001Oh, wait, wait. I'm sorry. I have to get my students up here. >> To the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Roll call. Trusty Hill, Trusty Trent >> here, >> Trusty Proctor >> here, >> and Trusty Kim here. >> And I am also here. Uh, may I please get an approval, a motion to approve uh, Trusty Nick's agenda? >> Approve the agenda. >> Second. >> All in favor say I. >> I. >> All right. And can I please get a motion to approve uh the minutes from September 25th? >> I'll make a motion to approve to set the minutes for September 25th and October 23rd uh with guidance to staff to corre clical errors that the
002trustees have flag after the minutes posted live online. >> All in favor say I. Okay, now we will please bring up our um SMCA group. Good evening board, Superintendent OOA, and um our community. I'm Dr. Amanda Ball, the principal at Bowage Middle School. I'm very excited to be here with Mrs. Facel, who's the principal at Foster City. It's a little bit of history there you might know, but I'm very excited to be back together tonight. Um and I first want to acknowledge that this week we had a visit from our board and community members at Bowage Middle School. So, thank you so much to Trusty Proctor for coming to um Dr. Rupacaba for his visit. We had members of our um ELOC committee, our PTA, um Mr. Perez was there. And one of my favorite
003parts is we had students that were also there to visit. So, it was a really great opportunity and so thank you for coming. We saw our new buildings, we saw classes, and most importantly, we saw our students. And I'm going to have Mrs. Mason. >> Good evening. And tonight, we're excited. brought students here to share about their experience with project career map. And this is a two-year grant with the Gilead um foundation and their goal is to inspire students to get into STEM and science careers. So, they're going to share their um experiences and the trips that they got to go on. >> Hi, my name is Melissa and I am here to tell you about my experience on the San Francisco State University field trip. We walked around the campus and explored many places
004where people can start their careers. We visited the science building and even got to go inside. It had many classrooms and other cool learning spaces. We also tore the library where we found the maker space with 3D printers, computers that generate AI photos, and even headsets we were able to try out. Overall, visiting SFSU was amazing, fun, and very interesting. I would definitely recommend this trip to others. Thank you for listening to my presentation. >> Thank you. >> Hi, my Hi, my name is Guy. I attended October camp and my favorite activity was when we built bridges out popsicle sticks. be because I never did before and I found it really fun. Another activity I really enjoyed was coding robots to go through a maze. Thank you for listening. Um, hi, my name is Alika
005Cooper. I went to the October camp as well. And one of my favorite activities that we did there was we made cars out of paper and clay. And me and my friends over there tried to make it fastest. Thank you for listening to my speech. Hello everyone. My name is Sia Singh and I'm an eighth grader at Bowage Middle School. Thanks to project career map, I had the opportunity to do two very exciting things. I attended an engineering focused camp over fall break and this Monday I participated in World Savvy's AI conference. Both experiences were amazing and I learned so much. When we arrived at the conference, I was assigned to a table where I met people from all over the area. Some attendees had even flown in and woken up at 3:00 a.m. just
006to be there. Wow. My table included a mix of adults and students. After a few minutes of introduction, we listened to a panel of of speakers answer some questions. One question that really stood out to me was, "What helps us prepare for a future where AI can do every single job?" The panelists shared a variety of perspectives. Some felt that curiosity will be essential because it drives innovation and learning. Another panelist emphasized the importance of being able to adapt to change and roll with the punches that life throws at us. Someone else suggested having agency using AI as a tool to support us but not to completely replace our own effort will be key. After hearing from the panelists, we took a short break and then returned to our tables for group discussions. At my
007table, we talked about where the AI gets it information. If the sources feeding the AI are inaccurate, then the information that we receive will also be inaccurate. We also discussed how AI can replace many creative jobs such as artists. For example, instead of someone spending hours on a drawing, a person can simply type a prompt into an AI tool and have it do it for it. When I we also talked about how some AI generated music and some AI created songs have been very popular. When I got home from the conference, my mind was buzzing with questions. I couldn't help but wonder, if I rely on AI, am I holding myself back from growing and learning new things? Are the skills we're being taught today in school still valuable in a future where AI may
008play such a dominant role? And of course, the big question everyone seems to have asked themselves at some point in time. Will AI take over the world? I also followed up on the discussion about AI generated music and it turns out that there are some AI generated songs topping the charts. Overall, attending this conference was a wonderful experience and I learned so much. Thank you to Project Career Map for providing me with these wonderful opportunities. I truly hope that Project Career Map will continue to give other students opportunities like this. Thank you. you questions, but thank you guys so much. >> Thank you very much. >> Um, okay. Uh do we have any updates from uh CSDA? >> Um you guys can hear me? >> Yes, ma'am. Good. Good evening, trustees, superintendent OOA, executive staff,
009and guests. For those who do not know, my name is Brienne Bishop, and I'm here on behalf of the CSVA Chapter 411, which is the union serving the classified employees of our district. Our report is nice and short tonight. Our members are all working very hard to keep up and wrap up for the Thanksgiving holiday. Uh the only report I have to share tonight from our chapter is that we are excited to participate in the benefit advisory committee tomorrow. We are hopeful that this will help pave the way for expanded healthc care coverage for our members families in this district. Our members work very hard and deserve to be able to provide health care for their families at an affordable rate. Other than that, we wish everyone an enjoyable uh relaxing Thanksgiving upcoming. And that's
010it. >> Thank you, Miss Bishop. Thank you. >> All right. Do we have anyone from SMA? >> Good evening everyone. I'm here tonight on behalf of the educators of SMEA. As we approach Thanksgiving, I want to share some gratitude for our educators, for collaboration, and for the collective community commitment that strengthens our schools. I'm grateful to our teachers who have recently completed the timeintensive work of report cards. While the report cards are extensive, it's the personalized comments and conferences that help parents truly understand their child's progress. and these take considerable time and care. Tonight, I also want to celebrate something truly remarkable. More than 75 teachers are being recommended on the consent agenda for permanent status. This is an incredible number and a tremendous honor. These educators have demonstrated their commitment to our students and
011our district and we're grateful to welcome them as permanent members of our teaching community. This speaks volumes about the quality of educators we're attracting and retaining. These dedicated and passion pass passionate teachers will receive additional recognition at their school sites with their colleagues where their accomplishments can be celebrated by those who work alongside them every day. Congratulations to them all. Finally, I'm grateful for the ongoing collaboration between the district and the educators, for our students who bring a lot of curiosity and energy to our classrooms, and for our parents and families whose partnership makes our work possible. It's this collective commitment that enables us to meet the diverse needs of our community and makes our schools strong. As we head into Thanksgiving break, I wish everyone restful time with loved ones. Enjoy your week off.
012Thank you. >> All right, our foundation. >> Um, Karina could not make it today, so she asked me to do the update. Um, okay. Um, okay. This is what she sent. Um, library book funding of $50,000 to match the district's funding for new library books. And that's being distributed to the schools um based on enrollment and then also um a number of students with a socioeconomic need. Um so we are really grateful to the Ed Foundation for that and I know the librarians are really excited about that. Um, the Ed Foundation is currently running our annual giving campaign asking $250 per family in the district to support out of classroom experiences for students across the district. Uh, please think of the Ed Foundation on Giving Tuesday and check if your employer will match your donation.
