001birectional interpretation into English and Spanish. If you're bilingual, you don't have to click anything. But if you're not bilingual and you're using your laptop, in a few seconds, you'll see an icon shaped like a globe at the bottom of your screen. Click on language interpretation and then select English. If you're using your phone or an iPad, in a few seconds, locate the icon shape like three dots in one of the corners of your screen. Click on language interpretation and then select English. And when you speak, do so at a moderate pace because the interpreters are going to be simultaneously interpreting everything you say. Spanish. Gracias. Thank you. Thank you. If you wish to view closed captions of this meeting, please view the meeting on the SMU HSD board meeting YouTube channel. The link to the
002YouTube channel can be found on our website. You may view captions in English as we live stream our meeting tonight. And you may view the captions in a variety of other languages if you choose to watch after this meeting has ended. Viewers may request additional accommodations by calling 650-558-2201. That's 650-5582201. For our deaf and heart of hearing community, we have a team from Hannah interpreting services and they will be interpreting our meeting this evening. We would like to ask everyone to speak at a clear and reasonable pace for our interpreters. Thank you. Uh pledge of allegiance. I would like to welcome our new student board members and ask you to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one
003nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. There were no actions taken in close session. Uh item J. Um adopt the agenda. The board of trustees may either adopt the agenda as presented or make a change to the agenda through a motion, second, and majority vote. The Brown Act prohibits any additions to the agenda without a 72-hour public notice for regularly scheduled board meetings. Are there any questions or comments from the board of trustees or the superintendent uh with respect to the agenda? Any public comment? I don't believe there are any blue cards spec specifically. Any online comments? Yes, I have one raised hand on the on the uh Oh, I don't I'm sorry. I have one raised hand. I don't know if it's on this uh topic though. Okay, then
004we'll move we'll move ahead. Um, would a trustee care to make a motion? I'll make a motion to approve the agenda as is. Second. Second. Okay, we got a motion and a second. Um, any discussion? All in favor? I. Student board reps. How do you vote? Okay. Uh, motion carries. Uh, we will now move to, uh, K1 report, the superintendent. Thank you very much. Good evening, everybody. Uh, welcome our new student board reps. Good to have you here. Uh, I I want to start off by saying that uh, in 2019, the California Senate declared, uh, April as arts, culture, and creativity month. And there are a lot of VAPA visual and performing arts events happening this month and in May, including a district-wide student art show at the Society of West Coast Artists in San
005Bruno from April 24th through May 2nd. And I want to encourage the community to uh see a full list of our visual and performing arts events across the district by visiting www.smuhsd.org/vapa or vapa. Um so really exciting stuff and and our students are incredible in their visual performing arts performances. Uh golden apples. So, I want to take a moment to recognize our two March Golden Apple recipients, which we awarded late last month and our February Golden Apple, which we awarded last month due to a scheduling issue. Ryan Stevens was our certificated February Golden Apple recipient. He's a teacher at Hillsdale High School and he's been with the district for eight years. Principal Jeff Gilbert said of Ryan, "Few educators give as much to their students as Ryan does, knowing that he will carry a heavy
006burden for carrying so much and knowing that the results of his work may not be immediately seen. Ryan is a great teacher in the classroom, a wonderful colleague within all of his team, and an adviser that is trusted and beloved. Ryan embodies all that we hope for out of a small smaller learning community teacher and we're so fortunate that he is a knight. Our March classified Golden Apple recipient was Lisa Yakushi, our district human resources assistant. And Lisa has been with the district for eight years as well. Nichollet Landuchi said, "Lisa's care for every district employee shows through her diligent and meticulous work ethic. She tackles issues head-on, quickly, and with confidence. With HR, she consistently steps up and takes on extra tasks, often going above and beyond her usual responsibilities to cover a co-worker,
007head new projects, etc. I'm grateful to have Lisa as a co-orker and a mentor, and she's been a great help to me personally with my transition into human resources, and I know I can go to her with questions, uh, any questions or advice when needed. Thank you, Lisa. And our Merch March certificated Golden Apple recipient was Janice Kelly, a counselor at Hillsdale High School. Janice has been with the district for 36 years. Assistant principal Jesse Boyce said, "Jan's dedication goes well beyond words. It can't even be counted in years. It can only be measured in decades and by the thousands of students she has served and by all those who were impacted positively from students for whom she has counseledled. Yes, she is a school counselor, but she is also an ETA group leader, a
008member of school communities, a trusted colleague to many, and an SLC atlarge representative. Jan, our school is so much better because of you. Thank you. And just coming up in in 2025, uh Passover begins at sundown on Saturday, April 12th, and lasts until the evening of Sunday, April 20th. And we want to wish all who celebrate a happy Passover. And we also have Easter, which is Sunday, April 20th. And we wish uh all who celebrate Easter uh a fun time with family and friends. And that uh is it. So thank you. Thank you. reporter of the district teachers association. Representative Arian Adamova. Press the button. There you go. There you go. Okay. Good evening, members of the board, Superintendent Booker, colleagues, community members, and staff, students. My name is Arian Adam Chikova and I'm here
009on behalf of the Sanonteo Union High School District Teachers Association. I will be reporting tonight on the district multilingual language program and offer some insights into how we can best support our multilingual language learner students throughout our district. A little bit about me. I am a Spanish and multilingual language teacher at Cappuccino High School. I began my teaching career at Mills High School in 2002 where I taught Japanese and Spanish. Over the years, I have taught all levels of Spanish, including our native um Spanish for native speakers, our international balorate Spanish program at Cappuccino High School, as well as English courses targeting both our firstear newcomers and our students exiting our multilingual language classes. Additionally, I helped develop the curriculum for our newcomer native speakers program to target the literacy and tech skills gaps in
010our slife population. Slife stands for students um with limited and/or interrupted formal education. I like many in our district have deep experience and knowledge about the process of acquiring a language, the body of research and the importance of cultural competency. Many of us are language and cultural learners ourselves. I am proud of the work that many of us have done over the years and the collective actions we have taken towards supporting our newcomers. While Cappuccino has the smallest of the newcomer programs, our size is our biggest strength. Students are welcomed into a school with a very tight-knit cohort of teachers and staff who enjoy collaborating together and sharing students stories to build success, resiliency, and camaraderie. We teachers rely on the expertise of Adam Faber, our ML department chair, Sal Castillo, our multilingual learner specialist,
011Fernandanda Seli, our family coordinator, and Wendy Rivera, our ML counselor, as well as all of the staff and the college and career center and wellness program. Our multilingual learners participate in our athletics programs, extracurriculars, arts, music, dance, and CTE programs, as well as the district ELD soccer league. At Cappuccino, we emphasize community building with our students as they acquire English and academic skills. Some of the highlights of this past year that teachers and staff wanted me to share with you tonight include a Thanksgiving potluck with foods from our students home cultures, an afterchool carnival with games and prizes, and an endofear field trip day. Our field trips, however, are one of the highlights of the year. This year on the first Saturday of spring break, 27 students and five staff members took BART to the
012ferry building and out to or to the ferry and to out to Angel Island. Students and staff took a guided tour with a park ranger and reflected together on the struggles of immigrants from China in the early 20th century, recognizing how immigrants today still face discrimination and hardship. Students also witnessed the importance of documenting their own experiences as they become part of the American story. Students and staff built connections and students gained real life experiences practicing English in a non-school environment. At Cappuccino, we are also the only school in the district with an international balora program which emphasizes our international connectedness and communities. We boast a large number of newcomer students who benefit from our IB program, passing from our multilingual language math courses into our advanced level IB math classes and also enroll in
013our IB arts program, Spanish programs, and science programs. Many educators seek to work in our district because of our humanizing and research-based approach that focuses on our students proficiency levels, academic levels, and backgrounds, including from a traumainformed perspective and including a perspective on the and knowledge about the limited academic experiences of some of our learners. However, last year a lot changed in our newcomer program across the district, affecting every single one of our comprehensive high schools and peninsula. Our district adopted a different approach to our newcomer students, informing teachers, staff, administrators, and students that the state required all of our students to fully exit the newcomer program within 30 months of being admitted to a US school. We began the process of compliance with the new board policy. Many district educators immediately raised concerns about
014the negative consequences that a one-sizefits-all program would have on students, particularly those coming to us with limited educational backgrounds and/or trauma. We know that all students acquire language at different rates and that there are many issues that affect our students growth and language acquisition that are beyond our ability to control or speed up. As predicted, many of our students, perhaps 15% of our newcomer students, have not thrived or even progressed under the new strict guidelines. For these students, attendance, motivation, and self-confidence have diminished. They are now placed in classes in which they cannot possibly access the content or curriculum due to overwhelming language barriers. I was a student like that myself when I went to Spain after having four years of high school Spanish. It was not enough and I flunked nearly all of my
015classes except for English and math. As teachers, we have been asked to comply with this program with no added support for our struggling students. Teachers workloads have increased. Teachers have been asked to create translated materials and novels, create more scaffolds and language supports with no increase in instructional aids, access to purchasing such materials, or time to translate all of our materials into multiple languages. Acting in good faith, teachers feel that they must in good conscience pass our struggling ML students even though they may not meet a baseline of the academic standards required. Teachers do not want to discourage or demoralize our students. This has been an ongoing struggle and many of us have sounded the alarm to get our students the support they need and deserve. We have identified students throughout this year and last
016who are just not ready to be in our mainstream standardized classes. While we at Cappuccino know that our students succeed best when they are well known to the adults on campus and to one another, we also know that they need to be placed adequately in classes that match their proficiency level in English, which encourages them to keep learning within the appropriate amount of linguistic stretch. Last fall, CC Cronin, a highly respected longtime EL and ML teacher and former ELD department chair of San Monteo High School, who I believe began in this district in 1991 and is sitting here to de tonight, wrote to Superintendent Booker and the members of the board to request a listening session with teachers to discuss the cascading effects on both newcomers and mainstream students due to this change in policy.
