001okay uh good evening everyone um today is november uh 18th it is now 5 30. i am calling our the samtel foster city school district school board meeting to order and we are immediately going to recess to close session and in closed session we have three items item 2.1 government code section 54957 public employee discipline dismiss release item 2.2 government code section 54956.9 conference with legal counsel existing litigation and item 2.3 conference with legal counsel anticipated litigation initiation of litigation pursuant to section 54956.9 subsection d subsection 4 one potential case and so with that i will recess to close session and we will see you guys at 6 30. thank you okay uh thank you everybody we are returning to our uh publicly scheduled meeting of the san francisco school board at 6 36 p.m
002we are reconvening out of closed session i want to thank everybody for your patience that's just some technical issues here at the beginning of the meeting so um reporting out of a closed session uh by a vote of four to one or one abstention that is uh one certificate employee was released from an administrative position and reassigned to a certificated position within the scope of the administrator's credential effect effective the close of the 21-22 school year so that is our report out of close session and um we are immediately going to item 3.2 which is our flags loop so if everyone would please unmic or on mute and join me in the flag salute um that'd be great ready begin i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the
003republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all okay thank you uh moving on to item 3.3 which is roll call um trustee proctor yeah uh trustee watkins trustee warren here and trustee corzo here and i am here as well all right uh approval of the tonight's agenda item 3.4 uh we are up for vote for this but i do have some changes that we'd like to make um first off item number [Music] 8.1 i'm recommending to the board that we pull this item to a date uncertain and then item 9.1 we are going to move up to the beginning of the meeting after the consent agenda so they will go before item 7.1 and we do have speakers that are being here and historically we bring the
004speakers up to the beginning of the meeting so those are the two changes that i am recommending for approval based on trustee and public requests have any questions about that or would like to make a motion motion to approve tonight's agenda with the removal of 8.1 and moving 9.1 after the consent agenda a second thank you thank you trustee walk into the motion and trustee corzo for the second uh roll call vote uh trust you proctor yes trustee watkins yes trustee warren yes and trustee corza yes and i will with this as well okay so that agenda the agenda has been changed and modified uh we are now moving on to the approval of the minutes from november 4th does anybody have any changes corrections or would like to make a motion i'll make a
005motion to improve the minutes a second thank you trustee proctor for the motion and trustee watkins for the second roll call vote trustee proctor yes trustee watkins yes trusty warren yes and trustee corza yes and i will vote yes as well okay so we are moving on um to our permanent status certificated recognition i'm not sure who's going to take the lead on that um it will be me thank you trustee chen um tonight it's my honor to congratulate 51 teachers who have completed their probationary period and earn permanent status with the san mateo foster city school district the district does not take decisions about tenure lightly and looks upon this as a long-term commitment and a partnership with each teacher gaining tenure recognizes the exceptional achievements of these teachers who began their service in
006the district in the 1920 school year when we closed schools in march due to the pandemic we extend our gratitude to our new permanent teachers who've gone above and beyond the call of duty and showed tremendous resilience to serve the student staff and school committee during these difficult times the district is very fortunate to have this incredibly talented and dedicated group working with our students we want to thank the teacher for their ongoing commitment to san mateo foster city school district at this time we'd like to recognize our teachers and support staff who chose to be publicly recognized in the following video mr perez can you please play the video sharing the video now [Music] big congratulations go out to jennifer barbara christina roberts and van doan thank you for being a great part of
007our audubon community congratulations miss reiser we are honored to work with you here at baywood congratulations on making permanent status we are so proud to have you here at bayside we're so happy for your permanent status and that you share your talents with us tonight we like to honor guinea desai and dustin brian for becoming permanent members of baldrige middle school congratulations congratulations to our staff and teachers at brewer island who have attained permanent status as certificated employees congratulations to our two certificated school nurses katherine lee and marilyn ponce de leon as they receive their permanent status thank you so much for everything that you do for our students and our families congratulations we are so fortunate to have everybody on our team um contributing to what makes our staff and our community so great
008thank you biggest congratulations to both our amazing pe teacher dave stevens and our devoted fourth grade teacher mallory landry for their third year of teaching service here in smfcsd and getting granted tenure so we can keep you teachers forever i want to congratulate three amazing staff members leslie mcmahon jessica blindell and liz greene thank you so much for being part of our team i am just thrilled to be able to congratulate all the members of the san mateo foster city school district family for their status as permanent in our district and a special shout out to our parkside tiger staff thank you for all of your hard work your dedication to montessori to your students your families and for being a part of our amazing team we are so proud of you uh thank you
009for that presentation it's fantastic to see uh everybody and uh recognize uh your amazing accomplishments um i wish that as we were getting back to pre-pandemic days that you guys were all still here uh again back in the day we'd all celebrate and i believe there's usually a picture and cake and everything else but um as we're still dealing with the pandemic the video is very fantastic and so um i would just like to congratulate everyone again i would say that um our director of human resources has always said we want superstars and we definitely have them so thank you very much okay with that we are moving on to um item five but before we go on to item five um trustee corza would you mind doing the spanish language translations announcement please sure
010all right thank you trustee corzo and usually at this time i also like to announce how many people are here i'm happy to say we have the most in-person public attendance that we've had um since we've returned to having live meetings um i wish there's a camera facing you guys we have at least nine nine ten people here in the audience uh and we have online we have uh 66. so um i really appreciate everyone being here uh it just i can sort of think about that we are hopefully coming in then too um or the light is at the end of the tunnel so uh we are moving on to item 5.1 public statements related to non-agenda topics um the san mateo foster city school board cannot act upon any matter that has not
011been included and publicly posted on the agenda except under limited circumstances as permitted by law the bird may refer matters raised in this form to staff for investigation and or action where appropriate um so because we have members in the in the audience we do go ahead and alternate so we will have members in the audience first those who are live um speak and i have two speakers on speaker cards and then um we will go on to the members online so first to speak is dr barbara adams good evening school board and superintendent ochoa my name is dr barbara adams and i reside at 8 30 for granada lane in foster city i'm here to commend you on your plans to develop a new school campus with community service at the north central neighborhood
012at the current site of the mandarin immersion camp program i'm a retired school administrator i work as assistant superintendent in west contra costa in alameda and i was also chief of schools important public schools in oregon and boston public schools my most rewarding work was being principal of audubon school and turnbull learning academy in our district 28 years ago in 1993 evelyn taylor then principal in north shore view and a community leader in the north central neighborhood and i were appointed to be co-principals of the new elementary school north central purble learning academy we weren't designed as a school with a wraparound services we quickly became a community school with the help of our teacher leaders parents and community and students samaritan house is located at the end of the block next to our school
013with john kelly who's then father of samaritan house we provided dental and medical clinics to our students as well as breakfast and after school snacks the maritime house also provided assistance to parents needing food and employment cemetery public library provided evening literacy classes in english for parents and family members and the audubon pta provided us with with educational experiences for students on minimum wednesdays parent participation was required and we learned to customize the participation for stem for families who sometimes work two to three jobs and we strive to help parents to be effective advocates for their children partners in school innovation the foundation in san francisco provided assistance to schools across the country to improve student achievement started their work with us and we became the first school they built a apartment these are some
014of the things we did we never claimed to be a stellar example of a community school but we strive to be more importantly we're part of the history of this district we became a california distinguished school facing insurmountable hurdles i commend that i commend you i recommend rather that you learn from our successes and failures because what you are about to do in the quest of exedy of equity will tax your resources and your human capital time and energy you will face criticism because you might give a school more than you do other schools the quick the key question is do you have the will and finally i commend i recommend you define equity in understandable language without the jargon so people can be aspired to be part of the vision and part of something
015greater than them equity is not equal to treatment of unequals i am excited about your vision and commend you if i can be of any service i'll be happy to be part of your work if that's if you want but thank you very much for allowing me to speak tonight and i will leave with you a copy of the turnbull story which was our attempt to address the needs of the community and teach students to be stellar learners and contributing members in their community thank you very much thank you for those comments next speaker is andrew brock i think we're ready um good evening board of trustees superintendent district members and fellow parents my name is andrew prock and i'm a resident of san mateo i'd like to open tonight's discussion by raising the issue
016of communication in all my endeavors communication is always is an always present challenge and by far the most like the most difficult challenge to master i raise the issue of communication because i see an opportunity for the district and the community to strengthen collaboration and trust by doing this hard thing communication recently input was solicited from parents and students by the district unfortunately only a small portion of the community was surveyed while most with most stakeholders excluded from participation we will see the survey results tonight we also see results from in-class survey students this survey similarly represents a very narrow slice of our community community input is important community engagement is important communication is important it is also hard as we consider the survey results presented tonight let us all reflect on how much more
017valuable insightful and meaningful the survey would have been that it represented an inclusive survey of our entire community as we move forward i ask the district to be more inclusive in gathering input there is a deep-seated desire in the community to build up the trust needed to make many of the many of these difficult decisions together thank you thank you for those comments um diego diego p sorry um we'd like to go ahead and open up public comment online again this is for non-agenda topics sure if anyone would like to speak on non-agenda items click the raise hand functionality on the bottom part of your screen and we will call you shortly in this order we have three hands raised we'll start with fernando fernando you have three minutes go ahead hello can everyone hear
018me okay perfect so hi everyone i wanted to ask questions around teacher pay and covet requirements firstly about pay why are teachers making so little as a substitute teacher if i work every single school hour available in the year i think the maximum i can make is around forty thousand dollars a year given this has no benefits there isn't work throughout the whole year this is way below the living wage for this county why are we investing so little in education whereas policemen and firemen get paid so much more even if the work was year-round the total pay would only be the minimum living wage according to mit calculator for one of the richest counties in the country is this how this county values education secondly about covid requirements are we going above and beyond
019federal and state requirements for vaccination and testing i am a fully vaccinated individual the recent email sent to teachers said that substitute teachers will be required to be tested weekly regardless of vaccination status will these tests be free and will we get compensated for the time it takes to get tested thank you for your time and i hope you can address both of these points thank you so much okay next we have randy randy go ahead good evening um first of all i'd like to thank dr adams for her comments um i appreciate the general effort of this board to bring awareness to topics like equity and inclusion and i applaud some of your major accomplishments including prioritizing a neighborhood school for north central neighborhood taking a hard look at the impact of busing on
020north central students and families and finally being willing to admit some of the district shortcomings and adequately serving it students with disabilities however there have been and continue to be some missteps in my opinion in actively ignoring the needs and contributions of our higher performing students and their families this failure to nourish the entire ecosystem of our district students is an ongoing missed opportunity that so far has resulted in a drop in the district's enrollment of more than 1500 students the more participation that we get in public education from across the entire spectrum of ability and background the better education can be for each individual student we should be striving to meet the needs of all students in our public schools at least that's why i stay committed at a deep level to public education
021i worry about this board's true commitment to meeting the needs of all students in our public schools i've heard members of the board say publicly that they don't care that higher ses folks are choosing private options i think that this is an irresponsible view and it's not being a good steward of the public interest i don't get the sense that there's a lot of respect for the parents in our community based on ways that i've observed board members communicate verbally and non-verbally throughout the past few years i understand that the pandemic has been rough for school board members across the country however you have all chosen to be leaders and you are responsible to lead in word and action i'd like to offer up a simple suggestion for how you the board can be more
022mindful about how you speak to each other how you speak to district staff to community members and to students i've listened to every meeting all year and i've heard board members refer to the aforementioned folks as you guys this may seem to be an easy going way to address a group of people but to quote joe pinsker in the atlantic from a couple years ago to many it's a symbol of exclusion a word with an originally male meaning that is frequently used to refer to people who don't consider themselves guys this insidious phrase is particularly troubling to see used by a male leader addressing a group of female peers it reinforces a power structure that only recently has been disrupted when that same phrase is applied to trans or gender non-conforming folks how might that
023feel for them or for us i'd like to suggest that not only is it important to fully walk the walk you might consider what it might mean to talk the talk thank you so much for your time you so much randy and next we have marianne marianne go ahead um hi there um first and foremost um thank you for all the work you all are doing for our school district it does not go unnoticed and our family is incredibly grateful for everything that you're doing um a month or two ago our principal at audubon shared about our then upcoming annual giving drive which had a tagline of stronger together we had a wonderful week of giving community interaction and school spirit we have such an amazing community at audubon and we've rallied this year and
024surpassed our giving goals we are really really proud the excitement of that week quickly came undone with the news that our assistant principal nelson hunter would be leaving audubon to fill a position at a at another school i know everyone says this but it's most certainly true that audubon is stronger together we are a team but that team sentiment flows beyond our school walls we still need your help district help losing our ap in and of itself is not a huge cause for alarm however losing our ap combined with the recent loss of a tosa actually two totals as of right now el teacher rsp teacher and now an ap is concerning we are also lacking one-on-one aids as many schools are for some students that really need and require extra help from a parent
025perspective it feels like audubon is last in line for services and that's a really tough tool to swallow our staff our staff is absolutely amazing and i know our staff is up for the challenge in front of them that is not my concern they can do this however just because they can wear many hats does not mean that they should our pta is also incredible and strong and doing a wonderful job building our community back up post coveted but our pta cannot foot the bill for additional staff members nor do i think ptas in general should be funding any staff i know i am all over the place with this and i apologize i'm very nervous this is my first time speaking but where does this leave us while i realize our school sits under
026600 students as of today we are by no means a small school in the past when we were in the 500 plus student range we shared an assistant principal with another school in the district so i am wondering if this idea has been taken into consideration for the remainder of this school year or if we go from having a full-time ap to none in a matter of days additionally i'd like to ask if we could get if we would get an ap back if and when we hit the 600 student threshold as i imagine that that will happen within the next year any feedback is appreciated and a big shout out to our amazing staff at audubon our family feels very very lucky to be a part of such an amazing community thank you thank
027you so much marianne have no further hands president chin great uh thank you to everyone who provided your comments in person and online uh we do appreciate everyone's comments and to take them at heart we are moving on so item 5.2 public statements related to agenda items persons will be called on at the appropriate times uh item 5.3 the foundation and community committee reports does anyone have any foundation or committee reports they would like to report out to the board i have one i attended the ed foundation meeting this week and um there were several topics discussed um including the gala that we recently had there was um they're still reconciling numbers but it was very successful um coming up on november 30th is giving tuesday so look for more information if you um have
028some extra money please consider supporting the ed foundation um and there was a couple other things that was discussed but i just wanted to give some recognition to the ed foundation i think first of all it's one of my favorite um committees to be on but really these p these group of people that are on the board they are really focused on um and aligned with the district goals and they really put some very thoughtful ideas and decision making when they're talking about where funds can be used and different grants that they're going for and really aligned with the idea of equity and um and everything that we're working for here at the school district so i just want to thank them and i hope that everybody can dig deep and contribute somebody on giving
029tuesday we had an equity task force meeting this week i know ellie i feel free to jump in with anything that i miss i know i missed the first a little bit but had an opportunity the bulk of the time was spent considering the board's desire for the equity task force to be involved in looking at board policies related to discipline um and individuals of the tests for sharing their own experiences as students educators administrators with discipline in our district um and so that will be something that they will be taking up and looking more at kind of other examples that are out there for school discipline policies and um again and kind of as we revisit our school to prison pipeline resolution and next steps there the equity task force will be involved in
030that and so they kind of made the decision that that would be an area of focus so that was where the bulk of time was spent that was a great summary so i won't add anything thank you i attended the cdac committee meeting and we had a presentation from our selpa president um karen brislow who talked about the iep process and um went through how parents can request an iep how the meeting goes and just basically walk parents and family members through the process from child find to to the various meetings that end up being held through the process great thank you everybody um i do not have anything to report uh so we are moving on to item 5.4 um smita csca and samia updates diego p would you mind bringing everybody in please
031thank you um good evening i know alicia is not feeling well so i'll go first um i don't have a lot to report i do want to send out a sincere congratulations to all the members who received permanent status in the district and expressed my gratitude for the contributions that they've made to our students over the last three years and beyond that i just want to wish everyone a happy and healthy thanksgiving and express my gratitude to everyone here for everything that you guys do in service of our students so thank you good evening board member superintendent o'chilla and community members oops daisy you can't see me for those of you who may not know me i am amanda driscoll i'm the principal at baywood elementary in san mateo on behalf of smia i want
