001president uh chin we're ready to begin great thank you uh good afternoon everyone on this uh sort of overcast saturday afternoon today is saturday may 15 2021 and we are calling our special board study session to order it is now 101 and we will um first order business is our flag salute so you have the flag please okay you guys can repeat after me i pledge of allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god and indivisible with liberty and justice great thank you uh next we're going to just do a roll call um trustee corzo here trustee proctor here trustee warren here and i am here as well uh trustee watkins is coming she'll just uh be a few minutes late
002uh trustee corza would you mind doing the language translation um service announcement please sure sure um um all right thank you very much uh next is the approval of today's agenda does everybody have any uh comments if anyone no motion can would someone like to make a motion i motioned to approve the agenda for the board study session on may 15th thank you trustee warren do we have a second a second thank you trustee proctor uh roll call vote trustee carson yes trustee proctor yeah trustee warren yes and i will vote yes as well okay um as this is a special study session we are having public statements now uh item 5.1 public statements related to the agenda items please limit your statements um probably to three minutes because i don't think we have very
003many people at all so um yeah we'll go three minutes if there's any uh statements diane would you mind calling for public comment please yes to our attendees if you would like to make a public comment today on please use the raise your hand functionality in zoom at this time um president and we have no raised hands great thank you i will close public comment um for this study session and we will move on to item 6.1 which is our discussion of governance and equity with nicole anderson hello nicole good afternoon so um it's great to see you all and i call it like a bittersweet moment this is our last study session of the of the year and um it's been a long year but just super honored again to hang out with you
004for just a few hours on a saturday um as you again um think about your transition of leadership and i called my other bittersweet moment as as as dr joan decides to retire and leave us and go run right off into the sunset with her beautiful kids and grandkids and enjoy her next wonderful part of her life we know that also um you're in the process of hiring a new superintendent and so um as a board it's always important to um think about you know your governance kind of practices and the capacity you've built this far to be prepared for that transition especially when you want to continue and a key word is continue to really drive home your vision about equity for your students and so i think this is a really important study
005session although you will probably feel a little non-closure because you'll have a transition um in the summer and then you'll have to kind of re-center again right like that's very normal to have a new board member or governance team member um a superintendent is one of those and so you'll have to re-center again and so i want you to kind of go into this today knowing that there's some things that you want to have in place um and thank you again joan for being a part of that to really um you know leave a i call it a legacy i'm gonna superintendent retires to just make sure there's some things in place um that are really i'm a foundation for the next superintendent coming in so i just want to acknowledge that um in this
006transition and and also acknowledge all of you for the hard work you've done this year um i think you'd all agree you've been beat up a little bit would you say that it's been a long year and um all of my board kind of clients that i get to work with around the state have all been just like exhausted right i don't even know that's the word um and so i just commend you for stan standing strong um in the midst of it all it's a big deal and and i know allison and lisa you kind of came into an interesting time in governance which is historical it's unprecedented in education um but i just commend you for standing strong as newer members and really coming together with your superintendent and your colleagues to really
007create a strong foundation um for governance in san mateo foster city which is a legacy it's a culture you're creating so it's not today is not going to just be about like technical like individual things you're doing this is really about a governance culture that you want to kind of build um real strength in right now as you get ready to transition um because you want to be able to hit the ground running i know you're gonna you know again open schools in the fall right with the whole kind of new way of looking at education um and you've done some great work to get to this point so today we wanted to be really meaningful for you and and before kind of jumping into the work what i wanted to do is just ask
008you a little bit about um like what you're most proud of thus far and i know there's a lot this is a hard question because you've been through a lot in the last i'd say year and a half i mean there's been a lot that's gone on but what are you most proud of is what i wanted to start off with so i'm gonna let you think about that because that's a hard one what are you most proud of and specifically to your governance work focused on equity so that's the specific what are you most proud of as a board based on the work you've done around equity as a governance team so i'll open that up for anybody to jump in what are you most proud of i can start okay um i feel
009this this seems like a simple thing but you know we did um redo our mission and vision and made it a lot more equity focused and um i think you know that might not seem like a huge deal but just i think it it is a big deal because it's a common language that now our our entire district shares and a common focus and um while there's still a lot of differences of opinion in terms of what equity is and what it's not and what it looks like um at least it's part of the central conversation now yeah i love that one absolutely you should be just very very very proud of it thank you noah yeah thank you equity focus mission and vision yeah jump in allison um so i think um this year
010was really hard and i think um the work that we did about prioritizing the reopening and especially starting with the learning hubs where we did focus on the most the students with the most urgent needs i know that it didn't feel like things moved fast enough for everybody but i think that starting with those baby steps to get those kids on campus first and now looking at where we are now and where we're headed i think i'm really proud of that work and it was hard but um we we did some some good stuff there powerful that's a pretty powerful one yeah very proud good i think i'm proud of the fact that um i brought up the need to discuss special education before it usually is discussed in the year um historically special education
011comes at like two o'clock in the morning you know at the end of the year or sometime lisa i think you're fading out on i don't know if it's me okay yeah it's hard to hear you i heard like the first couple of sentences then after that i was like i'm trying i'm trying but yeah okay is this better that's better okay i'm like working on my phone and so it's a little my hand might have been in front of me yeah okay so i was just gonna say that i'm proud of the fact that i brought up um the need just to find out what special education is doing before the end of the year um just because historically that's one of the presentations that gets pushed off week after week and is usually
012one of those 11 30 2 o'clock in the morning presentations so the fact that it was one of the first for an earlier presentation and in march as opposed to june or july or august um is really huge for a lot of our special education families got it got it so um my immediate thought was getting our kids back into school on campus uh well it's not for everybody and we still have um you know a number of families in distance learning that was sort of my first and foremost um as much as we struggled all year uh it was actually getting kids back on campus was a big thing um but when you change uh or added the additional equity sort of option or focus to it i would say that um really the
013sanctuary task force and allowing them space and the ability to sort of pivot and ma and and make some uh um really uh move whether it was you know translation services or food or information about evictions or whatever it was at our food pickup lines but um but giving them the space and the allowance and in some ways the authority and ability to actually just get out there and make a difference um i think that that was pretty huge um you know i think everybody was sort of over overwhelmed and um over the last year and and without that group specifically i think there would have been a large population school population that may not have been um received services or know what was going on and so i think that was a big thing
014got it got it powerful thank you powerful joan what about you i have a couple of things to add i'm i wanted to say that a while distance learning was not our our preferred method of education and it certainly maybe we could have done things differently and it maybe made it easier we did um ensure that we added chromebooks to our our fleet you know we didn't even have uh one-to-one chromebooks we weren't a district that had one-to-one so we had to move rapidly to ensuring that we had chromebooks hot spots and like i said it wasn't a perfect roll out but um we scrambled around and did that uh our staff had to completely re-imagine how they taught and the whole work around online curriculum and how to engage kids uh through an online
015platform i i feel like that was a tremendous undertaking and then just i know that wellness is on the top of our our minds right now as we go back we really want to ensure that students feel supported but all year long our counselors were out there trying to reach out to families we had a social worker working with families principals staff members everyone community engagement just reaching out to families and asking them how you're doing and what do you need um so i think some of these things are i mean they're they seem just like normal things but they they weren't in the world we were living in they became very very important and and that information fed these groups like the the sanctuary task force so that they could do more effective outreach
016and and also it it informed the work um of the equity task force and the board and where do we need to go with things in the distance learning hubs so um just uh like i said it we won't ever all of us look back at it and say we did you know it was 100 wonderful project we did during distance learning but we certainly gave it our very best uh effort got it thank you for that powerful yeah lots to be proud of in that um welcome to shara good to see you so we're we're just um we start our conversation with what we're most proud of this year is a governance team with a specific focus on equity this year so do you have something you want to share with you're most proud
017of of the governance team's work focused on equity this year can't hear you yet you're still on mute though it looks like oh i lost you did you ask me something my internet just cut out oh okay yeah yes so no welcome first of all um and what we were saying is we're literally just talking about um what are we most proud of as a governance team after this particular year we've gone through but also um specific to equity work so what are you most proud of about your governance team works focused on equity um i mean i think for me that it's i'm just proud that um we've kept it as the focus and the through line for the work moving you know from everything from you know reopening conversations to um it's just
018been the focus of um of the of the conversation and we've kept it at the center despite i think many opportunities for us to stray from that as the area of focus and so i i think that um continuing to prioritize that work um in the midst of lots of other things is is huge and so i'm proud of our board for continuing to do that and and our district team for continuing to do that and to engage in those conversations even though they're not always easy and um they're important yeah that's the work it's big yeah got it powerful now and i appreciate this um because each of you shared what you're proud of um again you i know uh charlotte what i shared prior to this is kind of our purpose today is
019a little different from you know kind of your normal study sessions because you all are in a transition of leadership so as you think about some of the work we're going to do today it's not going to be so technical where you all will make some decisions and anything of that nature but you definitely um as you think about this transition what you're most proud of is really going to be something i think you all can create as a platform for your jumping off point for the next level of work and so um the things you're proud of i think is important to celebrate because you've been it's been a hard year um but then i also i'm curious about i know that many of you when you're sharing your responses you said you know
020although distance learning wasn't the most ideal way or you know although you kind of qualified it with there was still not completely you know just this positive experience but you were proud of some things but also i heard you kind of say that there's some things you still want to work on you want to improve so i want to open that back up and so i'm going to ask you as a governance team and just kind of stay in the governance space right as a governance team who who governs by policy right in your vision what would be one thing that you're like you know as we move forward and kind of transitioning um into this kind of new school year and obviously coming in with having a new superintendent what would be something that
021you're just like we got to still get better at we have to improve so anyone want to jump in and i know there's a lot of things you can pick but kind of pick like that top thing okay what would that be so anybody can jump in special education okay okay you want to tell me more you're like where do i start right that's just because of the top of my head i didn't know you want to explanation no i think um you know we've gone through the audit you know i think that there's some recommendations um that are there i think that if if you look back at the pandemic and everything you know one of the things that have sort of fallen through i would say follow through but um didn't get as
022much focus well it still got focused but it there was always room for improvement whether it's sort of like you know those with you know ieps and those who are supposed to get their hours and their minutes i mean that is something that you know definitely i think that you know we we need to look at and so that that is that's one one for me yeah okay and i think i want to jump in immediately right after that because special education is definitely my um my big thing and i just want to echo ken's statement that you know there are a lot of students that did not get all of their services for you know many different reasons um whether it's we don't have enough staff whether it's you know zoom minutes just don't
023work out versus in-person minutes but i do feel that we need to set the goal for our district to exceed what the state expectations are for proficiency to grade level for our students in special education because the state what the state requires is incredibly low and i know for a fact that many of our special education students can be better and can rise to the challenge and so we need to create that challenge for them powerful please have the expectation of that challenge for them got it yeah all right anyone else want to jump in what would you want what was that one thing you'd want to just improve and just don't feel quite satisfied with you sarah allison noelia yeah i'll just say i think um [Music] our um are like mtss supports and
