourth Mountain League tournament and boys and girls swim and diamond defeated at Tuscadero at their dual meet on Friday. They also honored their seniors that evening during the meet as well. That bottom picture in the middle. Moving on to the world of FFA. Over 20 students attended the 97th annual state FFA leadership conference with some even competing in the state public speaking finals. Here are some highlights. The novice parliamentary procedure debate team was announced state
007champions. Five of six were announced outstanding chairs and they will represent California at nationals in October. The advanced parliamentary procedure team was placed fourth fourth in state and while Arya Olsen was recognized for excelling in a highly competitive individual event as she also placed fourth in state. As her students grew in leadership, Stevie Bates was installed as a regional officer. Two served as voting delegates and our seniors were recognized as they shared their plans for the next year. In the world of AP environmental science, they just had a field trip and we are extremely grateful for Compas for providing the AP environmental science students with the opportunity to tour their facility. During the tour, students gained valuable insights into waste reduction practices and technologies, the process of electricity generation from captured methane, and the operation
008of the anarobic digtor and its role in sustainability. This experience was both educational and hands-on, offering students a deeper understanding of environmental science and innovative solutions in waste management and energy production. And that is it for Slowhigh. Thank you for your time tonight. Thank you. Are there any board questions? Okay, seeing none, then we'll move to Mororrow Bay where we have Zahira Seagler and Nate Landwork. Thank you as always for having us. And first off, for some general campus news, our spring play, The Little Shop of Horrors, kicked off last weekend. It is really amazing, and we hope members of the district's leadership team and the board members can attend one of the three remaining shows if they have not seen it already. Uh the remaining shows are on Thursday and Friday evenings at 700
009p.m. and this Saturday the show will be at 2:00 p.m. Uh right now our juniors are in the middle of state testing and they completed their math test last week and this week is English and then moving on to science for the final days of this week. And of course our AP testing will begin at the beginning of April every or excuse me beginning of May. Uh really looking forward to that and just to get those out of the way and like Linda was saying our FFA students also attended the state conference in Sacramento the two weeks ago. It is neat that the MBHS FFA has more students now than we have had in the last 10 years participating in it. So the program is rapidly growing. And as you can see on the right
010here, our March Madness tournament went amazingly well with the staff team unfortunately winning again. I say unfortunately because our team lost to them. Um it was also 46 to 21. It was it was a it was a big loss for us, but you know they're going to have to try and do it again next year. So they're trying to go for the three repeat next year. And then moving on for sports, uh track hosted the pirate pirate relays track meet on Saturday. 18 high schools in total attended and it was an amazing day for everyone. And track also hosted their senior night and honored their nine seniors on the team. Zahira being one of them. And Morbay Dive took first place at Slow High Dive Invitational. So that's a good thing for the whole team.
011And then our softball team defeated Sanz and Coast Union as well last week. Continuing on with sports, baseball now has a record of 15 wins and three losses after defeating Regetti on Saturday. Boys golf is having another great season. We're so proud of them. And we have another school record that has been set by a track athlete. Congratulations to Wendy Wilson. She set a new school record on the 800 meters, two minutes and 14 seconds. The previous record was 2 minutes and 15 seconds set in 2013 by Ally. We're so proud of Wendy as she's only a sophomore and she we can't imagine what great things she has to come. In the world of other MBHS events, the spring student recognition lunch is next week. ASB and our food services team work together to support
012the lunch. At MBHS, each staff member invites two students that they feel deserve to be recognized and we have a great lunch all together. It's always fun. Everyone comes out and is in a great mood. We're also looking forward to the MBHS film festival at the Bay Theater at the end of this month on the 28th. We are planning a parade on the Embaradero on May 17th in honor of our girls water polo and girls cross country teams. both won CIF championships and our girls water polo team were runner up of the at the state championships as well. On May 17th, we are having prom. The theme is yet to be announced, but we're so excited to learn more about it. For pirate Olympics coming up on May 22nd, we sent out invitations to the
013local elementary schools. They begin to sign up their fourth and fifth grade students. We're so excited to host this event for the third year in a row. Thank you. That is all for tonight. Thank you very much. Does anyone have any questions? Seeing none, then I guess you're off the hook. Thank you for as always, thank you for joining us and and filling us in. And you're welcome to stay if you'd like. Um we're mindful you have other things going on in your lives as well. So, thank you very much. Okay. Uh item 6.01, correspondence. At the time the agenda was published, no correspondence had been received. Item 6.02 is public comment. Is there anyone Mrs. Schoffer? Is there anyone on uh Zoom? No. Okay. Right. I have uh Kristen Kent followed by Phil Angel.
014So, if you'd come to the podium. Yes, you're uh public speaking is limited to three minutes. So, and we're pretty we're kind of strict about that. Okay. Um, since we have a sort of small attendance this evening, I won't go into the rest of the the spiel about seeding your time to others and what have you. So, please go forward. Someone just start waving at me when my three minutes are up. There's a clock. Oh, the clock. There it is. Great. Go. Go. Good evening. Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I'm Kristen Kent and it's nice to see again those of you who I've met before. Um, and I want to let you know that I'm a resident of Los Soosos and I've taught in Central Coast K through2 schools for 32 years and
015I'm finally retired. Um, I retired from Santa Maria Joint Union High School District in June. Um, I'm here tonight as a community member and as an advocate for social justice. I represent the Central Coast Coalition for Inclusive Schools, also known as CCC4IS, and I'm here to observe. CCC4IS actively supports the development of safe and affirming school communities. We strive to celebrate diversity and transform educational c culture by empowering youth, families, professionals, and organizations. Therefore, CCC4IS is interested in schoolboard policies and actions directly impacting marginalized student populations, including immigrant students, students with disabilities, and students who are members of the LG LGBTQ plus community. I know that St. on those coastal unifi has um provided professional development for many many years um to support DEI and provide safe um learning communities for your students and I
016look forward to finding out what you are going to be doing with that in the future. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. Um, Phil Angel. Good evening, school board cabinet. Next month is uh we'll be celebrating the day of the teacher, the day of the school nurse, the day of the classified employee. So really, it is just time to celebrate our educators and uh May is a great time for us. Uh CTA this year came out with a theme. And this is we are the ones that we've been waiting for. It's like I don't know who came up with that. And I had to ponder it and think about it for a bit and then it hit me. Somebody's cutting the Department of Education. He will remain nameless. However, this powerful theme couldn't be more
017fitting for this moment. We are the ones we've been waiting for. In the face of mounting attacks on public education, budget cuts both federally and locally, and the rising demands placed on uh today's educators, our teachers, our educators, our schoolboard members, our superintendent. They're being called on to lead. They're being called on to lead in our classroom and in our communities. And St. Louis Coastal, we're lucky. We have a generation of educators who show up. We speak out and we organize for what is right. For our LGBT and our most marginalized students, we're here. We speak out for our immigrants, for everyone. And our students deserve more than the bare minimum. They deserve a high quality education with both robust academic and in uh social emotional supports. Our students deserve fully funded schools who are
018focused in our who are focused in on success and our educators. We deserve to live in uh work and live in the place where live in the place where we work and it comes with the cost. Right now we live in a place and it's a great place but our cost of living is 18% higher than the state average. and our educator salaries little bit below state average, but there's some outliers there. Um, it's unsustainable. However, I know we can work together. Our students and our community's future won't be handed to us. We need to work together both locally and at the state level and also the federal level. Um, on the CTA front, on May 17th, CTA is going to organize a statewide act uh action. It's a Saturday. We're not taking days off.
019We're good. Um to stand up to the fed uh against federal attacks on our students and schools. Actions will be taking place in our large community uh our large urban areas of Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Francisco. So, uh I hope to see you guys CTA and our and our students. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Angel. Is there anyone else that would like to address the board, please? Come forward and state your name, please. Emily Pomeroy. Good evening and thank you so much for allowing me to speak tonight. My name is Emily Pomeroy and I'm a resident of St. Louis Abyispo. I'm also a member of the local slow chapter of uh 50501 or 5051, a national movement to uphold the constitution and end exe, excuse me, executive overreach. I'm here today to
020speak up for the children of this community and to preserve a positive and safe public school experience for my future children. I'm here tonight with grave concerns over the current administration's executive orders and harmful actions aimed at vaguely and broadly ending DEI programs and the impacts that could have on our local school systems. We need to protect our children and foster a culture of inclusivity and acceptance and not a culture of eraser, discrimination, or hate. We should be teaching K kids how to identify their differences and to embrace them warmly. We need to demonstrate and encourage celebration of differences in race, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, cultural identity, language, differences in physical or intellectual abilities, and more. These are the things that make us who we are. And children need to know that they belong
021no matter what. They shouldn't be made to feel as though they have to hide or feel shame for being themselves. In these formative years of life, it's crucial that our youth feel welcome and safe in their schools. And I'm hopeful that the board will agree. I fully recognize the immense challenges posed to the school system by the dismantling of the Department of Education and the uncertainty of many crucial funding programs that provide students with a fair and equitable educational experience. programs that keep our students fed and help to meet their basic needs so that they can learn. I feel hopeful that the district can transcend these challenges and work at the local level supported by the state of California and by your community to continue protecting children despite the harmful actions at the federal level.
022Thank you all for working so hard to support our students and families. Thank you very much. Is there anyone else that wishes to address the board? Anyone on Zoom? Okay, then we'll close public comment and move on to our superintendence updates 7.01 business and budget update. Mr. Pinkerton. Yeah, just a couple things to share with the board tonight. Um the uh Moral Bay City Council is going to have a meeting about a potential roundabout over by Moral Bay High School. So I'll share the details of that with the board. But so they've asked that myself and Scotty come to you know look at the project you know the effect that it might have on the students and and uh as well as the school there. So we'll uh we'll both be attended attending that meeting.