017policy. Board members reached out to Cece and many conversations with teachers ensued. A meeting was held in January with district personnel in which teachers shared their concerned concerns, shared narratives about particular students who were doing poorly in the new structure. and we discussed whether our district was in compliance with the Lao versus Nicole's law, which requires districts to provide a language acquisition pathway toward entering the standard program. I am now very happy to report the news that our concerns have been heard and we are reconvening a district-wide task force that will once again include the voices of our teachers to rewrite the district policy to include the necessary flexibility that some of our students need to acquire English and access the curriculum. I want to thank the board members who spent many hours on in
018phone discussions and meetings with teachers to examine the law and examine the student street data that we shared. Specifically, I want to thank trustees Leia Andrade Desiga and Jennifer Jacobson for their advocacy and for their time. We invite all of you to meet our teachers, our counselors, talk to our students who need more time, and hear all of our voices. Thank you for supporting our multilingual language learners and immigrant students during a challenging time of dislocation, instability, and insecurity. We know that we are better when we work together in collaboration as faculty and administrators and community members and that we must center our students linguistic needs and goals as well as use best practices in order to promote English acquisition, well-being and integration into our society. Thank you very much. Thank you. report of the
019uh CSEA chapter 519 representative Mr. Brewer. Good evening everybody. Uh my name is Dale Brewer. I am an electrician here at the school district and also the CSEA president and I am happy to uh speak to you tonight on on behalf of our group. Um, CSEA is now preparing for negotiations with with uh the school district tonight. We actually have had a meeting and we're going over the negotiations. So, we're looking forward to doing that. Um, no other real news to report tonight so we can keep it short and sweet. But just a reminder, CSA is working back here on the internet. CSEA is cleaning up spills. We're here for you to make everything go smooth so that our teachers can teach our students. And uh it you're absolutely correct. It's so much better when
020we all work together because like uh Mr. Booker says all the time, "Everyone here at the district is an educator." And I know as an electrician, I still take that to heart because I know I got to keep the electricity going. Lights on. So, thank you guys very much. Have a good evening. Thank you. Report of the Sanail Adult School Teachers Association. There's no report this evening. Reporter of the Student Board representatives. Good evening. Good evening. Hello there. So, you want to introduce yourselves? Uh, yeah. My name is Johnny Lopez. I represent Middle College. I am a junior. Good evening, dear board members. I'm Venicia Sharma and I'm a sophomore at Sam High School. Currently at Middle College right now. We are expecting our our semester flex day field trip to UC UC Davis and
021UC Santa Cruz. But besides that, we have no new reports, no new activity going on this month or next. Okay. So, from San High School, we have the drama Hades Town, the musical coming up. It's on in this weekend, April 11th through 13 and 7th through 19th. The next weekend we have prom coming up in on April 26th, 7th to 11:00 p.m. at Oakland Scottish right and its theme is Bearcat Masquerade. Um, we also have a Pride Prom coming up on April 18th from 6:30 to 10:00 p.m. at CSM. For sports, personally, I'm part of badminton and it's going pretty well for now. Um and then we have boys soccer who have a very good win streak. Girls soccer making records. Girls and boys basketball both um have gone to the Ocean League championships. And
022boys basketball had make it made it to the CCS playoffs. Okay. So last board meeting we had an AI discussion with Mr. Simmons. He took our feedback on how he thinks teachers should use AI or not use AI, how they've been doing it so they know how students are feeling about it. We reported that most of us did use AI to some extent for mostly test preps because we're like here's a text. Can you help us with it? We also had varying teacher approaches. Some were strongly against it and some did not quite talk about it. They did not address the issue exactly. So um to summarize, we just thought that there was a need for a stronger ethical guidance and equity in the access of which AI to use which would be best for
023us as students and also as teachers. And um we also decided on merge designs for the board council and searched logos through customing to see which one suits us best. and we're looking forward to our next meeting where Dr. Julia Kempkkey will talk to us about the instructional frameworks. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to governing board comments. Uh I missed whatever you guys were saying. Public comments first. the little sheet I have here. Put the governing board comments. I can't That is That is correct. Governing board comments and then public comment. We'll get to both of them. I only I only deliver the text. I don't make it up, but that's fine. We're We're going to go ahead and get these governing board comments out
024of the way quickly. Trusty Chavez. He says quickly and then he says, "Trusty Chavez, I will be quick." Usually it doesn't go hand in hand, but I will try my best. I only have a couple things to say. I want to say thank you to our new board reps for this quarter. You guys did you guys are amazing. I just love that we have our student reps here each and every one of our meetings. Um, couple things. Um, about a week ago, I attended uh the second I was also at the the first one a year ago. I attended the second annual women's power breakfast hosted by Assembly Member Diane Papen and women leaders throughout the entire county of Sonteo are are invited um and many trustees were in attendance as well as city council
025members and other leaders in the in the in Sano County women business owners um several leaders. It was awesome. There was a panel discussion as well. Um I saw Trusty Jacobs in there. Um, also our very own adult school, our principal of our adult school, Angela Taylor, was there as well. So that it was great to see a couple of folks there from from Smooshed. Um, and uh, just one more thing to share. This is more about myself. I was I'm I was just recently appointed as um, a CSBA delegate for region 5B, region 5B, Santo County, and I'll be working with Greg. Greg's one of the delegates. So there's about six or seven delegates. Um, there are I had information here, but I know I'm supposed to be fast. Um there are um so
026CSB is California Schoolboard Association. So a lot of us attend an annual conference but in addition to that we are divided into 21 geographic regions. So our area is Sanonteo County and we have six or seven delegates and I am I am honored to be appointed in that position. Greg Trusty Lan is also a delegate as well. So, um, collaborating together with other delegates from around the state of California is is a great thing and I'm really excited about that. And I will end there so that I don't get, you know, elbowed. Thank you for Thank you for letting me share. Thank you for your comments and, you know, for the sake of the confusion, we tried to move the we changed the order and so we had governing board comments come before so we
027can get these guys out of the way. So, uh um that's where that's where that confusion came from because it the actual printed agenda has the old traditional thing. So, um Trusty Lan Oh, did Trusty Jacobson? Oh, sorry. No, I'm I'm I'm going by roll call order. I don't have a lot to say. Um, just that uh I also attended the power breakfast uh that Trusty Chavez mentioned and I um attended a lacrosse game at Berling Game High School yesterday versus Hill Hillsdale and the new gym is looking great. I'm excited for that. So, um and I just want to thank uh the everybody who came here tonight. Um, thank you for your reports and um, look forward to to hearing more this meeting. Trusty Land, I I will just do a lot of echoes.
028One, I drive by the Berling game gym and it's amazing how fast it's gone up. It's amazing. I'm so impressed. Um, yes, uh, Trusty Chavez was right. I am a delegate assembly and got elected this year. So, welcome aboard. We'll see you at the the delegate assembly. um since you and also I was not at the women's uh breakfast but I want to honor the woman of the year who's a very good friend of mine Donna Coulson and she's a very good friend of mine and former mayor of Berling game and she's still on the city council and I just was so impressed she's such a giving person and uh really strong in our community so I have to acknowledge her in publicly on that um the last thing is since you took a personal
029privilege I am too um AXA which is another acronym, but it's for administrators of California. I was just appointed to the middle grades education council for AXA. So, I will be doing that for middle schools. So, I just got appointed to that. So, thank you. So, doing a lot of things with education. Okay, that's it for me. Thank you. Thank you, Trusty Andrade Zuniga. Yes, thank you. Um, I first want to start with a land acknowledgement that was written by some of our cappuccino students a few years ago. Our community acknowledges that all of our campuses lie on the ancestral homeland of the Rome alone. The Romeish are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula whose land was stolen from them and whose native language was lost because of Spanish colonization. As settlers on
030the stolen land of the peninsula, we should be alongside the Rome Tush, remembering and honoring their ancestors and relatives. We thank the first people, the Rome Tush Aloney, for taking care of the land we use now for education and activities. Our responsibility of caring for the earth is unique and personal to each of us but should be rooted in allyship with the Romeo Shalon so we can work together to protect and preserve the land for future generations. Um I did not attend the power breakfast but I heard it was really nice. Um so I'm glad that we had representation from our district. So thank you for attending. Um I am part of the Sanonteo County School Board Association. the suit the secretary and we have our Kent Award dinner um on May 2nd at the
031Crown Plaza. Um, so for anyone that's interested, um, you can go to the Sanonteo County, uh, schoolboard association website. And for the trustees, um, please also sign up to go. Um, we recognize different, uh, programs throughout all of the different school districts in the county um, and give them an award. Um, we also have different speakers and different entertainment. Um we are actually looking for some um uh some performers from our district. If anybody would like to participate um please let me know. Um that would be really really really good. Um there's also I want for everything that's been happening with folks um that are um undocumented here in our community. Um, don't forget that there are red cards that you can access that will give you um all of the information on what your
032rights are. Um, and some of those are also done through given out through the um through the county. Um, I'm not sure if anyone in the district does, but if they do, thank you. Um, and please uh please distribute those. Um, my heart's really heavy for our community. Um there's been a lot of people that have just disappeared and then we hear that they are in another country. So um it's very taxing on a lot of us. Um I can't even imagine how taxing it would be on our students and our teachers. So and our staff. So please um just hold each other close. Um there's some information through supervisor uh Noia Cordo's office that also has a lot of information on immigration uh services. And so again, she's a supervisor that um represents some
033of our some of our community here in the district. So um you can go to her website as well um and get some information. Um, like our students mentioned, um, April 18th at 6:30 p.m. at CSM is the annual Pride Prom that our district is, um, very proudly part of. Um, let's see. Um, I chair the California State Independent Living Council through the governor's office and I joined we every quarter we have statewide meetings and last week I attended our statewide meetings where we talked a lot about special education about services for folks with disabilities whether they are um youth with disabilities or transitioned youth. um the the changes that have been happening with our just funding sources and the um administration for community living that also provides a lot of resources through our centers
034for independent living. Um I work for one and we are just experiencing a lot of uncertainty. So, if you could please advocate for us um through to your legislators for folks with disabilities um especially our young people, please do so. So, reach out to your legislators about about education uh funding, about special education funding, um about immigrant rights. That would be excellent. Um, and lastly, I just want to leave um us with a quote by um Alexis Dasas, who was the editor-inchief for Elte newspaper from San Francisco. He says, "May we never stay silent in the face of injustice. May we never lose our humanity." And so I want to thank all of our all of our folks in our district, our educators, um who advocate tirelessly for our students, who are here tonight. Um
035all of the parents that come and speak. Um everybody that just advocates for those who who really need the advocacy. Thank you. Thank you. I have no comments this evening because all I've done for the since our last meeting was work. So, I'm like, uh, I do taxes for a living and I'm not looking for any more tax returns. So, public comments. If you are joining us in person and wish to make a comment about an agenda item or during the public comment section at the beginning of the agenda, please fill out a request to address the board form and submit it to the secretary. This form should be given to the secretary before the agenda item begins. If you are joining us virtually, use the raised hand feature on Zoom to be recognized. When