024making them consistent um also just like the support we give to our english learners many of who are also special education students and and like really focusing on that group of kids because if we can support them we can support everyone um yeah got it powerful thank you um i was just gonna add i think when i think back this for through this past year about some of the really like more challenging topics that we've tackled i think um kind of figuring out how to balance um like the community input as along with the data and like really making informed decisions and how we communicate out that i think some of the some of the topics that we've discussed just felt really really heavy and i think also it's in terms of this i think
025just following the data also because as we as we move forward um making sure that our decisions are like resulting in some outcomes that we were hoping for or at least if they weren't then knowing knowing that and making sure that we're kind of following through there yeah powerful very powerful i love it balancing yeah like that input which is important from our community but then the data to make the best decisions powerful thank you yeah i'm kind of building off of that um i was kind of i i think having really consistent data that we're monitoring and tracking really consistently you know setting setting really clear goals having data to track whether or not various things that we're doing are helping us move forward you know having that progress monitoring piece um because i
026think with any of these things right there like lots of things you can do and lots of ways you can approach it um not necessarily right or wrong always right but we don't actually know sometimes when things are are working or not working so i think um really having that those that those clear data points and then also having really clear um like growth goals and targets right for our groups that are underperforming so just bring it back to data and progress monitoring got it got it john you want to add anything to what would be that one thing we'd want to do to improve as a governance team completely agree with all the points that have been brought up and of course i won't be the one that will carry this through but i
027i do think also that as we move forward into the next year there should be a focus on what you would call tier one instruction which is the instruction in the classroom because we haven't been in the classroom for a year and so how do we support our staff in providing instruction and managing any um social emotional needs that are coming up so really a focus on what's happening in the classroom how can we use the best of what we learned in distance learning the best of what we used to have and create a new reality because we don't have to go back to same old same old this should be our opportunity for change so how can we do better with our tier one instruction and then that would incorporate the things that the
028board members have brought up you know setting the goals and monitoring and the el and the special education and the mtss that would all be very important and connect to to that classroom experience so um before you ask the next question nicole i wanted to ask a quick question um if anyone's using the translation service this afternoon would you raise your hand okay but i say no it seems like no one is using the translation but um could you stay on and if we have a change in folks coming then you could continue but it's hard to translate simultaneously so maybe take a breath for a moment and then we can ask in another 20 minutes or so okay all right sorry okay thanks joan yeah good should you jump in a good catch on
029that all right and so um as you think about the question i ask you what are you most proud of and then what is that thing you want to improve um as you kind of move forward into today but also as you transition everything we're going to talk about today is about thinking about okay we're transitioning and our governance team structure may change right it may change we may do some things differently we may continue to do certain things and then there's this thing called like effective governance practices right best practices and so we absolutely want to make sure we're really conscious of that and that of course we don't lose focus in equity because that's ultimately why i know i you know partner with you all to really keep equity at the forefront of
030everything you do so we're going to talk about like how do you do that because that's sometimes very difficult and i think allison brought up a good point about like how do you balance like community input because this year you had a lot of input right and you all called it you were celebrities i'm a lot of board members i kind of teach and say you are celebrities right you have lots of people watching you have lots of people come to meetings and a lot of boards across i think the nation experienced that so you're not alone but one of the things is so critical is that you kind of really find times to refocus and re-center your work because ultimately you all had a lot of initiatives you had a lot of i call
031them distractions because of what covey brought to us i think you know and the state requirements accounting requirements things change i think every time i met you joan you had a new update on what the new requirements were i mean you had 50 reopening plans i mean it was a long hard year and those unfortunately become distractions to equity work right and so what i want to do is just help you all kind of push all that out for just a moment and just think about who are we as a team as we get ready to transition because ultimately you want to be healthy um i wish we were in person um in terms of like somewhere in a mountain somewhere we would have retreat kind of experience right but you've never really even gotten
032that this year right you've been beat up and so sometimes it gets really hard to recenter and focus on the things that are most critical and those are tools that governance teams need because it's not going to be the last time the more equity focused work you do the harder it's going to get it's not going to get easier and um and i know as a team you all you know kind of had as your criteria for your next superintendent is like you want them to continue to leave for equity so that means you're going to go deeper and deeper and deeper and what happens is it gets messier messier messier there's a lot of emotions attached to this work there are people who do not believe in equity work um and and here's what's
033interesting and i've noticed in the last i'd say month is a lot of the pushback for equity work and people who don't want to do um they think like you know critical race theory is going to be the focus and that you're teaching kids um you know um who have maybe different beliefs within their households maybe teaching them some and some people call it indoctrinating kids right literally people are very concerned about this work and and and many people are people of color who are saying this so i say that to you is that as you get ready to really go deeper into your work that you continuously are building the why of your work which is focused on equity i think shara said i'm really proud that we kept equity at the focus of
034everything we did but even more you're going to go deeper into that and deeper into that and the work gets harder so today is really centered around strengthening your kind of team as a focus on equity not just as like individual team members remember we always come together as one so as allison when you said making those tough decisions right you have community input you got the data but then there's the our vision for this work which has to be unified and so what i want to do is i want to pull up first um your why what i recall from your y which is your statement i'm going to pull it up in a second um and i just put it back in some slides for a minute um so let me go back
035sorry let me share my screen and uh okay so this is the first slide so just you know i mentioned the word recentering so something i think is going to be really important is when you all are going through your study sessions and even your governance your regular business meetings next year you're going to have to spend quite a few moments re-centering okay and i like simon sinek's visual it always really helps me when things get really messy is why are you doing this and so going back to your equity statement your resolution your policy that's an important place to be why are we here so that we have common language um how you do the work so you remember we spent time with your um your governance handbook remember we went through we kind
036of looked at those things that um maybe you want to adjust and things that's like oh we're good um but sometimes going back to your governance handbook is really important for your team because how you operate looks very different from the from what joan or your superintendent would do from what the staff does like you're a governance team so your protocols your norms how you work together um how you make decisions that all has to be re-centered because i think um this year you were tested in your house you know i got to watch you from a distance and up close and you got tested on how you do your work because this was an interesting year right and i go back again allison's comment you had to balance the community input which is very
037important and then you have to balance what is the facts what are the data and what are effective practices as a governance team but also as practitioners joan and her staff right obviously have roles they play as the experts of educators right so your how is something you're going to get tested on once again as you move into your transition and you've got to go back to your handbook most boards only look at their handbook once a year so i always say you may want to pull it out a little bit more often than just once a year right um really important when you want to be effective in your governance work and specifically equity focus work um the other is the what to the work so like when it's all said and done like
038what comes out of this so i think about like like lisa mentioned special ed ken mentioned special ed when you think about the what like what are the results of our governance work like what what does it look like when we're all done and that's something you're gonna have to be able to continue to articulate it shows up in your policy because governance teams govern by policy you're not the implementers of work so it's going to show up in your governance policy your bp's right um it's going to show up in your priorities so special education obviously is a priority it falls in that i heard a lot about the teaching and learning space like what does it look like for kids in that classroom and then there's also like the plan right like what
039is it actually going to look like what are you all going to do and that's where kind of the administrative regulations show up right in that policy space um this is where your plan coming from the recommendations from your task force show up um this is the what of the work and and it's going to show up in data right it should show up in data i think shara mentioned how do we measure right the the the progress of our work that's the piece that's going to be important when you get stuck and it gets messy i love this slide because it visually i like visuals and so that simon sent his golden circle is always really helpful when you get stuck as a team right and just go back to where you started just
040go back to why you're here and obviously how you're going to do the work is important and of course the the what of your work is obviously going to be where do you want to be okay what's the point of all of this right where are you going to be and then remember this is a long-term journey this is not overnight so this is where i always talk about how you have to also be very clear about your long-term your short-term your medium-term goals because the reality is that some of this is not going to happen overnight and i think i heard jones say like we're proud that we could leverage this opportunity to learn new things but we got a lot of work to do in terms of what does this look like in
041the classroom and that's not going to be tomorrow so when we talk about holding your superintendent accountable on the staff for doing the work of the governance team that's not going to show up always overnight so we have to really be real clear about what that looks like okay so i love this just kind of re-centering and so what i'm going to help you look at is like okay so what does effective governance look like so i'm going to share a few things today um just to give you some tools and some reminders um as you go into your transition okay um and so i'll give you a few resources that are helpful so i know you all study on your own right and so often um it's good to have resources to build your
042individual capacity as a board member but then as a team there's some things obviously study sessions help um we're gonna go back to your board assessment um we did this prior to i think allison you were on board then um i think i think this was still uh back in june of 2020. so i'm gonna go back to where you all um looked at your own kind of governance space um and then we're gonna talk a little bit and remind ourselves about our roles um definitely look at your equity statement i think it's important to go back to what you said equity is um and then let's talk about priorities because i think that's going to be important as you welcome a new superintendent you have to be really clear what are our priorities because
043we can't do everything all things equity right we have to really prioritize so we can make sure that we can get the work done and that it's feasible for your superintendent to implement the work with their staff um we'll talk a bit again about questions we can talk a little bit about how you i know joan's going to share a little bit about um meeting efficiencies around responding to community um needs and public comment um i'll give you a little quick snapshot of like just what you're gonna do in the future i think with your new superintendent in terms of like going back to some of your policies specifically equity policy so i'll just give you a couple reminders and of course i do want to spend just a few moments talking about leveraging the
044task force um because you're at the space where the task force is going to bring recommendations and there's actually a meeting um on tuesday so i want to make sure that we have a real clear kind of view and vision of what that looks like and so the first is just a quick resource um i believe i shared this with you all in your packet did you all get this one and apologies if it didn't get in there i may have just thought i gave it to you it just came out recently so i can send it over to um to ken and joan just to share uh later if you all it's just a resource but i thought it was really cool um it's it's a brief that literally um talks about like restarting
045school right and like what are those things you can do to focus on equity as you go into new year so it really is a great resource that you all could take a look at on your own um the other is um there's a brief that csba came out with um as well and it's really powerful about trying to help governance teams really think about like the unity that you have because this year also created a lot of divisiveness i think even amongst teams because people have different views and visions on the work and so especially equity work can be so tough that there were some really great reflective questions in that brief so you all should have gotten this issue because i think you all are csba members so you should have gotten that
046one and so definitely take a look um the other is next year you may want to think about your own book study process right sometimes it's really great to have a touch point because you're going to be super busy we have the pleasure of having lots of study sessions this past year but you won't always have that time so sometimes having a book study is kind of a cool process to think about and that governance core book is a great one that several boards are actually using as a study session tool um on their own just want to share a few resources before we jump in which book was that uh-huh the governance corps with davis campbell and michael fulham yeah that's a really good one lots of teams um are using that pretty easy