013We are very excited to see how Project Career Map is developing with STEM career clubs across our middle schools and large field trips to see STEM professionals at UC Berkeley and SF State over the last two months. And we recently received large grants from the Adobe comm community uh employee community fund and Michael Kai I think is how you pronounce it. That's it. Thanks. >> And also of course um our readathon is coming up in late January, early February and it will be the 10th annual readathon. So excited for that. >> Any other community reports? Isn't the paper? >> Isn't the paper? >> You know, 10 is paper 15. You know, there's like >> any married people know that kind of thing. >> I miss any other. Okay. Public statement relates to agenda items. Persons
014will be called on. >> Oh, here we go. Okay. Public um let's see non-aggenda items. Okay. >> Uh we will call Lena Lina. So, I'd like to just talk to you guys about um the safety in your middle schools. My child was assaulted this couple weeks ago at Baron Middle School. And in that week, there was about I don't know four or five incidents. And I guess I'm just I'm concerned because the safety at the schools is just there's no security. There's no anything going on. The teacher literally stood there while my child was assaulted unprovoked. And so I'm these things roll over into high schools. And it's ridiculous. And I I hate to have to do this here, but where else do we do it? Our kids are not safe at schools. Our kids
015are not even safe in the streets. It's bad enough that kids are walking down the streets and they're getting jumped or whatever's happening. And then it rolls over into schools. Schools are getting beat. Kids are getting beat up in schools and nobody's doing anything about it. So, that's my concern. I would also like to bring up how it rolls over into high schools and into the streets. My son was also jumped and assaulted. Two of his friends were put in the hospital. And I apologize. I have to do this here. I have USB drive of the kids that jumped him. May not know who they are, their faces, but you guys will some of you will recognize their voices and their clothes. I also have on this thumb drive a phone conversation of the person
016stating where they found my son when they jumped him and his two friends that were put in the hospital. And the reason I bring this to you today is because the person who jumped my son is your son Mason. There's your uh USB drive. You guys are welcome to check it out. I think it's important that everybody here knows what goes on. And I don't know, but we obviously don't have the schools under wrap with safety. But I don't understand how that could happen when people of this level, their own kids are terrorizing the community. So I just hope that we can do better and you guys can figure out something better. And I hope uh superintendent that you look at that them drive as well. Um like I said, there's a phone conversation on
017there and other things just because you guys need to know who else you know whose kids are doing these things as well because it's not just people in the community who come from bad backgrounds and good back or horrible backgrounds or poverty or whatever. It's kids who have parents who are high up, kids who have parents who are powerful in the community, and they're out there doing this as well. So, thank you for your time. I appreciate it. >> Next, we will have Joel Rebella. Rebella, >> um, good evening. Sorry to hear about that. My name is Joel Rebelloo. I am a parent of a Fiesta Garden student, two students and one over at Abbott. And I just want to start by thanking first the teachers and classified staff at Fiesta Gardens for their continued
018amazing work they do within that community. And um I also want to bring light to the public space my concerns with an issue that we've been having with I would like to say the administration as a whole but um I've already emailed superintendent and trustees that I'm doing it here as well. Um we we have a issue with a long-term sub placement or how it's being addressed at Fiesta and we're grateful that we now have um a qualified excellent teacher who is going to fill in for the remainder of the semester. But um it's important to note while we're going to be celebrating this milestone with a signing of a bean for the new campus that's being built, it's also important to know that we have about 20 or so second grade students in a
019classroom that have gone a whole month without instruction from a Spanishspeaking instructor. And it is quite remarkable that we were not able to find a qualified Spanishspeaking substitute at the district Spanish immersion school. Um I believe the teacher of assignment for this school year provided the district and administration adequate time regarding their maternity leave. But I don't think we could rely on TOSAs and retired staff members to fill in for positions long term, especially at the Spanish immersion school. So, while we are grateful that we have a teacher now for the remainder of the semester, the problem is not solved. There's been a significant loss of learning that has occurred over this past month. The teacher who's now entering in has to assess all the students who are at different levels in Zern and STMath
020and has to establish ground rules for the classroom in the remaining three or so instructional weeks we have left which then is going to transition to the teacher returning back from maternity leave. So I want all of you to keep this in mind and consider working with the families of that classroom because we are also now in a position where we have transitional administration at that campus. And while everyone is going to see the newsletter of the new campus, we want it to function and run smoothly because the families of Fiesta deserve this. not just my children but all the children in room 17 as well as at school. Thank you. >> You thank you for your public comment. Uh we will move to announcements. >> Oh yes. Uh Joel, can you please check online
021to see if there are any public um statements related to agenda to non-aggenda items? Yes, President Brooks, there are no public comments on Zoom at this time. >> Okay. Public statements related to agenda items. Persons will be called upon at the appropriate time and then we will move to announcements. Announcements. All right. Superintendent report we don't have our mics. >> Some of the components are some of the components are down. Um a number of different things of really wonderful opportunity we had just a week or so ago um to do a very rainy day um theme at Fiesta Gardens International School. Um, for those in the community that are just learning about this and being updated on it, um, it's very exciting to have a 36 million dollar project well underway and for the vet
022school community to be offered a gymnasium, 11 new classrooms, a STEM facility, 50 more parking spaces, um, some additional improvements in the dropout and pickup area on Humble in addition to um the completion of a field project that we have going on there. So um when we have an opportunity to celebrate milestones like this for a community like North Central Cemetery, it's really special. It's a really wonderful thing. Um I want to uh give my thanks to um our current principal, Mr. Robas. He is going to be transitioning um out of the district in a couple of months. He's a wonderful person. um and um he cares a great deal about education. He he did some really um some really wonderful things while he was at Fiesta Gardens, but he has decided to move on
023effective January and um we have some plans in place on how to support the school moving forward and we're looking um at a really positive return coming back in January. Um in addition to that, the school visitations are always a highlight, being able to get out and see what's happening at five of our campuses. And um one of the um interesting things that took place is during these visits, we have taken uh our visitors all over different parts of campus. And some parts of our campuses, as you know, are not updated. They're 50 year old classrooms or in some cases 70 80 year old classrooms that are not updated. And when you walk into a classroom like that, you notice it's really easy to see the facilities needs that we have. So being able to
024take members of our community to see that um is a really important part of our journey as a school district because then we have members in our community who are able to go out and share with their um networks and their neighbors, what their experiences were. Um and and we got some really wonderful responses back from the people visit uh the schools with us. I think they're always impressed by how uh smart our students are and how hard um our kids work and I think they always love seeing how strong our teachers are and how caring our staff are. So, you know, when we have those school visits, it's just always a big highlight for us. Um and and many thanks to the schools that hosted the visit. And then I want to um thank
025Susie and the team over at Belvage uh because last week they did a really big ebike safety event. It was a threeday rainy day. So thank you for that, Susie. A threeday rainy day event where we brought in an expert from Southern California who who came in, got to know the streets surrounding Bage Middle School and then did a bike safety training for our students. um that that ended up serving a lot of kids who really benefited from it. Um and we do have plans to bring that company back in the spring and have them work with have Bayside and Brow as well. There's certainly a higher concentration of bike riders at B outage. So we felt like that was an important place to start. Um but we do plan to get out to all
026of Susie. It wouldn't have been possible without you. So thank you for that. And that's my report. >> Thank you. Okay, we will move to the post consent agenda or let's see. All items on the consent agenda are considered by the board to be routine and will be enacted by one by the board in one motion in the form listed below. There will be no discussion on these items prior to the time the board votes on the motion unless members of the board, staff, or public request specific items be removed and discussed from the consent agenda. The superintendent and staff recommend approval of all consent items. Movement of any recommend, excuse me, movement of any um recommended consent item is appropriate at this time. Is there anyone on the board who would like to promote
027anything? >> Anyone in person? >> Can you check online to please see if there's anyone who would like to remove any items from the consent agenda? >> Yes. Thank you, President Brooks. There are no raised hands at the moment. >> Thank you. Right. I'll take a motion to approve the consent agenda. >> Second. All in favor say I. >> I will move to 5A, education services. >> And Joe, I think we have um our executive director online if you want to check. >> Yes, they are on. >> I'm here. >> Hi. Uh good evening everyone. Um wonderful to see you. Um this evening, myself, Pam Barfield, the executive director of curriculum instruction, and Elita Barrera Cruz, our executive director of multilingual services, will be sharing our fall interim assessments with you. And just as a
028reminder, interim assessments are given approximately two to three times per year and they really provide our teachers with usable data to ensure what we're teaching um students are learning. So, we're going to share that with you. And I'm going to share my screen, which I have not done yet right here. All right. So, we're going to start with the um PATH foundational literacy assessments. And as a reminder, these are given to kindergarten, first, and second graders. um they are given um in the beginning of the year, middle of the year, and the end of the school year to see how our students are doing um with our foundational reading program. One thing to note um this year we did the first assessment a little bit later. We normally give the assessment in August, but we
029moved it to October to align with uh grade reporting. Um last year we tried it four times of the year, but we get feedback from teachers that sometimes that's a little bit too much. So this year we're doing it in October, again in February and March, and then again in May. So a couple things um to see here is we're continuing strong progress in our early literacy data um in our first um fall assessment that was done over the last couple of weeks. We have 67.6% of students meeting and exceeding standard. We see a nice little bump in our first grade. And another quick thing um as a reminder is the kinder assessment looks a little bit different than the first and second grade assessment. So the kinder assessment is measuring students ability to um
030read letters and make letter sounds while the um first and second grade assessment is the ability to then read and lift words off the page and decode individual words which we call the test for single word reading. So, it's really great to see that strong first grade because we know the students are really getting great instruction um in kindergarten because first grade you actually have the most um to learn when you're learning how to read. Um this um slide here is giving us a little look at as we know we've been doing this program for the last few years and I know we've talked a lot about the program but we're kind of showing you well what's happened over the few years um that we've given. So you can see kindergarten from 2023 24 25
031and the same in first and second grade. And again we're seeing a lot of progress in our students even though um again the assessment might have been given at slightly different times we're seeing the right trend um with how students are performing. Second grade is always something that that we look at together and I know we've talked about where um sometimes we have students that haven't started our program in in kinder or even first grade. So second grade is always a grade level that we're keeping an eye out for to see what sort of interventions do we need to provide students that maybe have missed things in kinder or haven't been with us since kinder and first grade. Um what you're going to see over a few of our slides, you'll see this little visual
032here. It's got like the kids kind of growing up. we did want to provide uh during this um presentation because we've talked a lot about well what's happening with cohorts of students versus kinders each year. So we're going to get a glimpse over the few slides of some of the cohort data. And so what you see here are a cohort of students that started with us as kinders in 2023 um continue with us in 2024 and 2025. this data. Now, again, like I shared, we we're not we didn't pull out students who didn't start in kinder or first, so I wouldn't call this a fully stable cohort, but it is a general sense of how are students doing that are in um our schools kinder through first grade. And even though it's not necessarily a
033stable cohort of students, we are continuing to see that um students that are getting the program in kinder and joining us throughout the years are still showing significant growth and we're getting a lot more students meeting and exceeding standard um than not meeting a nearly meeting standard in the in the um assessment in the program. Um and I'll turn it over to Ala. >> Good evening everyone. Um, Ala Vera Cruz, executive director of multilingual learner services. As my colleague Pam has been describing, um, I'm describing here the subgroup of students who are considered to have economic need. As you can see, we also see a trend towards increasing their performance from uh, 27.4 4 back in 2023 to approximately 40%.7 now in this school year during the fall term. >> Next slide please. >> So
034as Pam was describing um we're trying to create a visual of what a cohort looks like. However, when we think about multilingual learners or English learners, the term cohort doesn't really apply because every single year we reclassify students. So, the students who are considered English learners in kindergarten might not be the same group the following year because we're constantly reclassifying. So what you see here is that um our multilingual students, English learner students are becoming steady in terms of their performance. So they started with approximately 27.3% back in 2023 and now they're at 24.6% in this current school year in the fall term. But like I said, it's not a stable cohort. For our Latino Latina students, we do notice an increase from 24.5 back in 2023 to now 36.5 during the school year. Okay.