036invited to do so, your camera must be on before you are called upon to make a public comment. We will call on you to begin your comment once you have we have promoted you uh into the meeting. If your camera is not operational, please email your comments to the board of trustees at boardshd.org. That's boards smuhsd.org. Please note that comments are limited to three minutes. The board president may increase or decrease the time allowed for public comment depending on the topic and the number of persons wishing to be heard. Uh I will call on in-person comments first and uh we will allow three minutes this evening. So, um, Diana de Guzman. Good evening, President Griffin, members of the board, district cabinet, and the SMU HSD community. My name is Diana Duzman, and I'm the lead
037wellness counselor at Sonteo High School. I have served this community and district for almost 18 years in various roles from a trainee working with teen moms at Peninsula to a contracted school safety advocate, a district wellness counselor and now a lead. This work is deeply personal to me and to all of us who showed up show up every day for our students. In all my years of working with the district leadership from Scott Lawrence, Kende Mackaml, Kevin Skellyy, and Don Scatenna, I can say that never before have I felt such a lack of support for the wellness program and the meaningful student- centered work my colleagues and I provide until now. Tonight, my colleagues and I are here to respectfully act ask for your attention to shine a light on a deeply concerning issue. the
038injustice, lack of transparency and support for our program, specifically around the clinical services supervisor role and the changes being imposed that are not that are more than just a structural shift. This role supports 20 wellness counselors and ensures we're able to provide consistent and compassionate care to all our students. As a lead, I know how critical a clinical supervisor is in supporting me to manage high crises on my campus and why current structure has worked so well. Previous models involved travel time, created challenges in with inconsistent support, coordinating schedules, securing spaces, and managing multiple sites. The current model improves accessibility, timely support, and student outcomes, reducing liability. Since January, our group has repeatedly reached out to for meetings with the superintendent and Dr. Black with the support of RCA union. Instead, we've faced delays and
039now we're told a threat of litigation prevents any dialogue at this time. Therefore, silencing us, imposing changes without meaningful dialogue feels like our voices and therefore students needs are being dismissed and minimized. With the job posting move to close April 18 from original date of July while we're in the midst of supporting students through finals, graduation and life transitions, not to mention the issues with immigration anxiety and all of the other anxiety and depression that students are feeling with the social emotional political climate at this time. Today I ask the board, please be aware of what is happening to our program. Where is the harm in listening to your dedicated employees in sharing the impact of these changes to help district leadership understand why preserving the current model of the clinical services supervisor is so
040important. You will hear more from my colleagues that are joining me here tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Lucer Govia. Good evening and wa tardes, board members, district cabinet, and members of the community. My name is Lucero Goa, and I currently serve as the lead mental health therapist at Cappuccino High School. I have been part of this district for 16 years. I am adding on to what my colleague discussed related to the clinical supervisor position and would like to provide valuable perspective on how this shift affects affects both staff and our students. The role of a clinical supervisor is required for licensing, but it's especially vital in supporting mental health therapists. As wellness staff, we are fortunate to have a supervision that blends professionalism, expertise, and compassion. A supervisor doesn't just oversee. They inspire, guide, and
041care about the well-being of each team member and the students we serve. In this program, quality supervision has equated to student safety and staff retention. Since the program began in 2016, the role of clinical supervisor has gone through many changes with various setups that have been unsuccessful. Between 2016 and 2018, the district tried having sightbased coordinators, but the role was unsustainable, leading to frequent staff turnover, making it hard to maintain consistency. In 2019, after thoughtful system reorganization, the current model was introduced, providing more stability, stronger support, and better alignment with the district goals for student mental health. Ultimately, we are here today to stress the importance of the work and the vital role clinical supervision has played in our success and student safety. We're experiencing a serious mental health crisis. Our students are dealing with
042far more than the typical adolescent struggles. Some are undocumented undocumented and are fearing family separation. Others are navigating changes related to gender identity protections. and many are under immense stress at school, at home and their relationships which puts them at risk in terms of mental health. These are the issues we manage every day and we need accessible, highquality supervision to support us. I thank you for listening. I invite you to speak with us directly to better understand the value and need of this role and we request this issue be added to upcoming to an upcoming board agenda for further discussion. Thank you. Thank you, Gabriella Gill. Good evening, board members, district cabinet, and members of the community. My name is Gabriella Gelb. I am an associate mental health therapist at Cappuccino High School and have
043been working in our district in multiple roles as a mental health therapist for 5 years. I am adding to what my colleagues before me have already shared related to the clinical services supervisor position. Our team was informed of changes to our supervision structure on January 31st midy year and just before March, a time when student crisis historically peaks. As a frontline mental health provider, we assess the severity of suicidal ideiation, abuse, neglect, assault, and other serious concerns, often relying on immediate consultation with our clinical supervisor to ensure student safety. We respond to high impact crises like housing loss, caregiver deaths, fears of deportation, and even sightbased tragedies. All while supporting students and families and managing our own emotional toll. We navigate all of these instances legally, ethically, and empathically because of our clinical supervision. This
044school year alone, my Cappuccino team had 720 individual student sessions and 767 additional student visits to the CHS wellness space. We have initiated 57 safety checks this school year with students. Ultimately, the proposed change to our supervision model will directly affect student safety and staff effectiveness, not only for the 20 therapists who require the supervision, but also for the 12 licensed therapists who we work alongside. When presented for approval at the January 16th board meeting, the clinical services supervisor role was misrepresented as having shifted to remote only due to the pandemic. Why, when this role is finally being approved for permanency, is the structure that makes it successful being questioned. The board has renewed it as virtual annually without concerns and therefore there has been no disruption to clinical supervision for the last five school
045years and extended school years for up to 20 therapists across all of our sites. Why is this model in question when our assistant superintendent informed our director of mental health that and I quote the employed clinical supervisor would be able to provide virtual supervision as necessary and appropriate. Our current model provides a supervisor who is always accessible during crisis and who is ethically, legally, and culturally competent, built from years of experience in our district. It allows us to remain on site during the 3 hours of required weekly supervision as mandated by our licensing board. All of this is to say, why is this change happening? And what is the plan for obtaining consistent and qualified school-based supervision support for the 20 therapists who it directly affects? Why weren't we included in any of the discussions
046related to this proposed change? We are available to discuss this further and we appreciate your attention to this matter. Thank you. Thank you, Elena Ortiz. Good evening. I'm Elen the I've had the honor of serving Sonato High School in the district for the past 10 years. As a bilingual bicultural wellness counselor and a daughter of immigrants, I bring personal and professional insight to my work. I strive to provide our ML newcomer students with the sense of civility and connection. Especially in today's political climate where representation, cultural humility, identity affirmation and safety are more than important than ever. Many of our newcomers and multil multilingual learners students are navigating grief, loss, disrupted education, complex barriers from legal status, and being in survival mode. They require harm reduction interventions, particularly to our victims of exploitation, foster youth
047and students on probation, and many of whom continue to be exposed to violence and injustice. These challenges impact their emotional well-being, their ability to trust, and their capacity to learn and engage in school and daytoday life. Our wellness team first learned of the proposed changes to the clinical service supervisor role at a January board meeting. The disrupt timing just before a critical period in the school year and during a political sensitive time raised concerns about the transparency of this process. Originally an inerson an inerson role the position transitioned to remote remote with board approval before the pandemic. Having worked in both models I can confidently say that remote supervision provides us with immediate access to clinical guidance especially during crisis. I rely on this support several times a week during high need crisis. A supervisor
048can't affective can't be effective if they're constantly moving between sites or scrambling to find a private space to take my call while also trying to provide quality care. Changing back to the previous structure would weaken this program. Professionals who work in this field like our director understand this need and their input should be taken into account when making these changes. The district administrator made this change to our supervision without any conversation or input from us. Remote supervision has not decreased quality, it's actually improved it, ensuring trauma informed care for our students and support of the wellness counselors. Many of the positions in the district meet staff online and this model helps retain our diverse clinicians who are crucial to our program and for our students. We respectfully request a chance to discuss the value of
049the role directly and ask that it be added to a future board agenda. Thank you. Thank you. Amelia Nash, I'm sorry I can't read your first your handwriting. So, I know it was hard. I had to write it on my chair. Um, thank you. Good evening, board members. My name is Amelia Nash. I'm an unlicensed therapist who has been working for the past six years with students across the district who need an alternative to suspension. These are students who are fighting, posting bullying comments, using drugs and alcohol on campus, using dehumanizing language. Many of my students tend to be students who you talk most about wanting to serve in your board meetings. Students who are chronically absent, students who are failing all their classes, students who don't particularly want to be at school and are
050not thriving there. I love the work I do, giving these students a trusted adult to feel connected to. But it's challenging work. I am concerned that the seriousness of having a strong clinical supervisor is not being understood by our district leadership. As you've heard this evening, we have been trying to raise these concerns and open a conversation first with the head of human resources, Dr. Black, then with the superintendent, Mr. Booker, only to be met with silence and feeling ignored. Our current clinical supervisor is remote and not being considered for the position despite having thrived remotely in this role since before COVID. Dropping a new person into this role to supervise 20 therapists doing so many different things across the district is risky and exposes the district to avoidable liability. Our current clinical supervisor is
051highly experienced, highly knowledgeable about our district and has supported this team successfully for many years. To see her being pushed out due to a new requirement to be onsite without any clear reason is disheartening when there are examples across the district of hybrid and remote work. As therapists, we don't get to choose what comes our way every day. But having highquality clinical supervision gives us the courage to face that unknown. I know many of you board members value the wellness program. We apologize for having to take up board time, but we wanted to bring our concerns to light so action can be taken before it's too late. Thank you. Thank you, Adriana Gomez. Hi everybody. Um, good evening and thank you for the opportunity to speak. My name is Adriana Gomez and I've been employed
052by the district for 10 years in a couple of different roles. Seven years as the assistant to the director of student services at the district office and the last three as a wellness counselor in the therapeutic elective class at Berlingame High School. As uh as our director, April Torres, reports to this board every year, our mental health therapists more than pro prove our worth without fail. While we appreciate the accolades we receive for what we do, it is not enough and it is not our why. As Superintendent Booker encouraged us to reflect on in his first year, we do this work for the good of our students and our communities. This work could not be done as well is as it is without our clinical supervisor and the modality in which our supervision is currently