023Um, and then also for the board to know, there are some new regulations about, um, ELOP funding and attendance policies. And so, um, I've been working with our IT department, um, and curriculum department on just how to do that, um, in terms of those programs and after school programs because it's it's basically, you know, run by the city of San Bispo, Moral Bay, YMCA. So, how do they how are they able to do that? So, we're we're working on a solution um to come up with and there's also a program called Sunbox um which is a way for our our students that are on free and reduced lunch that qualify free and reduced lunch um for them to get some funding for the family for for meals. And so, just another thing that we're working
024on with our with Aaron Primer in this case um as well as our IT department to be able to share that information with parents so they can sign up, get the paperwork done. And so we actually have a uh a webinar tomorrow I'm going to attend and give kind of the details. So I just want to let you know those are couple things that we're working on help our families. Mr. Pinkton um our ELOP funding is what we use for our summer experience. Correct. Yeah. As well as before and after school care. So how will summer experience be affected? It won't be just a paperwork. Yeah. we we're going to find a way to take attendance however they need. So it's just and again sometimes they will come out with you know hey here's a
025new thing you have to do starting in the fall but then that there's no details there's no specifics yet. So in working with our IT department you know our student database specialists basically who run all the data and attendance part with Katie Ecklund you we're just working together to figure out a way the easiest way to make that happen. So we're still still waiting for more information. Thank you. Yeah. Um, ed services update. Mrs. Yumasha, I believe Mrs. Balttoadon have a question. Her lights on. Thank you. Um, Mr. Pinkerton, what was the last program called? Sandbox. It's called Sunbox. Sunbucks. Thank you. Sunbucks like dollars. Bucks. Yes. Thank you. Yes. We'll start sending out parent square information, things like that very soon in that regards with the information. So we were just kind of again
026waiting for this webinar from the state tomorrow to get some confirmation about what exactly parents are going to have to do you know and and again when when we when we take in information like that of course it is um strictly confidential so we have to do it in a way where parents are filling it out there there's a very only our student database specialists are able to pull that information to share it with the state um and so we we just have to find that how do we do that you can't use really a Google form form because it's not secure enough even potentially parent square. So it again they sounds great let's do it but then it's kind of like how how do you do it right and our parents have become accustom
027um to being able to do it when they do Aries and just make you know we try to make it as easy as possible for them but in this case it might be back to the old form method they have to fill out the the free lunch form and so so then if we have parents do that then how do we get that across them how do we share that information ensure that they turn it in so it's just kind of having that dialogue with a group um because we want you We want our families to take advantage of any opportunity they have. Yeah. Thank you, Mrs. Yimash. Thank you, board. Um, you'll be hearing a lot tonight from my team. I'm very excited to share some developments going on. Um, I did get the
028opportunity to kind of kick off uh the strategic direction work. You know, we have a strategic direction document that was 2021 to 2025. And so I'm beginning to explore first with some of our administrators and district leaders um some feedback and inputs and then I'm going to be meeting and inviting the community task force members to engage with me next week and then um I'll be engaging with cabinet to do a polish kind of on the the list of document and then finally bringing it to you all for your feedback and input in June at the board workshop. It was exciting to get kind of a comprehensive look um underway. Also, we're continuing to develop and work on our family guides plan for next year. Those are the by grade level documents and then by
029high school information to our parents and community about what students can learn in each grade and how parents can be our partners. I attended a fantastic DAC meeting as well as um Mr. Buckman got to come see Tony Orosco again presenting in Spanish about positiva disciplin I think is how you say it and talking about parenting. It was well attended. Um lots of laughter and smiles and I'm sure we're going to continue to engage um so strongly with our Spanish speaking families about topics that they really care about that experts can help us with. Um I also attended the foundation's executive committee last week and just today there was exciting announcement. Um I wanted to share with you briefly that trust automation um is investing in the launch of a new program. So they've committed
030to support our position in our school district for three years to build an advanced manufacturing apprenticeship program. So the development of that um is alongside Mr. Nef Marcy Bedal and CTE, our high school principles and others will all be involved in developing this program and you'll be hearing more about it soon. Um, we're continuing to talk about staffing, both classified staffing and certificated staffing as people are moving about and retiring or resigning and getting promotions and all those things that happen at school districts trying to play the puzzle of who's going to be where as well as engaging with SLCTA in negotiations and bargaining all day today. And last week we got to do a day at um, Loos. It was actually here with Mororrow Bay High on our leading equitable schools work with University
031of Washington and we got to go around and observe classrooms and look at students and see what um evidence of agency and belonging specifically students who are chronically absent and what systems and procedures are in place um to help support them. So, lots of fun. Thank you. Seeing no board comment, then we'll go back to Mr. Brinkerton for the measure C update. Yeah, just a couple of things. Um excited to bring the PBGMP very soon to get that work started on our new continuation school uh for Pac Pacific Beach High School. Um and then right after that, we're going to have LOMS and Lambs are quickly to follow in terms of GMPS and and beginning the major modernization of both of our junior highs as well. Um it's again long arduous process uh to get
032through the Department of State Architects right now. just crazy in terms of the the amount of time that it takes um from even what we saw with measure D, right? It just seems like it's just taking longer and longer. Um, a couple other things again, the study session. Hopefully the board got a good view about, you know, the work of Kelly Lee and our BG&T department and trying to expand those funds that we receive um for our bond dollars, right? And really maximizing the state facility funding that's available so that we can get more and more projects done um as we move forward with our our modernization of our campuses. Um, you know, seeing this play bill today, like it's isn't it cool? Measure D like they have a theater to have a real play
033and to like be able to put on a production like this and I know you've all you've been to St. Louis High and it's just you know it's it's awesome right so for me and my see like not a lot of accolades things but to see this kind this is like the you know why we do the work part of it right and so I'm excited for all of our schools to have facilities like that um to be able to share so exciting to see that. Um, and then lastly, I want to give a shout out to Gary Giri. Um, he's architect who works with the district. Um, as part of our CT funding and to be able to get it now, the new regulations, you have to have a facility maintenance plan, a 10-year
034like deferred maintenance plan together. Um, and so Gary helped us put one together. So, just finished it, got it completed. So, we we're moving forward with that. But, um, I'll share it with the board later, but just know that it's kind of like Kelly's spreadsheet for all the facility funding. It's kind of the same thing but for literally every single one of our sites and from infrastructure to flooring to roofing to paint to all those things, right? And and lays it all out very nicely. And so again, we couldn't do it without Gary's assistance, right? Um and so it's just really nice having him as part of our team. Thank you, Mr. Runger. I'm wondering about the deferred maintenance, Ryan. Is that depending on the work is that considered cap are those considered capital outlay
035projects? The deferred maintenance plan for Yeah. Deferred maintenance projects. Absolutely. So we can use capital outlay money for those things. Absolutely. Yeah. Anything that goes into the facilities just roughly how much over 10 years are we looking at for deferred maintenance? So it's I'll have to come back to you on it because the hard part is there's deferred maintenance, but a lot of that for the next 10 years is going to be dealt with with our current bond measure. Okay. So I haven't it has all those things built into it that we're going to get accomplished. So I would I would want to come back and share kind of okay after the bond what's left what are we going to need? Right. Um so I I need to work on that. So I I just
036got it yesterday. So okay. And then one other question that just occurred to me is um any work that we would have to do on our surplus properties would be considered deferred maintenance and would come out of that fund. Is that correct? It's on our plan. I see. Thank you. Both sides. Okay. Seeing no one else, then we'll move on to item 8.01, reimagining athletics in St. Louis Coastal Unifford School District. Mr. Black, good evening. Um, thank you board for having me today and cabinet members. I really appreciate it. Um, today have the opportunity to kind of share just a little bit of highlights of what we've been working on uh, regarding reimagining athletics within our district. And I would like to just kind of share where our current progress is and just some ideas
037that we put together. Um our journey began in um October, early October with a number of stakeholders coming together to start looking at um what some things that we can look at within our athletic department um as a whole for the district and to um support our students even farther. And from that, I was able to I'm just kind of giving you a little background here. Uh held four different focus groups. Um the first focus group that we worked through um developed our mission statement of what we're doing with our athletics. Our second one uh was about understanding our student athletes and our students and what their desires are and what they uh just getting information from them. Our third one was kind of looking at that information from our students and designing or or
038reimagining what um our current programs look like. And then the fourth one was our evaluation process and what what you know, how are we going to tell that these programs are successful, if they're beneficial for students, and where we're moving from there. So, that's kind of just a rundown of what we've been doing over the last few months. And today, we're just here to highlight and kind of offer up um where we're at and so that you guys are up to par and up to speed with it. Obviously, you know that St. Louis Coastal cares very much about their their students. They want to provide opportunities and um uh engagement opportunities for all their students uh both physically and socially. Uh we want safe opportunities, making sure that our students are feeling safe and included
039um and definitely building in with some life skills such as teamwork, communication, discipline, things of that nature that are supporting our students. Our first group came together and using um the um project play which is the um came up with eight children's bill of rights for athletics for sports as our kind of our guiding light and we broke down through those eight bill of rights which I'll hit here in a minute. We developed our mission statement here with some stakeholders from students and parents and coaches as well as educators in our district um from both the coast and St. Louis. Um from that, you know, we wanted to create a collaborative and caring uh environment, safe environment, a caring qualified coaches, which was one of our major focus areas um in our third focus group,
040and also to have those um lifelong benefits socially, physically, and emotionally. So this is what we work through here. Um this is an example of just project play. I'm not going to kind of go through all of the different bill of rights, but there are eight. So the first four here, you know, children's have the the opportunity to play. They have a safe environment. They have qualified program leaders, so qualified coaches, the development appropriate play, so they're age appropriately. They can share within the design of their play. How are they going to be part taking part of it having equal uh personal growth to be treated with dignity and to also enjoy themselves from that we uh worked together with um a number of students uh from both Moral Bay High School and St. Bispo
041High School that joined us, some coaches and athletic directors and we decided to survey our students to get feedback on them that aligns with the project play survey that was a national um survey done with uh elementary and all the way through high school age students. Here are just some data points this and I have more data I can share at a later point, but these are some of the major things that stuck out to us. We surveyed all fourth through sixth grade um elementary students across the district and currently they had 7992 so 85% of them stated that they had played in an organized sport before. 54% stated that they still play today. The average age they began was 8.2 years. That was the average age of all the students that completed the survey.