032to share a similar a message of congratulations to all of our certificated staff members this evening who are celebrating tenure your contributions are tremendous and we are so grateful for um the way you have supported students and staff and families throughout these um first couple of years in san mateo foster city additionally we want to wish everyone a happy thanksgiving um this thanksgiving i'm thankful for many many many things but i'm especially grateful for community we build each day last week at baywood at additional schools in our district in our community and across our nation we celebrated world kindness day at baywood we created collages of kindness in our classrooms just to celebrate the power of kindness in our relationships in our classrooms in our schools our families and in our community this was one
033really pretty simple way to come together as a community and celebrate kindness and i'm grateful we can continue celebrating kindness this week as we head into thanksgiving thank you so much for the opportunity to share this evening and have a wonderful thanksgiving break uh fantastic thank you julian thank you amanda for uh your comments and we do hope uh alicia is feeling better and on her way to um oh getting healthy so uh we are now moving on to item 5.5 uh board announcements does anyone have any announcements they would like to make one shaking head and you go ahead no i just wanted to announce that yesterday was ruby bridges day and many of our schools participated but a big shout out goes to leed elementary school who had a really great showing at
034the shore view shopping center i think i believe over a hundred different um families showed up or 100 people showed up and then walked to school all together and our superintendent was was able to be there i was planning on being there but um as you can all see i'm home i'm feeling i have a little bit of a codes i'm still recovering from so have not been going out for that reason so big shout out to all of our schools that participated all of our kiddos that walked to school and really celebrated the history of ruby bridges thanks any other announcements for yourself one two shaking heads i have one more sorry okay good trusty queso um for folks that don't know um we have an amazing representative amazing um congresswoman jackie speer who
035just a couple of days ago announced that she will not be running for reelection and um i don't know if folks have ever have like really know her history but she has a really uh compelling life story in terms of all of the obstacles that she's overcome and her dedication to public service she started as a supervisor in san mateo county and has been a congress an amazing congresswoman for many years and really championed really really important issues in our community and at a national level so i just want to create some space to thank congresswoman jackie spear for her for her service and wish her like a happy a happy retirement all right thank you trustee corzo any other trustees no i'll make uh two announcements um and some of them are really more
036bored comments but i just want everyone to hear uh we um as a board if you don't know we visit um schools uh at least uh every month sometimes two or three schools and uh last week we were able to visit um brewer island audubon and uh our new school beach park elementary and so uh i just want to thank everybody for those side visits um they were amazing and i did just want to highlight beach park elementary it is is something really rewarding to actually go there and actually see students in our new school learning um and after everything that we've been through in terms of the design and you know how everything was laid out and the actual construction and even the little bit of um delay while they were at uh about
037edge for a little bit it's it's absolutely amazing and so um for anyone who didn't get to go on that side visit i would highly encourage it um also the new turf was in and so that was pretty amazing because it had just rained the night before and that turf was dry so the other announcement which leads into the superintendent report is um i just want to thank everybody so it's a little before your report but i don't mention it anyways um on monday for those who don't know we did have our big vaccination day and originally we had only 500 vaccinations but we were able to do 731 it was an amazing amazing experience and i wanted to and i know superintendent choi you're going to talk about this but i just want to
038thank you ahead of time thank you and all of the staff who helped out on that day it was absolutely amazing i walked the lines a couple of times and saw some families coming and even though uh at the last minute we had an additional 300 doses given to us so it kind of made the wait a little longer people were happy they were finally getting their shots uh and you know like governor newsom had mentioned before about the light at the end of the tunnel this was just a huge step and knowing that at 731 shots that's roughly 10 of our student population from ages 5 to 11. so i i just want to give everyone kudos on that it was very amazing and i'm um i'm super happy that we were able to
039do this uh for our school community and community so uh with that i will turn it over to super nintendo cho which i believe you are gonna talk about it so definitely have been i want us with a big thank you to san mateo county uh with the confidential is a big thank you to this office of education and the work that they did to coordinate this with us the team at the district level uh it was really a labor of of just a lot of effort and caring and engagement from secretarial support staff here that works at the district office as well as at school sites from our district administration every department being represented multiple school sites some of my principal um heroes out there working the lines and and working the event um
040our maintenance department and our facilities department was really incredible in setting up the design of the event getting everything in place before the event started our student services department and our assistant superintendent of student services dennis hills and his team susie riley everybody on this the district nursing team all of the staff members in that department who really just rose up to make sure that the event was a big success for those that didn't attend uh we were able to coordinate with burrell middle school to um mrs grotes the teacher and her students who came out and played music for us to just create an environment of joy and a relaxed environment um uh mr hills was able to coordinate having a mr softy truck on site um with which i think a fair number
041of parents you know use that to their advantage in terms of getting their kids you know calmly to sit down for the vaccination um in in addition to that a huge thank you to uh principal maria di mate and her assistant principals and their entire school for hosting us and welcoming us for those that don't know the school was doing parent-teacher conferences right up until the start of the event so there was just a lot of coordination happening and and i do want to let the community know that uh we have been contacted about hosting additional events um there is going to be a focus on putting them in uh parts where there's maybe concern that local residents don't have as much access so we'll host events as many as they'll allow us to in
042those neighborhoods so if they were to say okay we want to have an event in north central and also one in north shore view and also one uh you know in in the george hall neighborhood or in the sunny brain neighborhood then we would basically opt in to host those events i think those are several weeks out so it wouldn't be anything immediate or anything um you know prior to to december but when they uh get a little bit closer to the final decision we'll step in again so dennis that's kind of your notice that we're gonna have four parties to to put together in the weeks ahead um as many as they'll let us because for us it's just another layer of mitigation it's another layer safety i do want to let board in
043the community know we are very carefully monitoring our data this school year i can tell the community and the board that our attendance rates throughout the district are really something to be proud of we'll prepare a report for the board at a future meeting to really give an idea of the kind of successes that we've had that to me it's all part of this story of multiple layers of mitigation a real community willingness to work together and of course all of it resulting in these children being healthy and in our schools being open i do want to also call out my experience walking with the parents that lead from the shopping center in the morning i think the motorists were sort of shocked to see so many people walking at the same time it definitely
044got the message across that they should drive a little bit more slowly around schools because we were really all over the place it i could not see the front of the line because i walked in the very back with the pta uh president's spouse and he we said oh they're up there somewhere but we can't see them because we're such a big group and those streets in that part of town are really narrow i mean only two people um especially me only two people can really walk next to each other on the sidewalks but it was just a great turnout the the pta president did a great job that that morning of talking to the kids about ruby bridges and and engaging them and thinking about what we were walking for while we were doing
045it then when we write lead the pta lead had set up donuts and coffee and fruit for the parents and kids who had walked and you know as soon as the kids got on campus they were excited so it was just all in all a great event i do want to call out susie riley our coordinator for student services she went to the laurel event that morning and then swung over and made it to the lead event afterwards so many many thanks to those folks and a final thank you and congratulations to all of our recently tenured teachers it's a huge achievement in your career we are so grateful to have you in the district and we're looking forward to the next 28 years at least with each of you great thank you so much
046superintendent ochoa for that update uh we are now moving on to the proposed consent agenda all items on the consent agenda are considered by the board to be routine and will be enacted 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 recommended consent item is appropriate at this time does any board member have any item they would like to pull for discussion or comment just more of just a highlight once again of npa summary non-public agency summary for ot and behavioral support totals six
047hundred and thirty three thousand five hundred and seventy three and then there's two special education settlements within the consent agenda totaling eighty four thousand dollars okay thank you chester warren um diego p or actually does any member of the public in person here would like to request to pull an item on the consent agenda no thank you um diego p would you mind asking that um same question for those online please sure thing if any members in the online zoom audience would like to propose or mention a comment on any proposed consent agenda items please place the raise your hand functionality on the bottom right hand corner of your screen okay we have one hand raised and we'll start off with randy randy go ahead thank you um item 6.2.8 please thank you go ahead
048okay thank you we will decide it's a little loud um we're going to officially pull item 6.2.8 for comments other than that the rest of the consent agenda has is recommended for approval would anyone like to make a motion motion to approve tonight's consent agenda with the removal of 6.2.8 if you trust you walk into the motion trust your proctor for the second world cup trustee proctor yes trustee welcomes yes trustee warren yes trustee corzo yes and i will vote yes as well okay uh item the consent agenda has been approved five zero uh we are now going to pull item 6.2.8 uh superintendent ochoa did you want to talk about this and then we will call for clarifying questions public comment and um and board direction thank you president chin um as you know
049this is a an item that is presented to us by our business department we do have our assistant superintendent or excuse me our chief business official patrick gaffney with us tonight patrick i'm going to kick it over to you let you speak to this item if you want to go ahead and unmute and address the board you'll see you hear me okay thank you yes uh we're bringing forward to you tonight for your approval for the installation of co2 sensors at six sites that are referenced in your cover sheet audubon barrister fiesta gardens highlands parkside and sun ray that have existing heating air conditioning vending ventilation systems that have the capacity to receive co2 sensors that can adjust fresh air intake the district has decided it's trying to add new controls to be able to
050monitor the co2 levels in each of these classrooms this recommendation to the board that you approve of the contract with mesa energy due to the installation of co2 sensors at these sites at this time great thank you superintendent and uh patrick um any clarifying questions from the board no trust me course i know okay um any members of the in-person audience have any questions uh i'm opening up public comment on this item no okay do you go um p would you mind opening public comment on the online audience please sure i think if any member of the audience would like to make a public comment on the proposed agenda items please raise the hand functionality okay we have one hand race randy go ahead thank you so i first of all i'm happy to see
051that there it actually is possible to um install some carbon dioxide monitors at these schools and to move that um ahead of schedule especially in light of the pandemic um what i'm curious about is if there is more to any of these proposals or to this agenda item than just a spreadsheet with two columns and two lines because that's the only thing that was um attached in the uh in the agenda there was two lines each with a vendor name and each with a dollar amount is there anything more to see about this any more information for the public thank you okay thank you i'm gonna officially closing public comment on this item um patrick sorry would you mind um answering the question please this is uh the format we provide to you and is
052this is bid so this is the bid value so um we don't typically include in the board pack of the bid documents themselves um so so i think that's the technical questions being asked so this is the this is the typical format we provide to the board so you understand what the the value of the bids were so we can move forward with the recommendation of the entity who's provided the bids to you so there's a whole bid packet that's posted etc etc that has all those details in it thank you um any other clever any other questions or questions or comments or would anyone like to make motion about this item i was just thinking maybe the question was more is there an agreement we can review or anything so once the once the
053this is approval move forward the contract with this entity will do all the other typical things to do with the insurance and etc etc so i i so in terms of the types of co2 sensors i'm not sure what's being asked specifically so i'm trying to respond to the question with their ass but um so i'm not i'm not i mean i'm not sure what more detail these would be co2 sensors that can be installed with the existing systems so whatever the particular systems are whether they're honeywell or whether a particular system is those systems are designed to have co2 sensors installed in those systems so this is a bid to have the that work performed with the current systems that have the capacity to house a co2 sensor which is for lack of better
054term proprietary right that that interface with the existing systems so i i there may be more depth to it than that but i hopefully hope that's uh helps provide some information it's so so miss practice i'm not sure if i'm answering your question sufficiently i'm happy to share more detail but yeah i guess in general sometimes we review um contracts when there's something that's coming up like a an agreement for services and sometimes we don't so i didn't know when we do one or the other you want to see out to bid where we bring to the bid um bid amounts are and we have so the format for those agreements are are um there's a standard set of those agreements that have been uh generated for us by council and we use those standard
055agreements for these types of contracts again i think that my more there might be i'm happy to entertain a conversation with miss painter outside the board meeting she has more questions incarnate about the capacity and what how it functions and what the image of it is if there's a model number etcetera i'm happy to provide that detail if there's an interest in that but um trying to answer your format question for tonight's movie and patrick also item 6.2.3 on this agenda is another example of a consent agenda item indicating an approval for a uh an item that was bid so if you um review item 6.2.3 you know it's a different project but the backup documentation that is as you're saying sort of the standard type of documentation we present is a spreadsheet that indicates
056the bid submissions themselves indicating the company name and then the amount that was bid um and there is as you know patrick a great deal more backlight right there huge event of uh specifications and descriptions um typically we haven't done that and i think um perhaps our work together can talk a little bit about you know what maybe in the future we would think about including the board packet um but as of tonight this is what's sort of standard for this type of i guess you know sort of a public uh public showing of what the bids were for the project itself that's right i'm sorry there's yes no it's great thank you guys um it sounds like um we have a plan and um whether there's additional comments to be followed up um patrick
057you can um talk to public and it sounds like we will um look at our consent agenda items for a little more consistency as well so um any other comments or does anyone like to would like to make a motion to approve this agenda item thank you trustee corso for the motion do we have a second second thank you trustee proctor royal cava trustee proctor yes trustee watkins yes trustee warren yes trustee corzo yes and i will put yes as well so um item 6.28 has been approved 5-0 and so that includes the entire consent agenda we are now moving on to our modified agenda and we're going to be jumping to item 9.1 um so diego p would you mind bringing in our speakers for item 9.1 please yes good evening can everyone hear
058me excellent uh good evening president chin vice president proctor trustee watkins corso and uh warren as well as superintendent ochoa uh so good to see you all again my name is eddie flores and tonight i speak to you in my non-publicly elected role as the director of youth behavioral health programs for the peninsula healthcare district as you may be aware earlier this year peninsula healthcare district the board approved a six-month pilot program with the san mateo county office of education to roll out access to the care solas program to all k-8 schools within district boundaries for those of you in the audience that are not aware what caresolus is it is essentially an online resource with a live 24 7 concierge meant to assist individuals in finding local mental health related programs and counseling services
059care solus is web-based system works alongside on our multi-tiered systems of support as a tool for school staff and families to be able to connect with community-based mental health care resources and providers this initiative directly intersects with public with the peninsula health care district's strategic initiative around youth and mental and behavioral health and because of this positive results which we will be sharing with you tonight we definitely felt the board that along with sequoia healthcare district who also sought benefits to their school program we and the board approved a three-year extension to bring this program to san mateo foster city school district at no cost at all this means students families teachers and staff but not only them but also staff's family and their extended learning community are able to access this uh very much
060needed service once again uh at no cost to them tonight i am delighted to be here with my colleague miriam stevenson from caresolus who will walk us through some of the highlights and the utilization specific uh to your district and we will then wrap up and leave some time to field any questions or comments that the board may have at the end so miriam take it away thank you eddie it's my pleasure to join your community uh for this important presentation it seems like we're carrying on with the recurring theme to your other presentations in terms of the power of community and celebration of connection and equity of access so along those lines i'm hoping that we diego i'm not sure if you can pull up the presentation or if i should share my screen
061if you are able to share your screen uh we will try technology and we'll go for it so appreciate your patience while i'm doing this um my name is miriam stevenson i am actually a life a an educator and i'm kerasalis is now in-house educator my official title with them is executive director of community engagement and i basically get to work with communities and our district partners to be able to oh perfect thank you mr perez uh to be able to really understand their community and how we best can support them if we can go to the next slide that would be perfect thank you a little context for the board and the community around the initial pilot of carosola services across your entire san mateo county we started back in january with the partnership
062that eddie described really partnering with the county office of education as well in terms of engaging our districts that were part of this partnership and their staff members to bring awareness to what the resource is as well as train them on the platform so that they can access and utilize us to connect families and students in need to local community resources we engage in a variety of ways all the trainings that the county office holds we joined they also pulled together hr directors public information officers anyone who basically could need awareness about the resource to be able to spread that awareness to their staffs as well as their communities now we're in the fall and i'm going to switch slides again please um before we go too far into how uh kerosalis is serving your