035Um now we're going to take a look at our um NWA MAP English reading growth. So this is a newer assessment that we started last year to look at reading in 3rd through 8th grade. And I do want to say and I meant to say this earlier, I am really grateful for our students, for our teachers, for our site leaders and our TOSAs supporting this assessment system. um you know teachers take time out of their uh schedule and their um scope and sequence to give this assessment and really look at this important data and a lot of the times in especially in kinder first and second grade they're onetoone assessments and um we just really appreciate and are grateful for them for doing these assessments so we can look at this data together. Um so
036our first um is kind of again an overall by grade how we've been doing in the NWA reading growth assessment. Um again we've only had two fall administration so far and um in third through 8th grade across the grade levels. Um you can see sort of the data looks a little steady across. We have some um higher data in seventh grade, a little bit lower in fourth grade, but overall we're at 55 um and a half% of students median exceeding on the NWA MAP reading assessment. Um this assessments and the next two slides are kind of doing a similar thing where we're looking at by grade, not cohort. So you can see what did it look like last year when our third graders were taking the NWA reading growth and what does it look like
037this year. Um again it's a little bit mixed of um of how students are doing where we have third graders that made some increase this year, fourth grade a little bit less and the same with fifth. Um and then um we also have now by cohort. So where the previous one was grade level, this one is looking at how did a third grader last year do compared to them being in a fourth grader this year. Again, understanding that the cohort might not be fully stable, but um it's giving us a good sense of how our students are doing. So here we see pretty steady, looks pretty similar for students as they move through the grade level. We do see um from the fifth grade to the sixth grade that dipped a little bit um for
038those students. And then now we'll take a look at the middle school version of that. So these are our sixth graders, seventh graders, and eighth graders. How they've done in that grade level over the last two years. Um again looking pretty similar in the grade levels. A little bump which we saw earlier in seventh grade. And then we're back to the cohort look where we can see how did our sixth graders do um that were in sixth grade last year and seventh grade this year and then seventh to eth. Obviously, we can't share eighth because they're in high school now and they don't do this assessment. So, um again, we see a little um increase from the sixth to 7th grade, but a little decrease from the seventh to the eighth grade. And for some
039of our key subgroups, if we try to compare them by cohort, again, we're doing our best because we know that every single school year, these students may be new to our district, to their school, or um you know, they are just there's a lot of mobility in our schools. So, when it comes to economic need from 2024 to 25, we don't see uh much mobility. The same goes for English learners and our students with disabilities. So, our subgroups in these areas, they pretty much stay about the same. And then when it comes to um some of our ethnic groups, Latino, Latina students, black African-Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islander students, we also notice the same happening across the three ethnic groups where the students pretty much stay about the same in terms of their performance.
040Um, and before we move to math, just um to clarify, the NWEA is an online assessment. Um, some of it looks a little bit like the CASP assessment, but there's um I would say less writing on it than you might see on the CASP. All right, so now we're going to move into our math CFA Zern assessment data. And this is just kindergarten through fifth grade. our middle school teachers just gave the um their interimm assessment so we don't have that data readily available but we can definitely follow up with that. So we'll just take a look at what's going on in elementary school. Um a couple things to point out that this is the zern portion of the assessment. So um this is letting us know how are students doing in the program that
041we're teaching. The other thing is that a little different than the benchmark assessments. The benchmark assessments usually are given, it's the same assessment two to three times a year where the common formative assessment or the CFA is given after a unit of study. So it's letting us know did students learn what we taught them in that mathematics unit. Um and so overall we're seeing uh based on the Zern data um across the board pretty high scores on students performing on this assessment. Um I think we see some really great data across the grade levels um in kinder through fifth grade on students that are meeting and exceeding standard. Um here's a look again um which is around like how did kinder do last year in the beginning of the year to this year. Here we're
042not going to show a cohort because a kinder assessment looks very different than the first grade assessment. So it's really hard to kind of match how the students are doing in in this um kind of um graph. So we see that um in kinder we have uh kind of similar data. First and second students overall in those grade levels scoring similar um definitely the data is letting us know that kinder and second grade might have some stronger data than first at this time um as we're looking at the last couple years, but they've been steady um in those grade levels. So definitely data for us to um take a closer look at. Um this is uh again similar by grade level last year and this year for the fall assessment third, fourth and fifth grade.
043This time we see a um in this one it's interesting. We see a nice little jump in the grade levels. And one of the things that um we could um say as a support of this is these are the grade levels that when we rolled out our last strategic plan had a big uh more of a focus in mathematics with the mathtosis and teacher support and professional development. So here is where we could say one of the strategies that we put in place seems to be working for these grade levels. >> And for key subgroups uh we are talking about economic need English learners and students with disabilities. We're happy to report that these students have increased their performance from 2024 to this school year. For example, students with economic need have risen from 65.2
0442 to 68.2. English learners 58.7 to 61.3 and our students with disabilities as well jumping to 59.1. In terms of our ethnic racial groups, Latina, Latino students, we see the same trend um going up across all of the three racial groups, black, African-American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander. We see the same trend. So, we're really happy to report that all of the math strategies that the math team has been putting in place has really paid off. And now we uh we close it and we open it up to uh questions and discussion. >> Thank you. Is there anyone on the board? Yeah, I >> um thank you both for the presentation. I wanted to ask um based on this data going forward, are there any things that we could or should be doing differently to
045support literacy um particularly in upper elementary or middle school while acknowledging that we were focused for a while on K through2 literacy? Yeah, did you want to start because I know we talked about that a lot. >> Yeah. So, one of the things that our team is planning on putting in place is just the additional tier 2 and tier three literacy interventions that we hope to tighten up in the upper grades. For example, we already have some interventions. PhonX for reading is one of them. And we want to examine more closely how we can put that in place across all the schools in our district, specifically in our title one schools where we find more multilingual students. And we know that these students are also acquiring a second language as they're learning to read and
046acquiring literacy skills. So they have two two loads on their back to carry when it comes to learning uh language and literacy. And so that those are some of the steps that we're putting in place. Um, additionally, uh, Pam also has some new initiatives that are happening this year. >> Yeah. Um, so our language and literacy tosses, we're um kind of creating little group cohorts within ourselves. And one of the groups is focus on uh what do we look for in interventions for upper elementary students who are not yet at grade level or may not have been with us since kinder or first grade and have some components that they're missing. So to really find that opportunity for what is the um highlevel tier 2 or tier three strategies that first ideally could happen in
047the classroom but if can't happen in the classroom can happen either in the after school or um um or happen with um tosses later in the day when the students aren't missing any um core instruction. >> Thank you. If I can um share as well, over the last week and a half, the assessment department and I have been working on a pretty elaborate, very, very detailed um multi-year analysis of the experiences that our kids are having in our schools. um to try to find examples where multiple variables together predict achievement. So um in our business in this in public education, we often run into analyses that look at one criteria. No offense Pam and Ala, but many of the charts you saw tonight are showing English learners. And so when you look at a chart
048that says Latino, that means that's a very very big category. What we started to do in this process of evaluating this presentation and multiple years of data was I really had a curiosity to see the sunny not but sunny bra third grade students who tested last year and there were um 53 kids who tested in third grade and of the 53 kids 25 started in kindergarten. at Sunbury and took a test at Sunbury and the other 28 came from outside of at Ottabon. There were closer to 80 testers and 19 of them came from outside. So that's a high number to that honestly surprised me a great deal. So I said let me look at these scores. The kids who came from outside well they were very good students who transferred in to Sunny on
049average 85% did not meet standards on a state test at Ottabon 70% met or exceeded standards. So in evaluating what other criteria predicted that because those are two really like opposite outcomes, it was initial fluent English proficiency and income. So when I was able to take the late arrival or what I'm calling not continuous enrollment, the non-ontinuous enrollment with income and initial English proficiency. If a student has English has a initial fluent fluency and does not have economic mean coming from outside the c outside the district in many cases outside the country has zero impact on their achievement. Flip it this way and if you add a lack of language proficiency or income both of them result in almost uniform non achievement. So you have to think about a teacher at sunny grade third grade
050who has 23 kids in their class and 11 have come through the system and 12 have not come and of the 12 at sunny of the entire group which was 28 15 have been in the US two years prior. If we don't think about that, and what's interesting about what this has to do with multiple years of our reading program is like our theory of action is get them in, get them started, move them up. And to some extent, we know that we're a very mobile um school community. But this surprised even all of us who every single person who's started to look at these data arrays is just sort of like, wow. Um having said that there are still like impacts even when a student comes from outside um the district and has a
051higher income is not a challenge or um they already speak English. It's just an adjustment to a new place is also hard. Um, so another example like Ottabon this year's this year's third grade class have 12 newcomers who've been in the US less than two years and that is wow. I knew we had newcomers but there is something unique about this part of the peninsula and this part of the state where trends just move faster. Things just things just shift a little faster. And when I compare it to prior years, um those those shifts weren't evident yet. So what that has to do with this conversation about how we support students who do arrive is we can develop specific plans to support families as they enter the system when we know they're entering after kindergarten,
052but we haven't because we didn't understand the scale up until this point. So there's a part of me that feels like I have to interpret achievement at Sunny and Laurel Park which all have very similar data in a specific way and I also have to be able to look at students who we think are going to score a certain way on their achievement exams and don't and try to figure out why that's happening. And almost in every single case when a student does well on our because one of the things we've talked about is if we're getting 67% meeting standard on these why aren't they scoring on the counts? One of the reasons that we're zeroing in on explanation is when a student scores meeting or exceeding on these internal exams that we're reporting publicly
053into the board but they haven't mastered English. There is a high degree of certainty that an expected achievement outcome expecting a kid score exceeding results in reading and and pro for kids and when they have English proficient that doesn't we can predict that part of the reason is that what we're reporting is a reading test. The English language arts test involves other literacy domains that aren't captured in the reading test. And that's what's important about being at this juncture and having, as you know, incredible teachers and having really smart administrators is figuring out a way to take that initial reading data and begin to provide support in the class in the non reading domain. overall achievement. So, it's like it's been a week and a half of like a lot of reflection. You can see
054on their faces on the TV screen. They I've been pulling them in about every couple hours saying, "Look at this chart. Look at this." Um, but I think we're zeroing in on a way to start to collaborate with our teachers and principles about giving those inclass supports and obviously out of class. Thank you. you want to >> um I just had a quick question. So based on where we are with our fall assessment, actually I just want to start off by thanking you all for the breakdown. I especially found the cohort analysis to be very helpful. Um maybe not for a full board meeting but in the future I think now kind of seeing what superintendent spoke about about the kind of micro levels of I wouldn't say noise in the data but other factors
055that will affect the kind of overall we're getting. We've talked already about maybe having a sideby-side analysis, but even breaking out those other variables just to really get a clear sense. Um, and just speaking more broadly, we've all seen the headlines. We've seen that half of California students aren't being level. We've seen examples of people at UC schools who, you know, 18% of students don't even have eighth grade math skills. And so, we know this isn't a problem isolated to our district. But especially as we're expending all these resources, pilots, initiatives trying to address those, it would be helpful to have clear data to know what is or isn't moving the needle. Um, and I know it's something that's already kind of happening in the background, but I know I hear constantly from parents about
056why are these headlines still persisting despite the resources, despite all the, you know, announcements that we make, despite all the kind of exciting things we talk about. >> And so, whatever we can do to square that circle, I think would be helpful. But I guess based on where we're on the poll assessment, do we feel that we're on track to hit where we're trying to be for spring or is there cause for concern or cause for alarm based on where we are right now? >> Um I know at one of our I think it was a board study session when we looked at the student um achievement overall, we talked a lot about what could we do be doing also to support students with um being ready for the assessment. Again, you know, we're not
057necessarily like the old school test prep, but at the same time, really looking at how do we know our students are going to be ready to take that sort of assessment. So, we definitely have some plans in place to work with schools around um that over um the next few months, especially starting when we get back after winter break. So, I don't know necessarily to say like we have this, it's always, you know, for us data is always urgent and we always want to look at um are students making growth through the year? where did they start? Where could they end? Because sometimes, as you know, like if a student's starting far below grade level, you're not necessarily going to get them at grade level, but how do we make sure they're making progress? But
058we are definitely um coming up with some plans to support our teachers and our schools with how do we make sure students are also ready um to take the assessment through um um through some um giving them the chance to practice it. Uh yeah, and just adding based on what Superintendent Oro just mentioned like the nuances of the data and the profile of the students that we're supporting. I think that's going to be really important. So for example, um our ed services team and I we walk the schools and we observe classrooms. We have conversations with the principles about the instruction that we're not noticing for specifically for multilingual students. And that then triggers like a site level specific plan around what data do they want to look at. And it's not just academic data
059because when it comes to multilingual students, we're talking about trauma that they come with um during their lived experiences having lived uh immigrant experiences and the trauma also impacts their learning in the classroom. So for us it's always a whole child approach um having the um social emotional supports in place that will also impact the academics and vice versa. If I can add one other thing when we give context like this, one of the things that we worry about and we talk about is we don't want our community to interpret that we are making excuses and we don't want others to hear what we say and think that it has some way of masking going on or um throwing a shoot over something. Um but I just want you to think about your personal children.