053offered completely remotely. In therapeutic classrooms, students have individualized needs that require tailored support. a small group of us provides that care and clinical supervision is essential to ensure we're equipped and grounded to do so effectively. With the proposed change, associate therapists may struggle to address the unique needs of their students, which could impact their well-being and raise legal and ethical concerns regarding the quality of care. This undermines the therapeutic environment and the overall support we strive to provide. In addition to supporting crises related to suicidality or self harm at any given time, we may also be balancing a CPS report, child exploitation concerns, having contact with probation officers, and many other outside agencies and supports that just one of our students may have contact with. Our clinical supervisor helps us immediately navigate these high stress
054situations, many of which go beyond a single moment, to determine the safest next steps for our students. Historically, as classified staff and as wellness counselors, we've often felt overlooked and undervalued within the system. We are expected to do much, and truthfully, as a collective group, we ask the board and our superintendent for so little. However, over the last several years, morale within our team has become increasingly poor and turnover has been quite high. We have experienced so much disrespect as a program and we have collectively felt that this decision is the final straw. With all due respect, the posting of this position without any collaboration with our department management or any um or input from anyone whom this directly affects was premature, thoughtless, and irresponsible. This was not a student- centered decision, and truthfully, no
055consideration was made for the impact on your staff. This situation has been very messy and has only served to exponentially increase the stress imposed on those of us who rely on our supervision as is. As mentioned earlier, since learning that this position was posted without the support of our director, our team, alongside with our CSEA representatives, has made multiple attempts to meet with Mr. Booker and Dr. Black since January 31st. Despite our efforts, we haven't been granted the basic professional courtesy of a conversation to share our concerns as the very people most directly by most directly impacted by this decision. The day-to-day responsibilities and complexities of this role are details that respectfully only our director, associate manager, and clinical supervisor truly understand. Most district leaders are not familiar with the nuances of this position and
056should not be making decisions in silence without consultation with those directly involved. In closing, I urge the board to recognize the value of maintaining the clinical supervision model that has worked effectively for the past five years. This model was developed based on our needs as staff and the location of our supervisor has never been an issue. Thank you. Are there any online comments? There is one hand raised. Okay. I'll be promoting Shannon Boon. No. Hello. Okay, you may go ahead. Good evening board members. My name is Channon Pune and I'm a junior at Aragon High School and a member of YCA, youth climate ambassador. I'm here today because I care about our planet and I know our district does too. But looking at the SMUD energy breakdown, I want to raise a major concern. Our
057heavy reliance on methane gas as an energy source. According to the district's own data, over half a million burns of methane gas were used in just one school year. That's equivalent to nearly 15 million kilowatt hours of energy. While electricity use sits at around 7.9 million kW, methane gas remains as the dominant energy source in colder months, especially between November and March. This is a problem. Methane is one of the most powerful greenhouse gases, 84 times more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term. It traps heat in the atmosphere and accelerates climate change. By continuing this use of gas powered heaters and water heaters, we are contributing to the very crisis we're trying to educate our generation to solve. We must act. Our district has the power and the responsibility to lead. That means
058transitioning school buildings toward full electrification, investing in electric heat pumps, and cutting our dependence on methane gas. This isn't just about numbers on the graph. It's about aligning our practices with our values and preparing for a sustainable future. I urge the board to take action to reduce methane use across all campuses and to commit clean energy solutions that will benefit students now and for decades to come. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Appreciate everybody's comments this evening. Thank you. Uh communications to the board of trustees, Superintendent Booker. None this evening. Okay. Recognitions. Yes. Uh this evening we've got the Burlingham High School robotics team. They finished in first place out of over 40 teams at the Arizona regional competition on March 19th through 22nd. They've qualified also for the World Championships. And I'd like
059to introduce and invite the the robotics team coach Christina Wade to the podium to help us celebrate. Thank you. Hi everybody. I'm Christina Wade. Thank you so much for inviting us tonight. Um, most of our team is at our Redwood City practice field right now packing up our robot so we can ship it tomorrow on a semi-truck to Houston. So, these were the only people that I could grab and we're going right back after to Redwood City. So, I just want to introduce who I brought with me tonight. Very honored to introduce our co- captains, Zach Weinberg and Serena Coopsman Hootman's, sorry. And one of our new mentors, Chris Whit Whitmer. I always say it wrong. Anyway, I'm going to have them talk about our team because it's a studentrun team, which means I don't
060really talk that much even though I love to talk. I'm going to let them talk. So, thank you so much. Thank you, Miss Wade. Um, as she said, I'm Zach Weinberg. I'm a senior at Berlingame High School and one of the co- captains on our team. So, we are the Berlingame High School robotics team, the Iron Panthers. We're the largest studentrun organization on the BHS campus and we compete in the first robotics competition with over 3,500 teams worldwide. We are the 2019 World Champions and hopefully the 2025 World Champions when we compete in Houston, Texas next week. Yeah. So, as part of the First Robotics Challenge League, we receive a new competition every year. And so, in January, we received a new challenge and we've gone to two competitions so far. At the Ventura County
061Regional in Southern California, we won the Autonomous Award for our um amazing programming skills and we ranked incredibly high. And then two weeks ago, we went to Arizona where we were first from qualification matches, won the engineering inspiration award for our work with STEM outreach in our community, and also qualified for the world champions, um, which we're going to next week. So, we're incredibly excited and we just wanted to say thank you so much for the district support. Um, yeah. Um, thank you all for having us. Um, and we would love to uh continue talking more about how uh the district can support robotics, not just our robotics team, but teams at Mills and Aragon high schools. Um, we'd love to once we return from the championships, uh, have further discussion. Um, I believe also
062um, some videos of our team will be sent out. We were unfortunately not able to put them on slides during this meeting. Thank you. Well, we want to congratulate you. Yeah. Congratulations. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming. Good luck. Wish you Yeah. Wish you the best here. Pack the robots. You guys are awesome. Awesome. Okay, we're going to move on to uh and they're going to rush back to Redwood City. Probably got a forklift loading that that robot on that big rig, huh? And they're going to help out the their partner district junior middle school. So, [Laughter] yes. All right. Okay. Okay, we're going to move on to the consent agenda. Um, does any a trustee wish to pull an item or is there a motion? I move to approve if there is
063no discussion. Second. Okay, we have a motion in a second. Are there any comments? Any any comments by the board? Any comments online? There are none. Okay, we got a motion and a second. All in favor? I I student board members Okay, special reports and appearances. Superintendent Booker. Thank you. So, this evening we've got Charlie Royce, our director of facilities and construction, joined by uh excuse me, yes, thank you. uh to give the presentation sorry presentation of the 2023 2024 Measure O andL citizens oversight committee annual report and the 2324 Measure OL annual financial and performance audit. That's a mouthful. Uh and I hand it over to uh Mr. Royce and I'll say the same mouthful. Thank you. Um I'm really pleased to introduce Erica Lions. She's one of our um committee members for our
064citizens oversight, our amazing citizens oversight committee uh who we rely on to uh make sure that uh we are spending our bond money correctly. And so she's here to submit for your acceptance the 2003 2004 measure OL citizens oversight committee annual report and the 2023 2024 measure and L annual financial and performance audit. Thank you Mr. Charlie. So hi everybody. I'm Erica Lions. Been here a couple times before. Um, just want to say I'm here on behalf of our fun yet hardworking citizens oversight committee. Um, I think we I it's a mouthful. Yes, Randall. Um, it's you should read the thing. It makes your head hurt. Yeah, I my I think everything was just scrambled after that. So, um, if you're unaware, our C, our citizens oversight committee, the most important responsibility is to make
065sure that, um, the expenditures with bonds are in accordance to what our voters approved, you know, and so far since I've been here, it's my fourth year. So, good. Um, we review the financial data, which makes our heads hurt, and sometimes we even find that pages are out of order. I mean, that's how detailed our people get. Um, so we also accept the financial performance and we and the audit review. That's the thing that really makes our heads hurt. Um, the fun that we usually have is on the project visits, which the last couple years is actually centered around my birthday, so I've had a really good time. It's like the kickoff for my birthday, so it usually involves food or something. Um we do review change orders and um we also create and distribute
066the annual report on the bonds program for all of you. So um here it is tonight to present the the annual report for measure O and measure L. Um and you should have a copy overjoyed to to present it. And so in that you'll see the summary of what we of our activities, the financial summaries and project updates. um other information the committee um has deemed important for our constituents to have here in Samontto Union High School District. Um and also included as an attachment to the annual report is the financial and the performance audit report. And you know once again we didn't find anything out of the ordinary. So um as a former parent in this district it's my first year not not being here. Um, but it's what I as a as a
067taxpayer in your district would expect and so everything's all status quo. So, thanks for having us. And any question? I think it's important that for the record, uh, we read the the bottom paragraph aloud of the Citizens Oversights Committee memo to the board dated March 25th. Uh, and if you'll allow me, it reads, "Based upon information presented to the committee by district staff as well as the committee's ongoing oversight activities and the review of the independent financial and performant audits, the committee believes the district is in compliance with the requirements of article 13A section 1B3 of the California Constitution. Article 13A section 1B3 outlines accountability requirements for school districts that incur bonded indebtedness under Prop 39. And with the present presentation of this annual report, the members of the committee believe that the Measure O
068and Measure L bond funds have been properly expended and have been utilized for projects consistent with those identified in the bond measures. Yeah, I want to I don't know if anybody else wants to speak, but since I Okay. And No, go ahead. If you're No, I was just going to thank them. Yeah. Uh, you know, I've enjoyed going to those meetings. It's it's hard work. I mean, there's a lot of detail. Yeah. Uh, the food does not make up for the hard work. I will agree with that. Yes. I mean, I I I as much as I enjoy the meetings, I think there's a lot of camaraderie that develops going through those late nights and kind of listening to that auditor drone on about, you know, his procedures. But we appreciate your work. Uh the
069public uh does too because you know you're certainly uh one of the controls uh and helping and helping to keep us accountable to uh to uh everyone uh about you know showing good stewardship over these bond proceeds and the tax dollars. So thank you Trusty Andradi Zindiga. Thank you. I echo everything Trustee Griffin had said. Um, but most of all, I mean, our our our volunteers, our parents that sit on this committee as well. Thank you, Miss Lions. I mean, really, you don't you can spend your time doing other things, but you're here and serving our district. So, thank you. And Mr. Rice always, thank you for everything you do. Please say hi to Simon for me, for us as well, because he's been there for a while, too. Yeah. And he does a great
070job. So, thank you all. I was gonna say something real quick. I didn't want to interrupt though. Were you? Oh, you done? Okay. Um I want to say thank you. Um I attended many meetings and I'm on the committee not as a not as a voting member of the committee, but but that's the committee that I'm assigned to and I asked to be assigned to that because we have so much fun. The however a lot of it just like uh Trusty Griffin said, you're digging into details, numbers, and this group loves numbers and they dedicate hours and hours combing through the numbers. Um, and they they're really dedicated. And Erica, we're just really grateful that you've been on the you've been on the committee for four years. You said that's Yeah. And other members have
071been there for a few years as well. So, it's really a great group. Um, and I hope the continuity um continues. I know don't say she could be doing other things. We we want Erica and everybody else on the committee to keep coming uh to the meetings. Not going anywhere. I got I got a little toe in the water because I really love what this did for my kids. proud Panther graduate and and bear mom. So we were house divided. Right. Right. It was Stanford. Right. Right. And I just and I want to continue to see it grow. And we and I also want to say we have so much fun on our field trips. We've gone to see after the uh gymnasiums were demolished. We've also gone to see what the field looks like