042And the average age of students that stopped playing was at 9.9. Within that survey, we also asked students their most interest of uh other opportunities um other than the sports or the athletics that are already offered for the elementary sites. And some of the most requested sports were baseball, tennis, and swimming. For our middle school, I had the opportunity to go and speak with every single middle school student during their PE classes at both Loss Middle School and Laguna Middle School. And after that moment, they took the survey for us at that point. You have a question? Go ahead. I I do. Um so the the average the the the students were playing base or playing sports for approximately 1.7 years. I can imagine why they would start playing. Do we know why they stop
043playing after that period of time and does this also include our athletic for achievement the um this does include the athletic organized sports? Yes. So, I have that data in another doc that I can share at a time, but some of the points were they weren't enjoying it anymore or they didn't feel they were good enough. Things of those types that type of nature. Um, I'm just kind of showing just some of the average ages. Those are just the average age of the students that are not playing anymore. Um, and for the reasons that they chose were a bunch of different choices that they were selected. So, I'm just kind of giving just kind of the layout of the of the framework and this is what we use to kind of guide our conversation about
044how we can reimagine it to keep more kids engaged and involved. at the middle school age. Um, we had 85% stated that they had played before and we had 46% stated that they still play. A lot of their average age that they began playing sports was 6 and a half years old and ending at 11.8. So, right about sixth, seventh grade is when they stopped playing any type of organized sports. Some of their top requested interests, which caught me off guard, which was great. Bad mitten, I think they just got out of that unit in PE, so that was great. um tennis and baseball were some of the ones that they uh shared that they would be interested in. The high school athletics, we we um surveyed some of the students in our PE classes
045uh at the high schools. Um we had a low number of turnout for these surveys. So, I would we do have plans to try to survey uh more high school students to have a better understanding where they're at. Out of those, we had 46% stated that they had played an organized sport. 26 still currently play. They began at 7.6. and look at the age that they stopped 13.4. Um, some of the most requested interest was dance, even though we have dance at both sites, gymnastics, and boxing to be honest with you. Um, some of the sh I wanted to share some of the uh reasons that um all three levels, so elementary, middle, and high school stated why they play athletics or why they're involved. The number one choice by far was having fun. And
046I think that's something that we need to share more with our coaches in our district of what we're doing and why we're here and why we're doing it. Um, exercise was number two. Learn and improve new skills was number three. Winning games and championships was four. And the the fifth one was playing with and making new friends. And these were the top five out of about 13 choices that they were able to rank of different um options. So, I'm just kind of setting the stage of where where we've been. Okay. Um, top reasons high school students uh stop playing sports or do not play organized sports. Number one, they said their schoolwork was most important for them. They don't think they were good enough or they just don't enjoy sports, which is obviously there's there's
047some students that don't. This is just one avenue that allows students to be engaged with their schools. Um, opportunity. So, coming from our our third focus group was developing, you know, okay, here's the data. This is what our students are saying. Here's our mission statement. What do we offer currently? What can we build upon or reimagine for us? Um looking at elementary athletics, continuing with the athletics for achievement at all 10 elementary schools and sixth grade at LOMS. Looking at um expanding working with our foundation, continuing our partnership with them of athletics for achievement at both middle schools for some of the sports that have cuts. So keeping kids engaged and involved at the middle school level at the seventh and eighth grade. If I go back a couple slides, that's the age that they've
048they stopped playing is right around that sixth, seventh grade. And then um a very creative idea like a city league or a Sunday league for high school students that are don't play for the high school sports, but offering opportunities for kids to come um make their own leagues, design their own leagues, play with their friends, keeping them in tied with the schools themselves. So these are some of the things that came out of those meetings and I have more detailed information here in a minute here. Um some of the barriers that came out um equitable equipment was one of them and that came from actually our athletes, our students that were there. Uh they felt that uh some students don't feel comfortable playing because they don't have the same gear or high quality gear as
049others. Um, so we came up with the Play It Forward program, just like Pay It Forward, but we play Play It Forward, where we could uh access and work with our community to donate used equipment that maybe their children don't use anymore, that are still in decent shape, that are high quality. People may want to donate. Maybe a kid outgrows certain gear. collect those and have them offered for families to come and pick up and plan that out so these students have opportunities to have it like cleats, shinguards, things of that are part of our athletics for achievement program. Physicals for middle school athletes was a was a was a point that we're working through still and there's still conversation about that. How to support our middle school students um that maybe that's a financial
050barrier to get that completed or done so they can even try out at the middle school levels. um similar to the high school where they do their physical nights. How do we provide that for our middle school ages as well? And then transportation for elementary, which I've already uh been working a little bit with and trying to map out a um with Phil Angel, uh map out a schedule that's more doable with within regions and locations to see if there is access to be able to get kids to the games on those Friday afternoons. So, um, some of the barriers that obviously we've been we've been dealing with for the last few years and those came up again for that. Um, but we're working through on trying to find some opportunities. This is just a
051little bit more detailed. Um, elementary athletics for achievement for um, next year continuing our our current program for the different seasons of sport. There's four seasons having regional competitions. So, like location-wise, those schools play each other. Having an end season tournament where all students are at the same site. Um, we are looking at developing curriculum for our Tuesdays, our power 30. So, it's the 30 minutes that students are in the classroom with their coaches and building out curriculum on goal setting, you know, co-creating uh common expectations for their team, individual goals, team goals, working about uh how to be a teammate, developing leadership roles on their team for each other. We're working with Calpali on establishing some lessons on uh sports nutrition. So students understand what being dehydrated is staying hydrated. What's good food for
052your body, how to fuel your body. Um working through the psychology of sport, how to overcome failure, that's a big one for a lot of young kids. And so making it more of an educational based for those 30 minutes prior on just one day a week prior to the practice time. And then like the different types of exercise, okay, and sportsmanship. That's a big one, too. Teaching them how to do that. A big piece of our conversation was developing a St. Coastal coaching academy for all new coaches that are hired within our district to be trained by our expert coaches in house. Um having different uh training modules that are going to educate the coaches on our expectations as a district of where we want to go and what we expect from them on how
053to treat their kids using the the bill of rights to guide our to guide our lessons. Um from that uh sorry kind of kind of going through my head here. the coaching academy, different modules, working with Calpali um sports psychology department and having a pre and post survey from uh our coaches so that they can identify and self-reflect on maybe some different areas that they can grow from and continue to beef up our professional development for coaches as well within the district. Um coaching manuals per sport. So, um, some of our more advanced, uh, coaches can develop coaching manuals for our coaches that are new, coaching elementary and middle school, um, athletics, um, to support those coaches, having practice plans set up for the season, know working through them. We're talking about having coaching mentor
054programs, having retired coaches in the community that that live and breathe the vision and the mission statement of what we're going after to be a mentor for these young coaches so that they can develop that way. And then a great idea came out from the one of the meetings is having some of these younger coaches or new coaches go and observe our PE teachers on the site that they're going to be coaching at so that they can see how to manage a large group of kids at that age. So trying to do a lot of development, professional development with our coaches to be develop more of a pipeline of coaches through the years that they can build within come back the retention and grow middle school athletics. Um looking at athletics for achievement for girls
055volleyball, boys and girls basketball. So the three sports that we have a large number of students that try out and only a small handful that are accepted on the team but still providing them an opportunity to be engaged with the sport but also with their school. And that's the ultimate thing is trying to keep them engaged and tied with their site. Same thing with the coaching academy, the coaching manuals and the mentor program for the middle school. And then the high school was was a very creative idea. Um it ca it stem from a actual a current basketball league that some slow high students are doing right now on their own. Um they meet up on Saturdays afternoons and they play in an organized way that they draft their own teams. They have their own
056website. They keep their own stats. They they're just having a blast. No parents, no adults, and they're just having a good time. And so that kind of stemmed the thought process of how do we give these kids opportunity to stay physically fit, participate in a sport maybe that they don't participate at the school team so that they can still be tied with school and keep the adults out of it. To be honest with you, I'd like them to just be able to run it on their own. Um some of the sports that they kind of talked about were um like in the fall playing having a soccer tournament, having the fields open for a soccer league, pickle ball was one of the things that the high school kids came up with that they wanted to
057play. Uh bad mitten in volleyball in the winter, maybe flag football and basketball in the spring, and a lot of students would like the weight room. They were very interested in having the weight room opportunities and learning how to lift weights at the high school age. The evaluation was the last focus group and this is what we went through. Um the first one was the coaching professional development. That's co uh teaming up with Calpali's sports psychology uh department and kinesiology department. Um having that pre and post coaches survey so that they can assess themselves and self-reflect. Maybe I need some more help in this area of coaching. Maybe my communication with parents or students is this area that I need more help with. a lot of things that we have expert people in our district
058that can support that and how to build that within them to to increase their capacity. And then tracking the coach's retention. Do the coaches return? Do they come back year after year? And how do we keep them during the season for our athletes? Um obviously we're trying to tie this with academic progress. We want to make sure that we are tying um their engagement level with academic support and they are achieving. Um we can track um daily attendance. We can track their teacher ratings um and behavior in class, their engagement in class from the teachers and also their academic progress for the upper grades, middle school and high school. Elementary will be a little bit more difficult as far as academics just because of how they're graded with that. But we can check and check
059with teachers and saying are they still are they engaged in class? Are they, you know, are they involved or are they still disrupting class? You know, is it a successful thing for that student? Um, and then tracking for the evaluation of the overall programs, the player retention from fifth to 12th grade. Do kids keep playing with us? Do they start in fifth grade and they continue to play? Providing that opportunity in seventh and eighth grade. I'm going to be honest with you. I think the golden ticket is seventh and eighth grade. I think keeping kids tied with the middle school age, I think going fifth and sixth and then just dropping the sport for the rest of their life in seventh grade is not fair. I think that makes them disengaged. I've been I've did
060it. I lived at Moray High School. I lived at slow high. You know that I the kids that I was working with in ninth grade. Those are the ones that we needed to keep tied in. Right? So I think that's the golden ticket. Other things, number of participants, parent and student surveys, participation, growth year-toear, diversity of participation. Are kids playing more than one sport or are they just sticking to one sport at all? And then coaches feedback um at the end of the season. So this is just um again the tip of the iceberg here. We are we are looking through a number of opportunities to keep kids engaged, attract the students that aren't don't have the ne necessary resources or means to participate in outside of school's athletics. Um and and really you guys
061know me. I've been here seven seven years as principal. You know which kids I'm fighting for and you guys know which kids I'm I'm reaching out for, right? So that's what we're trying to do and keep these kids with us. So this is just one starting point. We just want to give you an update on where we're at and we're going to continue to uh work through this. Um again, partnering with our with our foundation to kind of keep keep these opportunities available for students to to be a part of something and to tie in with school. Dr. Prader. Thank you, Mr. Black. Um Erin mentioned that this is really the this the beginning of a much longer conversation. Uh it reminds me of it reminds me of the work we began to do with
062our summer programming long before COVID. We started working. In fact, Mr. Black was part of that cohort of about 35 people that we gathered together and started questioning what are the disparities of summer experience, the disparities of kids depending on their resources, depending on their supports, what what were their lives like when school wasn't in session in the summer. And that began in earnest in about 2018. And I remember there were some detractors even in the room among the the cohort of stakeholders that I brought together and the detractors were we can't afford to put money into summer. We can't afford to do that. And um so we moved along developing the idea, the vision and the the big idea of course was it's not right for some kids to go to Avala Junior Lifeguards
063uh throughout the summer and another kid from the same school is uh put in a classroom room at a at an elementary school for 4 hours a day doing math and reading with a substitute teacher. And that's really what our program was. And it's it was inherently unfair. We began to peel that back and really began to look at it more carefully. And what I want to tell you is from that came summer experience that we currently have which is a state model program for our kids and it's thriving. Now if you would have asked me in 2018 2019 how are we going to fund this? How are we going to make this happen? My response is the same response I gave to members of my team. I'm not sure. But I believe that if
064you put the idea out there, which is why I love play um play sports, I love the Aspen Institute's Children's Bill of Rights, is it's a framework that we act within. Those are our core values at play, no pun intended. And um and so the I didn't feel comfortable moving down this road without the board having a dipstick along the way. And really where we're at now is relatively unclear. We think we know where we're going. There's some really great principles at work here. But what I wanted to do is bring you up to speed today prior to summer so that as we are building out our um our planning for next year, we we are conscious of our core values. We are conscious of the kids that have and have not. We are really
065becoming more clear about the idea of inclusion and belonging at the center of our work. And uh this is the beginning of something very big and very important in our district. It aligns to our stated core values and yet it's still not fully developed. So uh I was talking to Aaron today, Mr. black today. And he had already started working with transportation department on lowcost impactful ways we could improve transportation for kids trying to get from one school to another to play sports and get back home. And um and I think that's the trick is how can we do this thoughtfully, creatively in an integrated fashion um where we honor all kids so that they learn to as Mandy Dawson said to me in my office today where they actually learn how to play and