047read um but you know it's after you've gone through your mig trainings and all that i know like lisa being a new member this is a really good one um having like again you're bringing in a new superintendent so re-centering your work doing that onboarding kind of process this is a really good one to use when you just don't have a lot of time i didn't get that book in one of my in the mail or i don't know i thought it was the school district did not everyone get it yes i had purchased that one for you for the team now lisa do you have that book though because that was a while ago okay good i i got the book you do okay that's good yeah so that might be a good one
048to do is like a book study um i have a one colleague who we work with several boards in san mateo county and um she actually trains boards around the nation so she uses quite a bit um it is obviously a book that um you know davis works a lot with csba but um it's a really good one you know to utilize um and so in her study sessions she'll kind of go back to it and it just kind of a time efficient thing too because you don't have a lot of time to do learning right and so it's just powerful so definitely a recommendation and so a couple of things i want to kind of jump in on um as you think about kind of your work you've done this year um you all
049have an equity statement so i just want to remind you about kind of the why that you have of your work and um your equity statement was this so you all remember we went through this together and you all did some revisions i just left the one that we did last you all adopted it um i think back in february um so i just this is what you you said equity was i want to just remind you let you take a look this is our why why why the work our vision our lens great statement powerful statement as a team so i have a couple questions for you so when you think about this statement um i'm going to share the other slides just to help you with this so thinking about your statement um
050a couple of things i think noelia said it we have some common language now right it clearly communicates what equity is to you and it is something you can use as a lens for all your district policy work and i think shara said that when one of the things you're proud of um being a part of your equity policy so one thing about the statement is a lot of boards have it in their policy to really make sure that this is um what equity me says i believe you all adopted the cscba policy correct so as you yeah joan go ahead i think we're gonna jump in no i think that we did update that but i'm realizing that we may need to update it again i'll pull that out yeah yeah and so that
051was the one piece is your statement typically shows up in your equity policy so that's something that you all can definitely do in moving forward just to make sure everything's kind of in one place and one it really calls out what your lens is for the work in your policy um obviously it's student-centered um so it's always about the kids obviously equity is about everybody all stakeholders but specifically the outcomes and the work is about kids and so i just want to commend you on that um it calls out inequities and data so you already made those revisions which is powerful some boards are still working on this right it's very broad in general and bringing it down into you actually calling out racial inequities calling out um student groups i think is really important
052to be more clear and also about the measurable piece so i want to go back to i think shara mentioned being able to have measurable uh measuring product monitoring progress and so thinking about your equity statement has some things called out that can be measured right very important it shows up in data if you said you your policy or sorry your statement actually came to life that you actually can measure it and so i want to commend you on that um i feel like you definitely aligned it with your vision and mission and i think that's something that's not only a thing you do on paper but it's also like an action right it's a thing that you do it's a culture so your mission and your vision for your district absolutely should speak volumes
053and be in conjunction with your equity statement so i think you all are really in that good space and that has come to life right i think it's very important here's something though that's interesting this last bullet is including stakeholder voices in this process so although you have um adopted a statement it doesn't end there right it's still ongoingly having that kind of elephant blind man process remember i always show that kind of analogy right and we talk about defining equity because as you know everyone does not necessarily believe in your equity statement yet they may not quite understand your equity statement yet so this is not a like final process you've adopted in february like we've magically like done our work you're gonna have to continue to get input and feedback and you're gonna
054have to continue to use this as a guide for your conversations and the decisions you make and so that's an ongoing piece now my question to you is this do you feel like as a team that when you make decisions that this is the lens that you use when you're making decisions i want to ask that just kind of open it up where do you think you are in that do you feel like you use this as your lens for any decision you make i don't know shara maybe i can pick on you for a second because i think that was one no it wasn't char i think it was noel yeah okay let me go back let me go back uh yeah it was you sure so you mentioned keeping equity at the focus
055of all like governance and um decisions even when there was like distractions around so tell me a little bit about now that we're looking at the statement do you feel like this is a lens we've been using to make decisions as a team just curious um i mean i think i would say like when when i look at this definition um maybe like those kind of those first two bullet points like i think we've been really focusing on you know interrupting kind of an equitable and equitable policies like removing predictability of success or failure i think that those have been huge driving factors and i think it's you know it's because um you know we have significant gaps in our district um and we have groups some groups of students who have historically underperformed um
056and that's you know that's a systems like that's a systems challenge or you know failure um and so i think we've been really targeting those groups um of individuals and so i think that that part of the definition um has been driving has been driving the work okay would you all agree when you think go ahead sorry no go ahead no no go ahead no i was just going to say i mean i think no that's it that's it well you might be thinking what i was going to ask this next question is that i want to ask on your team do you all agree with sharon that statement like maybe like we really focus on those first two bullet points of what the work looks like um would you all agree with that piece
057and and i think my my kind of follow-up question is like do you have a specific example of where this statement really was used as like let's get our statement out and let's make this decision based on what we say equity is like do you have a specific example because you've been doing a lot of work this year but i want to know is there a specific example and it's really important because i want to hit on something about how boards can use their equity statements to to really prioritize their work do you have a specific example where you this statement really was applied to a decision you made as a board i can do a simple one i mean one of the simple ones was that we wanted to make sure that um there
058was some some information that had to be uh we had to be sure that everyone received it so we actually printed copies and took them out to our lunch pickup not only just doing it by email the normal ways we that's just a simple small thing um it's not enormous but trying to think of ways to ensure that everybody is involved and part part of the part of the system and can access information and in your statement tell me what part of it you feel like you really saw that because that's a good example but tell me like where in this statement that that really resonated with you in that i guess um i guess it would be around eliminating biases where where to create inclusive environments i mean make sure that everyone knows what's
059going on in and involved yeah great example thank you joe i'm not saying it's perfect and i don't think we're all there but it's just another step that we were we did purposely yeah yeah no i appreciate that and so i think i was thinking the same john that that interrupting and equitable policies but practices right so you called out a practice of making sure that our maybe disenfranchised stakeholders um have information they have access to information that's being more inclusive so my follow question um to anyone in response to jones example do you feel like that's something that could be measured in data the impact of that practice could that be measured in data i'm not sure that it could um because i'm just thinking about like i mean unless we like sent additional
060surveys to families and asked you know did you get this information was it able to did it have the intended um you know did the was the intention fulfilled like did you use the the services or what the information that you learned about um yeah um not to like take things in a different direction but i something that i was thinking about and i know like you know the the sixth grade math um vote that we had you know wasn't uh uh we didn't all reach a consensus but um but i do think that's an example of interrupting um an inequitable practice and and that one i think could be more tangible in terms of having data and was one that i think you know was really equity focused and more like tangible more substantial
061yeah got it yeah yeah and it sounds like you can measure that by data the impact you can measure the impact okay sure jump in no i mean i was just i was just gonna kind of build off of that because i think that that is one of the most recent and one of the most you know a really that was a really big kind of policy decision recently and i think um you know when i look at kind of some of these pieces like i think i i think sometimes things get you know um like we've done a lot of work around you know what does it mean to be a board what does it mean to be district staff you know policy setting policy and direction versus implementation and i i mean i
062think about that as a policy decision and a lot of the concerns actually didn't arise from the policy no there were some concerns about the policy there were more concerns about the implementation our job though is to make a policy decision right and so i think about how we um how do we as like a board like like just just the complexities of that right in terms of like i think it goes to allison's point around communication like the community doesn't necessarily know that and obviously there's an accountability piece around implementation um which is where like data comes into into account and all of those sorts of things but um i think that was definitely like a policy decision that was interrupting a practice that had long um been inequitable and and long did not
063do any of these things well right and and so um but but there was still concern around it but the concern the concerns were less about the policy which i just think is interesting when you think about like our work as governance and how we then make decisions that are policy decisions not implementation decisions absolutely yeah well said yeah and i think we go back through our governance assessment we can definitely unpack a little bit of that because there's the policy side of it then there's the practice right and how do we make sure those are even aligned um and how can we measure the impact which goes back to like even when we adopt a policy do we recognize is it feasible to implement right and and even is it feasible like short-term long-term
064medium right there's so many different ways to look at that um and then also kind of heard you call out like how we communicate that um to our community so those are all ones we're gonna definitely unpack in a moment but i wanted to just re-share this because here's here's something i also want to ask you is you know how often do you go back to this equity statement and actually look at it and i think also how often do you share with the community to know why so they know why you're making the decisions i think sometimes there's that lost kind of communication because they they don't really they haven't been able to internalize this right the way you have because you created it and you created it with obviously information with your own
065learning obviously with data um but i think there's still some steps to this work around how do we kind of the question was do we use our equity statement to make decisions and also does our community understand what this means so this is where i think continuous conversation is gonna have to happen and continuously going back to this each time you make a decision i i'd even recommend having it sitting right at your your personal dice right in your homes wherever you're holding your your space is to remind yourselves like this is what equity means this is our lens that we apply to everything we do but sometimes we don't look back at it literally we don't can't we all can't always make that connection no yeah i just wanted to say um and this
066is this is like a piece of of where i think we lose a lot of people like when when i read this right i think about you know the focus of educational equity being the students that have faced and are facing the most inequity but when we have other people in the community who that they have been benefiting from some of these inequitable practices and then they feel like something's being taken away from their kid in that their child or student isn't receiving what they need to meet their full academic or social emotional potential like like that that's where i feel like we lose people and where we have to get a little more clear on how to how to explain that how to how to message that to the community and and how to
067um you know help people internalize what real equity is and what it's not um yep powerful million and this is why i think this one has to be revisited a lot because everyone doesn't understand that and you're right you're interrupting like that where you actually called it out on here right you're interrupting which means you got to unpack what interrupt means that means somebody's not going to like this and they do need to understand every one of your community members is is important so it's important to recognize like how we help them understand that interrupting doesn't mean we're taking away it means that we're creating access for all kids and that kids don't lose out because of your statement and that's gonna be a burden you'll have to carry for a while right because it's
068it's real so thank you for that lisa jump in sorry yeah um just to play devil's advocate here um i think a lot of people were looking at you know because okay so backing up the math discussion and the governance handbook discussion happened both at the same meeting or close to the same meeting so people did look at our equity statement as that was part that is part of our governance handbook and you know when you see the word each child and you know when you're talking about developing their full academic or social emotional potential as measured through multiple data metrics i can see how it would be very easy to you know make broad brush it and um apply it to all students um you know i look at so social emotional and i
069look at some of our autistic students and math is their language for you know since we're talking about math in this instance math is their language and if they don't get you know the level or the challenge that they need there's a very good likelihood they can have quite a bit of meltdowns i mean that's i experience that all the time multiple times a day of late um you know so i just feel like we need to look at ways even before sixth grade math and i think and i don't want to make this about math but you know i i feel like this is a good starting point to start that discussion of where is the best place to do the interruption um is it earlier you know where where is the best place