072before it's built. Build it and they will come. And that's exactly what our our group did. I mean, our group didn't build it, but oversaw the financial, but I'm just saying that the district built amazing new facilities, and this group oversaw it. And I don't know, I don't want to do give a spoiler alert, but you might see a picture here and there when myself and Erica Lions were on a tractor, but that was that was at the groundbreaking event. Um, you take pictures cutting. Ribbon cutting. Yes. And uh Mr. Hawkins was uh taking pictures and he says we get he was just joking with us, but it was a great time. So, I don't know if anybody else has anything to say, but I want to thank you for presenting and Okay. Well, I'll
073just check in the event somebody else may have something to say. So, Okay. Well, appreciate your work. Thank you very much. Okay. This is a action. There is an action. Yeah, this is a action item. Um, are there any public comments before we There are none. Okay. Is there a motion to accept the report? I move to make the motion to accept the report. Trusty Lan left you in the starting. He had the motion in the second. I'll second that. I'll second that. Okay, we have a motion and a second. All in favor? I I student board members. I thank you. We're excited. I know. We're excited. Okay. Item two, career tech ed, uh, education program and policy update and discussion. Right. Good evening. Um, just going to launch this presentation. We're here tonight to
074provide an update on the career technical education programs in our district. Um, focusing on current status, our strengths, some of the challenges, and opportunities for future growth. um aligned with our state priorities. And um just as an overview, we'll talk about what a high quality career techn technical education program elements look like. Um review the current state of the um Sonteo CTE programs. um discuss implications of current graduation requirement and then consider some opportunities to evolve policies aligned with the college and career indicator. And really, I'm going to pass the majority of this presentation over to Mr. Simmons who's going to take us through the meat of it. Put your mic Oh, got to turn on. There you go. Red is on. Red is on. It's not like I haven't done this before, but um
075so good evening. Um yeah, I'm here to talk about CTE and sort of some outcomes and all the things that that Dr. Kempkkey spoke to. So, I'm going to start by talking a little bit about what a high quality CTE program uh is, right? Um because that's really evolved over the years uh from back in the day when um you know, some of us went to school and called it vocational education, right? So a high-quality CTE program is defined by several key features uh including a rigorous curriculum first and foremost progressing clearly from introductory courses called concentrators so officially they're called concentrator courses to advanced career specific capstone courses. Right. Effective programs provide students with real world experience um such as internships and job shadowing or even just exposure by taking students out to a
076to a to a job site. Um they often now offer dual enrollment opportunities that allow students to earn college credits while in high school and and ultimately they enable students to obtain industry recognized certifications. Importantly, high quality CD programs emphasize equitable access ensuring that all students regardless of their background have meaningful opportunities to participate across the pathways. So those are sort of the and again I there's sort of details on this screen here but I think the big idea um that I would sort of encourage you to think about as you're thinking about career technical education is what is the vision we have for our students uh for the future right because the f and the future is murky right we don't technology and lots of other things are are making the future murky but
077what are the kinds of experiences you want to make sure that we're providing to our students uh that that support them in their futures um currently our district mandates uh and so I'm going to move into sort of you know how where we are and how we got here. So currently our district mandates elective graduation requirements in three areas, right? Visual and performing arts, VAPA as it's often referred to, CTE or career technical education and world language. Those are all sort of what we call electives, right? Uh and the UCCCSU system calls those electives as well because students have choices inside those, right? As opposed to you have to take English, you have to take math, right? Um these in these subjects you can elect to take whichever ones you want to take. This structure
078while intended to provide broad exposure, this this structure uh limits deeper engagement in career focused uh pathways. Although these electives help many students fulfill the UCCCSU requirements, we again to remind you all from back in January when I talked to you all about the C the the CCI, about 65% of our students meet the the college and career indicator and 90% of those students meet it through the A to G requirements. So although these electives may help students fulfill those requirements, pathway completion rates remain low, highlighting a critical gap between program participation and meaningful career readiness because we're really only having students take one class, right? One 10-unit course in CTE that in particular. Can we slow down just a little bit, please? Yes. Sorry. Thank you. I will speak more slowly. Actually, I'm enjoying
079that. But you know, one significant challenge. Uh so I'm going to sort of talk about some challenges now that are that are created by our current circumstance. Um, one of those is that despite over 90% of students enrolling in a in a CTE course, and we're going to talk a little bit about why it's only 90, right? If it's a graduation requirement, why are only 90 student 90% of students actually fulfilling the requirement? But we'll talk about that in a couple minutes. Fewer than 20% of students of those 90% who complete that first class ultimately complete a full CTE pathway. Right? So many of the students just take that first class and then they do other things. Um and this often the delayed enrollment that students who often delayed enrollment in these classes is a
080big part of this problem because often our students take their CTE classes in the 11th and 12th grade when we look at sort of course taking norms and some of that is because we sort of have this neverending self-fulfilling prophecy because basically students put off taking the class until 11th and 12th grade then therefore there are only so many seats for students to take those classes. So, we literally have had the experience. I've I've spoken to the folks over at Sonteo in particular. They could not provide a foods a second year foods class because they didn't have enough seats to provide a secondyear class because there were so many seniors who needed to fulfill the requirement. They could only provide the first year class. This is a problem. Um, so historical data uh confirms this
081low completion trend. So, I'm going to be looking right now at specifically the class of 2024, but then I've got a slide in here about the the the previous three years as well. Um, you know, there is this sort of structural and policy change may be necessary to enhance student success. Um, what you'll see here is that you've got, you know, this is just this is one of our pathways, engineering and architecture. First of all, it doesn't exist at all of our schools, which is okay. You know, we're going to have different programs at different schools. uh this particular course these particular courses are at Aragon uh Berlingame and uh Mills is where we have these particular pathways but what you see here is not a not a sort of even distribution if you if
082you look at the memo I actually have in the memo the actual dis the the percentages of of the student population across the district and we don't have representation across the different student populations right across these different pathways so this this is the this is our architecture engineering pathway this is our arts media and entertainment pathway which is our largest pathway. But again, you're so as it currently stands, just as an example, in any given year, there are probably about 1,700 students taking digital media in the district. And these are the numbers of kids who complete in the class of 2022, 23, 24. Uh this is uh biotech. So we have biotech at Sanonteo, Aragon, and Mills. Again, you see um and again, we've had real also differences in the number of of of completers
083across the years, but in general, a relatively low number overall. and certainly the same kinds of um discrepancies in outcomes in terms of participation and ultimately in completion among the various subgroups of students. Just to be really clear, the blue on the bottom is intentional because those students are duplicated essentially, right? A student who is maybe a multilingual learner also might be Latino. So you that's why there I sort of made that blue on the bottom to make sort of distinguish the data in white is actually one set of data. the data on the bottom as a separate set of data and there could be some duplicates ac among this data. Um culinary arts which again is our second largest program in the district. Uh we have you know significant numbers of students taking these
084courses but again not a lot of and we've had some improvements there right some increases in the in the part in the in the completion there but overall still relatively low numbers of students completing computer science. Computer science is sort of the messiest of our of our pathways because in many ways um very few stu many more students take AP computer science C which is the AP computer science sort of coding class that many of our students take and then they take the test that's actually seen by the state as a capstone class. So many of our students jump straight to that class because it's an AP class. They don't actually take the introductory class. Um we have the introductory we have an AP computer science introduction to AP computer science at every school site.
085I apologize translators. Um I will slow down again. Um at least I was self-aware enough to say it this time. Um and so we so AP computer science or computer science in particular both has these, you know, significant discrepancies in terms of student participation, right? You see these real differences um in in in equity of access. Um, but in addition, students really don't fi finish that pathway because they more often than not are just taking that one AP computer science class and moving on about their business to take other things, other AP classes more often than not. So, that's sort of the broad the big issue of completion rates and kind of the things that are impacting them. Um, you know, I think that we're going to move on now on to kind of issues
086of of access. Um, and so this this is a uh just and I'm I'm not going to go through all these slides again, but basically a significant number of students receive waiverss from the CTE requirements um especially at certain school sites. These waivers highlight the limited availability of attractive and relevant CTE options for all students. Uh and that further exacerbates our inequitable access issues. Um I would say that that's so we have sort of two things, right? One is we don't have equitable participation across the pathways and we don't have um access um in particular at our two pro at our two schools at sort of actually at the southern and northernmost end of the district those two schools have the most constrained supply of any electives period. But you'll see in the data in
087the memo and I'm going to show you in a minute that the waiver they have the highest number of waiverss or exemptions uh from the from the requirement at those school sites. So, it's not surprising, right, that schools with the least number of options have situations where students need to be exempted from the requirement. Often, more often than not, the exemptions come from things like students who transfer, uh, students who have, you know, other constraints on their schedule where they it's it's sort of determined at the school site level with the individual student that it's just not sort of worth that student passing that taking that class. So, so we exempt them. Um, that's that is what the administrative regulation allows is there to be some flexibility at the school level. Uh so I'm going
088to jump through these slides just because I don't want to take too much time. I'd rather hear from you all. Um the other issue that's part of this is one of the things that was the unintended consequence of our creation of this um requirement was that and again if you remember back to my first slide about what is a high quality CTE program? High quality CTE program has a credentialed teacher and you have a two-year pathway. All the classes that are here are classes that are not a they don't have a CT credentialed teacher, but we've determined through history legacy seems like a CTE, could be a CTE class that will allow that class to be a CTE class. Some of these are dual enrollment college courses. So, you'll see some like a college academic
089success and uh there's there's a few college dual enrollment college classes. In particular, you see that happening at Hillsdale. Um they have a lot of dual enrollment, which is great. They have lots of dual enrollment options, but that has sort of become their de facto sort of CTE program to some to some extent. And then at at Cappuccino, you just have an incredibly low supply. And honestly, Skyline has not been the best at providing a lot of dual enrollment options. And even when they've done that, some of those classes have literally vaporized in the middle of the school year. So, this is all to say, meaning the teacher just sort of quit or something and we had no we had to figure out where the students would go. It was sort of a mess. And
090so we we are we're you know and yet we've created these conditions and so again you've got basically 719 students in the fall of this year taking classes that don't meet the highquality CTE requirement uh or or sort of expectations again and this was all done with good intent right people in the district were like well we don't have enough classes let's let's create something so things like journalism journalism is sort of my favorite example all of our schools have newspapers is journalism a vocation Yes. Are they teaching the CTE standards? No, not really. Because they're producing a newspaper every week. And yes, could you argue that? I'm sure on occasion, does the teacher talk about what it might be to be a real journalist in the real world and how you have to do