066enjoy their and live a healthy life is at the center of all this. And so, and I agree with Aaron, middle school's key. And so, when you have 80 kids sign up to play basketball and 15 of them make it and nobody asked the question, what about the other kids? Well, sorry. We only have one coach and that's all we can do. It's not good enough. And so what this is going to be for us is a direct response to a more inclusive and equitable set of conditions in our district that honor and acknowledge the importance of being involved with caring adults in a very thoughtful and healthy way. How we get there and what it looks like over the next three to five years as we figure out the funding for this in earnest
067in a sustainable way is yet to be determined. But this idea is big and it's really important. So I want to say thank you to Aaron for doing this work for us this year. Y a good start fun. Y okay we'll start with Mrs. Schffer followed by Mr. Anger followed by Mr. Buckman. Thanks Aaron. Yeah. Um I think you know I'm big fan of yours sitting over here. Um I've watched your work from the high schools to CL Smith. Something I've always appreciated about you and your efforts is that you keep your eye on our atrisisk students. You have an affinity for noticing them for um relating to them and I appreciate that. I I have some some questions and comments and one is um I just want to confirm or ask about the sports
068being accessible to all students um regardless of physical disability or ability. Will all our students be able to participate in some level if they are interested? I'm glad you asked that. I've been thinking more and more about that the last honestly this last year. Um last few years I've been coaching um a baseball team for students with disabilities or special needs um and uh different abilities and uh how do a lot of them are from Smith. They're Smith kids and uh how do we get them more engaged with our elementary athletics to be more included? I think that would be a fantastic idea. Um it's fun and I think they would really enjoy being playing with their typical peers. Uh we did basketball this last winter as well. Um my boys and I and um
069it's definitely something that we can we can do and something to look at. So it's on your radar. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Be to include in this this great big beautiful ball of what we're imagining here. you know, and and and I I just want to hit on it again that this is just one mode of engagement for kids. Like this needs to be for all aspects. You saw the high school and their slideshow of everything that the high schools are doing to keep kids engaged. This is just the starting point. Um this is just something that we have in place. We're trying to um reimagine a little bit, make it even more engaging for students to be a part of and be tied in with their school. But that's going to branch out into other
070fields, other aspects, other subjects, other content. So, um, again, I I think this has a big a big opportunity to build and the potential of it to keep more and more kids tied with their school. Thank you. And then I also I have a couple more things if that's all right. Um, when you were talking about play it forward, what a great idea, wonderful concept. and it reminded me of Operation School Bell. And so that's an existing program that does great things. And it was just a a thought of perhaps figuring out their resources and how they reach out and accomplish the great things they do uh for students. And it might be save you reinventing the wheel a little bit. Just Well, right now it's it's my garage. Miss Baltadana donated some bats of
071her sons. Yeah, she dropped them off at my house the other day. No, I've just been collecting stuff. Um, we're looking at Yeah, trying to reach out, but that's a great idea to contact an organization that's already operating that way and figuring out logistic wise. Yeah. Yeah. They just have We got to figure out how to get to them to the families. Right. Right. That's my That's my next trying to figure out if we gather equipment and things, how do we get it to the kids? Okay. Not have them come to us. We got to go to them. Yeah. I love that reaching out. Um and then you mentioned the diversity of sports and again I just wanted to uh reiterate the diversity of students as well pulling them all in. I think that um
072uh for some students for some of our kids and families that one of the reasons they as you touched on don't pursue sports is they see a financial barrier to to participation. So it sounds like you're putting lots of things into place for that. Absolutely. It's one, it's just one avenue, right? There's multiple different avenues. And then finally, um I also love that you are looking at at this as a stepping stone. You know, I know Mr. Anger and I have talked before about how we were not the most athletic uhly minded students, but had other interests and I don't, you know, not every kid is cut out to have an interest in sports or participate in sports. So knowing that this is a stepping stone to perhaps additional opportunities for our students to participate
073in STEM activities or the arts or uh other things as they as they move along through their um school career is really great. Just all those doors that we're working to make available. Yeah. The foundation's actually already working toward with a Calpaly student about robotics program after school at all sites. Oh, great. So they're working with that as a robotics club student from Calpali. So we're that's that's where it needs to go and that's what it is given opportunities after school. Yeah. I think as Dr. Prader alluded it's a kind of if you build it they will come. um way of looking at this and I think putting that out there into the community, finding the right adults, training them up to work with kids to uh to be be appropriately monitored to be appropriately
074trained for all of these activities. is there are a lot an awful lot of people out there wanting to figure out how to fit in to um working being more enga from the outside more engaged in the community as well and this provides opportunities for that so% kudos to you um keep us posted I'm really interested in seeing how this moves along thank you stronger well thanks to Mrs. Sheffer for asking one of the questions I was going to ask which is what do we do for kids that like myself who have absolutely no physical ability or talent and and not leaving them behind because that is a concern that I have. Um since you did answer ask that question though I'm I'm curious uh and this is more of a philosophical question. Um what
075we want of course is this nexus between athletics and achievement and school and student engagement. And I think those are the things we're going to be looking at. To me, that's that that is supremely important as as a school board member. But I think that one of the things we can offer students is the ability to commit to physical fitness for their lifetimes. And I'm wondering how we can take this program and if it's our responsibility even to take this program and and figure out ways to get kids to be as you say talk about nutrition, talk about other activities you can do because physical fitness is so important for our lives as adults as you know as we become senior citizens for our country to have healthy population. So what what can we do
076about that kind of thing to encourage those kinds of steps stemming from organized sports into maybe not so organized sports, walking, you know, anything like that? Yeah, that's a great suggestion. That's always it's again all I'm trying to do is how do we tie students to school? That's going to increase their engagement. That's going to increase their belonging. That's going to increase them to their success on campus. Um, I can attest at Smith, I know when a student's participating in something because they're on point. They're doing what they need to do. They're respectful. They're following the rule. They're they're doing it. They're getting it done. They're showing growth. I can see it on a day-to-day basis when they're when they're engaged with school. The kids that aren't, they're the ones that are they're they're shied
077away or they're more distracted or they're missing school more if they're not tied in with something at site. As far as um lifelong benefits of of exercise, that's something we can look into um how we can incorporate additional activities for students to to learn those skills for their life. Absolutely. Mr. Buckman, I am I'm so excited. I was sitting at home reading this and it was like, wow. And um it sounds like you're so organized going into this. I hate to make another pun. It sounds like you're trying to cover all the bases. Um, but I one of the questions I have is how do we know that we're going to be reaching the children that are already not participating? So, yeah, great. Saturday, Saturday they go play soccer and then Monday, Tuesday they play
078at school. Yeah. No, great. That's that's um that's been the tricky part so far um with the elementary portion of it um for me. Uh sure, Phil, come on up. For me, I just walk up to the students at school and say, "You're going to play." Yeah. And they go, "No, I don't want to play." You're going to play. And they end up playing and they love it. So, I've done that multiple times. But we are going to be practicing on reaching out other ways. I I think a big piece is having folks like Aaron at every school. So we have a athletic liaison which are sometimes PE teachers and sometimes secretaries at the fifth and sixth grade level. But it's also engaging our uh academic support folks, our S cubes and our school counselors
079because they know who's struggling and getting them putting a flyer in their hands and inviting those kids to come out. That's who we want to come out. Some kids are going to come out naturally. Some parents are going to encourage their kids. I'm not as worried about them, but I want to know who's missing. And so, uh, I think we are at somewhere around 9, uh, 65th, sixth graders in the district, and we're close to 540 who have played and we still have one more sport left to sign kids up. And so, I'm going to look at hard at those fifth graders and say, well, who didn't sign up? I want to know. And then we're going to target them. Thank you. Also coming out to see no more um or Mr. Breman, sorry. Um
080bringing in the high school students at lunch was an option. Uh bringing our athletes to campuses to talk to the students. Calpali does a lot of outreach with their athletic their athletes. Um and our fellows, you know, talking with Phil, we're trying to figure out ways to get fellows on campus at lunch at the schools that they'll be at to start making those connections, building those relationships, and getting kids bought into to join. So there was a lot of conversation about that as well of how to recruit the students to participate and the ones that that we want to target and finding them, seeking them out and getting them involved. Then um it appears there's going to be a a lot of ability to build um or have the psych school psychologists and counselors working
081having them come in. You mentioned psychologists. I'm there's a lot of seems like there's going to be a lot of life skills that may be occurring naturally like what's winning and losing? How do you react to winning and losing? Just small things. Um is there some way that you think you might be able to use those experiences and actually make them a little more I don't know educational? We could absolutely. Um, you know, talking with Christine from the foundation, um, a lot of the companies and the CEOs around in the area right now are asking for those kids that have those skills. Okay? They need those skills. So, this is just again one avenue that will provide them extra support and learning those skills that will translate into their career and into their job site.
082So, um, that is going to be a huge learning lesson. Um, that's why we kind of created a curriculum about, you know, how to set a goal for yourself, how to set goals in your life, you know, how to work with others, how to have a leadership role, how to have a role so that you're in charge of something and you have the accountability. Those kids need to learn that. And that's that's a good part of it. And sports just like all other activities that you see at the high schools does that. And so that's what we're trying to build within so that it can create those skills so those kids can translate it and transfer it on to their their real life after their goals. Few more things real quickly. One, I'm really excited
083to see the kids. They brought up swimming because everybody knows we have so many kids. We live within feet of the water and so many kids that have never been in the water. It just scares me. Um, but lastly, um, and this comes from what you were just mentioning, we have a lot of CEOs that want those things and we need to generate money and so I don't know, we sp we get sponsors for for everything. Maybe we can get sponsors for this new program. Part of it. Part of it. It's part of the plan. Part of it. Okay, great. Um then one last thought. Um because I'm hearing a lot about Harvard on the news and their research department. Um it's we're going to be starting little guys doing something that is there any
084way that we that any of the medical professionals at any universities might be interested in tracking this group of kids because it'll be the first there'll be a cohort that comes all the way up from elementary and see in how it affects test scores, how it affects their their health, how it affects suspensions. Interesting. um ex expulsions um and I don't know whether I don't know whether Harvard pays to but anyway um I'm really excited and I really appreciate your your work on this. Yeah, it was fun. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for the great presentation and the the thinking around this, the context that was provided tonight and the goals. Um I appreciate all of that. Um, and I've, you know, I've long been a champion for youth athletics as a vehicle for academic
085success and physical and mental health connection, um, engagement and just success in life, right? So, um, so I appreciate what the goal is here. I also appreciate Mr. Buckman's question about how do we ensure that we're reaching the students that we're trying to reach. Absolutely. Um, and so that's I think that's really important. Um, and I appreciate Mr. Angel's response um to some of that. You know, it's not enough to open a door. You have to have an outstretched arm. And so um so I think that that on a very granular level, student by student by student like you do, Mr. Black, um I think is really critical. Um and um and I also, you know, appreciate the focus on um professional development and evaluation of coaches and and all of that. And I would
086hope that that extends to our existing athletic teams um because here we are talking about new athletic programs but we have a whole lot of existing athletic programs. So I think it's really important that that that work is done there as well. Um and then you know this is a big plan and Dr. Prader explains that it's a multi-year sort of long-term vision. Um and and so just at this time when we are really strapped for funds, um I I'm concerned about what it might look like. Here we are introducing a new program where we're letting you know prized teachers go. We're shoring up academic programs. um you know, we're you know, we and so I just I want to be sensitive to to what we have capacity to do and and um and to
087be clear that that I don't think any of this can happen until we have funding in place. Um but I I do really um believe that it needs to always be connected up with the academic goals. Yeah. Um, and and I was I was on the education foundation board when athletics for achievements was was first conceived. And it was always intended to be a three-legged stool. It was really sports as a vehicle for engagement and um, you know, academic supports and leadership and engagement in school. So, I just I'm pleased to see that, you know, if that's what if that might be the first step, right? Is just shoring up the existing athletics for achievement program that we have, making it what it truly was always supposed to be. That's the ultimate goal, right? And
088before adding or building building upon that. Um, and then I will also mention um that I I think there also could be more clarity. I appreciate the mission statement, but we also have a mission statement and vision associated with the um the safe sports policy that was passed in 2022, the extracurricular program policy that paced in that was uh approved in 2024. So, I'm very curious what the interplay is between all of those. Yeah, we're all over the board, huh? Yeah. No, that's that's valid. Um the safe sports policy is amazing. Um, and we utilize that in our conversation with the first focus group and the second one. Um, it's going to be integrated. We'll work together to integrate. It's got to be all all on the same page. It shouldn't be scattered throughout. Um,
089that's kind of next steps of how do we how do we continue this work and how do we keep working through it, but it definitely needs to be integrated together. Yeah. So, I I I think that's important because it's it's also just confusing. Um, I think it would be helpful to have one clear vision for athletics across the district. um that is always connected up with our academic and emotional well-being and and other life success goals. Um I want to share with you too as well um I was able to work with IS&T and identify ways to track activity codes for students that are involved. So if they were a fifth grader playing soccer at Smith or whatever, um we can track that year to year u much easier now. So we're able to add
090activity codes for our elementary high school already had it and they utilized it. middle school has it, but they haven't been utilizing as much. So, having that across the board, we could track that longevity of um kids that are involved, kids that are staying with us and things. So, it's easy to pull grades, pull attendance, pull where we're at in the moment. So, that that'll be nice, right? I mean, and that's parallel to what our SQ teachers are doing right now in terms of tracking students academically and coming in with the, you know, very targeted interventions as needed. And so, um, I see this as potentially just another intervention, um, that needs to be tracked, you know, and we have the tools to do that now. So, I think we we we should do that.