070to start that interest and make the change because at my kids elementary school i see an amazing amount of students who are just brilliant in math and of course you know because of socioeconomic disadvantages they're unable to get the same level of um assistance from their parents you know either you know depend you know it's a title one school so you know there could be any amount of uh reasons why so wouldn't it make sense to start the interruption at a younger age maybe we have we have you know um preschool you know what about starting the interruption at preschool and in the pip programs you know so i think i think you know it just opens the converse like our equity statement opens that conversation even more to a more think outside of the
071box yeah um you know we you know this is a great way to start that policy but i kind of sometimes feel that maybe our district staff might need um just a little brainstorming session and maybe you know that includes some of us on absolutely part of that to get the conversation started oh thank you lisa thank you for sharing that um and you said play the devil's advocate but i think just being very real this these are the struggles you're gonna have as a board because of your statement right which is powerful and strong and very much i think um gonna impact equity gaps you know for years to come however what you said it's interesting is when do we do bullet point number two i heard the win right when do we do
072do we interrupt now and you use math as a great example because you're looking at middle school but like you're right like these equity gaps you got to look at the root cause and they do start earlier than middle school right and so this is where i love what you said is we have to spend more time studying we have to spend more time really looking at what is going to be the impact of this policy because it may not impact the root issue which sixth grade math like before they get to sixth grade right there's something going on so thank you for saying that because that's the harder work of a governance team to not get in the weeds and do jones and her her staff job right but it's really about how do
073we ask those questions that you just asked as a board prior to us making decisions so that when we make a policy change we really can make the most impact based on our understanding of the root cause of the issue and this is why it's important to also talk about what how are we going to address when hot topics come up and then how are we going to address when we need to pause and do some studying with our staff to really get to before we make this decision are we really understanding the full impact from start to finish so i just appreciate you bringing that up because that's the hardest part of the work of being a governance team which is more of the long term work versus making a decision right away that's
074short term in nature but it has long-term effects so i just appreciate that sure you had a thought i think i saw yeah yeah i did um i i just wanna i mean just to kind of follow up on that i mean one thing i just want to say is it has to happen everywhere right and and at every at every place because the inequities exist everywhere and at every place and so as these things come up we have to address them and that's just our responsibility if this is going to guide our work yeah the other thing i kind of wanted to follow up on what noelia shared which is um and i don't know if i was miss hearing her but i i actually um part of me wonders if they're if we
075do actually and i don't know that now is the time to do it but part of me does wonder if there's a place for making some revisions to this again because i i i feel like and it's i'm glad noelia brought this up and i think at least it a little bit too in terms of like some of the places where some of these things um are not being understood or interpreted in the way that they were intended and so they're being used to um uh undermine in a way kind of some of the work or like um so you know i think about this idea of um you know the last bullet point that i know noelia mentioned and i know was brought up right like for example the math example right like if
076we don't have an accelerated pathway then my students unique gifts and talents you're taking that away from my higher achieving student not the intention of the policy and not what what is should be the impact with implementation right it should actually be that more students have the ability to discover and cultivate their uniques gift and talent as it pertains to math right and that the bar should be should be raising for all kids so i just wonder like is is it that the definition needs to change to better support the work that we're really doing now or is it that the communication needs to change or is it fun yeah good point yeah sure what i i'm gonna give you my professional um advice on that as a governance team just based on the reality
077of the time you all have to do this work is you know after a while like you every time you look at this statement you probably will feel like we need to revise it like that is a very normal feeling i think for the sake of your what's best for your you know effective use of time is probably not to revise over and over but i do think just like your handbook you go it's in your handbook it's in your policy like when you revisit your policies your handbooks in any kind of kind of process you have for that i think that's appropriate to say like hey maybe like we the more we learn right the more information we have maybe we do need to revise it but i think you said something that's critical
078about the communication is remember you're still educating your community on your vision right this is all new right this is a culture you're establishing and it has to be fair to say everyone's not going to understand at the same pace the same journey they have different needs um so i think it's important that you all keep going back to this over and over and re-educating not only yourselves but also your community because if this is gonna be the lens that you use to make any decision it's only fair that community members your staff everyone understands the governance team this is what they mean when they say they're making a decision with an equity lens and so i even um have recommended to uh boards that like if you take a statement like this you can
079just take bullet point number three and you could have a whole study session on what does that mean because that's where you're going to talk about implicit bias you're going to talk about um the fact that kids cultural identity varies right no one kid is the same you're going to rev imagine your metrics for success because remember every kid's gifts and talents aren't measured by your metrics in school remember you're still interrupting a tradition of measuring kid's success and lisa had a good point about you know the ieps right like there's different the state metric versus what we want our i mean those goals and and kind of ways that you look at what does it mean to discover kids unique gifts and talents is going to be a conversation about maybe your grading practices
080and policies right so i think you have to really take pieces of this and really spend time on it and that i think is going to hit chara's point about do we need to revise it maybe not but we do need to unpack it and communicate what it means because here's the big deal five years from now how do you measure that these things have happened in san mateo foster city that's going to be the challenge for you how do you know that you discovered and cultivated the unique gifts talents and interests of your students and that's where you're going to show up in it should be quantitative data and qualitative so it may be you ask people's experiences that's the surveys the interviews the equity walks and observations and then there's also like your
081academic like test scores grades and all the metrics you have those are going to be where you can say yes our equity statement really came to life versus trying to wordsmith it over and over you'll never really get to a place where everybody's gonna have that you know agreement about what a word means but i do really think you all will have to revisit this a lot and this is why i say how often do you actually go back to this the more you go to it the more you'll understand it and then the more you'll be able to explain it to your community that's what's going to be important it becomes part of your language in your board meetings so as i'm watching a board meeting from a distance i should hear some of
082this terminology come out of your mouth because it's your statement it's your lens how for which you do all work and eventually this statement won't even be needed anymore it's just what we do it's a culture it's our life right and that's going to take time so i think where you're at is really in a good place as a board but to take it to the next level part of why i brought it up today is as you're transitioning with a new leader who you said you want to be an equity leader what that is going to look like is you have to have a lens for what does equity mean and this is where i see your statement really driving a lot of that so i hope that helps a little bit because it's
083it's definitely a non-closure moment it's not one that you want to determine today but i think studying this is important um i challenge each of you individually look at this like i won't say daily but you need to go to this quite a bit if you're going to live it you got to actually see it and you got to make sure it makes sense to you because also each of you individually has a different journey and you have a different way of seeing it and so i think that's the part um you kind of goes back to the uh remember the where's the picture the elephant and the blind man remember like like that's what this process is is your equity statement is that elephant and you are each individually kind of getting to a
084place of having common language amongst your team which is really critical even more than prior to you having your community understand so you have to have a common understanding and lisa said you know i really focus on special education she's right right shara may say you know what i think charlo you've talked about several kids you called out this year you know your kids of color you've talked about i think noah you called out english learners right each of you are right but the equity statement you have is really calling out like all kids right but it's sometimes focused on one part of the elephant and that's what the community has to understand is i think noel you said it's not about taking away from another set of kids but it's about helping our community
085understand that right now based on the data we got to focus on the ear of the elephant right now because that's where the need is the ear is hurting right it's damaged so that's we're going to focus on and that's going to be i think your bigger battle as a board when you talk about what joan's going to share in a little bit like your ways of addressing the needs of the community because the community is going to come and say i don't agree i don't think that elephant is really real right they're not going to understand even when you show data this is the the bigger challenge as you make this bold statement and your statement is bold it's powerful i um often use it to share with other boards so i didn't ask
086your permission but um i definitely do say look san mateo foster city is a great statement right i mean so you should be proud i hope you're proud of this as well and so um i want to make a connection if you're okay with it um i'll leave this i'll pull it back up in a moment if you need to but i want to just kind of get to a place of where i think you all are kind of going into a deeper space is kind of as a team right as a team where are we in our equity journey as an effective team and i want to ask you all how you feel about it and i say i know you have newer members you have you're going to have a new superintendent you
087have a lot of changes that are going to happen but i want to ask you where you feel you are as a team and the last time i asked you this was back on june 27th of 2020 i don't know if you all remember that look at that can i ask one more time about you yeah oh yeah please go jump right in um okay gracias right should we um dismiss our translator then i believe so okay thank you thank you stephanie thanks stephanie it's on the spanish channel thank you everybody bye all right all right so i was saying i was just grabbing some water so i'm not sure if you all want to grab some water or um have a couple of moments to take a stretch break but we um we're going
088to go it's going to go pretty quick to three o'clock so you all feel okay you're still good with moving forward all right perfect take care of yourself as you need to um so i want to go back to um kind of this you know what you all thought of yourselves back in june okay in this board assessment um you all i'm not sure how many of you had a chance to take a look at it and just revisit it um so that was the one kind of homework i want y'all to work on but i want to just kind of go back to it um this particular board assessment um is based on and let me re-share the screen sorry um it's not as big on the screen so if you have yours in
089front of you that might be better um and i can actually pull this up uh yeah it doesn't allow me to blow this one up i don't think or it could be i just don't know how to use my computer uh i think i'm freezing on you all in one sec am i cutting out you're fine oh let's see yeah i think it's it's trying to kick me out and reconnect me when we pause first well i guess it did kick crap yeah it never fails i don't know what it is like they think i'm gonna say something profound maybe i don't know all right so this um study session study session this uh board assessment again is based on research around the center for um public education and i've shared this with you again
090back in june of 2020 so i want to revisit very briefly just to make sure that as you think about you're an equity driven board right that's the spirit of why i'm with you that's it i'm not with you for any other reason you are an equity driven board and to be effective at leading correctly we have to be effective in our governance practices so that's the spirit of this board assessment and based on the research there's eight characteristics of effective governance teams and so um we went through these um back in june and so i just want to revisit them just for a moment and remind you of some of the things you shared um and when you talked to me in june um of last year for the most part you all said
091like kind of a big picture that you felt like you were somewhat effective right there was three columns not effective somewhat or very so i want to ask you if you feel like you're still in the same place and maybe what's changed um and and or you know what are some things you want to really still focus on okay because again you all want to be effective at leading for equity that's what you told me that's when i met first met you so that's the spirit of this and so it's hard to be effective at leading for equity if we don't have these characteristics in place and this is really great when your new superintendent comes on to even revisit this again to see where are we because some of these things are going to
092require you to re-establish a governance team culture based on the leadership style um and needs of your new superintendent and what you all need as well and so the first one was around your common vision second one's around having shared beliefs the third one was around being collaborative with your staff and your community um so this is more about communication both both internally and externally the fourth one is about accountability driven spending less time on operational issues and more time on your priorities and equity um and then the fifth one is about being data savvy so i know that came up data savvy and we embrace qualitative and quantitative data and we absolutely embrace even if it's negative we use that as an opportunity to learn an opportunity to grow and improve the sixth one