063community in particular i wanted to just give you a little context about kerosene's as an organization i joined kerasalis after utilizing them in my community to really help bridge the gap to community-based resources and to really wrap around our school support structures as eddie described carosolus is a mental health care coordination service that's on a mission and our mission is equity of access to ensure that every person who has a mental health or substance use challenge can quickly find quality care matched to their unique needs regardless of their circumstances whether that's finances whether that's insurance whether it's identity we really look at that custom match to really shorten the gap between someone having the courage to to say they need help and connect to those service because we really know that that results in positive
064outcomes outcomes for those who need it across the country we're currently serving four thousand student four thousand institutions which serves three million students and as eddie described we also support the students family members as well as the staff and their family members we're really most proud of that middle number of the amount of time that we save on behalf of your students families and staff members really all that legwork that it takes to do a research to find what the options are available to find to wait on hold look for therapists who are accepting new clients all of that is what we take off of the plates and offer the burden of your community you can go to the next slide perfect for those of you who may not have context or if you've never
065sought help for yourself or a loved one this is some of what exists in the system in terms of trying to navigate mental health care or substance use treatment the courage to just say that you need help to acknowledge that that's real and to seek help is a huge amazing first step especially as we combat stigma every day but once you do that there's so many barriers in the way that oftentimes people give up or once they connect with a provider that might be taking their insurance that might be taking new clients they may not have that fit and they might find that therapy doesn't work for them because it wasn't a well-matched process so carouse takes on all of this and navigates it for them so all the person really needs to do is
066say i need help we present them with the options based on their criteria whether that's identity based cultural based language based insurance based we do all of that research for them present them with their options and make sure that they have support and reminders to make their appointments and follow up once they've started care to make sure that they're happy with their provider and if not we will resume that research for them to find another option next slide please we do that through three main ways um i'll start on the left the warm handoff is our signature it's really uh working with staff members who know your students and families the best uh to identify people who might be struggling and instead of giving them a resource list and hoping that they make those phone
067calls or trying to remind them to make those phone calls we they hand them to us and then we provide that individual custom support so someone calls in and we take it from there essentially they work with one person that from our organization that becomes their companion along that journey that's the middle section our care companion team is at the heart of everything we do they provide personalized and as eddie described concierge service they're available 24 7 and can help in any language we have a multilingual team and if there is a language we don't speak we have translation partnership to ensure that equity of access and to make sure that everyone receives the support that they need this care companion is that navigator who goes through all those bubbles i just showed to really
068make sure that the person is getting the help that they need additionally some people we find may not be ready to call or to really start the search process they might just be putting their foot in the water to research what's out there we have another web-based tool that people can anonymously search for resources in the area match their criteria and at any point if they want help making an appointment they can connect with that care companion team to get assistance making those appointments next slide please so essentially instead of chaos and bubbles we calm that by having that support the whole way and follow up after appointment next slide please so for san mateo foster city school district we wanted to present on how things are looking for your community in terms of utilization
069and engagement with the resource but also connection to care this slide has a lot of numbers and so i'm not going to go through each the whole thing but i do want to highlight that the left side is essentially your six-month pilot in which the healthcare districts and the county office of education were deciding uh whether they were testing to see what kind of impact could happen and then the next uh orange ones are about four uh the four and a half months that we've had for this new school year uh since that launch so i wanted to just eliminate those two since we put these slides into your board packet i'm happy to report for november which we're about halfway through um we're exceeding those numbers have changed tremendously uh the november numbers communications
070interactions people calling us for help is skyrocketing to 121 and we're midway through the month if you go to community communications saved right below that's all the effort that we're putting out to save time for your uh students and family members that's uh at 631. so there we know that finding a therapist is incredibly hard right now and it's taking additional labor to do that because there is such a shortage of resources so that's astronomically high right now additionally i'm really excited to report that the appointments into care for this month are at 16 or 16 which raises your percentile for this month to 145 with some carryover for the last um some important things i wanted to highlight just overall is you all have a tremendously high appointment rate which i credit your committed
071staff to setting expectations identifying families and really talking to them about the process so that they're more more inclined to answer when we call and stick through the communication process and get connected to care um that is a fantastic appointment overall for 2021 uh you had about your overall average now for the vote for the whole year from the beginning of the pilot to now is averaging about 57 percent which is fantastic um 83 of of that has happened in just this part of the school year um i'm looking through and making sure there's another category here i haven't really touched on and this is the anonymous searches through that tool that's web-based that's your custom for you all um that's at it's kind of low considering your population that's something that we can work
072on in terms of spreading the word and getting out there that this is an available anonymous pathway and there is a full service kind of support available to your families as well we can go to the next slide fantastic so i wanted you to see the breakdown by demographics and there has been some changes to this since we pulled this data for your board report as well some highlighted things around demographics since we've seen an increase in equity of access with the slides about 22 percent uh accessed by white or caucasian identifying families uh 40 so far this year i think that's up from what's listed at 38 percent for hispanic and latinos one area that i'd like to partner and work with your community on is we're seeing about 17 for the asian american
073community and when i looked at your demographics for your district that's one area where i feel like we're under representing folks and would really like to make sure we're getting the word out there through parent organizations communities we have everything translated so just wanting to promote and speak into the population it is possible however because we do see a higher trend now of people who decline to answer or put other so there are there is still some stigma in terms of attaching a cultural or other aspects of your identity to um things when you're looking and that might also be contributing to the discrepancy that we're seeing a couple other things i wanted to highlight in terms of uh we are seeing access for students who or families who are identifying as non-binary or gender
074non-conforming a critical access and resource support we are additionally seeking an increase seeing an increase in children or people seeking help for younger children that is something that we're seeing across the board nationwide and to be expected not surprising given the disruption to education and socialization that's happened with the pandemic on the positive side it's good that we're identifying students younger so they can get connected to help and hopefully mitigate some of the outcomes that they could see if they if their needs went unaddressed um the other area that we are seeing an uptick in is at adult health and that includes some staff members seeking treatment for themselves uh we can go to the next slide um this has changed just a little bit since we prepared these slides these are the types of
075reasons that people are identifying that they're seeking help for anxiety and depression very consistent with what we're seeing nationwide as well as trauma disruptive behavior it's not a diagnosis so much as what people are seeing in their homes or in their classrooms where students are having a hard time providing expected behaviors or responding to new constraints or routines and since we push this to you i think marital conflict also not surprising marital discord or help with your marriage or relationships has overtaken suicidal ideation which continues to remain a concern in the county but across the nation um this is representative this year there were other searches that i wanted to highlight for you previously including additional things related to alcohol marijuana stimulants and inhalant uses uh we are seeing an increase in substance use across
076our nation as well um in terms of uh needs so just important to highlight and opioid opioids has been a new search this year that hasn't appeared on your data yet uh next slide please perfect so this is a compilation of your the uh what people are telling us is their insurance coverage a couple of things that's changed since we submitted this is that medi-cal has actually become the top at the top of the list followed by some of your standard hmos kaiser blue cross this is one thing i really like to highlight to communities because often we feel like if you have insurance everything's easy and what we're seeing in kerasallis is that people actually need help navigating really complex systems whether that's the community access line for for public coverage or it's trying
077to figure out how to get a referral from kaiser and how to to navigate that system so people are really seeking that support and we again do and i want to highlight help regardless of insurance coverage lack thereof we can find options available for folks that need it um community providers just shows you who recently we're connecting with there's some others on here that are not listed important to highlight for you that care solas is i guess the best term is provider agnostic meaning we do not have a paid relationship with the providers in our database and we do verify that they are of quality care uh we incorporate feedback as well to make sure that we're maintaining high standards for the therapists that we're referring to at the same time we do not put
078one over the other or rank them we present the options to the family based on the needs that they've identified as well as that so critical aspect of soonest available appointment so that we're shortening that window between someone asking for help and someone connecting to help next slide please perfect this is just one way we get unsolicited testimonials all the time i love data and numbers but i love personal stories and in a time right now when staff are burdened and you all have so much on your plate um it's rare that i i'm proud to to present a resource to students to staff members who are fried and burned out and don't want one more thing it's nice to be able to provide them relief to do their job and support families and students
079and it's also amazing to get positive praise in such a difficult challenging time and it's a way of reminding that each one of these numbers represents people who need help and if we can make that critical connection at a critical time it can be life changing and life-saving i believe there's that's the last slide yep oh i do have some things since i have the attention of the board and you all are positioned as leaders as well as the district leadership who've been great partners in terms of implementing this uh resource in your community from your platforms from the committees that you attend the events that you are at uh the parent teacher associations that you're a part of we really encourage we know that successful ongoing support is achieved and utilization of us as
080a resource happens when we are keeping the resource fresh and connected to all the typical types of communication that the district or the schools or leaders send out it's really important to promote this directly to your staff members as well it is a benefit for them and it really does show commitment to their well-being we at caresolus create a bunch of custom messaging we work to make sure that you know we keep it seasonal anything that we can do to make sure it's at the forefront really so that people know about us before they meet us because when you need help it's the hardest time to actually figure out what to do and where to start and so it's good just to have that in the back of your mind so that if you see
081a friend or family member struggling you also can make that connection because we so often accept that when we hear it from people who we know or who we see every day so just that's my my plea to promote and keep it fresh mental health is such a challenge right now and accesses everything i believe that concludes our presentation i'm hoping that we haven't gone over time i try to make sure i'm on pace because i know you have a lengthy agenda but eddie and i are available for questions as well as your district staff if there's anything that we can provide you at kirsalis to better promote the resource we can be accessed through them great thank you fantastic presentation and you guys are an amazing resource um as as this is an agenda
082item we will go through our normal agendas uh agenda uh item process so i'm gonna open up to the board for clarifying questions if there's anything this is an informational item but uh any clarifying questions you would like to ask the speakers um please jump right in i have one i just wanted to um make sure i'm understanding correctly care solus right now is available to all school districts in san mateo county all public school districts in san mateo county absolutely your partnership is really innovative and shows a strong commitment of weaving together resources and leadership to really make sure there is equity across your county we have similar partnerships but nothing as tremendous as what you all have pulled off um so much kudos for living where you do i live in santa clara
083i'm envious i told eddie already um it's it's really awesome so you don't have to exclude anyone based on their zip code thank you any other clarifying questions i had one question i was just curious um when somebody needs help what's kind of the turnaround time to where they can be matched up with someone um so perfect um if someone needs help i encourage them to call us that's the best way we can get them connected the soonest um if a staff member does a warm handoff typically what happens there too is we will respond to that family in 15 to 20 minutes that's our average response time and that's to get the information that they're looking so we can start that research process uh the window to connecting to resources we can identify available
084resources pretty quickly in a couple days it's really about whether or not the family answers the phone or text us back that we can share those and really talk through them and so that is engagement that we really encourage so that people can get connected as soon as possible but if they call we answer immediately and if there's a warm handoff the call unless specified is within that 15 to 20 minute range i find that that is the it's um when people do that they're so like a staff member puts it in and they're like oh that really worked yes it really works um it's amazing to feel like you have that support available that's great thank you okay any other clarifying questions yeah i just have one more question i'm just wondering um when
085care solas first started working with our district um what did that process look like oh great question actually burlingame when we were presenting to them had a similar question yeah so and eddie can speak more to actually i don't think eddie was in his role yet so i came to historical context the county office uh really everything is running through them in terms of the mou and the partnership the funding is coming from the healthcare districts as well as the county office so the county office was really our hub and introduction to the districts we're covering so they sent out communication to leadership to say listen this is what we're doing you have this amazing resource that our partners are providing for you at the regular uh cohorts of collaboration we were present to train
086them on the resource and that all started back in january they kind of go through i think the collaboratives are like by location so south county mid-county county um and that was a piece of it in addition to that big large rollout in january and connecting with touchpoints we work with districts independently as well so we would follow up with the main points of contact uh we regularly check in to go through what i just did with you utilization to troubleshoot or to see if there's specific needs that the community might need like for um the day you all just celebrated the messaging attached to that and the importance of uh mental health for folks uh and equity of access any kind of thing that the district communicates we collaborate to provide that support thank
087you and just to add miriam thank you you described it really well the purpose is to really take off any heavy lifting from your staff right that's why we alluded to the extensive collateral that we have available so that it could be included i know your district is very active in social media or superintendent ochoa's um weekly newsletter etc these are all excellent ideas that again with the various languages that we have available could be ways to to promote it and to keep uh spreading the good faith of kerasolas thank you can i just say like i'd love some like some collateral some video yeah digital like i think we could like pass this out at bus stops like there are yeah there are postcard size and recently we um i helped generate like a
088just like a business card size one with more descriptions of like what mental health can look like because part of it is not just knowing about the resource it's understanding that mental health can be a variety of things for some of us it's dealing with transition or grief or loss others it's relationship issues or we want to perform better right so just kind of broadening that definition of it's not mental illness it can be mental health and there's ways that we can be more of our best self for our for us as well as our loved ones okay one more question and then i'll i'll let us move on um i saw something in one of the slides around it said like sliding scale was that i think for folks that do not have insurance
089can you talk a little bit about that sure so um if someone has no insurance and that includes public insurance so with the ex so there's two pieces to this because medi-cal coverage is really robust and strong and people can enroll in that regardless of status important to just highlight that as a resource for folks we will help them through that complex process that's important so for people who also financially either don't want to do that or are looking for a sliding scale option we will find providers that accept that so we have a robust database of i believe we're at about 140 000 providers and based on what insurance we keep it current what insurance they're accepting who their specialties are with what type of therapy they provide as well as do they provide
090sliding scale options based on income and so typically that works on here's here's what you make and then the therapist will give you a reduced rate base that matches similarly uh ratio ratio rational ratio has a similar ratio sorry losing the language in the evening uh ratio to your income thank you yeah great again thank you for the presentation we are going to again follow our normal process for agendas items i'm going to first open up to the public comment i'm opening public comments to those in person here tonight if anyone would like to make a public comment on this item no um diego key would you mind asking a question for those who are online please if anyone would like to make a public comment on the agendas item please place the raise your
091hand functionality on the bottom right hand side of your zoom screen we do not have any raised hands president chin great thank you i'm officially closing public comment on this item and bringing back for any board discussion comments again this is not a an action item so it's really information um but anyone would like to go thank you all so much for the pres for the presentation and for being here tonight and for sharing a little bit more about this program i think it's for so many reasons so important um not just i mean and especially now for our students and their families and i think you know everything from just access and quick access and and to um to just um you know long wait times if you're looking for support you know i
092just i think it's just a really great resource and hearing about kind of the quick turnaround time the lessening the barriers for um for folks i think is just really critical so i'm really appreciative for the partnership um you know at the county level and the fact that our district is really engaged in the process and you know just sharing that if there are other things we can do you know as a board to support this work that definitely hoping you know to continue and expand and appreciate um the information that you shared with us tonight an opportunity to learn more so thank you trustee thank you just to remind folks it's absolutely available k through 12 at all schools in san mateo county and again at no cost whatsoever for the next three years
093so not only this this school year but for the next three years as part of the partnership uh important two things i'd like to highlight best way to access care quickly call second thing is some people have stigma outing themselves to a school person you know someone attached to grades or their social circle and so families can access directly that is more than encouraged whatever it takes to get you connected and then to respond we will send collateral to the board and the leadership so you all can use in social media but please reach out if there's something in particular that you're looking for that maybe we haven't offered all right i just wanted to add a little bit i um i think this is like an amazing program and service that's available to our