060think about just moving tomorrow like tomorrow just saying we have to go because a lot of our families moving. They're not sitting down and saying, "Hey, let's take a let's fly out there and check out Sonteo first." When they arrive here, they don't know where the library is. They don't know where our grocery store is. They're living in transitional housing in some cases. Even when they are fortunate, blessed to be able to get a great condo here or house here somewhere in town, they're still a total stranger to them. So, they have no network. And and when I talked about figuring out a way to create services and support, it wasn't about getting better tests. Is about thinking about what families need to create a feeling of belonging and and integration to our local community
061because this is a great place and you can do a lot of the public library. But if you just moved here from Nicaragua, you don't really know. It's you need a way to get in there. You might need food support, support, legal support, medical support. You might need a lot of things that and just I didn't give the full number. I I specifically talked about Sunny which as I pointed out more than half the kids did go there kindergarten and in the entire district it's 285 kids last year out of our thousand students that were in Turkey came in and many of them in the last two years. um you know that that means we have to do something different because that and uh Vice President Trin and I went out to a great district
062out in in central California and their mobility rate is super super low partially because nobody's ever heard of it. So until you get there then you're like oh I now I know you exist. But when they have families, they start and they build up with them. When we only only factor in the continuity, our test score and that's okay, too. But we want we believe there's a way to create a support system around the family and child to help them be able to access their learning in the world completely. and and that's part of why we're getting so much context. >> That's really helpful to have that context. Um just two additional questions I guess. One I I know the the purpose of a lot of these assessments that we have that we talked about
063today is more about showing growth um within these cohorts and others for example with Zern but do we have a sense of how strong of predictive they are of say future scores on CASP or elsewhere because I imagine it's not a direct correlation but do we feel fairly confident in terms of their predictive aspects or we mainly focus on them to see year-over-year growth? the NWA um part of it is it's um they do give you a CASP prediction as part of the student assessment. So I would say you know we are only in the second year of giving it teachers still are um you know needing some professional development making sure the assessment is being given the way that we want but overall that assessment does officially have a little bit more of a
064cast predictor. um Zern we um look at it more around they're understanding the content and the more they understand the content then they should be able to um you know access the CASP assessment as well and obviously PAF they're not doing the CASP assessment just yet and then the metrics we have here we it seems like a lot of them more short term so we don't really have a good way to connect it back to prepandemic levels do we in terms of these specific assessments because it seems like they're more recently adopted >> these are more recently adopted assessments. Yes. I I think when we first started with PATH um we developed some of the um we developed some of the scoring based on how we knew students were doing in previous assessment but it's
065quite a different assessment >> any okay Joe can you please check online to see if there are any public comment Okay. So, Um I just want Thank you for this presentation. I really um do enjoy looking at this and and seeing the cohorts um is interesting. This makes me, and I know nobody has extra time in this district, but it makes me wish we had a dashboard or something that we could actually track cohorts like legitimate cohorts and not have like, you know, we could change the factors that we want to see. We can um with AI there could be predictive elements to it based on past data. So um you know somebody has time on their hands dashboard >> you know because Ken mentioned it one of the the lack of reliability in using
066these assessments to predict outcomes has to do with the factor that I discussed earlier which are the initial English proficiency income and then the continuity or discontinuity from the district. So a year ago, we would have looked at our NWA data and said, "Oh, wow. This is where we're headed with this group of kids, thinking if they nearly met on the NWA, they're going to nearly meet on the state assessment." And we found a less than 60% accuracy in that proposed um net result. And what accounts for that 40% that we were wrong about is when those factors are are put together with performance. So what we're actually doing right now is we're identifying kids who are just now third graders for the first time because they haven't taken their first round of state tests
067to do what you're suggesting. Use a dashboard and we are developing use a dashboard to identify students who fall into the category of this criteria this criteria and now this we got the first round of NWA in the fall to be able to predict put together a program for those kids and see what the impact of that was leading into what we think is going to be like midappril um implementation of test. Um and then if once that whole sequence goes we think we would publish a dashboard like that till May only to work out make sure that we don't have data errors but also um in cases where we have really small cohorts not to publicly announce that data is there a lot of restrictions on how do you show data when certain subgroups
068are small and that just honestly it just takes a lot of time to sort of manage the risk putting out data when there's only three kids who are part of a particular group of >> I mean I'm just thinking about like if you if you and I'm not a I'm not a computer person or whatever but um if you're able to kind of build these profiles of of students like they have these kind of elements and and I'm not suggesting like predicting it in a negative way where it's like limiting them but being able to identify early like these are the these are some of the resources that we might need or these are some of the areas that um we've seen based on historical data that we can like interview earlier. >> You're tapping
069You're tapping right on the X-ray. We're all looking at it, but you're tapping right on. >> Okay. >> Yeah, I think we're online. Yeah. Joe, can you please check online to see if there are any public comments? >> Yes. Sorry about that. Um, no public comments at this time. >> Okay. I just quick thing other than endorsing trusty property's business idea. Um I really appreciate what the superintendent said earlier because I do think when we talk about mitigating factors or other factors a lot of times it is viewed almost as a way to let ourselves off the hook and I agree with the way the trustees spoken about it as well. I think it is about identifying that need. I think especially hearing that nearly 30% of our third graders are newcomers or transfers into
070the district. Again, I have tremendous amount of respect for all the work that we do. I was previously on deal committee. I've been part of our sanctuary and equity task forces, but seeing the scale of the need relative to what we've currently deployed, it does feel like we need to have much larger conversations about how to either redesign or staff up accordingly to really address that. And so, that is something that I would ask for in a future board meeting or study session. Um, but just even recognizing that the scale of that particular issue and I think superintendent's point, it's less about test scores for this calendar year, more about are we supporting these students in a way that they're generally learning, engaging, able to take full advantage of everything we have in front of
071us. Um, and then I was going to say this before comments, but one of the best things we've seen with all of our community partnership visits is how so many of them have stepped forward to address a lot of these needs and what we've done with community schools and others to the extent that we can contain it within our district. we try to, but there are a lot of folks out there who I think recognize that we are in very unusual times and that the need is very high and that our budgets are tighter than ever. And so if there are opportunities to bring in folks like we have with the Bay Fund and others, um that's something that I think I'd be very excited exploring because I agree. I think this changes the picture
072of what folks typically think of and we hear a lot of frustration from parents, from observers, from casual commentators about our public schools having the kind of record that they have. And I think given the circumstances we're facing, I'm fully in support of re-evaluating how we approach these challenges to really meet what we're dealing with as opposed to how people thought of education say 40 years ago. >> All right, we have to circle back um now to Stephanie, which I do um human resources. Um, I actually think I >> I'm going to move back to >> Excuse me. >> See, that's okay. >> Thank you. >> She was going to do >> you can come up and talk. I didn't know I was giving a speech. >> Sorry, I backed up by accident. >> Okay,
073we'll move to uh 6A students. >> Good evening, board of trustees, public superintendent. Um it's my great honor uh to be here with our executive director of special education, Heather Morgan, who will provide a special education update. Good evening everyone. Thank you for having me. Um, give me just one moment to get my slides up here for you. Okay. Now, let me make sure that I'm doing this right. Okay. Okay. Making sure everyone can see this. All right. like yes. Okay, wonderful. Thank you. Okay. Um so again, Superintendent OOA and school board trustees, thank you for having me tonight. I'm here to bring you your special education update um and we'll this is our agenda. We'll be going over some program updates um as well as fiscal and staffing and um a review of some