091Um, but, um, yeah, I appreciate the thinking here. I think, you know, the focus, I think, needs to stay on how are we pulling in students that have historically and traditionally um, faced barriers to this type of work, to this type of experience. Um and um and then also uh just um I would appreciate some sort of long-term timeline with prioritized you know like if we get the funding this would be the first priority this would be the second priority because I think otherwise it could you know just to get some sort of structure to the roll out and to be very very mindful of both the opt optics and the actual actual funding that we have available right now as we look as we talk about rolling out new programs. Sure. So, thank you
092for your excellent work. Yeah. And I agree with you 100%. Oh, and I will continue to drop off I've been dropping off gear at your doorstep for years. So, I'm glad it goes good. I'm just passing it on. So, that's good. Okay. I neglected to go to the public. Is there anyone from the public that would like to speak to this? Hey, seeing no one, Mr. Black, thank you very much for the presentation. Yeah, thank you guys. We'll keep you updated. Have a good night. Item 8.02, elementary ELA adoption update and approval of benchmark adoption. This is Stephanie Shepard and Trisha Toes. Sure. Apologies. We're going to snooze an install so we don't get interrupted. Okay. Would you like us to pull up or you're gonna do it? Okay, we'll wait for you. And I
093can get the%. Hello. Wait, there we go. Well, good evening. Hello. Um, I'm Trisha Taves and I am the elementary curriculum TOSSA and you all know Stephanie Shepard. So, we're here um this afternoon, this evening to give you an update on the great work that has been happening at our elementary sites as we wrap up our first full year of benchmark implementation. Remember, benchmark is our ELA curriculum. So when I was here in September, um I shared this slide with the board and this was outlining our next steps as we moved forward into the winter and to the spring. And today I'd like to share with the board um some updates especially around our writing and our collecting of student exemplars. So, as we talk a little bit about writing, first responding to teacher requests.
094You're going to hear that often, responding to teacher requests. We focused on writing during our spring grade level planning days. So, in the morning, we met with our benchmark trainers and in the afternoon, teachers were able to go back to their sites for planning time that was sightbased. But in the morning, when the grade levels were together, we worked with our trainers to deepen our understanding of benchmarks writing instruction. Within Benchmark, there are different purposes for writing, different types of writing, and it's of course all researchbased. So, we learned a little bit about the research behind benchmark writing, as well as how teachers could better implement it in their classroom as they move into this second year of using Benchmark. Additionally, again, hearing from teachers, teachers are really wanting um more student samples of the
095writing. benchmark at this time doesn't have a lot of student work to provide us. So we were looking within our district to collect samples of student work. So what we've collect started is a repository of different student samples that will be benchmarked lowercase B um based on our rubrics and our standards. So teachers can use that for instruction and can also use it for collaborate uh for calibrating their own writing scoring. So that's work that is in progress. Additionally, sorry, I need to additionally again listening to the feedback from community members and from students, we heard again and again a desire for more hands-on activities. Um, so we are happy to be partnering with our I innovate team. I know that team came in before all of our grade level planning days and they shared
096an opportunity for teachers to um give handson lessons that were already based on the reading and writing lessons within benchmark and just add that additional layer of handson um and then of course our I innovate team would be able to support by providing any materials that were needed. Um, also MTSS, our SQS are continuing to provide interventions that are aligned with benchmark. Most recently, they're focusing on the vocabulary. So, they're going to be frontloading the vocabulary that is taught through the unit stories with our students that are in reading intervention so they have that leg up when they are reading those stories in the classroom. And lastly, this is a passion project of mine. Um, we have grade level band committees that are meeting. Um, we've done one meeting. We have three more coming this
097week and next week and the following week. And we're meeting as committees to streamline the assessment and the pacing. We have tried a lot this year. We have tried our unit assessments, our different writing assessments, and now we're coming together to see what is the most useful for informing instruction, the most useful for knowing where our students are, and of course, what's bringing our students joy um in their learning. So, we also have some celebrations um as we are moving through this year. First thing I'd like to share is our tier one is flourishing. So a healthy tier one um is known as students being approximately 80% of students being at a proficient level. So our most recent trimester common assessment reading data showed that grades 2 through six were performing performing at 82% proficiency
098at our nonli sites and additionally at our DLI sites in Spanish we were over that 80%. So, our tier one is flourishing. It's growing. We're excited to see um that moving forward and to track that data. Also, a second celebration. Um we're ready to jump into our year 2 goals. Year one was all about focusing on whole group instruction. Really understanding how the program spirals, really understanding the components of the program. and teachers are ready to dive in to our second year focus which is small groupoup instruction. So we're learning about the different components that are within benchmark and that are available for small groupoup instruction. And our last celebration and the second reason we're here tonight is our TK and grade six teachers are jumping on board too. And again, you're going to hear
099that this is response from our teachers themselves. Thanks, Trisha. So um the board will remember many of you were the ones that over the last two years have actually approved the benchmark adoption not only last year at our K to5 nonDLI sites but also two years ago 2 through sixth grade adopted um with your approval benchmark advance as well as Adilante. So tonight, we're standing before you to discuss and to recommend the expansion of that adoption to sixth grades in our city schools as well as our transitional kindergarten classrooms. So in order to do that, we wanted to describe this process a little bit because um it didn't necessarily follow the traditional committee model. This was very much a teacherdriven um process as you'll see here. So starting at the end of last year, we
100had teachers that were slated to teach fifth grade for this current school year andor a five six combo. And so they were participating in our June benchmark curricular trainings that were occurring um after the school year had ended. And there was a lot of excitement and energy around can we also have sixth grade potentially pilot for this coming school year which is now our current school year. Um, so after several conversations to ensure that this was not just one person that was really excited, but several, um, we did indeed venture into allowing the sixth grade teachers to pilot not just for a short couple of units, but they've been piloting actually for this entire school year. Additionally, um, also TK teacherdriven. This process was brought up so that we could ensure that new teachers coming
101into transitional K classrooms had some support with a comprehensive curriculum. And so there was interest and they have been also piloting at a very deep level throughout this school year. Um you'll see that after that initial professional development and training that occurred in that August through September timeline um sixth grade also was able to participate similar to our schools that had adopted and received support from benchmark trainers during their professional development and planning days. So the depth at which our piloting teachers were experiencing the materials um was not typical with what we would see in a in a normal pilot year. um they were able to take that further, stretch themselves further. And so when Trisha was bringing these groups together in February, as you see on the timeline, um they were really able to
102speak to whether or not this curriculum was meeting their needs and um both groups would like us to represent them in recommending the materials for adoption tonight. within there. Um, we did also have a public review process recently and so that happened at the beginning of this month and we had materials available at the district office. Um, and additionally we also sent out codes and access points electronically for families and community members to view. That closed on the 11th and we had a total of five parents that completed the feedback forms. the majority were reviewing the TK materials. We did have one person that chose to review um and provide feedback on the grade six materials. And so in an effort to provide transparency to the board, you'll see the full comments here. Um the
103TK reviewers did give very high ratings to the program in their feedback. And I'll go ahead and read the quote quickly for us. There is integration of math and science standards. The take-home activity calendars are a valuable resource in the homeschool connection. There is an access and equity guide in the teachers manual that offers strategies on tailoring the curriculum to all learners. Um, additionally, we had two comments that weren't necessarily related specifically to the curriculum, but you'll see that first um the the bullet point that's second from the bottom is really related to um our reduction in time for TK in the coming school year. and just some concerns more so about the program versus the curriculum itself. And then the final comment that is noted there um is expressing concerns around the split of
10450% of the um materials beingformational textbased and the other 50% being narrative textbased. And that aligns with our common core state standards or our California learning standards. And so all highquality curriculum is going to actually have and include that 5050 split. Um so seeing concerns that not necessarily relate to the curriculum themselves, um we felt that we could come before the board tonight and recommend the adoption itself. And so we turn it over to you as well as public comment. Okay, Mr. Oh, first let me go to the public. Is there anyone from the public that would like to speak to this item? Hey, seeing Oh, we have one person on Zoom, please. Oh, I'm Am I ready? Can I Okay. Hi. Um, I guess I just wanted to ask for in future um when
105you were asking for input from the community if we could have a little bit more than that one week window. Um, and then I was wondering um if there was any feedback about um how students are struggling, what kind of interventions are in place with adopting um the curriculum. I have one kiddo who's super struggling um and uh just trying to see what supports are in and I know with budget cuts and all that um just kind of wanted to know with the increase in rigor how we're compensating as our students get caught up. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Well, then we'll take it to the board. I don't know who's up first. Not first. I was not first. I think Rob. Okay. Mr. Mr. B. Um, Mr. Banfield, Mr. Anger, Mrs. Baltadono, my name's
106Buckman. Mr. Buckman. Am I? Oh, you're Bfield. Yes, I am. Okay. I think um now folks you can you can send me an email if if this is going to be too too much of a thing but I noticed that there's a committee that's working on streamlining the assessment and pacing. Um well do you still get together and calibrate for writing writing? Yeah, we're talking about writing. So two two different things. Can I address first the streamlining assessment and pacing first or did you have a question about what the committee is doing? Yeah, I'm wondering how the assessment is going to be streamlined I guess is what I'm wondering. Absolutely. So uh this first first year of our full implementation. So when I'm saying full it's because it's the DI sites and our English sites,
107our nonDLI sites. So with this first year, we had um we tried the unit assessments that Benchmark provides and we recommended that teachers use benchmark universe which is their online platform for those and through teacher feedback. We learned that those were very long assessments and all of the information that teachers were given about a student as they were taking the assessment, it wasn't necessarily useful. they got that information in other ways. So, what we're doing with streamlining assessments is we're really looking at shortening them, not short, not making them less rigorous. The questions are still at the same level of rigor, but just making them a little shorter because teachers are getting like language standards from another piece of work or they're getting their um you know, foundational phonics skills from another piece. So, streamlining
108them to make them shorter. We also are streamlining them um so that they are a common assessment. So there is that commonality where teachers will have them all finished at a certain time. So then we can come together at a staff development meeting or a TCT time to then go and review the results, see where our students are doing really well and where we might want to put some interventions in place. Okay. Yeah. Thanks, Mr. Hunger. Tell me about what we're doing at Los Solsus Middle School if we're doing this for the sixth graders in the city. Um, talk to me about Los Solsus Middle School and how it how it varies from the how we try to achieve the same things. If I may, um, I'm going to suggest that Mr. Nef and I
109put our our writing skills together and provide an update in the Friday focus. Um, as I probably don't have the most up-to-date information on that. Um, would that be would that suffice? Thank you, Mrs. Baltto. Uh, yeah, thank you. Thank you for the great update and um exciting to hear that we're looking to expand to TK and sixth grade to kind of all be using the same um program uh curriculum, which is exciting. Um so also really great to hear that um uh I think it was 80 so a healthy tier one system is where 80% of the students are being ranked at proficient right and that um we are grades two through six are performing at 82% proficiency which is great at our non um DI sites. So just for members of the public
110that's our dual language immersion sites. So, our nonDLA sites and then performing at 85% proficiency at our DLI sites in English. Right. In Spanish. I'm sorry, in Spanish. So, my question is is what's the measure for proficiency in English at our DLI sites? That's a great question. Um, with the current model that we have, our students are starting off in a 9010 model, meaning that they get 90% of their instruction in Spanish and 10% in English. And then we slowly increase that over time until they're receiving half of their instruction or 50% in English and 50% in Spanish. And so what we're looking at right now is our current our most recent measure. um only Pacheco has a sixth and fifth grade really measures that we can look at and at the end of their
111time at Pacheco as of trimester 2 we're at 60% proficiency in English. What I would love to do is have an opportunity to dig into some of this data across the state to see where else um neighboring districts are performing in their English um results at this time. What we know is there's going to be a lag. We aren't going to compare our Englishonly sites to our dual language immersion directly because those students have had less instructional time in English, yet they're accessing the same assessment. So, we do expect a little bit um lower rate of performance just due to the reduction in instructional time or the reduced instructional time that they've had. However, um I know that our both of our sites are continuing to strive towards increased proficiency levels. So, while I don't
112have an exact number for you, I don't imagine that 80% proficiency would be the equal measure to demonstrate tier tier one health at a DLI site in English at those grade levels. Right. And I appreciate that. And I had two kids go through our um dual language immersion program, so I I totally understand the concept there. Um, I think it's like you said, it's good to dig into that and do a little bit of cross comparison across the state at other DLI schools to see what is proficient, right? Um, and so I think that's that's really good. And then I'll also just point out that um I've become very impressed with our MTSS program. Um, I've been able to sit in on professional development with our SQ teachers at one point and um, in this