094families and my hope is that you know you already saw an increase just from it being posted on the agenda for our board meeting and um i hope there's a much bigger increase uh soon to come um i will say like i've personally like struggled even though you know i'm a school board member even though i'm a social worker like navigating um mental health and finding someone that is a good fit and um it's all it can all be a little bit overwhelming definitely time consuming and also you know for folks that are really needing mental health support who are already you know whether it's um for folks that are needing mental health support it's it can be really discouraging to try to get help and then not be able to get it yeah um
095and so i'm just really grateful to hear about how helpful this is and how insightful uh how much like intention has gone into recognizing all of the different barriers and it just gives me lots of hope and ideas for how we can have like similar thinking around you know other other issues in our community this one is super super urgent though it's like you know if you don't have uh stable mental health it's really hard to thrive in other areas of your life and so um yeah thank you so much i'm so excited and i can't wait to tell everybody oh yes please do thank you trustee corso thank you i also wanted to thank you both for the presentation today um i think that when somebody needs help or they're in crisis it's it's
096really difficult to figure out where to go how to navigate through that and so um and also to when you are looking for help and you hear that it's a long wait or there's a lot of hoops to jump through you kind of say forget it i don't need it and i'll just move on but hearing about this program and how quick the turnaround is and how people can easily access it it's really great to hear and so i am really excited to share this with people and um thank you both for everything you're doing thank you justin i remember last year when we had the discussion of bringing kids back um to school during the pandemic you know mental health weighed very heavily into that discussion and into that deciding the decisions and i
097am very grateful that we are still able to offer mental health support that goes beyond what our school counselors can offer that goes beyond what our school psychologists can offer within the confines of those positions you know i think it's a very timely service and a very needed service especially now that you know we're trying to adjust to a new normal of life beyond the pandemic or with the pandemic i guess would be a better way to put it um becoming friends with a pandemic i guess i don't know anyway um you know i we need to adjust to that new normal and that's this is something that we can't necessarily adjust to on our own and yet the dialectic is we have this stigma that is around addressing mental health issues so i love
098the idea that you know there's very many different avenues that help can be accessed either anonymously or with a warm hand-off and it sounds like in many different languages as well so i just can't think of a more timely service and you know i want to thank you to the peninsula healthcare district for offering this to the students and their families in san mateo county and board members and their families as well yes yes thank you trustee warren uh i also would just like to um share my thanks um fantastic resources i i said earlier um great presentation um you guys are really really needed in these times especially as we have all dealt with mental health coming back from distance learning and somewhat being isolated i will definitely say just what i touched on
099earlier about our vaccination day i mean you can kind of see slowly where people started taking down their walls a little bit you know and i i think you know having services like yours is is also really helping as well so um i really appreciate it and um my last comment i guess is it's amazing what happens when you post a presentation on uh on our agenda website and you know and see how many extra hits you guys get and how many extra calls you get we're happy to come back every year and report back maybe even every month you'd probably want so um you know has live access to your data so you can request at any point but we are happy to present absolutely especially because it brings awareness and i think this
100conversation around how many people need help but also that everyone deserves help um and no matter the size of the problem you don't have to be alone with it and so and you can get professional help to deal with it sooner and faster and better so anything we can do to champion that awareness we're happy to support you all i wanted to just add one more thing um you mentioned that there's um some groups that are under utilizing potentially care solus and i wanted to just give a plug for our um aapi belonging and inclusion group uh which is the subcommittee of our sanctuary task force um so i'll make i'll make sure to like share this info with our with our sanctuary task force um but i just wanted to let you know that
101we do have that group that is working specifically with that community and advocating for um you know that community so um yeah it's so important especially with the racial violence that we've seen directed in the bay area locally but um so if there's slides that we can provide you happy to do that too so you have um if i could turn you all into champions of karasawa so people get help that would be brilliant um any resource that you need we're happy we're here to provide that thank you okay thank you guys again for coming we are going to move on to our next agenda item which is 7.1 initial presentation for the educator effectiveness block grant yes good evening board of trustees superintendent ochoa it's my pleasure to share with you for information this
102evening and for subsequent follow-up at the next december meeting our planning around funding that's being allocated to the district under the educator effectiveness block grant so mr perez if you would go ahead and just thank you so this is the um this is a pdf of the plan that's that's attached to your agendas um just to provide a little bit of clarity um it's it's difficult to look at this document in isolation from the decisions we've made around ab-86 funds and sr-3 funds so those were places where we very particularly were able to sort of emphasize programs and strategies and think there also about the the professional development and the staff capacity to deliver on those this grant very specifically however is targeting the professional development and and staff capacity uh to deliver on the
103programs that we've described uh well and i should add of course in our lcap as well so uh so just as a kind of framing to understanding what's here this is funding that's targeted at specifically our people which is you know one critical but not the only component to uh delivering programs and services that accelerate the learning of our students so there's actually uh the form that we're using here is i just would add is actually not like a state mandated form in fact the state did not provide any um specific template that we were to follow however uh we worked with our colleagues at dts and they've gone into the legislation around the educator effectiveness block grant and they've pulled out these call them 10 buckets of priorities that are described in that legislation
104and so i have devised a tool here for presenting our planning and the allocation of funding so you can see as uh and i'm just gonna ask diego uh uh if you would just scroll slowly through there that we didn't identify anything specifically in the first bucket around coaching but in the second budge the second bucket that's a little too fast mr perez thank you that that the second bucket is you know very specifically focused on standards aligned instruction uh and particularly in literacy uh you'll see a nod there to a later bucket 10 where we're talking about early childhood foundational literacy which is an important component actually that that this this plan is is um helping with because we've we've primarily in other places targeted tk to two and this is a chance to
105to go earlier um frankly so we'll we'll come to that in a minute uh but then you can see we're returning again and just basically uh adding opportunity to um to support uh training in in the tk2 portion of a foundational literacy work um and again this is this is part of you know what's emerging as our uh our transition from a balanced literacy approach to a structured literacy approach and more to come about this but in any case this is our anticipating the professional development needs diego go ahead to the to the next page um and then in the third bucket you'll see uh again this is you know you could sort of think about this as kind of more most specifically related to our coveted circumstances of students coming back and how are
106we um how are we re-engaging them and accelerating and and you know addressing items of unfinished learning so you can see a a very specific investment in uh call it sort of the tier two strategies of what does it look like both in the classroom for a teacher and in pull out certain circumstances or other strategies for providing uh so-called tier two target intervention what's the what's the work there how do we build our um our teacher and paraeducator capacity to provide those supports so i guess i should go back for a moment and say it's clear this is actually an a grant intended for all staff so it's not just for our certificate certificated staff our teachers it is meant to include the broad set of of adults who touch and and support students
107kind of in parallel uh we've we've talked about the work that we know we need to do to strengthen our k-5 programs and so an additional investment there in mathematics there's a large investment in this in ab-86 as well as an esser but this is a chance to uh to develop even more um teacher and para-educator effectiveness there uh and then you know we've been talking about and we'll talk more about our six eight math pathway strategies but again thinking about the work that we're doing and the shifts we're making and how we provide time and space and a really collaborative opportunity for those teachers to build their skill and expertise go ahead diego and then in the fourth bucket this is a set of strategies tied to social emotional learning and trauma informed really
108you know addressing the affective side of students and their readiness to learn so very importantly looking at ways in which we can build and strengthen our behavior intervention and support skills so again thinking about uh both our para educators and our teachers and a really targeted approach to um you'll note their you know uh behavior um technician certification and this kind of thing like really uh is strengthening our our uh supports there and then also around a responsive classroom this is an approach that we've done with a handful of schools this is an opportunity to think about it going uh more broadly to more schools um again this this touch is kind of the tier one work that every teacher would do and paraeducator would support in the classroom and then in the fifth bucket
109you'll see uh you know kind of most specifically when we think about equity work social justice implicit bias work i've we've just loosely described their kind of diversity equity and inclusion training that that's meant to be you know frankly a kind of a broad category that will allow us to uh pursue a number of um a number of priorities within that work uh and this actually amplifies on the funding that we allocated in ab-86 and our sr3 budget diego go ahead please and then um in the in the sixth area um this is most specifically in thinking about um special education and the approach to inclusion uh we've talked a lot about this as a district already this is an opportunity to uh to do some explicit professional learning in in the the approach to
110universal design uh for learning so again kind of tier one strategies in uh general ed and in special ed classrooms to strengthen teacher capacity to deliver on on a you know more differentiated approach uh to instruction and then in the seventh area um this is going to most specifically thinking about our english learners uh and really uh importantly really uh accelerating adding to the investments that we've made um in our lcap around the professional development for english learner strategies go ahead diego eight you'll see we did not identify a specific strategy and then you get to nine which is um you know we've had some discussions here and board about um the the move to more ethnic studies it's it's right now kind of more particularly at the high school level but there is uh
111there is emerging discussion about ethnic studies curriculum um we're going through uh social studies history adoption um over the next couple of years we want to think about how we're integrating ethnic studies or amplifying on that adoption with additional ethnic studies curriculum and so this would be a place where we could build the capacity really primarily of our middle school teachers to to deliver on on that content and then the last as i mentioned early on is this this opportunity to build more capacity preschool before tk in uh foundational literacy work and you'll see the allocation there so just go ahead diego um and then part of this is is kind of thinking about how do we this is a this is a grant that we can spend over five years but how do we
112think strategically uh you can't put all of it up front right that that just can't be delivered on um but we you'll see here an emphasis on spending the funds early in the first two to three years and then a slight tapering of that spending across time when you get to the fourth and the fifth year so let me stop there and take any questions that you may have oh one last point this as uh this is for information this is a current draft of our thinking obviously we want to take your feedback today as well as uh feedback from other stakeholders and can imagine that when we come back to you in december you know this will look somewhat different based on the feedback that we get from great um thank you for the
113presentation uh any opening up for a board member clarifying questions i won't have any clarifying questions for david i have one and it's just around the behavior behavior intervention and support when you're talking about creating training opportunities um for uh like behavioral like intervention bts um are we talking as of that as a tier one intervention are we talking about that as a tier two intervention like how generalized will behavior therapists you know registered behavior attacks um be in this plan sue do you mind if i can refer to you on on kind of the details of what you're thinking about with this piece i think the plan is to go ahead and have the behavior support team support both general education as well as special education students so you know addressing behavior supporting students
114in class to really help them remain you know in the least restrictive environment and you know supporting their behavior so that you know they may not need to have an iep for services so it's really a function of both general education and special education wonderful that's great to hear thank you for the clarification any other clarifying questions from the board got a question about the um uh number 10 the early childhood early childhood foundational literacy um just wondering about i guess the the ec is for could you just talk a little bit more about that piece yeah i mean this this again is is for further development um certainly with with kerry hazelton and and the team the thinking is that we're looking at programs for example that can support student literacy development at home
115as well as in the classroom that could begin you know well before students actually arrive in the district as tk or kindergarten students and so we want to work with our ece team to think about you know what is the what is the professional learning and and training that they can benefit from um particularly we want to make sure that it's aligned to how we're thinking about the really explicit systematic sequential instruction that we're uh we're looking to implement obviously you know early childhood education it's a much stronger emphasis on phonemic awareness uh or you know we're not the goal isn't to make babies read right off the bat but actually just to begin those those early literacy skills that we know um develop in uh obviously before students arrive to us so this is
116part of the broader sort of model of thinking about p to three um literacy um instruction so is that no uh yes director of course is that okay thank you okay any other board member clarifying questions no okay thank you i am going to open up uh for public comment and opening up for those in the audience uh first now thank you for shaking your heads um diego p would you mind opening up um public comment for those who are online please sure thing if anyone in the audience on the zoom call would like to make a public comment please press the raise your hand functionality on the bottom section of your zoom call okay presidential we have no raised hands okay thank you very much um i am gonna officially close public comment on
117this item and open it up for board uh final board um comments and or um direction does anyone like to start i'm sorry thank you david for sharing um i i guess my comment i guess would be thematic from what i've been saying which is just as we're thinking about our strategic plan um i'm thinking just about alignment and how this how this aligns with a plan that we haven't kind of set forward and so um i guess maybe there's a follow-up question around kind of like what would be the process for revising so for example i'm like looking at the early childhood piece which i think is you know um absolutely something we should be investing in out of the grand out of the grand total it's a very small part of this should
118that be something that bubbles up in the strategic plan is something that people you know that it becomes a bigger priority would there be space and this is just i mean i'm just thinking out loud i'm not suggesting that we do this right but i'm just kind of thinking about should that um yeah should that bubble up what would be the process for making adjustments is that something that can happen um you know i want to make sure that we're again like really focused on rowing in the same direction and that everything that we're doing is kind of honed in on um that's why we're engaging in a strategic planning process and so i know that there's timing around when this has to be completed that doesn't affect in the same way that our equity
119you know evaluation doesn't like these pieces don't always fit as neatly as we would like them to so that was a comment and a question yes yes you know the state actually is really explicit they're actually you know expecting uh that they're they're forcing you know that we need to meet a deadline of approving sort of a tentative plan which is hopefully what uh the board can do in december but act absolutely expecting that there will be adjustments and whatnot as as folks go through in our case the strategic planning process and all districts go through their spring lcap process so they it's it's explicit in all their communications that they're you know staked some stake put a stake in the ground now and we understand that you're going to need to move that stake
120based on on subsequent planning that you do so and from a process point of view i think you know we would do that and and uh either through the lcap process at the same time as the lcap process or you know separately we would just come back to you and say hey we're actually thinking about this differently and want to move some pieces around okay that's great and yeah i think i would appreciate having this you know brought back i think this along with you know other things that we have been hearing about it and we'll continue to hear about um post kind of strategic plan and and ensuring that you know that there's um there is that alignment and adjustments uh should they be needed um and to the extent that there are things
121already coming up in the strategic planning process are there ways that that can be integrated maybe that's already happening um but you know just again thinking about the alignment piece of things just i think is is really important so thank you any other final board member comments no okay great um i'll just oh go ahead sorry i was just really excited to see um to see this plan and um yeah i would say i think it looks really good i'm really glad that we're you know really targeting literacy i think that's a big uh need that we have um you know we we talked recently at um at our board and community workshop about the how interconnected like like the the the older our kiddos get and the higher um you know the higher grade
122levels like mathematics like it's all language based and so that's when you see these gaps um really increase so um i'm excited that we're digging into the to the literacy as well as math um yeah i'm excited about all the training um can't wait to see to see how it all goes thank you oh it doesn't matter to me um i guess mike what i would like to just bring in too is um it's great to see so much uh going on with the idea of early childhood education um i think a lot of people in the community especially don't even realize that we have a preschool program um it's kind of one of the best kept secrets in all of san mateo as evidenced by the fact of our enrollment numbers and honestly we've
123got such a great program out there it's sad to me that we don't have waiting lists beyond montessori's and language immersion programs um not to mention when we talk about brain development you know the most brain development in a person's life is from birth to five um and you know when we get students coming in to our district at five maybe four and a half maybe three if they're in the preschool we're getting him at the tail end of that really really really important neural development and i see from what i'm reading about all this extra training that we want to put into early childhood education with the foundational literacy looking at even math in early childhood education it's exciting to me it's exciting to see that you know this is such a huge statement
124that we're making as a district to say that we really want to invest in all the students and all the children of san mateo um in foster city i also appreciate the idea that we are looking at um offering behavior certificate behavior technician certification and not just offering that to special education classes but also to students in all classes um in all whether your general ed or your special education because um especially post pandemic i think any behavioral support that can be offered in a classroom setting is is amazing and is very much welcome um not to mention having an extra adult in the classroom i'm sure you know just to not help help students navigate that behavioral piece um so that they would have you know their education accessible to them um is going