091whatever you have to do to be a journalist? Sure. But it's not the same as our core CTE, our five pathways. They do very intention, specific work on products like uh resumeumés and cover letters and even lately using AI in different ways. And so we're really beginning to see teachers leverage I mean in those classes they really intentionally think about career readiness. In our other classes it's hit or miss whether or not students are getting those things. Uh this is just another slide about sort of the the inequities I think of of sort of um the nonCTE course pathway or course takers. These are sort of non-real CTE if you will. So I'm going to move to the third challenge because I want to make sure to give you time to talk. Um I just
092have to move my slides here. Um so additionally, so in addition to all this, and this is this is somewhat related to what I was just talking about. Um credentiing and funding pose substantial challenges to us. Currently, only 26 of our 61 teachers hold valid CTE credentials um in the district. Actually, it's 28. I apologize. I had to revise it a little bit. We found there was a there was an error in the data, but the 28 teachers um of 60, but still 61 uh sort of specific classes. So that significantly restricts our eligibility for state funding the more we invest. So this is the other thing you should know about funding from the state. There's a lot of it actually in CTE but it's always requires matching funds and so the more you have
093to put into the buck. So we actually as a as a district we are qualified for many more resources than many districts because we have so many CT qualified CTE teachers. But if you imagine all of those teachers, all 61 of them having CTE credentials, we could get lots more money from the state because it's usually like a two to one match. We have $2, they give us a dollar. Um, and so that's how that's how we've been able to leverage as many grants as we have. So expanding the number of credentialed teachers or refining our criteria for what courses receive CTE credit would not only unlock this additional state resource, but it also would significantly enhance the quality and consistency of our program. Obviously um so these are this is the specifics about our
094um our teachers and sort of their distribution. I should say there's some people who are actually double counted on here because they actually have multiple CTE credentials. So for example I know at Cappuccino there's a teacher who's a ceramics teacher who's an arts media entertainment teacher and they have a business credential. So for example but actually we don't have any business classes yet at at uh at at Cappuccino but we're working on that. Um, moreover, there are critical gaps in our offerings in high demand career fields such as healthcare, trades, business, and automotive industries, right? And we've talked a little bit about this, I think, in the past. Students certainly have expressed strong interest in these areas. And actually, um, Miss Feight just was recently sharing with us a survey of multilingual learners, and the
095top two areas of interest among that group of students was business and healthcare. Um, and yet core our current course availability and work-based learning opportunities are just insufficient. um addressing these gaps would would involve strategic program expansion to align more closely with the regional labor market because that's the other piece of a of a strong CD program is that you're paying attention to what your regional economy needs, not just sort of what you might provide to kids. Um and so we do pay attention and there's an element of our of our grant writing that involves us really looking at labor market uh trends and and and making some investments. The challenge is that it's difficult to pivot as a school district where we have labor commitments and other commitments. it's hard to just all of
096a sudden decide we're going to do something else. Um, and so that's partly why I think refining our program to a much more targeted and focused program would allow us some ability to actually expand some some programs. So, as we explore present, um, I'm going to now kind of switch gears a little bit and talk about a potential way out or a different maybe a different way of thinking about um, what our requirements might be. Um, so as we explore these possible solutions, the state's college and career indicator um, offers a promising framework for potentially evaluating and enhancing student readiness. So, and I've talked to you all about the CCI many times before. The CCI considers uh, multiple readiness indicators including a TOG completion, dual enrollment, but specifically CTE pathway completion, industry certifications, and work-based
097learning workbased learning experiences as ways to meet that criteria, right? to say to students and the public and and and future employers, this student this student is ready for their future. And so, um, just as a quick reminder, um, the class of 20 24 showed some progress. Um, we saw some improvement, right? I showed this back to showed this to you all back in January, which feels like a few years ago now, but um um, but overall, we we saw some bright spots, including improvements among African-American, Filipino, and white students. But to me, the the problem can persist that, you know, that number has been pretty solid around 65 to 70 every year for since it's since it's existed. We had a little bit of a period where there wasn't the CCI because of the
098the pandemic. But when we clearly have these areas for significant growth where we have differentials in student outcomes. So moving forward, we propose exploring some adjustments to our graduation requirements to more to align more deliberately with this CCI framework. Such a shift would encourage depth rather than breadth, ensuring greater equity and significantly strengthening students readiness for college, career, and life beyond high school. Um, so in conclusion, our district remains deeply committed to providing robust and equitable CTE opportunities for our students. I don't think we're there's no one debates that. I think we look forward to receiving the board's feedback and collaborating closely with stakeholders, including certainly our CTE faculty, the administration of every school and community partners as we consider evolving our graduation requirements to align with these state indicators making college and career preparation
099really co-equal priorities, right, for the first time for real. Um, and so thank you and we we welcome your questions and comments. Thank you, Presy Land. So wonderful. Well, I I'm really glad um you brought a lot of the points through. Um going to my own middle school CTE experience and trying to figure out I get the credentiing problem. You know, I think that's worthy of a discussion because how do you get this highinterest careers that people want and get a teacher who's credential to be able to do that? That becomes a hard situation. I think you had some my my input and my advice on that are my I want to hear about is how can we engage community partners more. I mean we talk about the trades. We talk about trying to interest
100get people to help out. I mean that was one of the the reports that we had a couple days a you know a couple weeks ago. Um we have to do a better job of that. And I think again it goes to thinking outside the box. It's it's not just saying okay here's here's our credentialed people. what can we do with what we've got? It's got to go beyond that, which means that's tough because that's money because that's saying it goes outside of FTEES. And so we have if this is a serious discussion, we have to take into account what are we doing with CTE and how are we funding it outside of what we're funding. Um my other thing, so that's a discussion I'm hoping we can we can bring out. The second one
101is my concern about how students are taking classes because what you said was everybody starts thinking about the fun classes junior and senior year and I don't mean it in a I'm not trying to be flippant but what you said was basically they don't think about it till junior and senior year and I'm really curious as to why because in the middle school we use electives as a motivator as an engagement you know uh choice like hey elementary school you never got to choose something now you get to choose and this is your interest. It sounds like there's not a lot of choice and I have a funny feeling it has to do with A throughG or all the requirements that are done. So you have this limited choice of of what you can take.
102Um so I'm wondering those are two very difficult questions that I would love to hear something about all of us. That's my thoughts. Can I just quickly say one quick thing in response to just make sure you know we we do also have and you all have supported this a $5,000 inducement to get our teachers to get CTE credentials. Um we get some folks taking us up on that. It's a lot because you have to there's a lot of effort to to doing it. But it is we do have as an incentive program that we use CTE resources to support. So that's one way. I will say we're struggling with getting high quality career changers. That's a challenge, right? People think teaching is easy. It's really hard. And I think career changers we've had some
103struggles with. So I think and yet this is the place where you kind of want career changers. It's just like finding the you know the unicorns as we often talk about them. Right. So yeah but thank you. I I believe it was a great report. I really appreciate it. Any other questions or comments? Um I just have a a comment or a question. Excuse me. Um, so historically, CT has been used uh to primarily push brown and black students into just like pigeonhold education. Um, I, you know, clearly our district is not that way. How have you changed the perception in the community of PT being, you know, a good thing that people aren't getting pushed in, that there is option. Um, and then I guess my second question is um to what uh Trusty
104Land was saying in terms of partnering with the community, could we even like tap into our city councils? Um, maybe they have folks that they work with as well. Um, could we tap into like places that we just haven't thought of? Um, I don't know. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean I think I think we're in a many of the educators in this at this day here could could speak to this. I think we've we've we've been challenged as an institution with regard to our sort of um schizophrenia with regard to career and technical education, right? We we we did some things that were not great around storehousing particular, you know, you could predict who was going to be in those good with your hands classes, right? Um and I think we we as a as
105a as an institution have really pushed A to G, right? Kind of college for all, right? Right. And that's really been kind of the mantra for at least the last 20 years with you there were some assembly bills that's funded a lot of initiatives around that. And I think and of course everybody's now like well that pendulum clearly swung too far one way right we did. And so and at the same time in 2010 we we raised up many of the RO centers in the in the state certainly in our region right that this is the opportunity programs that used to exist. There were regional occupation centers that you know would allow for districts to share a a common space. And so we, you know, we're the state I think sees, so in some places
106that didn't happen, right? In some parts of the state, they still have those. But I think the state sees this, the community colleges now as sort of the 21st century RO. I think the question is, and I think this is going to be one of the open questions for all of us around your issue of racialized patterns of course taking. It's, you know, the require the requirement creates heterogeneity because everybody has to do it, right? when you start to say, well, some of you can choose different options, there is a sort of issue that we're gonna have to really think about. And I and I wonder what will happen. And I think it's one of the things I I take very soberly. I think we've talked about it. You know, that that is one of
107the things we got to pay attention to if we were to move in some direction where not everybody has to do something. You could you could see like students starting to take certain kinds of classes. And even even seeing your data, I mean, there's some there's some classes that are chosen over others. I think that's just what it is, right? Depending on what's of interest in this area. So, yeah. Yeah. And we that's it too. I mean, I think one of the things I'll lastly just quickly say is that we've never really tried to build from the from the beginning of a student's experience. We we've done this in in in uh A to G kind of completion. I would say our AVID programs at the at the four schools that have AVID really are
108thinking about from year 9 through year 12, how do you help a historically underrepresented student get to four-year college? We have a program for that, right? We've never really sort of said, "Okay, how do you build something where a student might actually get 12 units of community college credit in a CTE pathway by the time they get out of high school?" And that's what this these new grants that we have. um which I put into some weeklys previously. That's their intention is that they would actually we would we're trying to so we're gonna spend a year for the next year figuring out like what kinds of interventions what kinds of supports because yeah if you want to do business it's great to sort of get involved in some kind of social media thing but at
109some point you need to take calculus probably if you want to get an MBA right so we've got to figure so the the key is how do we help students and we'll talk a little bit about math actually next week that may have some implications for what we're talking about in two weeks um but my point is I think there is there we're we're trying to sort of build from the ground up a co-equal career readiness program using this business and healthcare careers pathways as like our incubator for figuring out what that looks like. Just so just so you know, that's what we're doing to try to build a co-equal A to G pathway if you will. Other questions? Trusty Chavez. Oh, sorry. Uh student board members. Sorry. Sorry. Great to see you again, Mr.