113very targeted student by student intervention, well, tier one for everyone in the classroom and then the tier one individually and in small groups. I it it's it seems to be working. The data shows that it's working. So, I just want to um celebrate that and and thank you for uh all the work that you're doing to uh shepherd our students through this for success. I I appreciate the pun. Thank you. I will also just add with the DLI data um our right now Baywood has expanded its DLI programming up through fourth grade. This is our first year of fourth grade implementation. So that is the other um bit of missing link for us right now because we're looking at partial data. We can't yet compare to fifth grade at at Baywood um as well. But
114thank you for the the comments as well about MPSS. And I did not mean a pun there. I I actually meant guide sheepard. I really didn't even think about it. But thank you. Okay, seeing no one else then thank you very much for the presentation. Thank you. They want us to we are looking for an approval tonight. Yes. So if I may then to follow through. Sure. Um, I would move uh that we adopt the elementary ELA um uh benchmark uh suggestion or Thank you. Yeah, I'll second. Okay, I have a motion by Mrs. Schaffer, a second by Mrs. Baltadono. Mrs. Sheffer, yes. Mrs. Baltadono, yes. Mr. Hunger, yes. Mr. Vanfield. Yes. Mr. Buckman. Yes. And I'm a yes as well. So that passes 60 with one absent. Thank you. 8.03 is a student support
115services update. Miss Gold. Good evening. Do you have my presentation? Yes. You can go ahead and put it up. So, my name is Janet Gold and I'm here tonight to represent uh student support services and share some information about our special education program. I'll talk a little bit about our numbers. I'm going to spend the majority of my time talking about a school services of California uh study of our special education program that was done and then end my time this evening talking about some um some things that are going to be new in their special education program for next year. I want to start with our vision and mission and in general just stress the importance that we have of providing services to our students that allow them to access their education um wherever
116they're at, maximize their time in general education. And we recognize and value the importance of working with our families as we work to develop our IEPs. Um, this slide shows you our numbers in special education starting as far back as 2019 to the fall of this year, 2024. And as you will see, our numbers have increased. Um, you'll see large increases around that postcoid uh fall of 21 an increase of 91 and in 22 an increase of 82 students. But since then, our um we've continued to increase, but our rate of increase has decreased. Um most recently, year-over-year, an increase of 39 students. This increase is not unique to St. Louis Coastal. It's being been seen across the state. It's been seen across the nation. Um when we look at some of our local districts
117uh Lucar, Pastor Robels, Atascadero in St. Louis Coastal, we will see that from 21 to 24 um Lucar and Atascadero similarly have continued to increase in percentage of special education while Pastor Robels took a um little dip this past year by a half a percent. Um this is data that comes from census day which is in October, early October of each year. So um numbers sometimes can be lower in October because we've just exited all of our 12th grade students at the end of the year and we're starting out in October and then our numbers continue to um grow throughout the year and then drop again at the end of the year. So one of the things about um special education numbers is they are constantly changing. These are actually who are our students um
118that are in our seats right now. And this is data as of April 1st, 2025. So our most recent data. Um overall we have 1376 students with disabilities. This includes students in our preschool program um as well as students in our 18 to 22 year old program. Um, and additionally, students on an ISP, which is an individual service plan. So, these are students that are in private school that we have some connection with. They don't don't have formal IEPs in private school. Um, but we do provide some minimal services to the private schools. Um, if the parents would like to have an ISP for their children. So, they're included in our count of 1376. When we pull out just our TK through 12th grade population, uh that is 1277 students or 16.1 of our student
119population. Uh the majority of these students are in RSP, which is our resource specialist program. Students that need um some academic or behavioral support but spend the majority of their time in general education classrooms at the elementary, middle, and high school. Uh and uh our next kind of pretty even are our speechonly students. Uh the vast majority of speech only students are in our elementary and our lower elementary levels. Our SDC classes are our special day class. So these are students in our um mild uh or moderate severe special day classes, our least int or less intensive or more intensive spe special day classes, our counseling enriched programs and then our prepare program is our 18 to 22 year olds. So, we asked uh School Services of California with the increases that we've seen in
120special education to come in and look at our special education program. And School Services of California is a private employeeowned company that's really seen um as a forefront leader in uh finance and resources and information around um education. So they came in and um we requested this program report to look at how are we doing and get some recommendations for areas that um we might be able to change. And so they looked at our revenues and expenditures. They looked at our staffing um and they looked at the rates of students with disabilities in the different eligibility areas. And this was done by looking at um nine other districts. Two of them were local and seven of them were from across the state but were considered comparable in demographics andor size. So the first thing that
121um I want to talk about is the revenues versus expenses and they gathered their information based on the 2223 school year because it was the completed year on which they had the certified data for. So in St. L Coastal, we spent a total of $3,698 per ADA for special education. Now, per ADA means per average daily attendance. So, when we look at this amount, we're looking at um a total of 3,698 for if we look at every student that we had in the district. So, not just our special education students. of that we received $1,331 from state and federal resources and we had um we we contributed uh from district funds $2,368 to make up the total amount of expenditures. So we contributed 64% of the cost of special education. um that if you'll see
122is exactly the same percentage that um all of the comparable districts expended for special education. Uh their the amount they received was a little more than ours at 1439. The amount they contributed was a little larger at 2573. However, the overall contribution uh was similar at 64%. And then we look at the state the state contribution across the st state the average district's um contribution is 61%. So we're a little higher than the state. Um according to this report um our average our ADA in expenses for all students was I think $19,01. So when we look at the um 300 or the 3,698 compared to our overall expenditures, it's about 19% that we spent 19.4% that we spent on special education and about 16% of our students have disabilities. Um the next thing they looked
123at is our students uh eligibility areas and how were we identifying students and how did that compare with comparable groups. So I have um the initials for the eligibility areas. There's 13 different eligibility areas in special education. And in the notes for this presentation, I wrote out uh what each of those uh abbreviations stand for. So with intellectual disabilities, we're 2% to 3% very close. Um SLI, speech language impairment, uh that was the area that we were most different from the comparable group at 27.84% compared to 22.22%. Um everything else we were rather close. there was about a percentage and a half difference in uh an emotional disability with St. Louis Coastal coming in a little higher than the comparable group. But overall pretty similar in how we are um finding students eligible for special
124education compared with comparatively to um how other similar districts are. And then this one didn't come from the study. This one came from this year's data that we receive from our SULPA. So these are county schools or county districts. So St. Louis Coastal, Atascadero, Lucia Mar, Pastor Robels, Templeton, and then our SULPA overall. And again, um again, I've listed the uh full uh eligibility category in the notes. Um, but it shows that again in SLI, speech language impairment, which is the blue on the bottom, we're a little higher than other districts. In all other areas, a little higher, a little lower in some, but um this SLI is the one that um appears to be the most different. This is a pretty complex slide. Uh my uh intention here was to take all of the
125information that the study presented on staffing and put it in one place to make it um easy to compare. So what this study looked at is um when we look at administrators, school psychologists, speech language pathologists, teachers and our aids or our par educators, how does St. Lost Coastal staffing compared to the staffing of the nine other uh districts that we looked at as well as the comparative group average. So what this looked at is for every 100 students with disabilities, how many of those different staffing categories did they have? So for instance in Glendora, they had a.3 administrator for every 100 students. Another way you could look at that is for 330 students, they had 1.0 or one full-time administrator. Uh, and the color coding is the green are the the um districts that
126have the highest staffing per 100 students. And then yellow is middle, the orange is low, and the red is the lowest staffing um across all of the districts. Uh I also organized it from uh districts that expend the least amount to districts that expend the most amount. And as you would expect to see uh the districts that are um spending the least on special education are have the lowest ratio of staff supporting their special education program. Um Arcadia's in there with not spending a lot. But if you look at uh Arcadia, they're um they have 7.8% eight% of their students eligible for special education. Uh so it would they don't have as many students on which to spend um uh funds on. Uh St. Louis Coast, you'll see we're pretty much smack in the middle
127uh for uh our psychologist funding, our speech language pathologist funding, teachers and aids. Uh one of the things we were not able to determine with school psychologists is we use uh a number of our school psychologists to pro provide ERS services uh in our district and we cannot tell if in the comparable districts that they also use school psychologists for ERS. Some districts use other models. For example, I know in uh Lucia Mer they use a blend. They have some school psychologists, but they also have some like marriage family therapists or other licensed individuals who provide uh the the mental health uh or the counseling support that uh goes on an IEP which is called your ERS services. Um we do have program specialists in um St. almost coastal and they do help with uh
128administrative type functions um in our districts such as they're able to support uh IEPs as uh as uh administrator design um for our schools, but with our administrators uh we have myself and we have Joyce that run uh oversee our special education program from the administrative level. So what else did this study look at? They looked at the policies and procedures that we have in place. They looked at the continuum of services for students with disabilities. And what that means is do we have appropriate placements when students come in um to meet the many different needs that students have. They found that we do we have a a wide range of services from our resource to our less intensive special day classes to our more intensive to our counseling enriched programs. um that we do
129have uh programs for students. They looked at our maintenance of effort and I'm going to talk about that in a couple slides. They also looked at uh English learners that were identified for special education exit patterns and late and overdue IEPs, which I'll mention a little bit more on in a couple slides. So, what did they take away or what did they what were some of the findings from the report? Uh they found that really overall we appeared to be appropriately staffed for students with disab based on our number of students with disabilities. Um they looked at when we compare our district in terms of case loads and class size that we're actually within or below industry standards overall on most of our um case loads and class sizes. uh they looked at the patterns
130of exits that we have for students with disabilities um in speech and language. So, what they found is that we're doing we're we're being cognizant and aware of students as they transition from elementary to middle school and then again as they transition from middle school to high school and looking at students who've met speech goals and really are going to benefit by more time in general education, less time being pulled out for those services and exiting students as appropriately from those services. uh they looked at our English learner student population at 10% overall and that special education was made up of 9% of students with disabilities. So, um what that is meaning is that we're not overidentifying uh our English learners as students with disabilities. That we're we have good assessment practices in place not
131to overidentify students. Uh they also looked at uh guidelines, policy, procedure documents that we have and pointed out that we had a robust uh compliant list of supports to support uh the special education staff. What did they recommend? Um if we remember our the one area of identification that we're um over the average really has to do with our SLI or speech language impairment and they recommended us considering um an MT MTSS or response to intervention RTI to provide more of a tier 2 level speech intervention um which could uh impact the number of referrals and eligibility for students um to speech needs because we're able to address them um through a response to intervention as opposed to qualifying for an IEP. That's something that we um are currently working on with our speech and
132language pathologists. China, do do you think that that we'll that that would be a program that would be more implemented in our TK and one first grade pro first grade programs as opposed to our third, fourth, and fifth grade programs? Yes. Yeah. And we're really when we're doing that, we are really only looking at um students that have articulation errors and very limited articulation errors. So it any students that are um struggling with expressive receptive language, we would be again looking at an IEP. that just for some of our articulation, we could look at respon uh response to intervention and interventions grouping to see if students are responding um to that as opposed to a formal IP. Can you put my presentation back up, please? Thank you. Um again, they did make recommendation about the
133level of uh administrators that we have overseeing our special education program. Um, however, we know what our budget looks like right now. Um, and not the best time to be adding administrators, but it is something that we want to, um, continue to monitor and, um, be aware of. uh they talked about with the increase of students with disabilities as well as the increase in classified staff or staffs who are oneto ons or para educators that we want to ensure um that we have uh assessments in place prior to adding additional support onto IEPs and that we are fading um fading that additional support off of IEPs when it is practical to do so. That's something we have been working on this year. Um, we've reviewed assessment practices that uh must be in place or must
134that that teams must go through prior to adding a onetoone on an IEP. And we're also this spring and this summer really looking at all of our I um our IEPs that have uh oneto ones and looking at what does our fade plan look like on that. We really want to promote independence with our students. That's what's best for them. Um is having finding times within their day where they can be independent and building that independence. So, we need to make sure that when we first put um additional adult support on an IEP that we're starting those conversations with parents in the very beginning that this isn't this isn't necessar it may be for some students it will be for the entire time we serve them and that's what they require to access their education.