125to be phenomenal and just such a great opportunity for our students so i would love to see this plan as it's fleshed out and presented for a vote it is being presented for a vote in december correct so i can't wait to see you know how this finishes out and how this looks at that time and one more thing uh real quick um you know i know that this doesn't include kind of all parts of of this plan but one of the things um i can't believe i didn't say before is just um i'm really interested to know kind of what the desired outcomes are for each of these investments and then what kind of the monitoring and accountability pieces right so how do we actually know whether or not this is working and towards
126the goal what are specific goals for each of these and then how are we monitoring and tracking that and then you know because while this is a five-year plan um you know there might be things that we make a decision to pivot because they're not yielding the outcomes that we want or there might be things that we want to continue way past that so i'm interested in seeing that piece which which um yeah interested in seeing that piece moving forward so thank you okay um thank you to the board for providing those comments um i will provide my final comments um i just again thank you for the presentation um i'm i would agree with um without what everybody else said in terms of their comments on the um on the grant and uh well
127my overall arching comment is that it's interesting to hear and what maybe the public may not see is that that this is just specifically for the educator effectiveness the block grant but in reality we have the lcap ab-86 you know the asteroid there's just so many different funds where the money comes in and this is just one tiny piece of the puzzle and so when we look at everything in terms of where all the money is going and how we evaluate effectiveness um it's this is just one piece of the puzzle and i just want to bring that up to everyone and i i'm i'm really happy we're going forward with this and uh don't have any major comments on on how it was presented or where the money is going i just um it's
128it's it's great to have this opportunity and um can't wait to vote on it in december so um thank you for that so um all right so that ends um item 7.1 we are going to be moving on to item 7.2 which is a discussion about uh the math pathways but before we actually get to that um it has been requested the five minute uh bio break so we're going to quickly take a break right now and then we'll come back right back and do a um and talk about that so going to bring oh thank you all right thank you everyone for that short break we are going to bring um our meeting back into session and uh go to item 7.2 which is the review and discussion of seventh eighth grade math pathways
129um superintendent choir or david who's david thank you thank you again i'll i'll step in um so thank you for this is an opportunity again for information purposes to bring a staff proposal to the board regarding the middle school math pathways so mr perez if you would go ahead and share your screen of again this is the deck that's attached in the agenda all right go right ahead diego are you able to see the screen we can yes go ahead to the second slide thank you all right so um just to provide some context we are beginning this conversation with the board action where uh in april 2022 where the board directed the staff to do two things one was to create a single heterogeneous math 6 course for all to address the challenges identified
130there and then also to plan going forward 7th and 8th grade math pathways to of course improve overall math performance to increase algebra enrollment and to improve the diversity of that algebra enrollment go ahead so again tonight we are specifically bringing to you the staff proposal regarding those 7th and 8th grade math pathways go ahead diego thank you and the goals of this proposal or the the pathway work that's presented in the proposal is that um by 2023-24 to meet a number of goals uh these are aligned with uh what's currently in our elk cap and you can see the expected increase of eighth graders enrolled in algebra the expected increase in the percentage of latinx students enrolled in algebra and expectations for all eighth graders in their grades and expectations for our latinx students
131in meeting and exceeding uh math performance on our math casp go ahead so what we're bringing to you tonight um is a proposal that's been informed by um a variety of stakeholder engagements you can see the activities and engaging families and students there and then also of course we've engaged with our our staff our teachers and site leaders in the development of this proposal so the proposal and summary is for the implementation of three pathways in our middle schools the first is a pathway that leads to algebra actually in high school should note that it is the recommended pathway in our state common core math standards which is math 6 math 7 and math 8 in each of those years and then two pathways for uh reaching algebra in eighth grade the first is to
132take math six and math seven in sixth and seventh grade and then in eighth grade that a student would take two periods of math and to be clear that the math eight would be two periods of math in the fall so my schedule might say first period math eight second period math eight third period english language arts that kind of thing and then in the spring my schedule would say algebra one first period algebra one second period so to be clear we're not talking about math eight and algebra algebra being taken simultaneously but actually the completion of math 8 100 and approximately 180 hours in the first half of the year and then 180 hours of algebra 1 completed in the second half of the year and then the second pathway would be an opportunity
133for those students who would like to to demonstrate a proficiency in math 7 actually before seventh grade so sometime in the area between february and um august of uh sixth grade going into seventh that a student would have an opportunity to demonstrate proficiency in math seven and thereby go into seventh grade and take math eight and then in eighth grade to take algebra and we'll go into more detail about these in a minute go ahead diego so just to say the first pathway to algebra in high school noted that it is common core aligned that each each of our high schools in our cemetery union high school district can offer a pathway to advanced placement and advanced math course taking by taking math eight in eighth grade so there's still the opportunity to do advanced
134work and certainly with compression in high school even expanded opportunities diego go ahead and then this is the so-called two-period uh pathway to algebra in eighth grade note that this is without compression in other words students are taking the full number of hours and time expected to complete each of the courses but in fact they're doing it by taking two math courses or two periods of math in their eighth grade year of course this elite this leads to uh expanded ap and advanced course taking in high school go ahead go ahead diego so i want to take from we mentioned uh we we mentioned in the the engagement piece that we did some surveying around this and it's important that we share with you and the public of course what was the what was the
135response to uh floating this idea to our our stakeholders and you can see their rather extensive support from students and in fact if every student who said they would like this option took this option we would reach our percentage goals that we outlined in the earlier slide and you can see the family and the teachers support there and then looking at again the one period pathway option again there's this idea of demonstrating proficiency which we'll get to in a minute again this also you know enables students to take advanced courses in high school and when we asked oh excuse me go ahead diego and when we're talking about the ways in which we can demonstrate math 7 proficiency before seventh grade um we're outlining um several different options uh for feedback and you know for
136discussion one is to offer an opportunity for students who feel that they're ready to simply take an end of uh course math seven um test and if they are able to pass it then they could move on into math eight and seventh grade uh another option and again these these can be simultaneous options right the key here is thinking about multiple ways that this could be and thereby increasing the number of students who have access one is through independent studies with optional online support another is the possibility of online live class outside of school and the third or fourth rather would be the opportunity to do in-person summer school and we actually surveyed people our students and families and teachers around both overall support for this pathway which you can see in the top band
137and then the uh you know of those who supported this pathway the fault the percentages below that thought a specific approach would work well for them and just to be clear on the survey you could pick more than one approach and you can see the distribution there of what people prefer so the key as i mentioned of this is that if we're going to increase the number of students taking algebra in eighth grade and we're going to increase the diversity of that we're going to have to have a mix of strategies that enable the greatest number of students as possible with you know certainly the guidance of their families and the support and guidance of their teachers and counselors in middle school to choose a path and an approach that makes sense to them so
138we you know we could think of this as a mix of pathways which will accomplish the goals that were outlined in an earlier slide one thing that uh has come up a lot that questions when we've engaged folks is that well why accelerate you know why why kind of offer an opportunity to skip over math seven why not do it in math 8 and so i just want to take a couple minutes to that this is a very specific decision that we're recommending because of what content is covered in these various classes so if you look at in and we don't have to go into all the details but basically you can notice what uh you know math 8 is sort of frankly it's sort of white in color algebra is rows in color and
139high school math meaning algebra 2 and beyond these are the standards that historically before common core were covered at those grade levels if you go to the next slide just kind of following the colors you can see how the standards have shifted down and so the key here is that math 8 now carries the weight of much of what was used to be taught in algebra and frankly algebra ii so the thought of skipping over a uh math 8 or accelera accelerating at that point it's the recommendation of the staff is is not wise because they're too much opportunity for key algebra skills and understanding to be skipped over and to create you know deficits in our students understanding so math 7 is in content uh kind of going deeper around the set of standards
140that are addressed in math six so we're recommending that that be the point of acceleration that a student could demonstrate after going through our math six class so and then just give you a sense of uh you know what's coming next uh pending board approval we know that we we need to finalize the timeline and the actual steps for those options for accelerating we get a lot of questions from families about that and our engagements and we've you know we've tried to hold them off to say look we need to make sure we have board approval of this and then we'll very quickly come back to you um we need to backward map from master scheduling deadlines and and set some dates and and confirm some staffing around that so that's a big next step
141uh but actually can't be done you know in advance of of board approval go ahead diego that is the last slide that is okay so given that i turn it back to you for any questions yeah great thank you for the presentation um i'm going to open up to clarifying questions on the board trustee warren yeah so i have heard through multiple channels that there's quite a few students um on the higher end of the academic achievement spectrum that are not feeling challenged in math six and you know i i just want to make sure and get a little bit more of a sense of understanding as to how seriously the staff is taking into account our own students chat there's concerns about feeling challenged and then what steps can be taken or are being
142taken to address the need for challenge and rigor for all of our students including those that are high achieving so just just to say this is our proposal tonight about the you know the math pathways beyond math six so i just want to emphasize that that's what why you didn't see any content about math six that but certainly in answer to your question um yes we have we have gotten heard that feedback certainly in the various engagements and and are are taking it very seriously uh just to say when we surveyed our math six students we found um about 150 students said they didn't feel like they were being challenged enough in their math 6 class that represented about 14 of our students whereas we had 65 70 of students saying well challenged a percentage
143saying it's too hard and a percentage saying i'm not really sure so that 150 students though even though you know it's 14 15 percent is is a large number and so uh we are working with our our math leads and uh that information is being shared with our teachers and believe me there's a lot of discussion about what are the steps that we can take to address those concerns this is a team that is about continuous learning and so is taking the feedback and thinking what are the ways in which we not only can uh can provide more differentiated opportunities but also communicate with students and with families how we're doing that and and the scope of that work um so so i think we're seeing it one as a as a real challenge and
144then also as a communication challenge how are we being clear about the ways in which students have opportunities to to be challenged yeah i and just to tie it back to math pathways for seventh and eighth grade i mean i see math six at this point from what i'm hearing and what i'm seeing in your slides is math six is kind of the gateway math six is the basis it's the great and i hate to say it like this but the great equalizer in terms of we've got all these students coming from various elementary schools with various different math experiences and now they're being funneled into one of our four middle schools where you know there's going to be more you know like across the board sameness um relative and i i apologize my word
145choice may not be quite correct right now but um you know we're trying to figure out and sort through where kids are coming from and their levels of ability there and then trying to create a foundation to the seventh go into eighth go on to algebra go on to ap classes eventually in high school um so yeah i see how we structure our math six and how much rigor and challenge we put into math six ultimately leads into those next steps on the pathway so that's why i just wanna make sure that we're talking about that as well great was that um sorry trust your wife so the clarifying question is a clarifying question yeah yeah i do want to maybe ask what i heard is basically additional challenges what i want is to hear
146like yeah like how are we going to do some additional challenge and how are we going to make this challenge start in sixth grade seventh grade oh do you want me to follow up with more t oh okay apologies i thought you were just reframing what your question was so the work that um that the team is looking at for example um is uh you know certainly the opportunity let's let's let me try to be specific so for example um there are um opportunities in class for students to engage in uh you know sort of deeper challenge problems right that that you know challenge students who are ready to engage uh in you know sort of extended learning what we're hearing for example is there isn't enough time i don't get to actually engage with
147my teacher around those or otherwise it doesn't feel like there's there's time and opportunity to actually delve into that they're given to students but then it's kind of up to the student to kind of manage that assignment and take it on without reflect so you know so some of the discussion um with our our teachers is well how do we come back and think about the those differentiated opportunities in class to support students with time and you know basically attention around those challenge problems so that's a that's what we would call that's an example of where we want to think about how we're using time and using it in a small group fashion that differentiates forward uh for different students so so that's something that's being looked at um the other question has to do
148with uh the content itself what are the ways that we can we can go deeper and provide opportunities for students with each other to push to push the conversation and to provide other kinds of challenge problems so one is an instructional strategy the other would be what are we thinking about from a content point of view and actually fortunately um both math nation and desmos which are platforms that are used that we're using for illustrative math have resources that allow us to do that and again remember this is the first year that our teachers have used this content in person and so you know it's it's we expect you know we expect teachers to get more comfortable and to get uh sort of uh stronger at using the resources and it's a it's a learning
149and a growing process for them as well great thank you any other board clarifying questions i have a question um i appreciate the goals of the proposal that you have on i don't know 5'4 i was just curious how will we kind of like track our progress on these goals um throughout the years especially now we're in math 6 and so just kind of finding out um how we know that we'll meet those targets and then my second question was and one of the goals is 45 of 8th graders enrolled in algebra and i was kind of thinking maybe the goal should be more about success in algebra i mean you can get to algebra but maybe if you're not ready or um it's it may not be the best experience if someone's not ready
150so i'm just curious if we're going to add any goals about maybe success and i see there's one about c or better in math so maybe that's part of it yes and and let me just add that this is also you know the whole reference there see the 20 21 22 el cap because you know there's there's 10 other goals that relate to middle school math learning that are captured there that just for the sake of today's tonight's presentation so definitely hear that feedback i mean actual enrollment we think is important to track but certainly success i mean because this you know again this isn't about the course taking specifically it's about the math learning and to your point how are we paying attention and our goals to the actual math learning the enrollment is
151sort of sets up the opportunity for the learning and then what's what's in fact the result result of the learning so um so yes tracking grades um across the the three grade level that's in the lcap um looking at uh the the specific groups and how specific groups within uh those goals are doing so breaking you know not just having overall goals but also breaking it down by key student groups is another thing that's called out here but it's also in the ocap so so i hear that feedback and and can you know certainly can come back and pull some of those additional performance goals or success goals out for you thank you any other board member clarifying questions no okay um i have just a couple um just to reiterate um the goals that
152are on slide four here are directly from our 21-22 lcap right so when we say 45 percent it's it's it's listed there under lcap and i just want to reiterate that um also the way i read it is you know it's sort of like at least it's not like just 45 but um that's i'm just making that statement um in terms of you know we're currently at you know when we went through the the math discussion in earlier this spring we were told that about 22 percent of our sixth graders or eighth graders made it to uh algebra and so it's a big goal for us to to essentially double it but i've seen data early data of us possibly going beyond that based off of the first trimester data are we going to see
153that at some point or is that maybe something we can add for the next math presentation in december when we actually vote because from my understanding the data that um that was shown and of course it was just right after the first trimester ended shows that because we went to um the homogeneous sixth grade math we could possibly exceed this 45 to great degree and so i i'm just wondering that's that's a direct question can we can we see it yeah yeah yeah we're thinking for you for sure okay yeah fantastic and then the other question i had is there were some questions about the two periods in math um and so this was something new for us to have actually two periods in eighth grade from math but math is not the only subject
154that we have um two periods in is that is that correct i mean yes at some of our schools particularly in sixth grade you'll see uh students who would take two periods of english language arts by eighth grade we have no schools where students are taking double periods of english language arts so so just to say that that that is another reason why it kind of located in the 8th grade years because there's there's some greater flexibility in that year so doing two periods in one subject is not new for our district basically it's something that we have done it in with other subjects english languages okay fantastic thank you um i think sorry and then when it comes to the survey i just want to ask so there were two questions in this survey
155one specifically was related to um the first um the double period pathway and it says 48 of um the students supported this pathway and and again you said that if all 400 took this then we would definitely reach our goal um and then there was a second question and i just wanted to be clear on this so because you know when i first saw this presentation i it just seemed like the the two survey questions were were mixed but they're two separate survey questions the segment survey question was specifically regarding um the one period in algebra and essentially demonstrating proficiency to get in and you could you could have said i would i will i like both of these options because they so yes it wasn't an either or choice it wasn't an easy either
156or okay great that helps that a lot because when i look at the survey data you know the numbers don't actually sort of add up the first so i'm thank you for that clarification um and i think that's all i have in terms of clarifying questions do you guys have anyone else no okay okay thank you so we are going to uh move on to public comment uh we're first going to open up to those who are here in the audience they see some smiles um i have uh four sheets of public comments um but before we do that i'm also going to ask for those who are online if you wouldn't mind raising your hands if you want to provide comments as well we wanted to make sure that we have ample time for