093is about aligning your resources sustaining them and doing that with the very focus on equity clearly and this one calls out for example professional learning because you spend 85 90 of your budget on staff so obviously building capacity of staff is absolutely needed to sustain equity uh focus work so staff has to have that opportunity um and then the seventh one is about leading as a united team the key word is united in that uh csba uh newsletter i shared earlier that i think you should take a look at those are the questions they talked about is united team you work with your superintendent and you work well together because each of you individually have maybe a different perspective but as a team how do you come together in a united way regardless of what
094your decisions are everyone has the right to vote right differently but once that vote is done how do we make sure we're united so that's that piece and then the eighth one the characteristic is you're part of professional learning together with your superintendent sometimes without without but you have a culture of learning very critical for equity work because if we can't we don't understand the context of what equity is and we don't have that chance to learn together i mentioned the book study i mentioned doing your homework when you get those packets from the staff as part of your board packet um those are the opportunities to learn together these study sessions so that was the assessment okay those are what effective teams do and in your um i didn't give it to you in
095your packet for this one but in your past package you actually got the report so it's a longer report and has the research around certain boards you may recognize that research as well so i just want to pause for just a second and ask you where you feel you all are as a team and the last time i talked to you the first one you said you felt like you were somewhat effective and i think one of you said you were very effective and having a common vision so just out of curiosity with your common vision and even your shared beliefs do you feel that you are still somewhat effective and moving to very effective would you say yes how do you feel yeah okay um i to be honest i think that we maybe
096have to like revisit a little bit yeah do some more um around this yeah so you say maybe somewhat which requires a lot means we're not quite there yet we're not very but we still have some work to do okay would you all agree with noya yeah so those first two like vision and shared beliefs i think that's definitely one where lots of boards are with so yeah that's where you were at last time so it makes sense um what about your collective your collaborative relationship with your staff your community um the communication structure that you have both internally externally where do you think you are with that when you talk to me last you felt like you were in the somewhat effective space and you so tell me tell me where you think you
097are with your collaboration i think we have a more collaborative relationship with the staff of our district um you know as you said earlier we've been beaten up quite a bit over the last year um with covert related things um i think the whole community has felt beaten up as well so i feel like you know we need to um just reestablish that um that trust and collaboration between us in the community okay i was just going to say i thought this this year we all um were very collaborative with the community there may not have been um like a shared um consensus but i think we all made ourselves available in many different ways to like respond to emails we've all like been you know on zoom calls with different members of the community
098so maybe we're not very effective but i think that we this year um we all made it an effort to collaborate and listen okay yeah yeah kobe definitely impacted number three on this list i think so you feel like you're still kind and that's somewhat effective um we all didn't agree per se but you definitely leaned in and you engaged with your community and you engaged with the staff i think a lot more i think probably joan you probably agree you all had to collaborate a lot this year um more than ever um i would say so yeah i think there's a lot to build on so you although it was a rough year i think you know when i met with you all in june um we were kind of at the beginning well
099not even at the beginning we were still deep in distance learning um but um reopening schools had not become a thingy yet i'll just say that um so i think so it sounds like we're still in that somewhat space okay all right tell me about this one this was a big one and i have another slide i'll go back to remind you about this one so number four and this is gonna be big especially in transitioning with a new superintendent because you're gonna have to reestablish this culture but we're accountability driven right so we as a board accountability driven spend less time on operational issues so operational issues are really like the role of the superintendent right um we spend more time focus on equity and policies that improve student achievement so that's more about
100the priorities right kids are always at the center how do you feel you are with that because that one when i talked to you last you felt like um you needed to have some more time around creating clarity on what roles were um again remember covet showed up when i asked you this right this was when you all were learning that you had to collaborate a lot more and it was the lines are a little blurred i think during that time so tell me where you think you are as far as accountability driven but you spend less time on operational more time on your priorities on equity and against student achievement tell me a little bit about that uh i'll just say that um i think of all the ones that are here i think
101this is the one where i have a hard time with because when you consider the past year and everything we've been through because of covad um we had to do so much more and so where we may have wanted to really focus primarily let's say on equity or policies to improve student achievement i i mean just getting the kids back in school was just a huge issue so i think you know i wouldn't say let's take a pass on this one it's more about like i mean this was just an exceptional year so if you look at where we last look at this in june you know june we had the previous year to look at you know which we were basically in school up until march and so you can kind of you know
102make that assessment and and you know compare um well you can't compare apples and oranges in this case so like i mean it's just totally different so i have a hard time with this one because i think yeah we were like so it was just crazy here and so like i i just this is a hard one to evaluate islam personally so yeah yeah would anyone agree with ken was that this is a tough one to make a real clear assessment on this one because of the past year you know and just to add to what ken said you know we did use the focus of equity when deciding on how to bring the kids back to school and making our recommendations to joan and the rest of the district you know we focused on
103you know bringing back those who didn't have access to the computers or chromebooks or hot spots um those with students with disabilities so you know there was some focus on equity in the process got it got it yeah this is a tough one i'm going to push you all on this one oh jumping kin yeah i would just say i completely agree i mean obviously we use that in terms of the equity i just felt like i don't know we had more operational discussions than i think we ever really ever wanted to and that we never really needed to in terms of or not needed to but more than we ever would in a normal year so um yeah i think just it was sort of all hands on deck and while you sort of
104make the separation between the board and the superintendent right i think that we got we got into obviously some of the superintendent's roles because you know it was all hands on deck and we were and and we all needed to work as a team to try and get things done but absolutely we definitely did focus on equity during the decisions to bring kids back um it was just more of a i feel like the board got more involved in operational stuff than yeah we never would have so yeah joan i'm gonna ask you to jump in because i know the operational stuff is is your you know side of the wheelhouse and this was a very different year i'm curious about your thoughts about this one we were heavy into operational issues [Music] yeah it
105was just the reality of it now granted though exactly what has come up is that as we were trying to get kids into distance learning and then as we started to work on trying to get back yeah we were heavily concerned with the students who weren't connecting right or who were um showing signs of disengagement yeah and we really pushed on that to the very best that we could under the circumstances but i can see next year being just um an opportunity to really dig into how students learn setting up some goals establishing metrics monitoring how we're moving forward in a very different way than what happened this year yeah because this year was just so so um operational oriented got it i will say we forgot about our equity vision no but but you'll
106be able to do much more in this area in the upcoming year i believe got it yeah i appreciate that and you know this one you know is one i think that um just based on the feedback i've heard thus far is as you move forward and you bring in a new superintendent and you open schools in the fall um i think number four i'm gonna encourage you all to spend quite a bit of time focusing on in some study sessions like i think you're gonna have to pull this one out and really unpack it because again the whole purpose of my conversation with you is to leave for equity right as a governance team and the role of a governance team is not operational that's the tricky part about this so let's just take
107covert away for just a second okay there's a lot of operational issues that in a classroom um you would be concerned about as a board the more you learn about what equity is and what it is not and and absolutely i'll even use the iep example that lisa mentioned right because it's near and dear to lisa but also as a team right like it's an important issue you have students with ieps and they're not being implemented um for obvious reasons during coven not that that's an excuse but it did impact and but prior to covet iep issues have always been an issue in most districts right and so now let's talk about that means like lisa's passionate about it right and so lisa is going to always have that wrestling we talked about this on
108our first one you'll always have that kind of you know wrestling with like how deep do i go how much in the weeds do i get because you're passionate about it that means community members know so they're gonna come to you right they're gonna come to those of you who have a passion for this work because equity work is people work it's not operational work it's people work so this is where you as a board are going to be tested because again to allow a superintendent to implement your vision you've actually got to get out the way that's the only way i can say it and it's really hard if it's your passion so this is why i think number four is gonna be a big piece as you bring a new superintendent you gotta
109just kind of re um establish what is the culture i took a note that um from june that said trust needs to be built that's a big one and remember covey cause all kinds of craziness so trust and any any emotion and any kind of you know um point of integrity that we have as individuals got tested last year so i want to make sure that's clear but i'm going to tell you trust is about knowing each other's roles that i know that i can trust that if something comes up related to any issue around equity i'm i can trust that our culture is very clear that this is how we're going to handle it and that's a big deal for not only a superintendent who has to leave this work and take your vision
110and the staff though remember you don't all just not only have your executive staff you have principals who are going to be expected to leave this work remember we're working with your principals and we're wanting to make sure that they feel that trust of i'm going to be able to lead this work because you expected me to but then if there's a mistake or there's a bubble or a hiccup that happens right that the board or the governance team is not necessarily in the weeds to address that people are going to complain about your principles i'm just being real complaints will come because you're remember what your equity statement said you're going to interrupt so if you're going to ask your principals to interrupt as leaders guess what's going to happen not everybody's going to
111be happy they're going to come your new superintendent will come right you're asking them to interrupt what happens there's going to be all kinds of things that will come to the board level because it's your statement and the vision so this is where number four you're going to have to unpack together a lot and i just want to reemphasize it it's a culture that you build um it speaks to i'm just going to go to this slide it speaks to this slide here remember this one this is always a really good one to like envision like that dotted line right the work that you do as a board is above that dotted blue line the work of the superintendent and all designees that's teachers principles you name it they're all under the blue line they
112implement the work right and i think that's going to be a hard place for you all to be when your equity work goes deeper and deeper so number four i'd encourage you all to look at for next year um as you look at your study sessions and just really giving yourself the professional learning time to be able to establish a strong feeling that when ken said like i just don't know if i have a good assessment for that i think noel you might have said the same that makes sense but at some point you do want to be able to be candid like we're not here maybe it's for a moment in time it's not overall today i'm asking about overall assessment of your board not individually like based on circumstances but you are going
113to have to be confident that we're effective in the space of not going below the blue line but knowing that that blue line is dotted for a reason right because you do have to collaborate you do have to talk and so the role of the superintendent and the staff to give you information to give you i think sure you said the data to give you the data to monitor the impact of the work you do want to know so it makes sense so instead of you having to go below the line and go get it you want to establish a communication structure that then creates information for the board to say you know what our equity statement and our vision our policy is being implemented and we have evidence of it that's a culture you
114have to create and that's where i think number four is going to really be powerful for you all as you're bringing your new superintendent so i want to say that because you're gonna have to re structure some things based on what that person's um style is right and and what they the way they work with their staff and you've got to give them the chance to be that superintendent as well and to lead this work so that was really one i wanted to bring in um number five was about data so i think char again you mentioned data so this is one i think you'll probably also need study sessions for because remember data is not just quantitative in nature we get the pretty pie charts and right and you get all the graphs and
115all that but it's qualitative data and it's also data that really informs you right it's not data that's just oh that sounds good but it doesn't really answer my question right so you want to have data that is absolutely um helpful but you have to be savvy about that so that means you have to know the questions to ask but then also you have to recognize um how to teach what i call an expectation of what you want your staff to give you in the form of data because remember your job is not to go do the data dive right your job is not to go do all the research but it is to understand data so how do you feel you are as far as your data piece i mean i i the last