135But for other students, we want to look for opportunities to fade that support. Um, the last two are uh recommendations that I um my guess is that this is on most if not all of the recommendations that School Services of California is doing. Um the first one being uh timely completion of IEPs. And what this has to do is is the state just started monitoring timely completion of IEPs. So they wanted to make sure that all of you know that we're very aware that this is happening and this this is something that we've been very aware of. Um we meet with SULPA once a month and look at our dashboard and um look at all of our late and overdue IEPs. Uh our overall number changes daily. Um, but we had seven late IEPs this
136year in our monitoring out of the 1,277,300 that we had at the time. So, we recognize the importance of compliance. We're very aware of um when IEEPs are due and make every effort to work with our families to get those scheduled on time. Um, and then the last one just talks about, you know, special education funding is very complex and uh there's lots of requirements related to uh this funding. And so it's really important for your fiscal department to work closely with your student services department to look at uh special education funding or spending and to look at what's called a maintenance of effort. And what maintenance of effort says is that year overyear you have to spend as the same amount on special education or a dollar more than you did the year before.
137So we are very lucky to have Katie Eklland in our district. She is um so knowledgeable and you know has been such a partner with me and a help from the very beginning of my time in this position. Um and we do um collaborate regularly um on this and we have made oure every year. So jumping now from the report into what is new, what are we looking for for the 25 26 school year. Um we have seen an increase in our numbers of of um preschool students this year. Uh in fact we had to put together a class in early March to support incoming students um that we are seeing between March and June. So we want to be ready for that next year. And so we are adding on um a half day
138uh less intensive preschool class uh that is going to be in Mororrow Bay. And we are also uh expanding our inclusive preschool which is Seal Smith. Right now we have a morning class. We're going to expand it to a morning class and an afternoon class which will give us more spaces in special education. The inclusive class will also give us more opportunities for um inclusive environments within our preschool. We are opening a TK1 C and C is our counseling enriched program. So, it's a C like classroom um at Sinzyimer and this is a classroom um for students that are coming to us, our youngest students that are coming to us and really have not yet learned the learning to learn skills and are significantly struggling with behaviors. Um what's happened, we've had some we've seen
139an increase of this. We've talked about it especially postcoid and we see students who are really struggling in a classroom of next year it'll be 14 TK or 24 26 kinder or first grade students. It's just really challenging for them. Um, so we want to create this class that's really focusing on meeting their learning tolearn needs and uh uh putting positive behavior supports in place to our our main intent is to get them back into their general education classroom if we, you know, work with them early and work with them intensively. But uh instead of like a school psychologist that's focusing on like a counseling enriched approach, we're going to work with our uh board certified behavior analyst, our BCBA to focus on um learning to learn skills and behavior programming to support those students.
140So we're excited about that. Um we are moving our coast less intensive LI a special day class from Baywood to Monarch Grove. Um as you know uh Baywood is our dual language uh uh program and what we are finding is we're not having the extent of inclusive opportunities at Baywood because our students that are in our LI class are not Spanish speakers. So it's limiting the amount of time that they can spend in general education classroom. So by moving the program to Monarch, we are maximizing um inclusive opportunities for our students and mainstreaming in with general education peers. Um the timing worked really well. We have a very large group of fifth grade students at Baywood this year and the the DLI program is not in fifth grade this year. So they've had plenty of
141opportunities for inclusion. Um but other than the very large group of fifth graders we had we had two we have two students um who were in that classroom. So those two students will move to Monarch Grove along with um some students that are moving from Delmare. Um this year we started a co-taught classroom at uh Los Ranchos um which has been a great success. These are students who otherwise would have been in a special day class and they're fully included in a general education classroom with um a special education teacher. Uh and they're doing really well. And next year we're going to expand that into TK and first grade, although a little different. We're going to have one teacher who works between the TK classroom and the kinder classroom and is just focused on those
142students who are fully included into um TK and K classrooms. So, individual transition plans are part of every IEP and historically they've been a part of an IEP when a student turns 16. So what transition plans look like is helping students to get ready for post-secary life. So college plans, career plans, and uh this year the state has said we're taking down the age of when that needs to begin in the IEP from before the time the child turns 16 to by the time they enter high school. So, we're working with our middle school to um train them on uh developing the initial transition plans. This goes really well with the work we've been doing in our district for four-year planning um because we start that at the middle school. So, we will be incorporating
143our transition plans and the work that our counselors are doing into um starting transition planning for our students with disabilities. Um we're also looking at what we're doing with our transition plans at the high school because in addition to just a plan um we put services in place uh for um you know college and career readiness. And so we are have Moral Bay High and Slow High working collaboratively to look at some of the offerings and really working to develop um a more robust offering of um college and career readiness lessons and and career planning and uh they're working in collaboration with um the work that's being done by our school counselors and building off of the work that they're doing. So we're excited about the direction that we're going there. We think it's be
144valuable for students. And then um the academic assessment that we use to determine eligibility for special education as well as reeligibility every three years is called the Woodcock Johnson and it is uh there's a new version that's coming out. So it's the Woodcock Johnson 5 and this is has been normed on postcoid children. So it's nice. It's it'll be very current and it has some more um electronic components in the pro in the assessment that um we're hopeful will help reduce some of the um workload of our teachers um as they're giving these assessments. So we the current Woodcock Johnson that they're using will not be accessible after a little time in the fall when they have this new one in place. So, we are um training and transitioning to the Wickcock Johnson 5 in
145the we'll do some training in the summer and get started in the fall. And then finally, as you've heard a lot about our ELA program, our new um adoption at elementary, there is an adjacent intervention and we are doing some training with our uh both our special day class and our resource teachers on the interv intervention that's adjacent to the new curriculum that we're using. So, we're excited about that, Mark. So, that is my presentation this evening. I'm open to um any questions that you have. Mrs. Baltadono. Uh thank you, Miss Gold. This was um a really helpful presentation. I really It was dense, but it was very informative and I want to just thank you for that. I also want to thank you for meeting with me to answer some questions that stemmed from
146it. Um I a couple things that we discussed that I think are worth sharing is um one that not only are we did we were we assessed to not be over identifying our English learner students um as special ed um but we're also not underidentifying in that with our MTSS program the way that it's set up is it makes it really hard for kiddos to fall through the cracks. So, I really appreciated hearing that. And yet another reason why I really support that program. Um, the other thing that I thought was interesting that you mentioned was um was uh compliance regarding late IEPs and we haven't had a whole lot um in the last year, but you mentioned that even one late IEP qualifies us as non-compliant. So, it's it's a rigorous um standard. It's
147an all or nothing. you are compliant with 100% on time or you are non-compliant if one is late. Yes. Well, I I appreciate the rigorous compliance expectation, but it's also helpful to understand why we easily fell into the non-compliant. Um and also yes, we are at in a position where we probably can't think about additional staffing where we we want we absolutely want to but in the event that we could what is the missing administrative position um that or what what would bring us up to sort of a a I don't know I don't best practice is not the right word but a recommended additional uh administ administrative support, right? Well, right now we have one special education coordinator, so I'd be looking at having two special education coordinators. Um Joyce Hansen oversees our preschool
148program up to age 22. She's actually the principal of the preschool program and the principal of the prepare program. Um in addition to all of that, um she also, uh does home hospital for our district and she does 504s for our district. So, if we were to have two and I could have one kind of preschool, primary, you know, elementary and then the second, middle school, high school prepare program, be helpful. Thank you. I wonder if you could talk a little more about the individual transition plans. I'm not sure when we begin preparing them in in middle school at the end of middle school. Uh how do we anticipate the kind of growth that students will make over their high school years in so that we can form appropriate plans and what kinds of plans
149are available? It's a good question. It's just introduced starting in 8th grade and then every single year at a student's annual plan review. Part of the work that the case manager does is gets together with the student, looks at the plan, updates the plan. So, while it's introduced, as the child progresses through high school, it's continually reviewed and updated based on their needs or based on what their interests are really. So, um, are they going to a four-year college? Are they going to a two-year college? Are they going to a trade school? Um, what is their ultimate goal after, um, you know, secondary or after college education? Um, and so they'll do interest surveys. They may do, um, resume writing. um starting at the middle school level, they're really looking at teaching kids about um
150the pathways that they can approach in high school. So the different you know CTE pathways that we have um you know A through G, right? So just the importance of GPA. So, um, building off of what our counselors introduce, just kind of setting them up for entering into high school, but then continual work will be done throughout high school. Okay. So, most of our students will metriculate out of high school and go on to a path, right? and but a small percentage uh will will complete high school but will stay with us in the prepare program until they're 22. Right. Okay. And do we work with those students in um developing plans for postp prepare? Yes. Yes. And especially with those students, we work with the department of rehabilitation, workability, different agencies um for support,
151tri counties for support after age 22 as well. Okay, thank you very much. Um we have no public present, but is there anyone on Zoom that would like to speak to this? Hi. I'd like to I have a few comments if I may. Am I good? There's no way to tell. Okay. Um anyways, uh Miss Gold, thank you for your presentation. It sounds like there's a lot of policy changes to keep track of, so I learned a lot from you tonight. So, thank you for that. Um grateful to hear that Miss Gold, your office is being conscientious of how students are being identified, and so I hope that that continues. Um, but I just wanted to offer some feedback. Um, Dr. Prader, you could probably give additional support and build capacity for how data is
152used. Um, but I'm just wondering, it was a little unclear to me in the presentation of how the districts actually compare and if the populations that they're serving, you know, would match would match ours. And just as we're trying to understand, um, where the district's at with our special ed services. Um, and then, uh, Miss Schffer, as your constituent, um, I'm curious to know and and, uh, Miss Baltadono, you touched on this, but, uh, what's the board's oversight and being responsive to these needs in light of I know where our budget is. Um, but I heard Miss Gould say there is a staffing need for administrators. And so I'm just kind of wondering, you know, in other words, with all this information, how are we engaging with a feedback loop of making adjustments to what
153we're doing in light of the needs that we have? Um, and then last bit of feedback, I just wanted to give the board. Um, just to share an experience I had. Um, I, uh, serve a lot of times as a family advocate for IEPs with families in the community. um and had a really great uh experience with one of the program specialists, Miss Gold. I don't remember her name, but she's really good. Um but I just wanted to I you talked about like phasing students out and gaining that independence and which I totally understand and agree with. Um however, one of the families I was with have a student with autism and that's not really something you can grow out of. And so, um, just kind of thinking through when you're supporting and working with
154parents as a team, um, that policies for wanting to reduce services isn't conflicting with the actual needs of a student. So, not a huge criticism, but I just kind of wanted to give you feedback of how that's playing out in a real world situation with our schools. Not that it meant any harm, um, but just to kind of let you know how these policies are being communicated. Thank you. Thank you. Seeing no further comment, thank you for the presentation. Um, moving on 8.04, approval of secondary school schedules for 2526 school year. Mr. Puchia, Mr. Dr. Puchia. Good evening, board. Uh tonight I am here to uh seek board approval of the uh secondary schedules that were voted by the respective staffs and uh with the exception of Mororrow Bay High School uh the other three
155secondary schools are maintaining the same schedules and Mororrow Bay is seeking to add an advisory to their schedule. So that's what I'm here tonight to seek your approval for. Thank you. Is there anyone from the public that would like to speak to this item? No one on Zoom, Mrs. Dawson. Okay, then Mrs. Baltadono. Um, thank you. Um I just want to make a comment uh just to point out that for San Los Aispo High School um there were a good number of um uh St. Louis Coastal uh teachers association members who voted not to uh maintain the current trimester five semester five sorry five period uh schedule. ultimately maintenance of that schedule did did win by majority vote. But I I think it's worth noting that there are significant concern I think by some people
156um regarding that setup and I I kind of have my own little growing list of concerns that I'm sort of in the process of exploring and and learning more about. Um, you know, I'm prepared to support what our uh union represent, you know, what our unions uh voted uh to approve or would like for us to approve, but I I just want to um raise those concerns. Um, and I will continue to be kind of thinking about them and uh learning about them as we go forward. Thank you. Okay, I think we're seeking I'm seeking a motion. Okay. I'll I'll make the motion. I'll move to approve the secondary school schedules for 2025 2026 as presented. I'll second. Motion by myself, second by Mr. Buckman. Mr. Buckman. Yes. Mrs. Baltadono. Yes. Mr. Hunger. Yes. Mr.