157everybody and i just want to get a sense of how many people are going to want to provide the public comment on this item so if you wouldn't mind raising your hands i see three people online so far so we're gonna total seven four five anywhere else okay that's that's five people online four people in person okay let's go with our first person on um which is nico nico and followed by andrew so nico and wyan taking the podium please thank you hello thank you so much for the opportunity to speak here tonight my name is nico javihari and i'm a sixth grader at bayside stem i'm here to speak about my experience in the heterogeneous math program many of us are not learning in any way shape or form throughout the past few months
158we've been received we've been reviewing ratios fractions decimals and money a significant portion of the class has already learned this myself included many of us learn math far beyond the level at which we are learning this lack of learning has consequences already visible i've always loved math if this love is slowly evaporating within this classroom as is that of many other students it's not only this but students that are not fond of math are being impacted under this curriculum as well they can simply sit back and perform menial tasks without any thought required no student in these classes is provided with the attention that they deserve simply because the teachers are swamped with over with over 25 kids of varying skill levels as a result let's just take on the mentorship role we do this
159because we are pressured by teachers to teach those around us just a few weeks ago the class was given a lecture on the value of our peers we were told that not everyone was lucky enough to have learned fractions in the years prior and that those who had should focus their time on trying to bring the class up to see this is fundamentally flawed because i want to be helpful and cooperative i'm a student before all else is school to learn not to teach others those that understand the problem at hand are often paired with those who do not this prompts those who do not to demean themselves and compare themselves to those to do not only does this hurt the struggling child but it hurts the other as well villainizing them yet now the
160child has done anything wrong they simply forced to compare themselves in a heterogeneous classroom a further issue is that advanced students are effectively being stifled even within the already stifling curriculum i as well as many of my friends and classmates have been explicitly told not to raise our hands in order to give others the opportunity to learn this eliminates any sort of opportunity that i may have had to grow you've said that the system is equitable but equity is providing everyone with what they need to with everybody's providing everyone with what they need to succeed heterogeneous math is not equitable thank you okay thank you mikko next speaker is andrew followed by uh hello again board of trustees uh superintendent ochoa district leaders and fellow parents my name is andrew frock i'm president of san
161mateo on my 20 years of business experience in professional mathematics 15 years of experience as an education professional and 10 years of experience as an education volunteer i'd like to thank superintendent ochoa and the district uh for the setting up the online town hall last night um it was a fantastic event um with honestly and engaging discussions um i'd like to applaud the district for laying out uh one measure of success which is measurable um 53 percent of eighth grade latinx students meeting or exceeding standards on the math cast that would be fantastic if you could achieve it second i want to thank mr chandler last night for clearly and directly differentiating what's happening in our school district and failures that other high-profile districts are experiencing san mateo foster city is building a path to
162eighth grade algebra for everyone now comes the hard part it's one thing to present a goal it's another thing to succeed a recent harvard survey um our recent harvard study of curricular change lays out the risks in stark terms change is hard success is hard succeeding under change is even harder and success under change is hardest for marginalized communities with these risks laid out the fundamental problem presents plan is that it favors acceleration for well-resourced students even more than the prepaid it does this by emphasizing independent studies online classes and summer school speaking more directly the changes we are making in the name of equity are on a path to backfire catastrophically when it comes to equity intent counts for little it is the impact that matters we must build honest and objective measures of
163success we have not yet built honest objective measures of success with so much at stake we there's a temptation to redefine success redefining success is the surest path to kind of to the kind of failure that perpetuates inequity for years or even decades or even decades i urge the board to insist on well-established measures of success based on mature standards doing otherwise replace all students at significant risk of adverse next step is um jonathan and then parker is up after that very interesting um thank you board members thank you superintendent otoa basically um i have one child engaged so i'm yet another gate parent with a math question i have two others that go to different schools um my major thing that i think you guys need to understand is that the kids who are
164in the gate program are definitely academic athletes they might have had some natural talent to get into the program but in order to stay in the program they have to put in hours and hours of extra work above and beyond most students so as a consequence during the pandemic when a lot of students including some children of my own regressed a little bit the gay kids kept moving forward at full speed i think it's a testament to the college park gate program that not only did they not regress they came out better than ever i would argue that that's part of the problem we're seeing here is that they're hitting sixth grade and they're probably one to maybe two levels above their peers and this this discrepancy is causing more collisions in the classroom than
165usual so um in terms of actual solutions i'd like to see the gate kids stay together as much as possible or any other high achieving math kids perhaps in a i mean we're looking at sixth grade i understand that your pro your programs are for the future but from a from a content perspective this year they're having a challenge so i would prefer that if they were at least in the same classroom where they got some time off like if their classroom was moved to the end then we could supplement some of their learning but i'm not as worried about the future years as i am about this year and maintaining the progress that they've already made thank you very much for your time great thank you for that comment next step is parker and
166then followed by breathe i'm a sixth grade um gates i'm a sixth grade student from bayside i'm here to talk about my two priorities one getting into algebra and two getting to learn for the next two years ever since first grade i've had a love for math and in first grade um i was getting ahead and my teacher missed andrews allowed me to do um half of my work in normal class and the other half of my work as advanced on this program called reflex math um yeah in fourth grade i got into gait i learned um harder math and um i was able to enjoy math further i did um fun activities which allowed me to enjoy it and engage in um fifth grade after distance learning i was able to um come back
167in person and our class um started out started doing algebra um but now in sixth grade it's not funny anymore it's and so i'm relearning things from third and fourth grade which most of the people in my in most of my um fellow friends are two um it's not our teacher's fault but um and they're it's not a teacher's fault and they're trying to um balance a classroom that's like totally unbalanced um people are either really good and ahead and some people are just really far behind and don't understand anything um i wanted to know that i am okay with working in a heterogeneous um classroom i would like if there were accommodations for all of us we are okay with helping others and we love to but we want to learn as well thank
168you for your time great thank you and next up is brayden uh do i need to put on this one can you guys hear me okay hi i am brayden mcmillan i've always had a love for math just like parker and nico and most of my fellow gay kids ever since i started doing extra math and first in kindergarten first grade in kindergarten i didn't have extra math classes like kumon or mathnasium i rather would just have my older sister teach me some math that she was learning or she that she had learned a year before now this helped but it wasn't really much extra because i wasn't really learning she was basically giving me the answers so when i was able to apply for gait i absolutely tried i tried my hardest and i
169managed to get in and it was very fun for the two years that i was in date i learned a lot but then they stopped having harder math basically which meant that we were basically learning what we had already learned which is killing my love for math i used to love it i and i still do but now i just feel bored i feel like it's time wasted and the challenges that we get aren't fulfilling because then we don't get an answer and we don't get to go over it even if we had a challenge problem and we got the answer incorrect and they told us that which they do not we wouldn't know how we got incorrect or even the right strategy to do it i just want a method that teaches all kids
170equally and doesn't favor helping have the better kids basically or people who know more teach the ones who don't know less thanks that's all great thank you for those comments any other last-minute comments from those members in the public uh in in the audience thank you for providing your comments um we're going to segue to those people who are online um i just want to thank everyone who's provided comments here but especially the students uh it is incredible to hear you guys speak and you know public speaking is not something that you that is easy for everyone so i just want to make that special notes i think you're more than welcome to go yes you do not have to stay uh if you want to you can go home turn it back on on
171on the on your screen so thank you again for for attending and we'll ship to online now thank you okay you're more than welcome to stay as long as you want um okay uh diego p would you mind um bringing in the first um online uh speaker please will do okay we do have seven a hands raised first up we'll have kalagi and please correct me if i am wrong on pronouncing your name thank you hello i am anshul dandiker a sixth grade student at bayside as many of my peers and my friends have addressed the base of the math that we're learning in sixth grade for many of us is not fulfilling it it's boring and the challenge that they do provide it's not adequately addressed for uh on the spectrum of on the
172side of boring um we don't learn anything in math the things that we we're the curriculum that's weird that's being taught we've already learned or within a couple of days we've accomplished what they need to do however it's being dragged on for such a long period of time and they do provide challenge but the challenge they provide is not being adequately addressed they're not going over the problems in class and they're not telling us the answers or the strategies or methods in any way which uh which kind of takes away from the whole experience of a challenge problem as the whole point of it is to grow off of it but if you don't if you only attempt it and don't get the right answer or don't get any help afterward it's kind of pointless
173another thing is others comparing themselves to those who have that exposure to math uh for example i've had many a classmate who sat next to me and have compared their own exposure of math to my exposure of math and started feeling bad about themselves because they hadn't learned in advance what i have and i was lucky enough to do it but not all of these people are and that makes them feel bad which it really shouldn't and because they're feeling bad it makes me feel bad that i'm the cause of this another thing i would like to address is the pathways that are provided they're not exactly equitable as they all they want you to sacrifice some sacrifice either time or your elective on the side of time uh you either have to sacrifice part
174of your summer which not which not everyone can do because what if you're like what if you have uh things to do what if you you can't what if you can't attend what if you have other um commitments then you won't be able to attend summer school you may not be able to attend the online classes and you may not even have the resources to do your own independent studies um and i feel like that it's not fair to ask them to ask people to if you want to do um you if you want to do algebra in eighth grade to ask them to either sacrifice an elective as the double period of math would or sacrifice time outside of school trying to learn seventh grade math when really it could have been done in
175sixth and seventh grade thank you thank you very much up next we'll have shilajit go ahead thank you uh this is saying um hi superintendent trustees board members i have a just want to say congratulations and thank you to the kids to recognize that they the the poor children and i could see they were still in their school uniforms uh was sitting there for almost three hours thank you to our beautiful kids for for uh speaking for themselves and speaking for their friends raising their voices and asking for what they deserve thank you again you are our voice and our our future and and thank you for speaking today um i have a um a comment and a request for call of action mr chambliss i heard that that 14 number of students that are
176not challenged um i think that this board launched an experiment in april 2021 by the way there was a typo on the slide it's 21 not 22. um i think um eight months down the road we have um some half-baked results from that experiment but there are some results um regardless is not a trivial number 150 kids that have been subjected to this experiment is not a trivial number i would request this board to please consider that these are 150 students who have been operating at sub optimal levels unchallenged with their love for math unrequited and i would request this board to please consider ways and means of providing them that challenge an ability to restore their intellectual curiosity and ability to restore their love for math and their love for learning over the next
177seven months of the school year um please recognize that these kids are just as much at risk as your lowest um quartile of students um that that our child that are um struggling um so so just as you look at those children and i'm not saying that they're not a priority um honestly um you know this your your educators you've seen statistics it's not the kids that are in your median in the middle of your bell curve it's always at the kids that are on the two ends of your bell curve that are your challenge um so my request to please please look at those kids um and then finally a question for mr chambliss um thank you for presenting those three pathways uh in math we greatly appreciate that there are um a variety
178of options uh my question is specifically about the third option which um is either taking a test to to skip math seven um or to um is it um a test to skip math seven or to skip skip that grade sorry shia labeouf the time is up i do apologize just uh 10 seconds please how do you plan to address gaps in learning due to skipping a grade thank you thank you very much all right and up next we have marisa mccurry marissa mercury go ahead you have three minutes hi good afternoon thank you all for being here again it's not 2 a.m but still late in the evening and i appreciate all the work that each of you has done month after month as we are still all adjusting i am relieved frankly to
179see a couple of pathways proposed here that we were promised in the spring might come about um still i want to address a bit of the process for how we got here because i think that's why you're hearing so much feedback from the sixth graders here because the concern is that the process used for sixth grade that leads to your 14 failure might also be baked into the proc process we have here for the seventh and eighth grade math as i watch your faces i can see that this is either a late evening or that your attention is not on the children speaking to you now the reason you have children speaking to you at a board meeting well past their bedtime is because you didn't listen to the parents we may have been one
180hundred percent completely wrong but when we don't feel heard we don't understand what you have before you and have had before you for months are numbers of parents who are scared for their children and who want their children to have the best education possible in a public district that's a challenge with such a variety of children and children's needs but what you have is not just parents who want what's best for their children what's best for all children notwithstanding some of you board members specifically telling us parents otherwise each of us deeply devoted to all children's education which means we're not just parents who want to speak but who have resources not just privilege resources we will dedicate our time and our money and our energy to a solution that will fit all students and
181when we feel disenfranchised that doesn't help all students we care about equity and we recognize that the teachers probably do carry more expertise than we do on what needs to be done but when we are left out of the conversation at the planning stages we can't trust the process when i sit and speak to a teacher who is deeply enthusiastically behind my student getting the best education possible we can talk about solutions we have not been afforded that opportunity i had a teacher conference today and when that teacher and i sit and speak i think we have good ideas that could be put in action but when you invite our feedback to you and then tell us what the teachers are telling you you're not getting the conversation that needs to happen namely teachers and
182parents working together not put at odds in a meeting like this where our children are put in front of their teachers to have to speak their peace thank you very much up next we have joy joy go ahead thank you my name is joyce moelly my son kaiden sitting right next to me attends boutique middle school i appreciate the opportunity to both listen to the options and offer some feedback from the get-go i was disappointed in the decision to lose the pathway that was especially without a plan because now i feel like it's very discombobulated more than anything the previous pathway did not come at a cost to the students in the pathways proposed one doesn't offer them algebra at all in the other two students are potentially sacrificing something to take a class they
183once had a pathway to without sacrifice not allowing students to take algebra leave students who are fully capable not reaching their full potential potential is that what we want and yes some could even take geometry by eighth grade by their capabilities but many of our children have already flown through math without any effort this year like one of the students previously mentioned if they take the first pathway that gets them to algebra they lose an elective which means they can't take for instance both band and a language and those are both also pathways to high school classes that's a sacrifice on their behalf because of the district's choices one of the great things about middle school and i worked in middle schools for 17 years is the ability to explore interests this takes that option
184away in the last option which to me has the most potential because there are multiple options for families we are going back to one option of what was you could text test in which is what used to be so what is that accomplished other than compress compressing more math into less time for many of our students the easiest class to compress would have been sixth grade i still believe many of our students can wave seventh but sixth grade should have been the obvious choice for the students who would have tested in from day one this seems like an unnecessary postponement thank you trustee warren for asking your question about rigor i think that was something that should have been addressed when we took away the pathway originally how would we challenge our students that are
185mathematically inclined my child was disappointed when the opportunity was revoked for him to be in a compacted math pathway starting in august he feels that the inclusion of some in a heterogeneous math should not affect the students who not only felt they were ready for a challenge but actually were ready he's spoken with many others who feel the same way he loves math he's always asked for more wanted to learn beyond his grade level standards his ability has sometimes left me astounded he's spoken with many um he is an identified gate student who chose his home school rather than bayside and was told this would be the time that challenge would appear sadly it is not i do respect and admire our equity lens but i still believe we've missed an opportunity for many of
186our students who were already ready we could have done both concurrently if that's still an option now if that's already now still an option for our students thank you very much up next we have ali ali go ahead hi um my name is james ross i'm a student at bayside academy and um i would first like to say that i think this we have some good options here and even even though they're not perfect yet i think that it's good that we have several different pathways because we have such a diverse district um and i'm glad that we are looking like we're going to be able to get a lot more kids out algebra because i think that is really important um i would like to make the point though as a couple of my
187friends and the other students have made earlier that we're not feeling challenged in math right now and it's great that we have plans for the future but right now in sixth grade we need to do something about math and there are so many small things that we could do to improve our math experience because i really don't want to spend a year just relearning standards that i've already learned in fourth grade and in third grade so i just feel that it would be extremely helpful if we could make improvements to the sixth grade math program that we have right now and even just small things like honestly we are given challenge problems every week but it would be really great if we could have an answer to go along with them like even that would
188improve our math experience so much because right now we do challenge problems and we don't get an answer key for them we don't get an explanation at all we have no idea what we're doing and like for example i did a challenge problem earlier today and it was about adding um ratios i had no idea how to do that i came up with an answer that i um thought was right based on my reasoning i checked it later again i just looked up the actual way to do it and talk to my mom about it it turned out to be the complete completely the wrong way that i would never have known because based on my reasoning and what i knew before i started that challenge problem i the way i had done it would