116time you talked to me you all were like split you were kind of like not effective and somewhat you feel like you're still in that place and um i think it was centered around like talking about a little bit more and actually spending times where do y'all feel you are with the data piece personally i think we lost some ground on that because we didn't get cast last spring and we had to change some of the formative assessments and so as we go forward i think this is those two um are going to be inter intertwined and that's going to be work that that i mean ed services is already looking at how to build that back got it okay anyone else want to jump in and share yeah how you feel in terms of
117data savviness yeah i think that we still definitely for me this is like one of our biggest areas of growth i think um okay because i think um you know i think i would love to see us just um i think allison pointed this out right just really be data driven in decision making and that requires just so much data right like i would love in all of our presentations to see um you know what we what we want goals to be and how that aligns to funding and what we hope the you know how we're going to be measuring that right just like in all of decision making across the board for that really to be what is driving the work um and for us to have really clear systems around then how to
118monitor that so i think i still think we're we're not there and i think you know there's lots of things that have um made that more challenging but i think it should definitely be a goal and a focus got it got i agree um it also this is one where it's going to be tough because you know right the end of the last school year you know going to shelter in place in march you know all the data sets that we normally would have had and testing everything we won't have and then this past covert year we we don't have a data either so this one is one where we we definitely want to be more data driven um just getting that data is is is hard so um but i think we can get
119there it's just um it's it's gonna be hard okay all right powerful so it sounds like four and five from it oh yeah jump in no i just want one thing i just kind of want to like push a little bit on that because i think you're right that like there's certain data we don't have but there's a lot of data that we do have it's different data right okay and so i think that's where we need to be like it's data driven generally we have data around learning hubs and except like there's a lot of data we have and we need to be leveraging that in our decision making even if it's not casp or the same format of assessment right and so that's kind of like the point i'm trying to make right
120it's like how do we find the data that we do have and use that um absolutely absolutely we do have that data i always sort of dive back down to like student achievement data which we want have but yeah but you're absolutely right we do have that data and yeah we can we can definitely use that data for sure so i was going to just say the same thing because um like although we may not have the testing data what recently we saw some data around middle school grades and i think that's like another piece we can look at so there's just different ways that we can dive deeper and even though we don't have exactly what we normally have all right cool you know like chara uh said and sort of no uh allison
121i'm so sorry um yeah we have data out there even if it isn't from standardized testing um and it sounds like it has been collected and i feel like you know i would love to just have a study session around the data and you know get the edge services take on the whole situation and really open up you know those you know just having that data available and i think that would also lend some transparency to the community as well so yeah you know it's like in nursing we call it evidence-based practice and i don't see why we can't translate that into education and make that the basis of how um how we create policy here yep got it powerful got it notating that and i think those are gonna be important to remember what
122you all just said right like don't forget this and i'll keep my notes and remind you later to say remember you said you were going to spend time on looking at data you're going to spend time on looking at your accountability driven space like you got to make that time but that means now we're going to have to prioritize our work because if you have too many things going you'll never have time to do these things which are the most important part of your work so that's going to be important so so i i just say that again um our agenda builder joan it only shows up till june but if you guys when you see the full agenda joan and i did go for the year gender builder for the year we did go
123through and the study sessions are mainly all about equity and data and so um lisa to your exact point we we have this sort of set up for our study sessions uh the question is whether or not our new superintendent would want to still keep that format but we could always work with that person powerful good news good good news all right so i'm going to finish and round us off with these last three because i want to get into our conversation about priorities and specifically um our piece about responding to the community um and so the last three are around resources so i think this is a big one that probably will require study sessions by themselves as well as your board aligns monitors and sustains resources which i just heard you say your
124data helps you to do that so how do y'all feel you are with that piece you last told me you were um somewhat effective so you feel like you're still in that place in terms of um monitoring sustaining measuring the impact of your resource allocation and then i know we called out professional development which is one space where you spend you know budget you you allocate your budget to your um human capital building capacity of human capital so let's feel like you're still somewhat okay all right so that that's probably going to require a study session just by the way because looking at resources a whole space in itself looking at your budget um and being really savvy at that and making sure you can ask the questions of as we spend our money how
125is it impacting our equity focus work and if you're spending money and you're not seeing a difference um you're not having a way to measure the impact then you have to revisit like is this the best use of our not only money but our time any resource okay um so the last two being a united team um working with your superintendent um having collaboration mutual trust strong equity focus work um that i think you all kind of shared to some degree kind of similarly when we talked about being um um having shared common vision and shared beliefs i think noelia you'd share that you know we're we're definitely have more um common language we have to continue to unpack together but as a united team do you feel pretty much like you're denying it for
126the most part again this is an overall assessment and sometimes i go the reminder is like kind of like a hand right like we have an individual vote we have an individual vision but when we make decisions as a board and we call meetings to order we are we're one fist you feel you see what i'm saying do you feel like you're pretty united or you're like oh i got a little finger hanging out and i'm joking with you but i kid you not like this is what this means we're united even though we may have different respective kind of you know perspectives but do you feel overall like that you're somewhat effective in being united as a border yeah yeah i think you should celebrate that by the way i know it's been a
127hard year but i tell you i've watched a few boards that haven't been in that place it's been nasty ugly and you should really be celebrating that as a board you might have different perspectives you may not always vote the same way but in the end moving forward even after the vote you stay united and that's a big deal it's a big deal so i hope you're celebrating that but i know we still have work to do so i get it and you're gonna get you have a new superintendent you have to revisit this right because being united means we have to all be on the same page and you got to know what that page is and that's going to require relationship building things that you lost this year y'all didn't get to go
128sit and have coffee and just you know enjoy each other as people right just to come together and i was lost this year for a lot of boards so i think this is going to be important and then our last one i just commend you i think the last one you all felt like um that you um spent lots of time doing professional learning together lots of study sessions um however spending more professional learning time learning about equity um i think is a big piece but it seems like you felt for the most part that um you were somewhat effective but you needed more time you needed to spend more time would you agree you're still in that place because this year just was such a distraction there's so much okay all right so i'm
129going to keep note of that all right so overall you're a somewhat effective board moving into a place of being very effective um which i think is something you should be celebrating when i think about what i'm most proud of and working with you all because it's been a lot you've had to take on um i feel like you should be really proud that you're in a place where you are set up for success to leave for equity so i hope that you kind of leave today with that perspective now what i want to do is um i'm going to ask joan in a minute to share a little bit about one space you all talked about i think it was number three is like being able to you know collaboratively have a great relationship
130um around not only communicating with the staff and with uh but with your community um and i wanted to just give credence to one piece because i kept hearing um the word priority come up so i just want to go back to that one visual that i shared a while back um again this is another visual i like to look at when it gets really messy like what are our priorities because you're going to do equity work you can't do all things equity there's a lot there is a life you turn on every stone you can unturn in your district and there's a lot but remember our role as a governor's team is to operate above the blue line so this is about that operational versus actually um policy so would you say these four
131priorities would be a good focus for you as you move into transitioning with your new superintendent this is something to think about just a recommendation to think about as we move forward the four things that should be at the top of our list when we make decisions our human resources our human capital right you spend 85 90 percent of your budget on your on your people yes you have policy around personnel probably should be a priority right when we talk about your budget absolutely all boards have to be fiscally sound you should absolutely have that as a priority teaching and learning student achievement absolutely that should be a priority you're in the business to educate kids it should be at the top of your list and then of course your school climate right this is
132about the culture how people feel the safety piece the social emotional space the discipline issues that may rise to the top these are the four that effective boards really spend their time on the priorities that's the key word priorities and anything that is not necessarily on this list per se but anything that doesn't fall in these four buckets you're gonna have to have a conversation with each other of is this something that shows up on our agenda is this something that shows up with us spending time and energy on or is this something that i need to call my superintendent and say that's for you i just want to make you aware i'll let you be superintendent this is really helpful for boards when you're doing equity work because there's a lot and your community
133is going to come to you with a lot of equity focused issues in their eyes that may not fit in your priorities and so you're going to have to train your community to understand your culture of governance so that you can be effective because you can't do it all so you remember i kind of we i didn't tease you per se but i said you know when we we met i don't know joan this was this was several months back and you presented like all the different initiatives that you all have and kind of a staff matrix and all the things that are going on y'all have a lot you're doing and most districts do don't get me wrong but some of those things to in my purse professional kind of opinion didn't necessarily need
134to be in the board space and that's when we talk about operational things so how much of that do you need to have in your prayer view and how much of that let the superintendent kind of do that work and then report to you so you can measure the impact of the work those are the things that effective governance teams do who want to focus on equity so this is really helpful i think is a reminder any questions or thoughts on this because as your new superintendent comes in you're going to have to definitely prioritize your work and i think you all have to be on the same page of what that means any questions about this before we go into um kind of our hotter topic of how are we going to address the
135community does this make sense to you is it helpful okay all right all right this is a great reminder i know you're processing and you're like okay it's almost three o'clock nicole my brain hurts but i'm gonna tell you if you don't remember anything else in your work if you don't prioritize your equity work you will burn out and you will not be effective at anything i'm just going to leave that and that's that's i'm speaking to myself now as an equity leader you have to prioritize what is most impactful what's most important because you can't do it all and some things um when we talk about closing equity gaps right sometimes you're just going to focus on certain target groups of kids i think sharon mentioned that earlier when you focus on a target
136group of kids and you close that gap guess what happens with all the other gaps they close too that's why you got to really focus narrow your focus of your work okay so that was really i think one piece i want to share so i'm going to pause for a second because one of your assessments was um go back to the assessment tool number three i want to kind of hit on this for a moment and ask for a little help from joan um but looking at how you actually um communicate to your community specifically um when you're talking about responding during meetings when you're trying to look at um your public comment process i think you're gonna all have to revisit this with your new superintendent coming in so i don't want to recommend
137you make any decisions or changes at all um but i do want to give an opportunity just to talk about a little bit more efficiency for your board meetings moving forward now that you're starting to settle in and so joan do you want to share a little bit of context for this i can but i did want to ask you um i think that the piece around leveraging the equity task force was super important and so um what i would suggest is that i simply give a very short overview they can come back to this topic later absolutely diane um i'm going to take like three minutes i'm going to push really fast but could you put the slides up so that i can talk from them i titled this board meeting efficiencies because as
138we know this is really the concern that has been brought up go ahead to the first slide the board meetings during the pandemic became more frequent and longer than usual and there was increased participation which you're going to want to continue but due to the complexity of the issues facing the district the presentations trustee questions comments public comments our board meetings were extending much longer than our policy of uh finishing up at 9 30. uh so we ended up with important decisions being made late uh in the in the in the night or early in the morning and trustees staff and parents were fatigued so this is what we need to look at as the year comes next year what can we do let's look at some options first of all you can decide that