074of our community partnerships tonight. Okay. So, as always, this is um the current breakdown of the programs and continuing continuum of services that we offer in Sano Foster City School District for students with disabilities. Um we've been creating these over the last 5 years to kind of track where the programs are and visually you can see where the um where they lie and and um also the complexes where our programs um live. Um, and again, this was done really intentionally to put more programs in neighborhoods so that children with disabilities or with IEPs can attend schools in their own neighborhoods where they live. Now um this the next few slides I just want to sort of explain um I I put a more attention on um inclusion and specifically to explain some misunderstandings and provide
075some clarifications about what we are what we mean when we say inclusion within special ed and the work that we're doing. Um this has been a long process. We're actually in our fifth year and over the course of five years things change and we we learn things, we pivot, we refine things. But I was working really really closely with um some of the leaders in our special education leadership committee and um I intentionally really wanted to get their feedback and their um sort of reflections on what the community and what the teachers and what SMEA believe um we mean when we say inclusion. And what I learned was that there is a lot of um I I'll say I don't want to say misinformation, misinterpretation. And so this is my opportunity, which I don't get
076very often, to really be clear in the next few slides. I designed these with their collaboration and with their support, which I really appreciate. So, um I I I say I present to you now uh some clarification and some information about what um the hard work and the really intense work that we've been doing around inclusion in our district. So, to start um we define inclusion is creating belonging and welcoming environments for all students. Um inclusion is standing up for human dignity. And that one actually I probably should put at the top because that's my number one. Um, inclusion is a belief that all students have a right to their education and inclusion is also required by the California Department of Education and it has target percents of time spent in general education. I'll be
077bringing you our data on that in just a few slides. Um, what inclusion is not, it is not segregation. It is not an expectation of assimilation or that we're curing or fixing students with disabilities. um it is not the same in every school or in every setting. So inclusion may look very different depending on the size of the school, the shape of the school, the location of the school, the programs that are there. It's very individualized and it's also not meant to replace IEP team decisions, but it should be encouraged as individually appropriate during the IEP development. Okay, having said that, this is a little bit more clarification and um again I'm saying this um to really respect the the thoughts and and contributions of the teachers that I work with. Um so inclusion again
078is not one-sizefits-all. It does not mean that all students will receive all services exclusively within a general education classroom. I think that's really important to understand. For some students, being included may mean receiving services um within the education setting, while for others, it may involve a combination of general education and specialized support outside of the general general education setting. Services should look different for each student in special education and inclusion aims to ensure a device diverse student population receives a continuum of services and supports responsive to each student's evolving needs. So with that clarification um this is our new and improved um inclusion improvement team and you can see we've grown. When we first started, we had two little schools and now we um have six with really um robust teams. Um these are all
079of the individuals. We have a great cross-section of roles um throughout the district um including general education teachers, special education teachers, administrators, um teachers on special assignment. We've got um pretty much everything. Um and so I wanted to make sure that you saw that um this crosses both cities, both age groups, both elementary and middle, and that we've got um a broad swath of membership um working with us on this improvement team. Oh no, why is my graphic not showing? Can you see it? Why does this happen sometimes? >> It like disappears. I don't know. Canva made it disappear. Well, I'm apologize for that. If I can get it to come back, I will. Um, I wanted to explain what the SIP inclusion academy is. So, SIP again um is supporting innovative practices. It is
080we are grantees. Um, we're tier 2 grantees from the state of California from the California Department of Education and leadership and training um and attendance um at this academy are no at no cost to the district. So, all of the people on the previous slide um are invited to attend this academy with me. We have been to the first session already. That was on October 21st of 2025. Um our second session is coming up in December and there's a third one in March. It is also hosted by the Sanonteo County Office of Education in conjunction with the Elorado County Office of Education. And um this is our our big um opportunity. I I wish I had the opportunity to participate in this five years ago when we first started all of this work. Um and
081so um these this is kind of the guiding uh the guiding work that we're doing to push inclusion forward in our district. Oh my goodness, my beautiful I don't know why they're not showing up. I'm sorry about that. It's such a pretty little pyramid, too. Um, so the results pyramid, which I I really actually Is there a way for me to try to get this to show? >> I give me just a moment because I think it's important for you to see the graphic. >> We all have it on our own computers by the way. >> Yeah, it was on the um on the online agenda. So it is >> Oh, so you have seen Okay. So on the online agenda, you can see it. Okay. Um so the results pyramid um is actually from
082a group called the culture partners um and SIP and the inclusion academy um introduced it to us as a tool that we can use to identify key results that we want to see change um within our district. So in order to do that we start at the top of the pyramid which is really your end product. it's your key results and then we work backwards. And the thought behind that is that the results that you get in any in any system um are the product of the actions of the people within the system and actions are driven by our beliefs and that our beliefs are the result of our experiences. And so in working backwards through this program, the way that we make real change that um is effective and your key results is changing
083people's experiences. Because if I have experiences that tell me something um that's going to affect what I believe and what I believe is going to affect what I do and what I do is going to affect my outcomes. And so this is um a model that we're using right now with within the framework of the um academy to identify uh outcomes that we're looking to change for students in terms of inclusion in our district and then what we need to do to shift actions, beliefs, and experiences in order to make that culture shift. If we don't do that work and the culture doesn't get shifted, we won't see um any sort of results that are that are permanent. Um this is this is where if we jump right into just trying to change something very
084quickly without having done the work on the experiences and the beliefs, that's where we don't see it stick. Um so I I wanted to identify this and share this with you. Um I'm glad that you are able to see that that pyramid. I think it's a nice graphic that sort of illustrates this. And I apologize for this um not showing up here. It's a little glitchy. Okay. Um and this is just sort of the um definition of what supporting innovative practices is about and what the inclusion academy is about. So our participants are are identifying or leveraging existing equity and inclusion improvement team. So, I've shared that with you and this team will work together to reaffirm our commitments, foster our environments, align our systems, center our educator beliefs, and then collaborate with our statewide
085partners in order to strengthen cross-system alignment and accelerate impact. Okay. And then this is the data. Um, this goes all the way back to 2019. Um so this is the indicator the goal is um the percentage of students in a regular classroom 80% or more of the day. And so in our first column you can see for example in 2425 we had 964 students with IEPs and this is um as reported through Calpads. So if we have 964 students, 761 of those students do in fact spend more than 80% of their time at school in the general education classroom. That equals 69.56%. And um we again have exceeded the state target which has gotten higher every year. You can see the target for 2425 was 67%. Um back in 1920 the target was 53.2. So,
086we um have made an enormous amount of growth in this um and I think it's really positive and it shows that we are um making the progress as we do this work with our inclusion task force and our committees, but we're continuing to um grow and meet the targets as as they increase each year. Oh my goodness. Um okay. So another um collaboration that we've had within special education is um our math department and special ed. Um and so we we started this last year. Um and it came out of conversations around bridging the work um that we're doing in our general education classrooms with the work that happens for students who are receiving resource support in especially elementary. We tried to target our elementary schools. So we developed a series of six training days.
087Um we've got four of them have been completed and there are two more in spring of 26. Um, we're offering and exploring intervention strategies and materials. And we're also teaching strategies to provide student access to grade level content regardless of barriers caused by learning differences. So, historically, that's been a problem is that if you have a learning difference, you may be stuck um working on one foundational set of skills for so long that you're no longer working at grade level material. And so we want to make sure that students don't get hindered by those barriers and that we still providing access to grade level content um regardless of a learning difference or a barrier that's created by that. So the team is consists of our elementary RSP teachers and and their parents which is wonderful.