189have been the right way so i'm just trying to make the point that we need more rigor in math classes and just challenges alone are not enough because i could have done that challenge the wrong way and i would never have known if i hadn't gone and researched it myself um thank you so much for your time thank you so much up next we have randy randy go ahead good evening uh first of all i want to really thank the students who have spoken um they've spent their time and their effort not just tonight been in previous engagements to communicate to you about their experience and their hopes and um i hope you're really really listening um and i appreciate their time so in this past spring the engagement that was done by the district
190by a couple of trustees with um with stakeholders with parents stakeholders this was not a 360 degree engagement this engagement was unidirectional there was a plan that was evangelized and that message and that plan remained unchanged um the feedback that you were getting was not incorporated into that plan families and students were promised that work on these middle school pathways and engagement would occur between springtime and now however engagement has only happened and in a performative manner over the past several weeks you've heard from some of these experimental subjects students yet the plan that was conceptualized for the pathways way back last spring and we can go back and look at those presentations in those meetings that plan remains unchanged uninfluenced on perturbed by stakeholder feedback the district staff talk about having a growth mindset
191but what i see really reflects a fixed mindset to this approach unable unwilling to incorporate any sort of feedback from the key stakeholders here are the problems with this plan these pathways do not equitably meet the needs of our middle school learners there is no way of measuring success or failure of this experiment for a couple more years the district has oversold the success of this plan so far saying that based on a 16 question formative assessment just a few weeks into the school year they can tell the percentage of students who will make it to algebra that is ridiculous unfortunately our entire district and community has paid a price is paying a price and most importantly our middle schoolers if you continue with this right now and over the next several years will continue
192to pay that price it's really too bad thank you very much up randy we'll have rust neat rest snake go ahead hi my name is veer chowdhury and i am a sixth grade student at bayside middle school i'm advocating for access to advanced math for myself and others i have a sister who is a freshman in high school and because she took an advanced class in middle school she is now an algebra 2 which is a course that actually challenges kids like me on the other hand who won't get a chance to advance courses in middle school we'll have two options first of all we could take courses that don't interest us and more importantly don't teach us anything or we could spend our whole summer that should be a break doing a course online
193another problem with the normal courses are that we often finish work early and the period quickly turns unproductive as we sit idly with nothing to do or just talk to another friend that has finished work early in gay i was challenged and pushed forward i used to have an extreme love for math which i still do though that though it's quickly evaporating as i relearn things that i've already been taught also if there is an advanced class we will be partnered with kids that think like us and push our brains further i personally have been paired with people that don't understand the work and while i should be learning i'm busy explaining what the teacher has already said i'm not a to tutor and my job is not to explain the class work i'm supposed
194to be learning in school as my sister has told my family more than once in high school if you don't take advanced classes you are doing the bare minimum which is not good enough for colleges in california as most of them no longer look at sat and act scores but instead the number of advanced classes you took and what your grades are another thing is that since ap classes are offered in high school it should not be different to offer them in middle school if there aren't advanced classes in middle school by the time we get to high school we would be playing catch up instead of getting ahead unable to make use of classes being offered meanwhile other kids from neighboring districts will be more ahead than the very school that offers the gate
195program i would propose an advancement in the current 6th grade math program thank you for your time and all the work you have put in over the past few months thank you so much up next we have size size go ahead uh good evening superintendent good evening board my name is sasudani and i'm a student at bayside academy as well i'm a sixth grader um so my classmates have already talked about um how the the current class math classes are very boring we're not learning everything how um math for some of us math used to be our favorite favorite subjects and now we now we dread it i keep finding myself looking at the clock every two or three minutes waiting for it to be over it's that boring um but my classmates have already
196talked about that i won't want to propose a counter plan for the current pathways as i believe they're all flawed and i also want to talk about the unjust uh justification for why um why the compacted math program was removed in the first place so the first justification that um was used was equity that it's not equitable to have a compacted math program um but equity is defined by merriam-webster as a justice according to natural law or right um in other words giving everybody equal opportunities you are not giving us equal opportunities you are basically robbing some of our learning um instead you are confusing equity with equality you are uh you're acting like every there is equality in math skills however this is not true everybody is at a different level in math so
197you can't you can't tell a group of students to build a log cabin when some of them don't know how to build a foundation others have already been building mansions um and for a counter plan um before this program was removed the district used to have a program in which students would learn math six and half of math seven and sixth grade the second half of math seven and math eight and eighth grade and um algebra one sorry the math the second half of math seven and math eight and seventh grade and then algebra one in eighth grade um so i i'm not sure why this is an option uh for compaction because this seems a lot more ideal than the pathways that are being offered right now because um again uh some of them
198are have accessibility issues like the summer school ones and the online courses ones um the um seventh grade matt salmon proficiency test could uh leave holes in learning for math seven and um the the double period of math in eighth grade could uh make causes us to sacrifice our elective thank you good evening thank you so much up next um it actually looks like we have uh raised hands from same commenters just so everyone in the public is aware we do have the opportunity to give every one three minutes per agenda item just so that everyone is aware so up next we'll have mendel mendel go ahead hi my name is david mendel thank you all for this evening i just have a couple of questions one is with the paths of kind of really
199kind of blowing through seventh grade the one thing that hasn't really been explained is why seventh grade is so much less important that it can kind of be blown through and so that's kind of question number one and number two is more of a comment that as there are which i think is great that there's multiple paths to achieve algebra by eighth grade uh one thing that is okay is to kind of reflect and say you know what maybe what we did before was not the right answer to just get rid of compacted math and to have an additional path of returning to a compact adoption could be and maybe should be a fourth option in addition to these other three paths thank you much thank you very much and with that being said we
200have no further comments president kim jin okay thank you everyone for providing your comments and definitely thank you for the for the students who provided their comments both in person and online we are i am closing public comment on this item and we're bringing this back to the board for discussion and further direction to staff as i understand it this item will come back for an actual vote in december on our december 16th meeting so any additional comments would be appreciated to um to staff now um would anyone like to go first um i can go first i wanted to first thank the students that spoke tonight um i don't know you guys all can't see what we're doing but we're all taking notes and so um if it appears that we're not listening or
201looking at the screen um that's what we're all doing so um thank you well they all left the room but thanks to them when they were here um and i wanted to just talk about a few things um i know that the presentation was on the math pathways and we heard a lot of comments tonight about um students that aren't feeling challenged in their course in their math class this year i think you know obviously that's that's an issue if students are not feeling challenged or feeling bored that's something that we should address but what's also an issue are students that are really struggling and need additional support and so i think um when we talk about math and we talk about equity um yeah it's making sure all students are getting the supports they
202need but we also have to kind of prioritize um and like triage is what i kind of think about it and so um if we're able to provide some additional challenge for students um that would obviously be ideal but i don't want to lose focus on those students that really need additional support and need that are struggling and we're trying to get them to either successfully complete math eight or successfully get to algebra so um i think we have to you know balance here um in terms of the pathways i think there was i wanna i just wanna address that the original way that we had the pathways it was almost impossible for a student to decide in seventh grade or at the end of seventh grade that they wanted to take algebra you couldn't
203you couldn't do it you had to do it um you either had to get into compacted math in sixth grade or um get into the seventh grade um bridge and compacted math and i like that these pathways offer a chance for a student who may just need a little bit more time in the common core sixth and seventh grade math to take algebra in eighth grade um i think that that achieves our goal of getting more students to algebra again i want to focus on the fact that we don't just want students to get to algebra we want them to be successful and send them off to high school well prepared um so actually i like i like that pathway i think also you know it's it's unfortunate that you that students may have to
204um give up an elective to go that pathway but it is a choice and it's something that students need to to weigh and they need to say is this is this the path i want to go on or do i want it is it more important for me to take um electives and i think that's just the that's just the way it is right the way that we have it laid out here and so um i'm sorry some of the students that may have to give up one of their electives for that option but it is an option to get there um i think that's all i have to say really i appreciate that there's multiple pathways and students can can kind of go with whatever direction they have i did want to say that
205it's perfectly acceptable for students to take um sixth seventh and eighth grade math i think um you can still be successful in high school and college and there's opportunities for everyone out there and we're all going to make it so that's it i could follow trustee proctor um yeah so um i guess one one thing i kind of want to start with is this concept of rigor which we have heard a lot about um and one thing i'm realizing the more that we're hearing um we're hearing conversation about rigor from our educators from district staff from students from parents because i actually don't think that we all have a common definition about what that means in math and i wonder um what we can do to support um families our students our board potentially and
206really what what does that look like right so the way we all learn map is really different and um uh and yeah so that's just kind of one thing that's that's been swirling around for me i mean i think we've heard we heard from a lot of students tonight oh i wanted to start with saying yes thank you to all of the students i definitely know that when i was in middle school i was not speaking at a school board meeting i don't even think that i knew that a school board existed and so getting up in front of a lot of people um is a huge deal and so continue to advocate for yourself and speaking your truth um you know kind of regardless of what happens you know and and and all of
207that like it's really important to continue using your voice and speaking our truth so thank you so much for being here speaking uh uh virtually i did want to start that um we have heard a lot from our students um about how math six isn't rigorous um we have heard um from our educators and our district staff that it is rigorous um and that kind of leads me to feel like how are we actually defining what rigor is um the other thing that i will point out that that i know you know some of our students tonight spoke about how some that sometimes they don't know the answers to the problems they're given which actually leads me to believe that there must be some rigor happening right if you don't actually know the answer to
208everything but maybe there's more support around um around what we kind of do with our follow-up to challenge so um you know i think um i will also point out that the majority of student comments that we have heard today and that we heard about board of community engagement are are focused on one school site and experience there and so i do wonder about you know we we have lots of math classes at lots of school sites across lots of across two cities um and you know uh just wanting to make sure that we're kind of keeping that perspective as well um i will say and i said this uh trustee corzo and i were part of a board and community workshop this weekend where we heard feedback around math and i said something very
209similar at this time at that meeting which is it does feel really frustrating as a board member to we have spent a lot of time on this topic and it does not mean that the experience of our advanced learners is not important it is i was a gate student i completely understand that perspective but i we have spent a lot more time i don't know how much you know time what percentage more it's a significant amount more time speaking about um the experience of our advanced learners in math and we have about our students that are struggling um in any subject over the past multiple months and that is not okay um so i um i want us to shift this conversation um and i i i don't feel comfortable continuing to have this conversation
210we need to have a conversation about how we're increasing rigor for all students we need to have a conversation about how we're increasing access for all students how we're supporting all students um but we can't continue to spend a significant more of our district time and resources and our board's time and resources only addressing our high achieving students and so i i as we continue to go down this pathway of math if we are an equity-minded board we need to think about what that means in terms of the conversations that we're having and where we're spending our time um as we think about the goals that were set out i'm appreciative about the goals i know trustee proctor mentioned this um you know how are we monitoring that what's the accountability going to be you
211know i like the idea of having the achievement goals right so it's one thing for kids to get into algebra it's another thing for them to be successful in algebra what does that look like also how are we working towards that at each level right so what does that mean we do in sixth grade math to really um encourage and boost students that maybe haven't traditionally been able to access those pathways in terms of that seventh grade year what does that mean that we're doing in terms of providing access resources for kids that maybe don't have um the ability um you know to access additional courses or to do the independent study or whatever the case is right how are we actually ensuring that we're get that we're increasing access at each of those points
212and i want to see that data as we move through this because if we're not doing that then it's true this is not working if we are doing that then we can continue to have this conversation but i think we need to be looking at that in a very consistent way um because that is the goal that we are committed to that's that's the reason why i supported this in the past and i want to make sure that our data aligns to that um i also just want to comment on the fact and i think trustee proctor maybe just mentioned this a little bit but you know that we talked a little bit about um we've heard a lot about sacrifice and what students need to sacrifice and i i i do just want to
213say that our students who are behind have always had to make these sacrifices stay after school miss an elective um you know always have had to make these sacrifices and we don't have we haven't had hours of public comment about that right and so that's kind of what i mean when i when i say where we're spending our time um and again it doesn't mean i firmly believe all of our students need to have access to rigorous math we need to ensure that we have the proper supports for our students that are struggling we need to ensure that our students that are high achieving are pushed and feel like they're being challenged and have access to that rigor um but we can't only be having that conversation and that is the only math conversation that
214we have had on this board for the past year um so uh i yeah i guess i'll just i'll i'll i'll end with with that um but for me we we need to change the the dialogue i'll be fairly short um i also um want to thank the students for speaking uh parents for taking some time out of their night to support their kids in speaking and in sharing their own perspectives it's very natural for parents to advocate for their kids you know at one of our uh engagements recently we did have a parent ask a question around you know um i don't i'm not gonna get the words exactly right but basically you know if other parents uh don't show up and advocate for their kids then then you know maybe they don't care
215to and um and that thinking is is problematic right um it does not take into account the reality of you know a lot of working-class families that are really struggling to meet the basic needs of their families and who most definitely care about their kids and their kids education we are a public school district and we have um the responsibility of meeting the needs of all kids and you know there's [Music] there's a lot of work to be done in those areas you know we do offer our our students math foundations classes who are really struggling in mathematics and middle school um you know the burden on uh their the the idea that you know students are um pressured into teaching other students you know there are math foundations classes like teachers are uh prioritizing
216maybe sometimes right like prioritizing the needs of of um teachers are prioritizing based on the most urgent needs for for you know the biggest number of of students in their classrooms and and that is um you know that's that's a maybe a a part of the of the reality um but there's definitely you know i also just want to share like in our math math six class now you know we're only we're getting to the end of the of the first half of the school year right um we're getting somewhat close to it um there's a whole other half of it to go right so um the point that i'm trying to make is that there has been there have been sacrifices that like shara said students have had to make historically that that were
217kind of not realizing right like the math six the compacted math six course before the compacted math um course in sixth grade before actually did take away resources for other students to you know and for teachers to be able to like teach more math and math foundation classes or or focus on on prep on prep um preparation for you know meeting the needs of all students in the heterogeneous class and so um the shift away from that is part of how we you know how we prioritize equity and i know there's i think sometimes like some misconceptions about equity but i always think about this um visual that's super helpful can you know it um you know we did a training uh through the equity network for uh san mateo county school boards association but
218it's basically the idea that you know when there are gaps with students you actually when you focus on supporting students that are are struggling and they move up then everybody can move up together right um but if you focus on you know having like if you focus here and then this divide is only getting bigger um what if you just you know if if you focus more on the kids that need it the most then everyone i'm not i'm like i'm butchering it so ken please feel free to correct me but um also i'm not feeling super well so if i'm not very eloquent right now i'm going to blame the cold i'm i'm fighting off for that um i want to say that i'm supportive of the pathways i think that is the conversation
219that we're here to have tonight right how do we move forward how do we create pathways for students to to get to algebra that was always our goal i understand that there are families and students that really want to advocate on bringing back a a program that or a class that we that we don't have right now and and you know i think the we are moving forward we are moving on to our pathways um this period of transition is is a little difficult it sounds like you know we do need to make sure that uh we are challenging kids also we probably you know next year we'll have many lessons learned and um and we'll be better able to do that and you know many of the kids that um need uh to be
220challenged more will have opportunities to do that right they they will have opportunities and they have a variety of opportunities but we also want to make sure that we have those same opportunities for for a more diverse group of students because that is part of what we we want to encourage as well right we i do also want to say that um you know i had i've talked with our our with our math team and um you know as a parent myself having a fifth grader right this is a choice that i have to think about myself very soon i want to make sure you know my kid really loves math too as a parent i have to make the choice of you know what should i push him to uh you know get to