139certain agenda items have a specified period of time if they don't uh if it needs to continue it continues on another time staff can work to make sure that their presentations are no more than 20 minutes any presentation up to 20 minutes uh trustees you can of course continue to submit your questions so that those questions can be part of the uh presentation and you can target your comments following that presentation now of course that's part of it and then the other part was that we had a lot of participation and so what can the we do with public comment also when we're trying to be more efficient with our board meetings our our uh policy that's on the um on our policy uh our pa our approved policy is 9323 it is from csba
140it is a gamet um policy uh from the it's a boilerplate and staff went to look at what were the policies that other districts had we stopped after 10 different districts they all had the same boilerplate language so this language this language is not unusual um it says that there's uh the speakers have three minutes you can limit the total input for 20 minutes uh with board consent the board president may increase or decrease the time allowed for public presentation depending on the topic and the number of people's people wishing to be heard so um this is a boilerplate but the issue really is not this policy but how is it implemented so then we tried to look at how our districts really implemented a three-minute 20-minute max well one uh example that was not
141from this county was that the board announced board president announces there's a three-minute 20-minute max the beginning of the public comment they encourage the uh folks who have the same point of view to ask one or two people to speak on their behalf and indicate that they're representing others and then the president gives a five-minute warning prior to the 20-minute time limit now of course in the world we're living in uh being in the same room knowing that certain people are talking on the same topic was not a reality so if as we go back to a normal situation would it be maybe i don't know um but that goes into this other example where um and this is i put quotes around these because these are literally pulled from websites uh the president may
142ask members of the public with the same viewpoint to select a few individuals to address the board um again that's the same question i have is how will people know they have the same viewpoint and gather so that they can make a collective presentation there's also another example where the board the district allowed emailed and live comments so uh emailed comments this one said uh that the comments would be read during the open session portion of the meeting as long as there is time so now who's deciding what is the time limit so that to me was a a similar concern as the three minute 20 minute who's making that decision that there's time for a live comment or an email comment um there was a city website now this one didn't make some sense
143to me stated that there were there were three uh speakers to non-agenda topics that those speakers would be taken at the end now that makes some sense because uh these comments would be non-agendized items and so you would go ahead with your agendas decision making uh uh items and then at the end listen to uh comments or that maybe would be coming later but you wouldn't have to make a decision in the middle of the night so that one had some uh i thought i had some possibilities now um another thing folks have done in other districts are collecting options uh for public comment for example they collect the public comment by utilizing a google form now if they do that the form is live at a certain time of the week and then it
144shuts down if you did that something like that then the board president does know how many people are going to be interested in speaking and they're called on when they when they want to speak um so you know how many you call on the people however uh it would reduce any spontaneous comments maybe that's okay maybe it really isn't and what if somebody misses the chance to sign up do they not get a chance to talk uh maybe they didn't even know we had a sign up you know so you'd have to be very explicit if you chose something like this and give a a way for everyone to be able to sign up but this uh example below where there's quotes around it that is literally lifted off of a website where that is
145in place um so then the real question is is public comment during a board meeting the only way that people can speak to the board so if it is then then that's one thing but um you know you i don't think that that should be the only way and this is where you would want to look at some other options do you want to submit your thoughts in writing to an email that's common to all the board of trustees right now you have individual emails and people send uh information uh or questions or thoughts to you individually or to all of you as a group but you could have a common board of trustee email address it goes there you can all read it obviously you can't respond to it there but then you could
146hold coffee chats like your superintendent and board president uh sit down and hold coffee chats regularly throughout the year or maybe even hold presentations on topics of interest uh using the staff for example uh there were uh math conversations that staff held there's el cap going on there's been uh engagements in that way so it's not an uncommon practice so what are my recommendations and i know i'm sliding through this quickly because i do think the next topic is very important but my recommendation is just be aware of that current forward policy take a chance to look at some of the implementation options and the collection options and other opportunities and consider you know a time limit on presentations for staff time limit on board questions time limit on board comments maybe some type of
147a registration for public comments so that you can really determine how much time is going to be needed for this item it but you need to think about how to incorporate live comments in that because you can't just think that everybody's going to understand that there's a google form and uh and or maybe another idea is to do some kind of a written submission via a form and make it part of the official record but not necessarily read aloud so uh these are just some options i think they should be reviewed with the new superintendent uh that person may have some ideas that they would like to bring to the table so uh then you can determine some next steps so nicole um that was like like a lot of discussion that we should probably
148have but there are other things on the docket so i'm happy to answer any questions or and nicole feel free to weigh in on any of those things too yeah i think specific to your agenda item um you know thinking about the big picture is recognizing and responding to your community needs and public comment is a big part of it and so um i i want to lean on what you just kind of finished in saying that this is something that you're gonna have to spend time on with your new superintendent um i don't think it's the best use of your time we kind of talked about that we built this agenda to go deep into the weeds of that because you're now you're on the tail end of like most of your public comment
149has been throughout this year um you're in a different space but there's going to be a different culture that you may have to consider as you think about what engagement looks like even down to um you know what the role of listening sessions look like first is because remember there's hot topics and then there's like people making public comment on your agenda items specifically throughout the year so i think those are all the things that i would add to jones kind of um recommendations as well how do you leverage listening sessions in community forums and sometimes your superintendent will have that kind of vision on how that will look so i just i'd caution you on making any decisions about what you want to do differently um because ultimately when you revisit and regroup together
150on a couple months that's this is probably one that would be i put it as a note of another one of your study session items that you're going to have to definitely decide on um and great but great research i think in different ways of looking at it which hopefully is helpful so i want to just give you an opportunity to weigh in ask questions if you have and um it i didn't have a deep amount of time that we needed for the task force but it is an important piece i think because we didn't get to meet um last week that i wanted to just make sure i got some feedback from you because there's a task force meeting next week so any thoughts or questions for joan or just about the kind of
151work you want to do moving forward with responding to the community and public comment and if there's a certain area that you would like further researched or that something that really speaks to you then i can take you know just um email me let me know and i can do some further um digging and um leave that for you and your new superintendent i had one idea but should i just save that or should i share it no feel free to share it feel free to share it but just know you all are gonna have to like visit this with your new superintendent so i just i don't want you i just didn't know if it would be helpful to share now yeah i could potentially add to the list or if i should wait
152but um i was kind of uh in in having like different discussions with folks about it um i i had a thought around like um having a way for people to interact and respond and ask questions and comments um almost similar to how we process presentations but on presentations kind of prior to the meeting so the presentations should be posted 48 hours in advance 48 hours 48 hours in advance like 72 the actual powerpoint okay so 72 hours in advance the actual agenda item i'm sorry yeah so i'm talking about the actual presentation posted like tuesday for a thursday meeting and then if folks have like 24 hours where there's some sort of form that has like a character limit where people can ask clarifying questions and make comments then staff would have some time
153to hopefully integrate some of that into the presentation right because sometimes there are questions that and and i also think it could help inform staff in terms of like oh are there is there a big thing that's bubbling up for the public that we weren't considering and that could be woven into the presentation um and so to be able to ask clarifying questions and make comments and then those could even potentially just be like a a last slide at the end of a presentation that says like clarifying question from and hopefully as a way to like actually have people feel like their questions and comments are being integrated into presentation and then there would still be time for public comment if there are still outstanding thoughts but um i just i think sometimes like you
154know because like we do we try we try to send in questions in advance but sometimes the way the presentation goes like you have other questions or based on a comment or whatever right like you're not always gonna catch every single thing but um i just wonder if having a little bit more of like an interactive way for people to kind of really see the information be able to ask questions and have that actually responded to um might just help people feel a little bit more heard and i actually think it might just help the communication all around so that was just kind of one thought i have so have a common place where questions related to a board agenda like they put the board agenda number and they'd ask a question um and just
155make sure that the presentation is posted like on tuesdays yes some sort of like form yeah right where then it would be a character limit so it wasn't like you were at you know requiring staff to sift through like you know long long long questions and emails right like 200 characters ask a question make a comment but some way where it's like easy to kind of like you know and then i i think people would probably see trends right um with those sorts of things and be able to like both bring that back to the board in terms of these are some of the trends in terms of comments we got and then embed in some of the questions into the actual presentation that could be done i like that idea i had kind of
156like a similar idea but maybe it's not as realistic as that but um i was almost wondering if the presentations could be pre-recorded where people could actually um like watch it and then submit the questions and then we wouldn't like because i come to the meetings oftentimes where like i maybe i'm more of a visual audio learner where when i hear the presentation that's when i start to come up with my questions but um i know that takes time and stuff so that's just what i was kind of thinking but i also think shara's idea was is good too could happen in tandem i love that idea i know it's a lot of extra time probably uh the one the one comment i have is i think this is just again sort of a ongoing
157conversation that we're going to have um because it's not just with the um the the new superintendent that we have but in reality the um i was talking to another trustee in another district the executive order that governor newsom said or signed last june allows us to have these meetings virtually but that was an executive order and the issue is as we're coming out of the pandemic we may not even actually have this option anymore and so the issue is within the next two or three months you know every city and every school district is going to have to start realizing how we deal with coming back to the board room collecting public comments again hopefully trying to keep some sort of virtual setting where we can get some public comment but the reality is
158that you know this is an ongoing conversation and and when you look back at our public comments statements and the board policies that was all written in a time when we were all in the boardroom right there was nothing ever mentioned about obviously the virtual comments and so you know i think that these are great ideas i think we're all just going to have to just muddle through them over the next few months because you know every local jurisdiction is going to have to be dealing with this and who knows whether or not newsome will rescind that executive order too so um i think it's just something that we all need to consider as we as we move forward got it perfect all right so president chin um you are um kind of at the
159end of study session time and we just needed really a few minutes it wasn't a deep dialogue that um was needed but a few minutes to just um allow i think sharon noelia is the board liaisons for the task for equity task force just to uh make sure there's a little bit of um direction and clarity on next steps for them because they have one technically last meeting and potentially more if necessary but i want to make sure we just have that time so do you want to do an extension yeah do you guys are okay with going to like 3 15 is that all right it's pretty sure okay to finish everything up okay let's just go for that okay yeah and so it's really more questions i didn't have a presentation per se
160um i think this is one of those things where because of the time of the year again you have a transition with a new leader coming in that there's just in your opening schools again and and so this group as you all know has been working throughout the year um lots of different distractions and things that have happened but they have been asked to look at three focus areas um that center around staffing around school climate and around kind of curriculum kind of the academic side um which shows up more at the school sites and so mtss was really kind of a big focus and school safety was around kind of started with lgbtq focus for students um obviously the sro resolution and conversation came into play so that kind of got lumped into that