088They're able to join us too and it's led by our math tossa team and our math coordinator. Okay. And I right now I would like to invite Alita is she's there she is. Uh Elita and I this is another one of my collaborations this year are working together um on dy identified students and I welcomed her today to share a little of the work that we're doing and explain a little bit more about the committee that we co-lead. Thank you Elita. >> Thank you Heather. Yes. Um here again tonight uh we're delighted to be collaborating with the special education department on this committee which is the multilingual committee for dy identified students and you might ask what is or who is a dy identified student so a dy identified student is an English learner meaning
089they have not reclassified who is also eligible for special education in the state of California. Out of all the students who receive special education services, approximately 23.5% of them are also multilingual learners or duly identified. In our district, that number is a little higher. We have about 52% of all of our students who were in special education identified as well as multilingual learner. Next slide, please. >> There you go. >> And so this year, our collaboration is a group of people or educators that include special education educators, general education educators, school principles. We are very fortunate to have two principles on our collaboration. And we also have some of our multilingual uh on there as well. And it's been very um very eyeopening because throughout these meetings we actually bring our own school and our
090own district data to really dive into these topics. And the topics that we're covering during our meetings are about tier one, meaning how do we provide integrated and designated English language development supports for students who are duly identified and what are those look fors. The second topic that we're diving deeper into is how do we ensure that our IEPs are language include language development and also have the criteria necessary for reclassification. Making sure that our duly identified students are in the correct pathway and that the supports and their IEPs are also supporting their language needs. We are also trying to build collaboration structures amongst our teams uh by doing some co-planning together and putting in place some protocols. For example, during our last meeting, the team developed some look fors for what does it mean
091to have linguistically appropriate IEPs and they're actually going to be attending IEP meetings and just providing that feedback to the IEP teams about making sure those goals are um adequately developed for the needs of duly identified students. At the end of our committee, we want to deliver a toolkit that our district can start implementing next year for supporting duly identified students. So, it's been truly a collaborative effort and we're both learning from each other. Uh we're learning from the SPE team as the SPE team is also learning from the multilingual team. So, thank you Heather for this collaboration. And in addition to that, we're also working on bringing more outside consultants who can really guide the work for our district and really identify how we can serve the needs of our communities. >> Thank you,
092Elena. >> Okay. >> All right. And um one of the other professional developments that I wanted to share, actually we had two that are aligned with each other. Um these uh sort of hearken back to um some of the uh requests from the school board that we work on compliance with our legal team and build more uh robust compliance within our own special ed education um teams and case management. And so the first one um was presented by one of our legal council from AALR and um the the audience was all special education case managers. So all all of our RSP and SDC teachers, all of our SLPs, speech and language pathologists, all of our psychologists and all of our other related service providers. This was a large group and uh we did two sessions,
093one on legally defensible notetaking and then also um one that we call sweat the small stuff um where she went over procedural errors that cause district exposure. Um this was very well attended. We had uh well over a hundred attendees at the September 26th um professional development day in the morning and uh re received um very strong feedback in terms of appreciation for not only the reminders but tips and helping them navigate um difficult IEPs and making sure that we are compliant for our students and legally compliant. And um the second part of this was that we wanted to make sure that our administrators also received this information to complement the information that their case managers received. So we did um a very similar sweat the small stuff presentation but we switched it so it
094was delivered through the lens of our local educational agency. That's what we call our our administrators the LEA and within the meetings the the IEP meetings. So um again our audience was our elementary and middle school principles and this was closely aligned with what the case managers received um so that the principles know what the case managers heard and the case managers um are aware of that their principles are are also learning the same information at the same time. Okay. Um I wanted to review also the growth of our behavior team. Um we uh have been prioritizing this as we have seen an uptick in behaviors over the last few years and in response to that and in response to creating supportive environments for our sites and our staffs and our schools um we really
095built out this this um behavior team. So we are continuing with safety care training. It is still a dedicated roll out to all schools and we do prioritize sites with no behavior challenges and we are still doing reertification annually. Um we've grown our BCBA team. We now have 6.0 FTEES. So we have six of them and they're all district employees. Um they oversee the behavior team pyramid which is the registered behavior techs as well as our behavior techs. And then um they've also provide increased support to our general education staff to not only improve skill sets but also student behavioral outcomes over time. Um we had training opportunities in the summer which was wonderful and also during our September 26 professional development day. The advantage of doing safety care training during that time is that
096we don't need to secure substitutes and and teachers and paras are not removed from the classroom. So we really like to take advantage of opportunities when we can provide that training uh when we are not taking people away from the kids. And then we have our ongoing rotating training schedule all year long and we do reertifications um annually in addition to new certifications for new teachers. And then I just wanted to dive down a little deeper also for clarification and just to show how important this is that we um are what our BCBAS do. So they oversee our our RBTs. They observe, advise and um on deescalation especially and ongoing behavior management support. Um they work on functional behavior assessments. That's something within the realm of of special education. Also psychologists can write um FBAs.
097Um this is an assessment that is requested sometimes um that requires an assessment plan in the same way that um other assessments that we provide in special education are. Um they also participate in IEP teams. They provide crisis intervention and they collaborate with our related service providers um to develop IEPs. Um all of them are safety care certified as certification providers and trainers. Okay. And just a few fiscal updates. I do like to pay attention to both our NPS and MPA costs as they can be expensive for the district. Um, this is last year's data. As of March of 25, we had 28 students attending non-public schools. And as opposed to now, we have reduced that by five. We currently have 23 students um who belong to Samo Foster City School District but are attending
098non-public schools. And this data is for our nonpublic agency um expenditures. I like to keep track. So just for reference, fall of 22, fall of 23. You can see we're hovering right around 200. Um I put the data for the end of last year instead of the fall because um we have been doing very dedicated efforts to make sure that we are not over assigning um onetoone support when it's inappropriate. And so um the reflection here that I think is important to pay attention to is that the difference between spring of 25 and our current numbers um it's almost a reduction of 40. Um and then also if you look at the um the number of agencies that we partner with has been reduced significantly. So we really tried to eliminate agencies where we had
099maybe only one or two employees and focus more on um developing strong relationships to improve the quality and improve the consistency of the um agency partners that we um that we work with. Okay. And then to talk just briefly about some vacancies, um we always post for speech and language pathologist. We actually um are fully staffed for our speech um pathologists. However, some of them are agency and so we always keep that posted in case people would like to come be um district employees. Um we are always looking for registered behavior techs. We do have a preschool SDC teacher opening. However, um I made these slides over a week ago and we do have a job offer out. So, I'm hopeful that that position will be filled. Um same with the psychologist opening. I also
100have a job offer out for that. And um we This is another update that happened within the last week of posting these slides. Um two of our international teachers arrived last week and are now currently working in their full-time positions. So, we welcome those two teachers, one at Foster City School and one at Samonteo Park. It's really good news. Okay. And then um I also want to thank Superintendent OOA and uh Trusty Trin for joining us at our um Beach Park Elementary, um Special Olympics event last Friday. The sun came out for us briefly. We we just avoided the rain. Um, unfortunately these slides are from these photos are from last year's event because the event happened after I posted my um my slides for you all. But um it was a great day. We
101just had such a wonderful time with and it was focused on preschool for the first time. So we do try to um change the groups and the focus each time so that different age groups of kids get to participate. And um we just had a wonderful time with our preschool students um out there on the field at Beach Park. And then we have two more events coming in the spring. Um we're uh cooperating with both Milbury and Berlingame school districts in January and um April of 26. And then I always want to mention as well that we continue um our best buddies chapters and they are happening at Foster City, Burell, Baich Bayside, and Abbott. and that the Ed Foundation um is continuing to support these chapters and I'm working with them to determine um
102what types of support they provide. But um we are very appreciative of that um to keep those chapters and those friendships blooming. And finally um my my last thing I'd like to share is that our SEO meeting um will be on December 16th. It's going to be virtual from 6:30 to 8. and our um our very own program support specialist, Thomas Feloso, who's our assigned person from SIP, will be doing a parent education night, um around the topic of inclusion. And so, um we've started advertising that because we want to make sure that people have an opportunity to come and listen to, um Thomas as we welcome him as our guest speaker. And with that, um that concludes my presentation for tonight. We're open for questions or comments. Thank you uh Miss Morgan um for
103all these wonderful updates and information you have given us. Um I want to make a comment. I have a comment and a question. The first um is my comment is I'm very happy to see the um deescalation as part of the regular um training routine for um the staff. I really appreciate that. Um I have a question regarding the um the uh spad students who are um attending the general ed classes and the teachers who are um responsible for their care. Are we training our um general ed teachers to be able to uh support our special education students in a more wholesome way? Um >> right. So yes, I I mean all all teachers should be prepared to welcome students into their classrooms. If students have special accommodations and needs, um that would be listed
104within their IEP. And um the special education staff works with the general education staff to make sure that they are aware of what each student needs um to be within that setting and that collaboration is really important part of being um in the IEP team. So that's why general education teachers are required to um be part of that team. It's actually a mandatory component. Um so uh yes >> um first wanted to say thank you executive director Morgan for the presentation and also um uh director Barrera and Cruz. Um I first wanted to say um a very deep felt thank you for adding in the compliance training um on how to be legally defensible. Um, when I think about my own like master's program when I was like becoming a school counselor, I remember my
105professors were telling me like, "Oh, you have to make sure that like you're really careful about your note-taking so you don't get subpoenaed." But there wasn't a lot of actual like instruction on how to do it or what it looks like. And so I really appreciate you doing that because, you know, in their teaching programs, right, like teachers are not taught how to like avoid lawyers. Sorry, lawyers. Um, >> no offense. And so I think it's really great that you're just, you know, enhancing their skills in that area. Uh because really we've all seen it, you know, mistakes are so costly um to our district. And so I really appreciate um you taking a very proactive manner in that and and also just, you know, looking for ways to, you know, like reduce the NPA
106partners and, you know, be thoughtful about how we're, you know, spending our money. So I just wanted to appreciate that. Um I also wanted to ask you know on the federal level we're seeing a lot of you know cuts and layoffs in the department of ed um you know which obviously includes IDEIDA special ed teacher training um and I know that you know for our district no matter what happens federally you know we are still committed to providing high quality education to all students and we will still uphold IDA no matter what. Um, but I kind of wanted to know like from what we're seeing federally, you know, how or will this impact our district? Um, I know, you know, special education teachers are already difficult to hire. Um, and I just kind of want