110Simmons. You were here at our last board meeting to talk about AI and now you're here for CT. So, it definitely makes sense that you're really into students and their well-being. Thank you so much for that. That was very nice of you to say. Thank you. Um, so overall, you said that um, CTE classes or elective classes in general, students tend to take in their final years of high school. And I'd say that's true, but that's only because we do not have a choice cuz in freshman year, we just have one class that we can take in CTE. And most people, they want sports, they take seventh period, not at school. don't they don't really take extracurricular I mean elect electives cuz they're doing extracurriculars and then same for sophomore year you have two classes
111I think that you can take for electives but then again you might have sports you might have extracurriculars it's only in junior and senior year that when P is cut off and some other classes like I don't know foreign languages that criteria is met based on the A3G requirement that we have the opportunity to take more classes and then like I that that causes like not enough space in the classes and then students in freshman year who are like I love cooking. I want to take food and nutrition not a spot. That makes sense cuz um freshman year I'd say I'm a STEM fielder so I want to take computer science here but only really few computer science like freshmen get into computer science like it's either about like three I think I knew two
112three people who got into computer science. Yeah. And personally, I think having more opportunities like different classes that can actually prepare us for our future would be really helpful. We do have dual enrollment. Johnny here is in middle college and that's great cuz we have intro to business classes and intro to engineering classes that could help us. And I would also say one more thing that these classes like I said they shouldn't be like too broad but specific. And that's right because um back in India because I moved here in like seventh eighth grade we had like really indepth classes I struggled at test but I did pretty well. I did really well. I was a topper. Um and then they would give us like a million terms in this thick science textbook. We had
113to memorize them. They would make us understand the topic but most likely it was a lot of memorization. At that point I'm like why am I learning this? But then once I came here and I had science classes, I could just breeze through those courses because I'm like, okay, it hurt back then. I could not memorize a single thing. But now I'm doing great. And I did not regret having such like harsh work. So I'm saying that if these classes actually interest the students, they won't mind if it's hard. If they like it, they'll do it. And yeah, it is true. Uh thank you for the opportunity to speak. Thank you, Kirsty Chavez. Well, I don't have anything as interesting as that, but I want to thank you for your comment. That was great. Um,
114I want to thank you for the presentation, Brian. You're It's always amazing, and you're absolutely right. He loves uh to help students um advance here. Um I just wanted to comment on the number of class offerings at the different school sites. I know that all school sites don't have the same offerings and and we know that we have different credentials staffed by by site. So, some schools have five credentials, some might have seven or three, but we still offer something with non-credentialed stuff. Right. Right. And um I think uh yeah, I would just like to make sure that we're offering something like I don't know architecture or something at all school sites. I I actually met the architecture teacher at Mills during open house. So, I was really impressed with that. CAD and architecture. I
115don't know. Is that the only school site that has that? They have it at Burlington. Bingham. Okay. Okay. So like you know two awesome teachers. Yes. Right. So two awesome teachers and two awesome school sites but we have other school sites too that could could have somebody equally as awesome. And so I so to your point um my daughter uh my oldest daughter she graduated last year and she was a se she gra she was a senior last year. So that makes sense. It's late. I don't know why I'm tired. Um and she took uh an elective foods right. um cooking and she did say that there were a lot of different um grade levels in there. I mean not a lot but you know well the maximum is four, right? So I don't know
116why I'm saying this. So I think to your point though she's a senior. Her friend was a senior. They had other seniors in the class. So I think folks do wait until junior or senior to take an elector. But I really like to see electives being offered to um all cl all like you said freshman and sophomore. Go ahead. I was just going to say, yeah, the question is how can we encourage Yeah. through counseling or whatever or your planning in advance how you can map it out the career so they have those options. Yeah. You know, that's a counseling question. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. And and that that's the meat and potatoes, right? That that's that's going to take some work and some strategy with our partners, with our teachers. Um, I think what
117we're presenting tonight and and looking for feedback on is there was a graduation requirement issued a number of years ago. I would maybe argue and I think our memo and presentation argues that it's maybe not producing the outcomes that the board intended or that we that board intended or that this governance team intends. And that's not saying it's terrible. That's I'm not being critical. I'm just saying that I think there could be some growth and before we start going down that path and working with our colleagues, I want to make sure because this is a board policy, I want to make sure the board is supportive of us exploring more depth rather than breadth. So, right, let's act on that. So, you're asking maybe that policy. So, what changes are you concerning that should be
118changed with the CTE policy? Yeah, I don't I don't know if I have the details and and I think that would be almost putting the cart before the horse because we haven't sat down with the CTE colleagues and and community college and principles and all of that. But before I go and invest the resources and time to do that kind of work, I I wanted to get a sense from the governance team as to how you're feeling about our current program and where you see it wanting to go. And then our job, it's kind of like that balcony dance floor thing that we talked about last last year. Uh our job is to get on the dance floor and and and start dancing, make it work uh to to the direction that the governance team
119wants to see. One one of the problems seem to be also that it's hard to find teachers. Yeah. Yeah. It's a it's twofold, right? It's teachers. It's how do you make it? So the students will map out their courses appropriately. Um and then I don't know there's other variables. I think I think the one of the variables is what courses are offered at each school site. And we're going to let Trusty Jacobson speak next. That's my that's my take on it, Brian, is that um I mean that's not just my take on it, but that's not the only thing, but but the main my one of my main concerns is making sure that we have uh the CT courses offered a variety of courses offered at all of our school sites kind of equitablely. Okay.
120While we are having this fireside chat, I'll call in Trusty Jacobson. Yeah. Oh, thanks. I mean, I jumped I could have jumped in like the rest of us. Moving too fast. I couldn't even jump in. No. Um, well, I really thoroughly enjoyed the presentation and the memo. It was very well done. I think your analysis is very compelling as to what the issues are um with the requirement um that it's not aligned with the the stated goals and what CTE is what we want it to be for our students. Um so what else do I want I I have a couple of questions. one. So noting that it's the northernmost and southernmost schools that have the fewer options. Those are also the schools that are closer to Skyline and CSM. What I don't know how
121impacted those CSM and Skyline are as far as access to our high school students if they wanted to take classes there. there's that um or if if we wanted to pursue more um what's the word I don't know collaboration articulation with those particular sites do we have a sense of how willing they would be to take on more of our high school students so I'll just quickly answer that question to the extent that I can I think they would we want them to speak for themselves to some extent but I think our experience is that I mean I think Um CSM in particular is already providing about eight sections of coursework at Hillsdale. So they're already coming down and providing professors. We have we have faculty at we have we have fac we have college
122faculty from CSM at uh yeah Hillsdale Aragon Berlingame I don't think we have anybody at Sano at the moment but oh skyline uh has gone through a lot of leadership transitions and they've really struggled. So principally the the and I will say we also have our own faculty. So I think we have a we have a dual strategy in in place on purpose, right? We want to always value and also honor our our labor partners in this in this whole experience. And they they we want to make sure that folks are on board with us as we expand our our our offerings. And the CTE credential in many of the areas allows uh our faculty to meet the the minimum qualifications for co community college teaching in a way that normally you have to have
123a master's degree to teach at a community college. You got to have a masters in business or whatever. So we actually just hired our first business instructor who has a masters in business administration who's teaching also for CSM. He's our he's our lead for our new business pathway development. So um what what I'll say is I think yes there's really a possibility here. I will say at the same time like we literally just in the last few days have heard that they're kind of limited in their on their number of options at the community college. So I really do think this is something for us to roll up our sleeves and lean in on and find the faculty to hire for ourselves. I don't see the college there's been their reaction to dual enrollment has
124been messy um at the college um I think for a variety of reasons but I think it's been messy from the perspective of um there there's some concerns up there about sort of losing jobs and turf and all that sort of stuff that that I think they're concerned about. So I'm saying that to say I think it's better to go our own way is my experience that that we we've found the most effective college teaching has been our teachers who are those teachers right we like the architecture teacher we just talked about those both of those teachers are college faculty literally uh Elena was a community college faculty before she came to our district so I think that's the the right approach for the most part I think yeah they can fill in some gaps
125but I actually think because again you got to be good with teaching high school kids they're not college they're not sort of, you know, 20 year olds, they're 16 year olds, 17 year olds. So, I think there's an argument to be made that it's our teachers might be the best at doing that. Okay. And those have been some of the concerns that I've heard in the community is that they are high school kids and they're around adults, you know, so it's different. And so, yeah, I mean, I hear you. It's just how do we get the pipeline, right? Yeah. Yeah. I know. I was just trying to think what what are the avenues that we can explore? And then the other one is um I can't remember if I've talked about it here at the
126board meeting or not, but I know I've talked with Randall and Julia about it, but at the CSBA conference, I attended a workshop where they had a biotech internship program where they got uh Did I talk to you about this? You might have. Okay. You were nodding. I wasn't sure. Anyway, it was because we have one of these too, but go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. It was a biotech internship that they they um partnered with basically like some kind of biotech accelerator that that's local down there in Irvine. And um the high school kids, anyone from the district, it wasn't sight specific because it was an online class that they took like after school hours. So in this class they have access to a really high quality curriculum where they um are learning about the industry
127and not just not just the biotech but um they're learning about the legal issues, the getting a drug um uh approved um all this stuff. and they have a assignment where they have to come up with a medical technology like they're solving a real world problem. So, it's this multidisciplinary, very projectbased. It's awesome. And I'm just wondering if we can think about maybe we could offer some things like that that I know it's not traditional to not have a a a class during the school day at the site. But it does address the access and equity issue having some options like that. Did you want to All I want to say is we met with We did meet with them. Sorry. We've met with them in February, I think. Yeah. And you can speak to
128the meeting, I think, better. Um, I would say when we had our um biotechnology lead at that meeting to talk with them and we were really impressed by what they were sharing, we offer some of the similar things. Um, one of the um, barriers that we found was that they're located in Southern California. And so what we did ask of them and I don't think we got access to it is what you were talking about seemed like the most promising was the online programming that they had. So we're going to reach out to them again because we wanted to we wanted u Mr. Akita our biotechnology teacher to take a look at the curriculum and see if it how how does it line up to what we're already doing in class. I know the one
129thing that they did have that he was really impressed by was an incubator that was accessible to high school students which is not something we have in the Bay Area. So um he was impressed that they had that but again it's that would be a physical location issue like it's in Irvine. So our students could and we have a great biotech industry here just north of us but sorry I got the look. I got the look. I love the fireside chat. I'm sorry. Mr. Akita does great he does a great summer internship program where he leverages a lot of these local biotechnology firms to work with students and have internships with them. Yeah, great. Thank you so much. So, and and I'm not saying that we have to do that exact thing. I mean, I
130was hoping that I mean, my thought was because it's online, because it's already established, maybe we could just Yeah. But the idea of maybe having some afterchool options um at at the sites because yeah the sitebased limitation is of a concern but I think that there are workarounds that if we put our if you all put your heads to it you could come up with some creative solutions for that. So um yeah I think Yeah, go ahead. No, no, no. No. Yeah. Yeah, I know you guys been to this particular room, but bottom line is kind of an open discussion. Bottom line is um I'm very supportive of uh of the direction that you want to take this. And oh, I know the other thing I was going to say. When I went to the
131um one of the career fairs that we had, I was talking to the automotive um instructor at Skyline and he was telling me about how when students take his class, they have to have I asked like what's the what's the like highest level of math that they need to have? Like what's the prerequisite math? And he said that, well, algebra is it. And he said, but I will say that when they take this class and they see how the math is applied in this thing that they're actually interested in, then it's it's amazing because they, you know, they connect. Why? So there was something in the memo where you said something about um you know it reinforces how those core subjects are applicable to their interests and that drives engagement. So, I feel like that's
132going to address some of our issues with attendance with engagement. And I feel like middle school is more of the period where you're doing the breadth and the exposure and high school is a time where you kind of got to commit to sort of a pathway and and and get that depth of knowledge so that you're preparing for adult life. And when students decide earlier what their passion is, what their plan is, then they're going to, like our student over here was saying, they're going to be more committed to the coursework and put the time in because it's of relevance to them and they, you know, that's going to come through counseling, too, is figuring out what is your plan and what are you interested in and how can we help you get there. It's