221algebra in eighth grade um and the the the i just wanna make the point that like there's nothing wrong with doing just the math six math seven math eight kids are still really young in middle school um they will have opportunities to accelerate they're not gonna miss out on on college opportunities because they're not um you know doing algebra in eighth grade or because they're not doing even more accelerated math in in middle school those opportunities will be there so i'm going to stop there i said it was going to be short definitely was not short sorry okay um we've heard so much tonight um and you know i really appreciate all of our students that took the time to address us um yeah i don't think i would have done that as a middle
222schooler i probably would have written something out and told my mom to go do it so um kudos to all of those middle schoolers who spoke tonight as i was listening to the students and just some of the things that have just been floating in my mind even from what i've first heard these plan back in the spring you know i am concerned about you know the rigor of the program i'm concerned about the challenge um i'm concerned for our teachers who now have potentially basically running a one-room schoolhouse for math with all sorts of different abilities um you know and just trying to be able to teach to that um effectively within that period of 45 minutes to an hour i want to make sure that we are um you know looking out for
223our teachers who are tasked with bringing math to life for the students um you know something as the discussion went on tonight um i kept thinking back to our last board meeting where we um discussed the annex and you know how we could make you know give that program just a little bit more oomph to it um and make it not not as i mean yes it's babysitting yes it's childcare but adding something to it and you know for those that are there i don't see why that couldn't be used as a place for math enrichment or um creating an opportunity for academic acceleration we spoke about basis grants and spots and how at this point it seems to be somewhat underutilized and not necessarily used effectively i mean perhaps that would be something to
224consider for the future um another thing that just came to mind too is just the reality of ability does transcend recording in progress it's just it's just it sounds like we're recording okay all right and let's everybody come back okay he gave us a thumbs up okay um i want to thank everybody for your patience as we dealt with that we did get an audio cue that the recording was off and so therefore we had to take that pause so um trustee warren i believe um you're still on on at the moment so please go ahead okay well i don't have much more to add just you know if somebody had brought up you know one of one of our public speakers had brought up the idea of a bell curve and in listening to
225the uh um what what students feel like we're doing right sounds like we're we're meeting that bell curve but now we need to look at the outliers and the outliers on both ends of that curve and i hope that what were presented in december will address that and that's it great thank you uh for everyone for providing your comments before i make my final comments superintendent ochoa do you want to make a comment um so i'll let you go ahead and then i'll i'll wrap things up thank you president i'm going to share some some numbers with the board of the community um the first is at bayside academy this is for math 6 specifically the school year is broken into portions it's segmented when teachers design graces students multiple comments have been made or
226references have been made to the the sort of the district's analysis of one assessment that was given i want to remind the board you know we're 11 weeks into the school year and so there's so much more for us to do in terms of the teaching and learning that's taking place in our math classes i want to assure you other assessments are forthcoming the results of those assessments are going to be shared with you but we do also assign grades to students in this district and those grades are really important because they're sort of a thermometer if you want to say of you know what kind of work are kids doing how engaged are they in class how many of them are finishing homework how many of them are really struggling so at bayside academy
227for sixth grade math the first number is nine and that number refers to the number since we have a d or f in their math class and the second number is 173 and that is the number of students at bayside who are taking sixth grade math working in a b or c in sixth grade so for me the numbers are dark so there's there's a very very strong distribution of numbers heavily tilted towards students earning a passing grade um and and you know really doing well on the grading side and as you know we saw some positive results on the testing side because the the grade is comprised of a combination of class work homework tests and quizzes but then the assessment itself has its own value in its own analysis and i want to
228assure you that at that school the achievement results in those teacher grades far exceed the achievement results in english six and science six in other words what we're seeing in that course which is in some ways statistically it's a bit unusual it's more common to see a struggle in in the math content so we're really excited about that i also want to assure you that it's not so taking place at um bay side that this distribution exists at other schools as well so the numbers at uh let me just make sure [Music] clear because i have multiple um reports with me tonight those numbers those corresponding numbers that abbott are six there are six sixth graders at abbott middle school who currently have a drf in their math six class according to the last grading
229period and abbott as you know is bigger in terms of the middle school student population and at abbott there are 231 students in sixth grade earning an a a b or c in sixth grade math so we're looking positively on those results and then also share with the board the distribution at braille and that distribution is 14 with a drf and then as you know barely is really big so it's close to 280 students with an a b or c in their sixth grade math class i think those numbers are an important piece of the conversation they don't tell the whole story but i just wanted to share that with the board great thank you superintendent ochoa for the for the data input so i'm going to sum things up i'm going to first address
230sort of equity in as a whole and then i want to talk about actually what we're here to talk about which is the pathways specifically what you want feedback for uh and trustee corza you beat me to the punch uh because i was going to do that same thing but i but i explain a little bit differently so do it ken you're going to do it better than that i know so so there is a question about equity and how we define equity and educational equity and there's always and how do you define it in a simple way and there's always two ways that i sort of do it um and the one that trustee cordsdo alluded to is well first equity is we want to provide the tools and resources um sorry the tools
231and resources and the needs for for all students to be successful right so that's just the basics right but the the representation is there's in the simplest form there's and this talks about educational equity student achievement there's generally two groups right it doesn't matter there's just two groups there and the idea essentially is what we want to do is bring this group up right but that bringing this group up does not mean bringing this group down what we actually want to do is we want to have achieve success for all we want to increase the rigor ferraro oh it doesn't mean that this group just comes up here and hits the ceiling it means that we go up here and we all succeed so it's bringing everybody up and that's what we talk about how
232we how we want every student to succeed how we want to close the student achievement cap how we talk about educational equity this is it in its simplest form right generally two groups simple form it's not just bringing this group up it's not bringing this group down it's not bringing the group up to just this limit it's bringing us up and then everybody goes up as well so that's how i sort of look at it and what we heard today not about the pathway specifically but we heard about this group from our students who again thank you for providing your comments because it is a very difficult thing to provide public speaking in a forum and then also staying up late on a school night so i really want to appreciate and thank the students
233for that but we've heard and what i've heard in previous meetings or at least in a separate meeting outside this our board meeting is that there needs to be more challenges there's there's then in the specifically in the program um these students want more challenging uh challenges and more rigor so our job essentially is we've heard the students and we need to provide that so um as a whole just as direction um just like after i had the meeting with them earlier this week is that we need to go back look at what we can do to provide these students a little bit more record so that would just be my overall direction just on that and the students that provided their comments so again thank you but in regards to the actual pathways themselves
234we have sort of talked about these pathways for a few weeks now whether not necessarily in the board format that we are in tonight but through the board community workshop through youtube live through a number of different outlets um we've you know i first talked about it in some way as at our burrell board and community workshop with trustee warren and we had a group of what 30 40 30 or so parents who were there and so this is what it was talked about i personally don't have a problem with pathways i think that what we did is is is good i think what what really sold me on it is is when you look at the number of who we had going into algebra because of the compaction and the pathways that we had
235before where there was only 22 percent of our entire district uh was only getting to algebra um here we have the opportunity because we put everyone into heterogeneous math because it's the actual math teachers who are teaching it right we have a way to actually assess them and per our early data which i really hope that we can bring back and which you guys confirm at their next meeting shows that these this is working and if everybody were to go along the track regardless of which path which pathway they choose we're going to have a much higher percentage of students who are going to be eligible for algebra now that may not mean that they want to take it because maybe they don't want to give up the elective or maybe they don't want to
236actually test it maybe they want to just take it in high school right but the fact is we will have more than 22 percent of our eighth graders being eligible for algebra and so when you go back to the initial meeting of our math teachers back in may when they talked about being scientists and mass engineers and you know mathematicians you know we early data suggests that we can hopefully move our needle to make sure that we can have more more students in algebra and so um i have absolutely no problem with the pathways i think it's great i think it's the fact that we're providing choice is really good the one issue that i have and it's and again it's not about pathways it's about the implementation now and so the question that i
237have in the comment is you know as we roll this out and as we go ahead and provide choice for the parents you know what is it the steps that it's gonna that is gonna happen right we know that we have to back um step or back map it because we have to assign the classrooms we have to do the master scheduling we got to get the teachers there's those steps that we work backwards from and so the idea is at what point what's the timing of when we're going to ask the parents the students and everyone to choose and are we actually going to ask them to choose because i hope we are because basically we provided a survey for our families for our students you know to see what they really want and
238the idea is one when are we going to ask them are we going to have enough data to do it and two what is there is there going to be a recommendation from the teacher from my understanding there is and it's like how does that come across right how does that get presented because the idea is it's great to have these pathways but it's how we implement these pathways from now on is the issue and and so that is the sticking point where i think that we could have planned all we want right we have the data that's coming in we've done all this work but until we actually implement it until we actually make sure that parents and teachers and everyone who we've asked to provide comments and and input on until we actually
239make that point until we actually assign the classrooms and everything else like that i'm still anxious and so and so i i think to me it's the pathways is good i think the early data that you've shown everything is good i think we'll see other things when it comes to december to actually vote on this but what i would like is is sort of the implementation steps and so uh because what i don't want is again have all the work that you guys have done which is fantastic work all the work that the teachers have done all the comments that everybody's provided with their family students or the students who provided here tonight or everyone online to all of censor to go up and smoke because maybe we didn't implement it right so um those
240are my comments um and i just want to end with that but i want to before we move on just to make sure that there's no other final board member comments on this topic it is up for vote we are going in december so for anyone who is listening uh and then also i'm assuming superintendent ochoa that between now and our december meeting there may be some additional youtube lives about it or a boarding community workshop or cafe con diego i'm assuming that our outreach doesn't necessarily end tonight we're going to take back the comments that we've heard we're going to listen we're still going to do some refinements i'm assuming and then we'll we'll bring that all back uh in december is that right okay thumbs up so i'm that's good okay so real
241quick yep i guess i heard trustee watkins ask for like a shift in direction in terms of time and resources etc about math so i just wanted to kind of clarify that piece um make sure we we have like consensus around what that path forward looks like exactly uh sorry do you guys want to answer that or do you i go ahead david um yeah i mean happy to to address that i mean we we do have this item in front of us for decision that will take you know additional conversation at board meeting but um you know we certainly can come back to you with um i know i think if i heard um trustee watkins correctly it was it was identifying you know what's what's the work that's being done in support of
242our struggling students uh some opportunity to talk through um you know the the strategies and what's being done in that respect so um guidance from you all we can figure out how to agendize that and bring that bring that up for conversation did i hear that correctly i mean if that hopefully that addresses the question i guess the way that i understood it was like um like can we focus like any engagements more on on like just like just the pathways and how we're supporting our struggling students versus um i guess like the i i don't know do you want to clarify what kind of like what you were thinking clarify what part of what i was thinking um i mean you you you were saying that like we have spent as a district and
243as a board and as and our staff right have spent a lot of time talking about um math specifically in terms of how it's not like uh how some students and families feel like it hasn't been rigorous enough in sixth grade specifically and like turning our focus to um you know how we're helping our our most struggling students or like just like the pathways are like shifting the conversation a bit in terms of how we how much time we dedicate yeah i mean i think my what i was trying to say is um i think in these conversations where we've only been talking about our most advanced students as a part of this conversation in math versus rigor for all students how we're supporting all students how we're supporting students that aren't currently achieving in
244math to be pro proficient how are how are supporting students that are i'm kind of in the middle to become students that can that can help us get to this 45 number in algebra right like it can't only be about our most advanced students and the experience they are are not getting that that should be a part of the conversation it needs to be about all of our students um is that what you're asking yeah i i i'm gonna um i think we're clear i'm just gonna stop there sorry so so i'll just sum it up i mean obviously we have um we'll have to actually vote on this at our next meeting between now and then obviously there's still some community outreach but once we actually decide and vote on the pathways i think
245everything does shift a little bit and we start moving on to different things so um not that word wouldn't focus it it's just that this has been so the topic du jour so um i'm gonna finish this uh item and we're gonna move on so we are closing uh the item seven point two and moving on we when we postponed a point one we heard nine point one we're going to 9.2 so l cap thank you members of the board this is a brief item um it's a format item i wanted to create public awareness about the fact that the state of california is implementing a new reporting requirement relative to the lcap that they're currently looking at as as a one-year requirement it is possible that in the years down the line they would
246turn this into a multiple year or perhaps a permanent process as you know the alcat process is ongoing the idea is to align your work and your resources around the tricks greatest needs into options and strategies that fulfills and as a board you all receive annual presentations in april and may and in june the first being the annual update the third being the first review of the draft el cap and then in june there's a typical alcap adoption those documents are humongous they're really lengthy and they happen basically 10 months after you adopt your lcat so this is an interesting supplement to the alcap annual update because it's going to happen in february so i just didn't want to surprise the public or surprise you all and make you think this is like that we
247moved it up this is actually a new environment every school district in california is going to be required to have this supplement to the lcap approved at their february meeting and what's interesting about is they really focused it on these they focused in on these series of questions pertaining to funding that's sort of unique to the pandemic so the sr3 funds the coordinated funds that came in that you know i think the idea is to have increased um accountability increased um notification to families and and to the community about how we're um how we're expanding these funds and how we're utilizing these funds to what purposes we've put these funds so uh david and his team in ed services will spend the next 30 days putting together a really well thought out response to each
248one of these prompts when that comes together we'll bring it to the board in january for a first review and then an approval in february but i just wanted to show the board this format and just open the conversation and give board members an opportunity to ask any questions now or to just say we look forward to seeing what you put together in january and with that i'll turn it over to the board great thank you superintendent does anybody have any clarifying questions regarding this item no no seeing the shaking heads no okay let's move to public comment uh we don't we don't have anyone in the audience anymore um diego p would you mind opening up the public comment for those who are online please sure thing if any member of the audience audience
249in the online zoom would like to raise their hand for public comment on the agenda topic please press the raise your hand functionality president china we have no hands raised great thank you i am closing public comment on this item does anybody this item is only informational uh there is no vote for this does anybody have any comments or direction for staff no no no i don't believe so so um thank you for providing these uh for this to us uh it's a good update and the good uh knowing that there's gonna be a slight change here so thank you for bringing it to us we are moving on to item 10 board member statements and requests for future agenda items does anybody have any statements or requests for agenda items i had one it
250actually came up in the ed foundation meeting this week about when we will incorporate the 2020 census data in the trustee area maps so if that's coming back that would be great any other comments statements no okay i'll just make um some statements here i um i want to thank everybody for providing your comments uh tonight uh i do want to say that um that when it comes to math and i've said this before is that you know it comes up every few years and so um this is just our turn to deal with the curriculum and so um it's something that we're all here uh to do and this is what our job is and so i'm really thankful that it has come up tonight um i also do want to thank uh staff
251and i didn't do this at the end thanks staff for that presentation and for all of our teachers who have actually been working really hard on it because i know that this is a big change and um they've been working really hard to make everything work and so i think the proof is in the data and the data that we have seen at least and so that's why i hope it comes out so again thank you guys for everything you guys have done um i know it's been difficult um but i truly believe uh we are going to succeed in this i also want to again thank staff on the vaccine day again i think the light is sort of at the end of the tunnel we are definitely approaching it and i want to
252thank everybody for all your hard work for everything that you guys have done um even our meeting that's at 10 30 here at night so it's not as late as normal but um again thank you for everybody and then lastly i just want to wish everybody happy thanksgiving um and i know that this is the first time our district is taking the full week off next week and so i just hope that everyone can take some time to celebrate and and spend time with their families or just reset um because we all sort of need it and then last plug if you haven't gotten your vaccine or your children's vaccine next week might be a good time to do it so um but with that i am done so um superintendent ochoa next item future
253agenda future meeting dates we have two upcoming meetings okay december 7th december 7th is the school side special site visit and december december 16th is our next regular week okay thank you thank you for that school visitation that is very hot okay anyways i think that is a sign so uh we have had technical difficulties tonight um i i would just like to close this meeting so um i will need a motion for adjournment anyone would like motion to adjourn check it thank you trustee proctor for the motion trustee corzo for the second vote in your mouth no and trustee watkins yes and i will vote yes as well we are joining this meeting tonight at 10 39 p.m so thank you all for uh attending you