107to know if there's anything that we can anticipate um, going forward. >> Yeah, it's great question and I know a lot of people are concerned. Um, fortunately for us, California does have a lot of um, statewide oversight of IDEIDA and even though it's federal law, um, a lot of the, you know, the the CDE controls a lot of what of what happens within special ed. So, I don't anticipate a lot of changes um, in the like in immediately from that. I think also it looks like there are I I don't have the answers, but it looks like there's some plans for um the special education part of the department of education federally to just move to live underneath a different um department. So, I don't think that section is necessarily going to be closed, but
108it might be overseen just by a different um like parent uh department. Um so, we'll have to wait and see where where that goes. One of the um just to add a little bit more context is one of the um reactions that states will have to having a program as big as special education moved under a different department is um the requirements and the procedures that we have to annually monitor um for reasons having to do with with non-discrimination. the services we offer students with disabilities. It's it's a huge thing when you if you just walk back to our special education department here, we're just one district with 11,000 kids. Um um executive director Morgan has lots of people working there to manage the monitoring and the reporting of what we're doing. So, you know,
109it's been multiple decades that we have just had one system of monitoring and reporting and communication. And if and when that were to change, that is a significant workload of change for school districts to maintain um uh eligibility for the the what I would call limited monies, but they're still monies and we're required to respond to those. The other component has to do with how the federal government manages complaint procedures that go above uh the state of California. And even just in the civil rights, office of civil rights and in other education related departments, that's already started to change. There's just much less activity in terms of us getting requests for information or having interviews being requested. Um, I think there's a lot of concern about what that means for the rights of students and
110families, but it is a a change for us. And then I think, um, as it pertains to the kind of funding that we're going to receive, there's also, as you know, there was a big report out, the Secretary of Education made a big announcement about about transferring all these different departments um or all these different components of the ed head ed department. Um, and nobody knows what that's going to be because there aren't any plans delineated about how the work is going to get provided. Um, uh, executive director Morgan was right to point out that in California, we do have a really robust system of special education management and support, but we do receive funding federally. And that's the sort of the big cloud that's over us right now is figuring out how the reporting
111and the eligibility connects to the funding that's that's set aside for us all. >> It's not good. No, I mean it doesn't feel good for me to like we're department of moving to, you know, health and human services who's led by an individual who believes, you know, certain conditions were caused by things that were not, you know, and so it's just it it worries me as an educator, right, to see our, you know, one of our most vulnerable populations, you know, being moved to a department where I'm not convinced cares for our kids. So that's beyond us, though. Um, so just a quick thing, Heather, I just want to thank you for the really thorough presentation. Um, I especially appreciate going into the misinformation going into the work you're doing on behavior teams, especially the
112work around compliance. A lot of things we've talked about. Um, just the kind of level of detail about our response, how we're tightening things up, how we're improving or even just discussing things we've always been doing, but just in a clear way for folks kind of outside our administration or those who are engaging with this daily. So really appreciate that level of deep dive. Um I wanted to just follow up on trust uh president Brooks's point. I think one thing that I still recall when I was with trustee walkins and we met with teachers was a lot of Jenna teachers saying they didn't feel like they had adequate support and this was years ago and I think we've come a long way since then but I am still wondering to the extent that we're not
113just having professional development but engaging with you know our teachers and educators to make sure that they feel supported in that capacity. That's just something I'd be curious to learn about in a future session. Um, and similarly, you know, the most common uh concern we hear often is from parents um especially for some of these students who don't always feel like they have great visibility into what's happening. Um, and one thing I always say about our district is often we're doing amazing work, but we're not always, you know, doing the part where we get to t, talk about the rationale, explain the level of support and the work we're doing. even just the work that you're doing to decrease our reliance on MPAs is something that you know parents have been asking for and I
114think maybe tonight it's something that'll start to get out there. Um, but it's just really great to see everything moving in the right direction in the way that we're hoping to see. And I also hope that a lot of that is also going out into the community, particularly to parents. Um, and for those of our dy identified students, you know, in language as well, just to really be able to kind of hit that last step of once you've done the work, make sure folks um in our community understand the kinds of investments we've made, the way we responded to a lot of those concerns um and also ways we can improve and kind of figuring what that next step looks like. So really just commending you and your team for all the work that you've
115done on this and especially taking in a lot of the feedback we've heard both from the community, from the board, and from others and really showing all that here today. So thank you. >> Thank you. >> Joe, can you please check online to see if there are any public comment? >> Yes, checking. No raise hands at this time. >> Okay, thank you. We'll take a five minute, please. Oh, I was trying to read it. >> Yeah. Something popping up. >> Yeah. Did you raise the level of what you're trying Sorry. >> No. I'm just saying it was >> cuz you know you get your like flip through and you see the logo you're like it's bad news or good news like what is >> who are we are we will you count us in or
116let us know when we're back. >> We're back. >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. Welcome back. Um we will now uh move to 7A superintendent services. >> All right. Thank you very much, President Brooks. Tonight's fourth monthly update on the community strategic plan process is a real treat. I'm going to start with some brief remarks and we do have our colleague Lisa Joseph, the chief of staff that's going to make a presentation in just a minute. Um, and and I think there's an attachment. Uh, Joe, when you get a minute, if you can just project it up. Uh, we had a big convening here last night. I did attempt to send a message to the school board with photographs, but the the Wi-Fi wasn't great last night, so I couldn't send it out.
117I realized it this morning, but this room looked very different. We had 45 people here. Um, and we were here for two hours together going through some pretty crucial conversations about um, learning walks that took place over the last month, talking about our uh, team's visit out to Lindsay as well as two student visits to Parkside Monastery and Design Tech High School to stimulate a student focus on something called the Imagine School campaign. And what it really all has to do with is um being bold and being intentional and being thorough about um about instructional and school-based reforms that we can adopt 2027 through 2032. But what I want to tell you a little bit about is one of our team members. He's a vision design team member and I discussed this with him and
118he gave me permission to share part of his story with you. Um but he's an eighth grader at Habit Middle School and he came from Nicaragua two years ago and um he's he is a truly exceptional kid um who is doing academically wonderful and um has in his heart has that spirit of I'm here to make a difference for myself. I really feel joy when I'm at school. um and he signed up to be part of the vision design team. And that in and of itself makes me feel really good about what we're doing because over the years this board and other members on this board have repeatedly asked to make sure that when we convene groups with important decision making and recommendation responsibilities that they not be exclusively students who have the 4.0's and
119have all the advantages. Um, we wanted kids who were opinionated. So when we reached out to principles, I told them, "Don't send me a group of kids that have high GPA but are shy about speaking their mind." And HV is not holding anything back in what he thinks. The very first activity we had was to look at a list of eight potential outcomes from the vision design process >> and to pick one that really spoke to us. I was at a table with Fernand chose item one, one of us chose item two, one of us chose item four. when it rotated around to him. He and I had been having little side conversations initially and he spoke beautiful Spanish and his English is improving but he's still getting there and um I said tell us
120in Spanish because Dr. G's bilingual grand and I both speak English and Spanish and he just proceeded to give this absolutely fantastic explanation for why we felt the biggest uh area of focus for our vision design team is to help create schools that meet the emotional and mental health needs of every child and adult. That's the one that they picked. And um when they handed me the microphone to give my superintendent remark, they said, "I want to start. I want you to just hear what this child said." and he and I asked him to say it in Spanish even though there were others who didn't speak Spanish in the room because I wanted us to think about why we have so many kids those 4,000 kids who speak a second language many of them who
121are incredibly bright and when we force them not to use their own language when what we want was think we're putting a little cap on our own district and minimizing and we make a spurge. We cast a spursion. We think differently about about the kids that we serve because we don't let them tell us what they know. And he gave this awesome explanation and everybody in the room liked it. Um and it was just that one moment. It was like a special moment in the process that I thought this is a really good group. And you know obviously I'm spending a lot of time talking about this one student. There were many many people there. The quality of teachers that we have on the team are like some of the absolute best teachers in California.
122Our leaders are diverse, strong, ethical, caring people. A lot of people with a lot of investment. Um although our Ed Foundation executive director isn't here tonight for to report out, she was there last night. She did an awesome job. Um and and it is truly a really special process. Uh we do have our chief of staff and I'm going to pass it over to her now. She's going to give you an update on what the visioning process has been about so far and a little preview into what lies ahead in the weeks that are that are going to come. So Lisa, with that I'll pass it to you. >> Thank you, Superintendent Ooa, and good evening board of trustees. My name is Lisa Joseph, chief of staff to the superintendent, and my main project at
123this district is to focus on the community visioning process. I'm really excited to share what we've been doing so far. So, as uh superintendent Choa mentioned, the vision design team met last night and that team is driving the development of our community vision. But there are many moments throughout this year when we're asking the broader community to participate in the visioning process, especially students. Um, so we start this document kind of outlines the phases of our visioning process as well as key milestones of community engagement and key questions for our community to consider in each phase. So we began with inspiration. At the top there you can see in the light teal it says inspire. Um, this included our kickoff event at Meadow Heights in September, the launch of our vision design team which has
12411 students now. Um, and the team's recent in as well as our team's recent visit to Lindsay Unified School District, which I know Superintendent OOA spoke about before. Um, and this also included uh a lot of research. We were gathering data during this time, both qualitative and quantitative through our community vision survey, interviews, and focus groups to help inform the next phase of work. Uh, you can see the green arrow there pointing to learn. Um and that is the phase we are currently in. We are looking closely at our data um to better understand our current the current state of our district and the hopes and dreams of our community. For those of you who completed the community in vision survey um which by the way we had over 1300 folks uh respond to the
125survey including over 200 students. Um and one of the key questions in it is what are your hopes and dreams for our school district? Um and as a part of this learning process, uh the vision design team went on classroom walks this week to Bayside. Um we have an upcoming community vision meeting on December 10th that is open to the entire community. And uh Superintendent OA also mentioned this imagine school campaign. We are launching the imagine school project which will launch on December 1st, inviting all staff and fourth through 8th grade students to share their vision for schools where all students thrive. So that's where we are right now and we're going to be in this phase for a few months. Then in February of next year, we'll begin the focus phase that that second
126teal bar. Um, and in that phase, the vision design team will begin drafting the community vision using all the input from the earlier phases and seek feedback from the broader community on those drafts. And our goal is that at the end of the 2526 school year, we'll be launching the community vision with board approval in May, followed by a celebration of this vision in June. Um, and one of our large goals here is to get as many members of the community to invest in this vision. That means students, families, administrators, community partners, staff. Um, and once we have that community vision, at the bottom you'll see a little yellow bar for the community vision. Um, and that will guide the development of our 202732 uh community strategic plan. uh and that will be hopefully finalized