157Banfield. Yes. Mrs. Schffer. And I'm a yes. That passes 60 with one absent. 8.05 proposed revisions to board policy 6143 courses of study. This is a first reading. This is Yamashida. Good evening board. Um, I'm bringing this to you today following recommendations by CSBA's Gamut policy updates to revise um our current courses of study. Um, there were not any um substantive um changes to to this document and it has gone through the board policy subcommittee. Okay. Is there any board comment? Yes, this is Balt. Yeah. Um, thank you. Thanks for all of this and I really do appreciate the new formatting um red line versus a clean a clean version. It's very helpful. Um, I just have a question. Um, it would be uh on the on this board policy under the header secondary grades.
158Uh, the first paragraph there that says the district's course of study may provide for a rig rigorous academic curriculum, etc., etc. Um, and then education code 51228 is cited. Do you see where I'm at? I'm first paragraph under secondary grade. I got it. So my question um so then I looked up education code 51228 and it actually encourages districts to um provide a rigorous academic curriculum. Um and and then our own district mission um talks about uh educating students through rigorous, relevant, and engaging experiences. So I'm just curious what the thought process was and and it may have been a recommendation from Gamut, but I'm just curious if any thought was given to a different word other than may um to align more with what the government code is is seeking and also what our
159mission says. I don't remember our board policy subcommittee specifically considering it. It was Gamut's recommendation that district's course of study may provide for um and so we didn't discuss it any further than that. We can certainly take it back into the board policy subcommittee and consider changing that to a shall I'd be curious with what my colleagues have to say. Um I I appreciate that it's the gamut recommendation but um you know Yeah. Mer I since you bring it up I'd be curious about that as well because you know um so we may provide for a rigorous academic curriculum as opposed to what right so I I I think I'd like to know more about the suggestion for may versus a shall are you looking for a change I mean I'm curious about I'm cur
160before I I would propose a change I would just like to know what the thinking was behind the word May versus some other word like shall or you know what what the what the alternatives would be. Like I said, may may seems kind of squishy to me as I think about it. Mr. Anger, I'm hearing that it was just that was the recommendation from Gamut. So, it doesn't sound like there was any discussion or consideration. No, I'm not. Yeah, I'm not suggesting on our part. I I'd be interested. I I don't know if it's possible to go back to Gamut and or to the folks at CSB and say, "Hey, you know, what what were you thinking? you know what what what was the intent with May versus some other um word in there. I
161Mr. Bugman I think it's it's valid and I I I don't see why we we couldn't reach out to Gamut. Um, I also would I also would posit that we often um will take what Gamut recommends and make it our own. And so if you send it back to us for further discussion, I think we we would discuss it and come back with something more specific, a more specific reason if if it were to stay with this. But I would need some time to look at it and understand why it why Gamut said may. Right. um if as long as uh that doesn't cause you know that that level of going back and talking to gamut talking you know would cause us any great delay on anything. Um I just think it brings it more
162a line into our own mission statement to say that we will or that we or that we shall. Yeah, we often do um reach out to our own legal counsel and did not about this particular item. Um, we certainly can bring it back to board policy subcommittee and and note that and do some research with both the gamut legal advice as well as our own. Happy to do that. I would appreciate that if if there's consensus with this group. So then is the direction to send this policy back to the subcommittee for consideration of may versus shall is that the board's direction? I I I would support sending it back to the subcommittee for its reconsideration. Not may versus shall, but may versus some other whatever else might be appropriate and might um might uh
163be be considered the will of the board. Okay. Then hearing no objection, I guess that's the direction on this policy. Thank you. I will proceed as such. Okay. The next is U board policy 6163- or.1 library media centers. This again a first reading. This is Yumasha. So uh this would be another policy brought to our attention by gamut and specifically we are focused on and they are trying to update language about fees um for students as well as selection of material processes and they've added like a survey of libraries across the state of California. Thank you. Is there anyone on Zoom that wishes to speak to this? Seeing no one, I'll bring it back to the board. Mr. Buckman. Yes. Oh, I'm sorry. Mr. Banfield, I just want to make sure. I think we're going
164to eliminate fees. Yes, that's correct. We do not charge students. Okay. Seeing no additional comment, then as a first reading, we'll you'll be bringing this back at the next meeting on the consent agenda. Um item 8.07, proposed revisions to board policy 3516, emergency and disaster preparedness plan. Again, a first reading. As you know, safety first. It's of utmost importance for all of our students and our staff. And so Gamut had recommended um changing some of this to be sure to include for example the federal individuals with disabilities education act um and making sure that such procedures are incorporate incorporated into safety school plans. That's one of the changes is ensuring um all student needs are considered equitably in our planning for disaster management. Thank you. Is there anyone from the public that wishes to speak
165to this? Seeing no one, I'll bring it back to the board. Mr. Hunger, I was going to say I'm I'm good bringing it back for for a second, bringing this at the first reading back to the second reading. And I also want to just first of all also comment that I believe our committee added safety experts along with law enforcement. And I and I think that we have found an uh that consulting with people who are experts in the realm of safety in many areas has been beneficial to us and uh so I I kudos to the group for doing that. And then just as a side comment, I really want to thank the subcommittee and Miss Yamashta for this work because um this is this is the most probably among the two most important
166three two or three most important things we do as board members and keeping up to date on our board policies is is so important. Um and thank you all for doing that. Okay. Then seeing no additional comment is the board's instruction to bring this back uh for a second reading on the consent agenda. Okay. Item 8.08 proposed revisions to board policy 6141.2 recognition of religious beliefs and customs. A first reading. So again, this is the recommended update from CSBA's Gamut. Um they noted that the US Department of Education issued guidance on constitutionally protected prayer and religious expression in public schools, which includes the extent to which prayer in public schools is legally protected. And it reaffirms that districts must annually certify to CDE that we do not have a policy that prevents or otherwise denies
167participation in or constitutionally protected school prayer. Thank you. Is there anyone from the public that would like to speak to this item? Okay, seeing no one, we'll bring it back to the board. Any board comment? Okay, then we will see this at the next board meeting on the consent agenda. Thank you all. I appreciate your time and effort and detailed attention to our work. Thank you. Okay, we are moving on to the consent agenda here. Please let me know if you would like anything pulled. 9.01 approval of calard purchases. 9.02 02 approval of certificated and classified personnel items 9.03 approval of new certificated job description and classification of employee 9.04 CIF representation form 9.05 acceptance of donations 9.06 approval of foreign exchange organizations 9.07 07 approval of furniture and equipment request. 9.08 approval of the
168minutes of March 17, 2025. 9.09 Approval of the minutes of March 18th, 2025. 9.10 Approval of the minutes of April 10th, 2025. 9.11 Memorandum of Understanding Anou between Templeton Unified School District and St. Louis Coastal Unified School District. 9.12 Disposal of Surplus. 9.13 Approval of quarterly report on uniform complaint filings. The William settlement 9.14 Proposed revisions to board policy accountability 9.15 proposed revisions to board policy 1321 solicitation of funds pardon me from and by students. So I'm seeking a motion. I move approval of item of items 9.01 to 9.12 and 9.14 and 9.15. Do I have a second? Second. Okay. I have a motion by Mr. Anger, a second by Mr. Buckman. Mr. Mr. Buckman, yes. Mrs. Baltadono, yes. Mr. Banfield, yes. Mrs. Schffer, and I'm a yes. That passes 6 with one absence, Mr.
169Buckman. Yes. On uh 9.13 is a Williams complaint. Um and actually that for the first time I've actually seen that there is a complaint. I'm just wondering what the complaint's about. Yeah, it was a facility uh complaint at um Moral Elementary School and so Mr. Bon and myself went out there yesterday actually and met with the current staff there and teacher and walked the campus and looked at each of the items that were in the facility complaint and found that they either were corrected or fine. Um and and so I responded to uh the the person who turned it in and sent them a letter today as a matter of fact. Okay. Well, thanks very much. I just thought it was because our our cars were the wrong color. So, yeah. No, no, it's okay.
170Thank you. No, they brought up some good good concerns. So I I again Mr. Bon and myself went out and made you know wanted to make sure that hey this is it a problem or not? Do we need to fix anything? Do we need to put anything up? And so um you know of course anytime there was a concern you know we we start by looking there any work orders? Did we know that this was a concern or not? Like you know those types of things, right? Um, but of course we want to ensure the kids are safe and have a a good place to to to you know to teach and learn and um so that's why we went out together yesterday and made sure that um they had everything they needed for that
171program. Thanks so much. That's good to hear. Um I'd like to make move approval of uh 9.13 approval of quarterly uh uniform complaint filings. Second. So I have a motion by Mr. Buckman, a second by Mr. Schffer. Mr. Buckman. Yes. Mrs. Sheffer. Yes. Mrs. Baltadono. Yes. Mr. Banfield. Yes. Mr. Anger. Yes. And I'm a yes as well. That passes 6 with one absent. Um items for the advanced agenda. Seeing none, then reports by board members. Seeing none, this meeting is adjourned.