133just I think it's all gonna come together. Trusty Jacobson, you have joined the rest of this crew in a runaway freight train. I appreciate that. You know this I mean the train. Apparently we found a topic that everybody is interested in and uh there was the everybody gets one question so everybody participates. Um, we violated that to to no end. We're trying to get equitable access for everybody. Trust trustee land, your last question. Exactly. my last question, but going back no because I really like what Trusty Jacobs is talking about and that's where the complication is to really address the concerns that uh Superintendent Booker were talking about with CTE and the capstones and the requirements that we're putting in. It really is how do we get kids engaged in these classes, really thinking about
134careers, really having quality education, quality partnerships. These are all very complicated problems, but I think it's worthwhile to keep pushing. I don't think we need to I mean, yes, we can re-evaluate the the requirements overall, but I think the the interest the reason why we're doing it is very good. And I think not only just the state of California, but what we're doing. I appreciate, Brian, what you were saying about working with teachers inhouse versus out. I think still partnerships are something we need to look at. maybe internships after school, you know, something that could be kind of connected uh that we haven't really thought about. Um I I think those are some things we need to explore. I think one of the things that I didn't hear yet to get more insight into engagement,
135I know that Trustee Chavez was trying to say, "Hey, can we have it across the board and be equitable, but what about student voice? What does it look like at each school? What do they really want? What are they thinking about? what is you know have them help us mold what we want to have um because each school you know granted each school has teachers of expertise you know that Sato's the biotech and you know you know there's some really hot spots of great CTE uh things happening at different schools and I don't think we need to change that but how do we look at what teach school students want you know at Hillsdale versus Berlingame and I don't think I think we need to engage some we've done some great engagement with students before
136and I think we need to do more of that. So, I know I'm talking too much and I apologize to President Griffin, but yeah. Yeah. Well, no, you all are talking a lot. So, there we go. I did try to give Trusty Lance some chips so that I could speak, but to cut me off, but but but he but he said no, he he saw quickly my motive. Um here, you can have the chips now. Um I want to mention about the community colleges um because everyone's been mentioning that that there we have we're fortunate to have community colleges in our county and um in San Bruno we're very fortunate to have the amazing Skyline College and there's so many opportunities that exist at Skyland Community College um and we there a lot of things
137are hosted there it's a beautiful campus um we had the women's power breakfast there in the what's what's the room called I think at the Fairon Islands Fairon yeah it's beautiful when it's when it's not foggy it's beautiful when it's foggy it's beautiful when it's not it's a beautiful campus. There's so many opportunities, so many class offerings. And I always think about the CTE courses if somebody's interested to go there. But I was thinking about our students and transportation is a challenge because in San Bruno, there's some trans up and down El Camino Rial quite often. But if you're going to venture away from El Camino Rail, I think that there's a bus that goes up to Skyline. I think it's the 122 once. It might be once every 30 minutes. It might be once
138every hour. I'm not here to say anything bad about Samr. I'm just saying that that if you're going to go someplace and you have you have a class that starts say at 4:00 after after school, you know, or in the middle of school, that wouldn't really work too well for the students who are trying to get there at 2:00 to get back to campus, you know. Um, so I just was thinking about transportation being a challenge. I think in in house, you know, I would advocate for that, but I always think that if somebody has transportation, then of course the community colleges are a wonderful resource. Yeah. I'll just quickly say our our classes are always on campus with the exception of middle college which is all up there but yeah and and but part
139of that experience often is we do take the students during that class at one point to the campus we have resources to do that because you do want them to also get a sense of the college campus and we and we provide that transportation you know as a district I was just saying that if students want to take a class after school you know the transportation can be a little challenging. Thank you. Well, thanks for bringing transport up cuz I wanted to say asynchronous classes are really nice cuz I took one last semester and I'm taking one this semester. I took psychology 100 last semester and sociology 110 now. So, I'm just saying um asynchronous classes are pretty good cuz you can do them at their at your own pace. And I hear you at
140some times they take hours. My sister for now she's at CSM and she whenever she doesn't have the car or can't drive for any reason and she takes the bus she's usually like 10 minutes late to class. That's cuz the bus schedule is not always perfect and that's annoying. It's really annoying. It takes up a lot of her time. So I hear her on that. So um those classes for CTE could perhaps be just the ones offered by community college but be asynchronous because many times students want to reach out and they're like I'm going to reach out to this college professional so I can get some insight on I don't know career that they're interested in but it's always not that close by and most of the time like say I wanted to take
141intro to business at CSM and I search up the classes everything's in person I'm a full-time student can't do that anything on the weekends. No, they have a life. They won't come and teach us on the weekends and that's fine. So, I think asynchronous classes could help because even teachers get their own time. They can make lecture videos and maybe reuse them year after year. So, I think that could be possible. Thank you for the thoughts. I do want to thank you. You know, I can't say anything except, you know, this was a good topic to bring up. I think we need to evaluate it from a whole bunch of different you know from the course offerings the sequencing uh what we're trying to accomplish the number of pathways it's just you know we look
142forward to you know to future developments on this so I think it needs it needs TLC thank I'm going back to Okay. S, Division of Human Resources Personnel Consent Agenda. Consent agenda. We have the personal actions and we have a job description for a teacher learning coach at Peninsula High School for the next two years. And then we have a revised and a multilingual specialist job description on consent. Okay. Are there any questions or comments from the board of trustees? If no discussion, I'll move to approve. I'll second that. A motion in a second. Are there any comments in person? Any comments online? There are none. Okay. Uh call for the vote. All in favor? I I passes unanimously. T division of human resources. Yes. The uh the first item is an uh for introduction
143and then the recommendation for approval of three uh contracts for non-represented administrators and managers. And I need to read out the um specifics and I'll do that first before we introduce the the couple that are here. So the following are the compensation terms for three district non-representative administrators. Each administrator will receive health benefits up to $33,551.90 per month. They will see transportation and cell phone reimbursements of $275 per month and various subscriptions, memberships, and reimbursements for district approved expenses. Okay. Specifically, Clarice Mesa will be the assistant principal of Aragon High School with a salary of $190,14 and a doctoral stipen of $3,482 with a work year of $214 days work days. Next will be James Ortega as assistant principles of Mills High School. salary $185,379 and that will be under a $214 workday year. And
144then we have our director of student services, Shalia Bernett, with a salary salary of $219,57, a doctoral stipen of $3,482 and a $221 workday year. We have a couple here that Superintendent Booker will introduce. Yeah. Why don't we actually just process wise, why don't we take a vote first and then I'll introduce uh our candidates. Okay. Does the board have any comments or questions on the If no discussion, I'll move to approve. Second. We have a motion, a second. Any comments online? There are none. Okay. All in favor? I I. Item passes unanimous. Thank you. All right. Well, I want to thank our guests tonight for hanging out during our board meeting. you get a little flavor of what we're all about. I hope I'm glad you're still here. Uh so, uh no, all joking
145aside, I do want to thank you for giving up your evening uh tonight. First, let me just talk about someone who isn't here tonight, Mr. James Ortega. He will join us um as Mil Mills High School's new assistant principal for the 2526 school year. He's currently an assistant principal at Skyline High School in Oakland Unified and he's has 20 years of experience in education at the middle and high school level and I'm hopeful that I can uh introduce him to you all uh soon. Uh next up we have Dr. Clarice Mesa. She's currently serving as the interim assistant principal at Aragon High School and was hired to fill the same role at Aragon as a permanent staff member for the 2526 school year. Dr. Missa previously served as the assistant principal at Liberty High School
146in Liberty Union High School District and she has also has over 20 years of experience in education for the elementary to the university level. And I want to welcome her up to say hi and introduce herself and let us welcome you. Yeah, I think you have to press the button. There you go. You're Hello. It's nice to meet you. I've gotten to know the Aragon staff and students and in my short time and quickly learned that it's a special place. So, I'm really excited to join the admin team um and serve the Aragon community as assistant principal uh with my site and district experience. Um Mr. Booker explained about Liberty and also in Palo Alto. Um, I know how important the district office staff and the board are in a district and I look forward
147to partnering with you um, as a site admin to impact our students um, experiences and outcomes. Thank you. Thank you so much. Welcome to the team. Yeah. Next up, we have Dr. Shilia Bernett Ly. And I want to welcome her to our district. She's going to join us officially on July 1st as our new director of student services after working with the Alama County Office of Education as an interim program manager of community schools. She served as the director of student services at Richland School District 2 in Columbia, South Carolina from 2021 until January 2025, where she developed extensive experience in leading strategic datadriven school and district-wide improvement teams. She was an adjunct professor at Clemson University from 2022 to 2023, where she taught courses in instructional leadership and contemporary issues in education. Dr. Bernett
148Lyle also served in a number of schoolside administrative roles, including as an assistant principal and principal in elementary and middle schools in North and South Carolina. She also served as a counseling and student services coordinator, school counselor, and AVID district director at the high school and middle school levels, respectively. Welcome to Sonteo Union High School District. Yeah. Good evening, uh, President Griffin, uh, board members, um, Superintendent Booker and the Greater San Monteo Union High School District. It is a pleasure and an honor to be here. I have thoroughly enjoyed this board meeting, and I really mean that. And let me share with you what I saw as an outsider that will soon be in. There was so much passion and dedication to students and student voice and that is what I am passionate about and
149I just feel at home already. I was nervous coming in um and I just walk away feeling so um excited. The students over here I wanted them to be here. I know they have class tomorrow but they're going to um be my boss one day. They're going very far. So, thank you all so much um for allowing me to join and please know that I am here to be a part of a team. This is an amazing district and I look forward to being one more member um that will advance the mission and vision of the district. Thank you so much. Thank you. Personnel action. Addenum. Yeah. No special recognitions on that. So recommend approval. I make a motion to approve the personnel actions addendum. I'll second that. Have a motion and a second. Any
150discussion? Are any online comments? There are none. Okay. All in favor? I I item passes 5. Uh any items for uh student ser division of student services? No. Okay. Division of instructional services. Got a public hearing coming up. Uh instructional services. Yeah. I'm sorry. Uh this is the teach town and unique learning system curriculum public hearing, but I'll hand it off. I'm going to give you mine. All right. At the previous board meeting, you heard about the alternative pathway, the inclusive diploma pathway. This is the curriculum that has been piloted and um now we're having a public hearing on um teach town and unique learning systems. So, we just want to have the public hearing before the adoption is okay. I'll open the public hearing. There any questions or comments uh from anyone in the
151public? Any online comments? There are none. Okay, we'll close the public hearing. No, they don't approve it tonight. Yeah, it was just hold the public hearing. Okay, great. Okay. Uh Division of Business Services. None this evening. And I see you gave Yansy Hawkins the evening off. Hopefully he's online watching no this show. I hope not. Must uh board operations. Uh none this evening. Okay. Uh future board agenda items. Let me um just indicate for the board that we've got our April 17th board study session on it's the DAC presentation. Uh, April 24th is a math update as well as an AVID program highlights and senior standout. May 8th, we'll be discussing we'll continue to discuss the instructional framework. Also on May 8th, we are going to bring back the multilingual learner board policy for review
152and updates. May 22nd, we'll be doing a mental health update. Um, and that's what we have so far, unless there's more. Anybody? Py Jacobson, I just have a concern about having the math update on the same night as the AVID presentation because I feel like those are both time consuming and I don't want the math one to get short shrift. Any other thoughts? No, I think it's good comment. April 17th is the board study session for DAC. I mean, we're happy to move it to the board. Not the DACA when I'm talking about the math. The math and the whatever you Well, when we Yeah. I don't know what all else is on that agenda. We we we should consider that and when we get to the Yeah. When you guys do the planning. Yeah.
153Because we try not to have more than couple hours. I know it turns into three hours. Yeah. And we we talked about, you know, kind of splitting it up that one meeting is like the recognitions and happy stuff and then another meeting of the month is more of the like let's talk about some roll up our sleeves. Yeah. So, I feel like that that meeting doesn't follow that framework because we're running out of meetings in school. beatings. Yeah. [Laughter] Okay. Why don't we do this? I'll work with President Griffin and Vice President Chavez on how to sort this out. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah. Okay. Anybody any other comments on the future agenda items? Will the mental health one discuss what was disc what brought up tonight or is it going to not? on advice of council.
154Uh I don't think we should be discussing it in public at this point. Okay. An update in some sort would be great for sure. Offline. Okay. Anything else? Meeting adjourned. Thank you. Fresno Griffin.