127by uh December of next year for us to begin implementation. I'll pass it back to you, Superintendent OA, as we enter into December is a short month, so we have those days off, but we have a really important vision design team meeting here coming up and then a big community vision visioning um meeting. So please to members of the community join us at that Dece December 10th event at George Hall to members of the board. Encourage you to get in touch with your networks. Invite um your friends and family to the event. It is a really really big group. Um, but as you know, we have a wonderful location there at George Hall and and it's a an opportunity for everyone in our community to um see the richness and the strength of the diversity
128that we have in San Jose Plaster City. um and to be feel like a part of that process that is going to result um in some pretty big transformations that we're able to put in place here over the next five years. With that, I'll pass it back over to the board for any questions. I don't have any questions, but um just wanted to thank you for this information and also um just this whole process. It just makes me feel really good about the work that's being done and the fact that this is really um coming from all aspects of the community and it's something that we're thinking through um together and allowing voices to participate. They don't always participate. um I have been one in the past that said don't always pick the kids that
129um have the good GPA or apply for the position. I think that those students are going to find their place and um we should be giving opportunities to other students to participate. So thank you for >> I don't have any questions as a general comment. We've said this many times. I just think the this has really been just like a model for engagement. um even in a district like ours that has prioritized this has worked towards it. I think just seeing what we've been able to do throughout this visioning process has been really great and I know a lot of other districts I've spoken to are really excited. More of a question for later. I think I'm very curious to see given all this effort to really bring in folks whose voices aren't typically a
130part of the conversation to really you know work with everyone from our students to community members and others when you know the final stages do hit. I am curious to learn I guess what we found through this process that maybe we wouldn't have predicted. um a lot of times just kind of seeing you know we feel like we have a pretty good grasp of things just as administrators, leaders, teachers, etc. um but I'd be curious to know at the end what we felt like through these sessions we gained that we wouldn't have gotten had we done this say the oldfashioned way of just putting you know 20 folks in a room and working on it for a year. And so just again a lot of praise for what's going on um a lot of excitement
131for the future and definitely looking forward to the next steps as they come together. All right, Joe, can you please check online to see if there are any public comments? >> Yes, checking. No public comments at this time. >> Okay, thank you. >> Yeah, we'll move to um 7B. >> 7B. Joe, if you could project up um I apologize to the community. The first page is upside down. Just out change that. I tried and my brother. Look at that. Joe, you know what you're doing, buddy. >> What you're all looking at is hopefully what you just got at each of your homes or your wherever you pick up your mail because we sent this out to the entire community. This is solely this item is solely to call attention to the fact that we have
132communicated in this way. The feedback that we've received so far from as a district has been overwhelmingly positive. Multiple key stakeholders have reached out to us to express that they really appreciate getting this information. Um, I do want to forecast to the board that you will have likely a presentation at your next schoolboard meeting about the facilities master plan. Um, and and this is a continuation of wanting to increase transparency, but also frankly I want the community to keep talking about this. Um so what you're looking at there are the prioritized areas of focus after visiting 22 school sites and holding evening meetings asking members of the community again in a sort of another um example of the kind of persontoperson really key um voices being heard. Um getting out and listening to community members
133about what they feel our schools need. And then also just listing um for the community um you know some some areas that we feel are really important for us to follow up on. Um and this went out to all your friends and neighbors. So discuss it, look it over, contemplate it, and um at your upcoming December schoolboard meeting, you'll have a much more thorough presentation. Um and uh it's going to be a big day for us at that meeting in December. So with that, I'll pass it back over to the board. Are there any comments or questions? >> When does this little survey thing end or did you say that >> we did we don't have an end date on it yet. We're kind of waiting to see what the responses. We might do some
134additional additional outreach if we don't get a big response. We're looking for um somewhere in the range of about a thousand responses kind >> Susie sends out one text message. Boom. after she sends a text. >> I just want to say, you know, I appreciate the pictures of like the restroom wall, like the, you know, the cracks and things because I think a lot of times what the community sees are like what we put on social media, like the brand new NPR, the brand new field, right? And they're like, "Yeah, you guys have money. You don't need anything." Right? So I think showing this like hey this is a baywood this is a fosters like these are not the schools sometimes you would associate with having these cracks right and so I think it's I
135think it's great so I I appreciate that like you have to like uncover the one of the you know uglier parts right like to to make to show the need but I I um yeah >> thank you Joe can you please check online to see if there any to comment. >> Yes. Checking. No raised hands at the moment. >> All right. Thank you. Well, with that said, we will now take any board members requests for future agenda items. All right. Board member statements. Um, I first want to thank the principles, faculty, and staff at Highlands lead soon to be Cottage Grove, um, College Park, Boutage, and Brewer Island for hosting schoolboard partner visitations this week. Um it's really great to see, you know, how these visits and you know, hear from people like how these
136visits have really helped change hearts and minds, you know, about our district and about a lot of the initiatives and kind of like that, you know, um the picture that we just saw, right, of like the the piping that needs to be broken. You know, I think it's really great to have people come into our schools to see it for themselves, right? Um you know, you can see that like, you know, I went to Highlands for example, right? And everyone thinks about the beautiful Ikler style new brand new MPR, but like they don't realize until you walk the school that like there are these incredibly aging classrooms with windows that aren't even made of glass. They're just like a >> weird plastic thing, >> you know. And so I think it's really great to have
137these schoolboard visits um you know to kind of really increase awareness of you know the good that's happening but also you know the needs of our community as well. So um wanted to thank everyone for coordinating those. Um and then oh that's it spoken earlier. >> Um I also wanted to just thank um for hosting um me and some other folks for the visit this Yeah, that was just Tuesday. Okay, I'm confused. Um, it was nice to, you know, again, get a chance to see the campus, but actually see students in the in the classrooms. And, um, I I'm always I'm very entertained going to middle schools, by the way. It's like you go into a sixth grade classroom. And, um, it's very different than an eighth grade classroom where students are comfortable and just
138like know they're they're big kids on campus and stuff. So, um, very entertaining to see. Um, and also just wanted to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving and tell you tell you all how thankful I am to be with you all and um thankful for our district just all the work that I visited College Park for the first time that switch campuses. It was really nice to reconnect with the principal who I think I lost saw when we appointment. Um, and it was really cool to also be there with students. One of the students who was there was a former College Park student and is now at Bayside. So I got to talk to him about his experiences and like what he was noticing. And so, um, I think it's really cool that we have students
139as part of these visits. And, yeah, it just seems like that, you know, they got it unlocked. They're, um, they have their book fair going. And, um, so they have, you know, such a strong, um, pool of comm, you know, community and parent support. It's just really, you know, really inspiring. And one of the things that Karina Williams mentioned because she was at the meeting as well was how many dads were involved and how many dads are like really active on on the College Park campus. So, um I just love seeing that and um I I really want to see like more of that across the district. So, that's encouragement. Uh, I just want to echo that as a still active participant on the College Park Dance Club group chat. It's a really phenomenal group.
140It's a very active engaged group. There's always a call to action. Folks can come in to chaperone, barbecue, help out with events. Um, it's just really great to see that level of involvement. Not that all dads shouldn't be that involved, but it's just nice to see it organized in that way. Um, I also want to thank Lead for hosting me for the campus visit. Um, along with several of our community partners. Always great to be back. Lead soon to be Cottage Grove. Um talking about a lot of the work that they're doing on project based learning um the math pilot uh the brand new library. And I think in particular from my visit I always love going back to lead. Uh but one thing that was particularly nice to hear was the work that our
141community partners are doing. So we were there with mobilized love with CPC with homework central and CPC in particular had contributed to renovate the library at lead and helped put in a lot of new um bookshelves and others for the books as they received and I think just going back to my earlier comments I think it really I keep coming back to this point but we do have just such an active involved community um across the entire district and I think sometimes even as trustees we don't see to the level that we benefited from just the amount of community support that we receive. um from everyone around. So to the extent that we already do our annual celebration, but it's just really something I like to highlight just because it's something I think is very
142special um and something I never take for granted about being in our district, especially coming Thanksgiving. Very thankful for the work that we do here for my fellow trustees, for all of our leadership, all of our educators and staff. Um but especially our community, our parents, and our students for all that they do. And then going back to Fiesta Gardens, I know several of us were there for the beam signing in the pouring rain under a tent. um appreciate that accommodation. Um and obviously great to see the kind of walls coming up and the celebration, but I do just want to call out there has been so much change at PS Gardens this year. Um with the site swift shift, with the new construction, with changes in leadership, with the transition to becoming a K
143through school. Um it is something that I know a lot of us are mindful of and we're keeping our eye on, but I don't know if it's whether another site visit or updates. It is like I think super tennis is every year there's different schools that are going through different cycles and I feel like this is a year that we should be very much focused on what's happening in North Central. Um and so I know that's already something that's very top of mind for the district but I am curious if there are ways that we can be more engaged or just get a better sense of what's happening. Um and also prevent us hearing about things after you know something's already occurred. I think even with the transition, several of trustees were under the impression
144that it had been a very smooth transition. Then we heard about some of the pain points after that have been addressed. Um but just we don't want it to be a situation where we only hear about it when it's too late. And so especially with leadership transitions and everything else, it will be helpful to get more I guess visibility into what's happening at regards. >> Thank you. I just would like to thank the staff here and our teachers and our staff who are so instrumental in what we do here. It's just wonderful place to be. Um also my fellow um my fellow um trustees here thankful for the work that you all do. Um I am a little sad because I was not able to attend my um partner visit this um week because I
145was not feeling well. So I I don't know how to be thankful for not being able to attend that. But you know that's my highlight of sitting on the board is visiting the schools and so because I miss that. I'm a little sad about that. But um I just want to wish everyone a wonderful and happy Thanksgiving and hopefully everyone gets some rest and get to enjoy their families. With that said, I think we are at the end of our session here. We will now um meetings. We have future meetings. We have our next regular board meeting on December 11th. last one for the year 25. Exciting. Um and then our next board study session is January 8th and that one will be relating to special education. >> Is that correct? Just wait just >>
146let me double check that might be there. Um and with that we will any comments uh public comment y'all on close session items. >> No raise hands at this time. President Brooks. >> Okay. Thank you. U with that we will recess to close session. Welcome back. Um from close session, we're going to report out now um items 12A1. The board voted 50 to approve a separation agreement with one classified employee effective December 31st, 2025. Uh item 12 A2, the board voted 5 Z to approve a six-day suspension without pay for a permanent classified employee effective November 21st, 2025. Um item number 12B, the majority of the the board voted 50-0 um unanimously to approve a compromising agreement uh with parents of a student to resolve potential and threatened claims against the district in exchange for
147funding of an alternate program uh and costs for student during the 2025 2026 school year. And with that, I will take a motion to adjurnn. >> Second. >> All in favor?