161safety committee subcommittee um and then staffing has been the one that's kind of stayed pretty focused but definitely still like i think work that all three subcommittees are are working on to create again action steps that they can bring to you as board um as a board to consider as you look through uh moving work forward and so um i know sharon noel i had a chance to meet with your equity task force leadership team just to kind of um re-center and like really where do we want to go what's the next steps and there is an agenda item next week that i'm not sure if you all got to see it yet but we just i think he just posted it yesterday i'm not mistaken joan um but there is some space on the
162agenda that i think both of you would be helpful for um helping to just make sure the vision is really clear for them in terms of what are the next steps um when like what's the timeline for you expecting that presentation to you as a board um and then of course some things around like roles in terms of like people coming off there's some who have to leave there's some you know you're gonna have to go through that process again of bringing folks in and outreach um and again knowing that you'll have again a new superintendent that's also going to probably impact however this goes going into next year so i just want to just take a few months and ask you just i think for one the board to make sure the whole board
163is updated on what's going on with its equity task force but then specifically next week that you feel prepared to just give the task force a little bit of clarity on um kind of next steps and timelines for how they bring those recommendations to you um and i'll share one last piece about the agenda but just want to pause and see if both of you had any thoughts um any updates that would be helpful so the whole board can hear as well since only two of you can go to those meetings so don't be shy so let me start with timeline where where do you want to see the task force and presenting to you all their recommendations from their action planning work this year because they have one last meeting this tuesday and then
164i suspect they may need one more meeting to just make sure they're good with their plan so we would take that information kind of give it back to them as here's what you said your plan is then we have to determine who's going to come and present it all that so just want to get your thoughts on that because you're in transition too you do have only two more um board meetings in june um so um 10 and 24. so um would you want to see something in this in this spring as we end school do you want to hear something in the fall um that feels a little late but that that's up to you folks sorry are you asking noelia and i specifically are you asking the whole boy because you're the board
165liaisons i think it's helpful because you've been with them all year but i think it's the whole board really you know does need to weigh in i think because the presentation comes to all of you right yeah i mean i think that they should present um at the end of this year um so if it's the last meeting that's fine if it's not like a solidified response you know if it's still like this is where we are and this is one we'll have but you know i know that there's been a couple presentations where they've already shared um kind of what they're thinking and i think that that gives i know district staff already kind of know what they're working on but it gives more kind of then more direction in terms of like this
166is where we're going and i have already felt like there's a little bit of disconnect like there's things on our agenda next week around mtss and then there's equity task force working on mtss and like how do those how are those things working together and so i think it's important just for everything to be aligned okay now you have any thoughts for that as far as timeline is them coming to you all at your june one of your june board meetings with a draft kind of uh recommendations yeah i mean i think that's a good idea but i will say overall um like in the long term when i think about a timeline i think um you know it's it's difficult to have the work aligned to our board meetings when we're meeting twice a
167month and the equity task force is only meeting once a month so i think that's something that we really need to um account for and make sure like we're not asking for you know things that can only be accomplished if they were only if they were meeting twice a month um so i i don't have the answer to that but i see that as like a kind of an ongoing um um concern that you know we as a board have said several times like oh we want to hear from the equity task force and we're not setting and they're not set up to to be able to give feedback in such a timely way um it's a big group of people um from you know all different parts of our community and so i know
168that there it's difficult to uh you know to get something that works for everyone um so i i don't have the solution to that i just want to you know as a liaison highlight that it does feel like we we as a board need to either plan out a little better what we're asking of the task force um and just set them up for success a little more i actually think it overlaps kind of with two around like if we have very clear equity priorities that we can communicate to the task force around things that we're going to be working on and things that we know that we're going to want their feedback on then they can kind of build that into their meetings that doesn't mean that there aren't going to be things that
169come up that we're going to want him put on and so i think i do think there needs to be a better system around that just so everyone knows that the equity task force had a leadership team that like kind of dissolved there's a leadership team again i do see that as a potential place where these things could be brought if that group is willing to meet more frequently potentially or it's a smaller group to be able to get like kind of some more quick input on but having some sort of that maybe then gets like run by the whole task force via an email or something like speak now if you have any concerns with our recommendation sort of thing right like some sort of system that allows for like that more um yeah
170that that those decisions that we need and put on more quickly but i do think that if we have our priorities lined out we have our board agenda builder for the year for the whole year right like it doesn't mean that things aren't going to shift but then at least people have an idea of where we're going um and i think that that would be really helpful i don't know so question for you because um remember you have a resolution because this is a board appointed committee so one of the things you're going to have to consider too is revisiting your resolution to talk about how you use this group moving forward because you had some timelines in there some of them i think based on kovic got you know a little bit distorted based
171on the reality of priorities um so i think you're also gonna have to go back to your resolution and really talk about like how does this group move on next year um you do have um some rotation kind of questions that we probably won't talk about on tuesday the leadership team did have some suggestions um to help stagger out so everyone doesn't go at the same time or some who are like i got to come off the task force because i have a lot of things on my plate some of them agree like i'll stay six months you know and allow till december so we can make a smooth transition so i think there's some things on tuesday that can be addressed but i think the board has to be really clear and you kind
172of said a sure about what your priorities are moving forward i think my suggestion is let them finish the work they've been doing um i think it's been really hard for them this year because there's been so many different kind of shifts in because of just reopening and everything that's gone on so maybe allow them to come to you in june with kind of here's what we have at this point in terms of our recommendations and then maybe kind of from that point decide where you want to go moving forward my technical question is because you only have this meeting um i said dr holt and i what we'll do is take what the group has done we'll kind of give back to them their draft plan but part of me wonders if you want
173to present to them um an opportunity to touch base one more time before they present to you in june and so maybe it's just the leadership team comes together to do that but that would be my one question for you if you think that would be ideal to share with them so that they feel prepared to present to you at your i think you said maybe your last meeting in june so how do you feel about that is maybe pulling the leadership team together at some point early june just so they can look at the draft plan and feel comfortable with presenting to you does that sound okay noelia sure you think that's okay because we'd want to say this to them on tuesday okay and the rest of the board does that sound ideal
174for you that you would see this draft in in june okay yeah i mean the one thing that i just want to let everybody know is that honestly um we are we did have to call a special meeting at the end of june uh for the l cap to approve the l cap but um just for all you guys information i'm honestly trying to keep the last meeting in june fairly light because um we should have some sort of ceremonial events then so and i think that it's um pretty important to try and keep that light in my opinion so okay well i think what needs to be clear then for this task force on tuesday is what that looks like in terms of dates so i know june jones you said there were two
175dates in june um and ken you're saying we want to keep that last meeting kind of light so can you give me the dates that we could consider bringing up on tuesday with the task force we only have june 10th and june 24th okay both both of them do have l cap in the budget you have to do the presentation of the draft on the 10th um that will give the board a chance to look at the final draft and um and provide input so hopefully then when we get to the 24th it's pretty done pretty ready to go um without much change needed so um the june 24th right now had the uh lcap and budget and now equity task force presentation i think there were a couple of other items but i don't
176have it with me right right here okay so maybe lean towards maybe the 24th because that would be a lighter meeting because for them it'd just be a presentation i think you could do it on the 24th the intense could get heavy because yeah unfortunately the lcap is literally hundreds of actions it's the brand new right three-year plan and there's a lot to it um and with all of the things that are coming out from the government about the kinds of things they'd like to see um there's actually it's very exciting you know it's very exciting but it's big yep yep okay got it okay so i'm gonna put the 24th on the calendar just based on the discussion um and then maybe again june we can decide when to bring the leadership team back
177together i think sharon noel will be great if you're at that meeting just to make sure you have kind of even the preview of where they're at so that you can kind of give direction on you know for them on what you're looking for in terms of even how to present that so it's meaningful for the board right you don't want to have too many details but then you want them to be able to speak to you know their recommendations so does that sound okay for june okay good it would be lovely to invite the new superintendent to that yeah yeah perfect so my only one thing i wanted to share for the agenda on tuesdays one of the things the leadership team asks is that to give them maximum time for their last meeting
178specifically but even meetings moving forward is to take those updates that we give like we always have um you know district updates board updates and it takes a little time in the beginning and so they thought it might be better to utilize those for maybe a written kind of um report or update just a couple of bullet points that are specific to the task force so that was what the leadership team did ask for so it will require just a little bit from you chara noelia or just kind of the board as a in general what is it that you want to make sure they see and hear and then just provide it more in like a written kind of maybe it's just a little um even if you email it to me i think
179it's fine or you know and if you talk about like who's going to be holding that for next year like just to make sure that report is something in writing it's a handout they can get with their agenda then that would be helpful so to be i think a little easier for you to have kind of some key things you want to share with them so um i think that's something they want you to do for the tuesday meeting so if you just think about what are those key things you want the task force to know um that would be helpful and you can just send it to me if you want and i can just kind of put it on a little document we can share the screen and be pretty simple um and
180that will eliminate you having to worry about doing any reports for the last meeting they can jump right into their their business so does that sound okay okay cool all right so that was it for the task force it wasn't anything super deep but definitely want to make sure we're all hearing the same thing because i know you have two liaisons but sometimes the whole board doesn't get to hear that deeper discussion so appreciate that time and i think you all have um solved all the world's problems in san mateo foster city today i truly believe you did but thank you for for hanging out today and um i'll just close by saying um you know as you transition i've used that word quite a bit this is going to be an opportunity for um
181deepening your work um you have you know an amazing superintendent who's locking arms with you the whole way from start to finish so being really thankful for that i think is powerful and i'm excited for you as a board i think equity driven work is not easy and you all have been intentional you all have been rolling up your sleeves this year like i said you got beat up quite a bit but you're proud of some things and i hope that you leave today with that proud experience i'm building upon those things that have worked really well for you and i think again you are going to be and are really a model for what governance teams are trying to do right now i get the pleasure of being with a lot of them and
182you are doing phenomenal work so don't be surprised when that csba conference comes up in december and i go hey san mateo foster city we're doing a panel discussion i might grab don't be surprised if i call and ask you to volunteer to share your best practices because you should be proud of the work you've done i'm honored um dr holt uh kevin taylor um we all are honored to work with you all and so thank you for your time for your service i just really appreciate it if you've not heard that recently again thank you for your service because this is not easy and i just appreciate every one of you so thank you and i'll pass a virtual mic to you ken cause we're way over and you all got to go enjoy
183your saturday because the sun has come out yes the sun has come out so um i just want to thank you nicole um obviously we can't do all of this ourselves and so with all the study sessions and everything we've had over the years even dating back to the san diego county's equity network um i think the reality is you've definitely been a partner hand in hand with us as we move forward into this um uh basically all year round i mean just all the time so uh we really appreciate it uh with everything they've done for us so um with that it is now 3 19. so uh our last item on the agenda is adjournment um would anyone like to make an emotion for a journey i motioned to a journey thank you
184trustee carson thank you trustee uh walking through the second uh roll call vote trustee corzo yes trustee watkins i may trust you practice sorry yeah trustee warned yes trustee watkins yes and i'll vote yes your screen your head is just above trusty practice that's why i was kind of messed up there but i'll vote yes as well and we are now adjourned at 320. so uh thank you everyone for the study session we will see you guys next thursday thank you you