001Good afternoon. I'd like to open the meeting for February 24th. Um prior to um moving on, I wanted just review the public comment process for um for remote public comment. Individuals wishing to speak must register by filling out a remote speaker form by 12:00 p.m. on the day of the meeting. When persons are called on to speak, their microphones will be activated by the district staff. Speaker will be notified that they can now unmute themselves in order to begin speaking. Speaker will then need to unmute themselves and by selecting the mute unmute icon. Please state your name at the beginning of the comment. I don't believe we have any comments for public session or for opening. Uh so therefore, with no comments, we will adjourn to closed session. regular session to order at 6:05. And
002we'll start with our presentation on language access and ASL. Thank you. We have interpretation into Spanish available through Zoom and also ASL interpretation. Thank you. Gracias. All right. Thank you. Uh please rise if able for the pledge pledge of allegiance. Ready? Begin. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Uh do I have the language from John? Okay. Oh, great. Do you have it? All right. Tonight in closed session, the board voted 5 to 0 to approve a 6-day unpaid suspension for a classified employee. We'll um now get started with the student board student board member report. Carlos? Thank you. Good evening, everyone. The leaders from the student advisory council have conducted
003orientation meetings for all Scholars Helping Scholars applicants in this cycle and are now coordinating and we are now coordinating transportation before our first day tutoring. I'm also excited to announce that Dr. Maldonado and I have begun conducting school site visits. One thing uh that I noticed at the beginning of this role and about the role of student board members is that although there are processes to include student voice at the high school level, uh there are still a number of students who don't have that platform, particularly our younger students. So far, Dr. Maldonado and I have met with the Adams, Washington, and Franklin student government representatives. Within the next couple of weeks, we will have visited every elementary school and junior high in the district. At these meetings, I have had the opportunity to ask
004questions about campus life uh to what are typically mixes of fourth, fifth, and sixth graders. These leaders on campus spoke up for their peers as we talked about their role on campus, what excites them about school, academic and emotional support, the transition to junior high, and platforms for student voice. At Adams, some students um some students are nervous about transitioning to a bigger school, citing concerns about more classes, letter grades, and new systems like Canvas. There were also concerns about things like campus cleanliness and students wasting shared shared school resources. At Washington, some students are nervous about managing homework and getting to classes on time in junior high. There were also some concerns raised about bullying and accountability, and students would also like to see stronger action to make sure that everyone feels safe and
005respected. Lastly, at Franklin, when asked about the transition to junior high, students talked about some nerves surrounding a larger school and more students, new schedules, grades, and the possibility of social conflicts. Students would also like to see improvements such as more after-school sports options, open seating at lunch, and continued teacher check-ins to make sure everyone feels supported. At all schools, however, the year is going super well. And students consistently mention liking subjects such as math, science, ELA, social studies, along with specials like art, music, and PE. Students feel supported academically and emotionally through tutor tutoring programs, teacher support, and other trusted adults on campus, and we're super excited about transitioning to junior high, especially after help from counselors coming in and visiting campuses. I look forward to sharing the outcomes and perspectives as I conduct
006more of these visits in the future. That is all I have for today. Thank you. Thank you. Um at at this point uh I'd just like to point out probably take another 5 minutes if you're interested in submitting cards for public comment. We'll close it in 5 minutes and then we'll move on to the superintendent's report. Dr. Maldonado? Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for being here. And yes, I have been visiting schools with Carlos, which Carlos, which has brought me the most joy uh in in the middle of my day. So thank you, Carlos, for challenging me to do this with you. It's been really fun. Tonight, I'd like to uh start with uh some of the work that is in our agenda for today, and you all uh probably aware of some of
007the structural deficits that district is really working on. If you've been watching some of our meetings, you'll hear more about it today. Part of addressing that structural deficit has been an offer of an enhanced retirement incentive this year. Our goal was to find creative ways to save costs without impacting the classroom directly. Today, those results of that effort are on the HR recommendations list. These staff members will finish the school year with us and officially retire this June. But the names represent far more than just budget savings. These are the people who have built our district. They've spent years and in many cases decades living our mission, giving every child every chance every day. They are the mentors who guided new teachers. They are friends who supported their colleagues in offices or offering services. And
008they are the leaders who shaped our community. We are losing a tremendous amount of institutional knowledge, and while we'll while we will miss them dearly, we celebrate the incredible careers that they have built here. Looking our head, our team will be executing transition plans and starting the recruitment process. We are committed to finding the next generation of talent to build upon the legacy these retirees are leaving behind. Next, I want to report to the board and our community that on Friday, we welcomed a packed house to the board room for our annual community partners meeting. It was a wonderful opportunity to celebrate the impact of these collaborations and an opportunity for us to discuss our shared vision for our district's future. We look forward to continuing these vital relationships as we bring updated contracts to
009the board this spring. We also had a pair of events uh that have taken place and I want to invite the board uh to the honor band performance this Thursday at La Cumbre. The district-wide event is happening at the Joan Kroc Theater at 7:00 p.m. Also, on Saturday, we will have our literacy festival March 7th from 10:00 to 2:00 at the Santa Barbara Public Library. We'd like to invite you and join us in inviting others to come and enjoy a variety of engaging activities, including visits from book authors, arts and crafts, family activities, and access to valuable literacy resources. And to close off, I'd like to uh talk about our Collaborative Spirit Award that highlights the great teamwork that happens in our district. With this year this meeting, we want to recognize Washington's third grade
010professional learning community. They're being recognized for their exemplary collaboration and shared accountability. This data-informed team pioneered the {quote} Power Hour model, which strategically mixes students for targeted intervention and enrichment, and their unified approach has directly resulted in a record sustained excellence in math achievement across multiple cohorts, serving as a powerful model for the entire school. And you could see it's uh Miss Kim Barron, Bridget Berg, Bettina Chin, and Heather Grosch, and I'd like to congratulate them and thank them for all their teamwork. And that concludes my report. Thank you. We'll uh now move into um public comments. Before we proceed, I want to remind you that our board bylaws allocate 20 minutes for non-agenda public comment and comment on any individual agenda item. Uh I think we have um uh enough on the on the
011public comments that we can allocate 2 minutes per for time and still keep it within our 20 minutes, and um we also will respect that the speakers respect that time limit. Can you tell me how many cards you actually have for this non-agenda? Are there any others coming up? No. No, I think there's nine. Nine? Nine, I think. Yeah. Okay. So we'll leave it at 2 minutes. We request that speakers respect the time limit allocated to them. When a speaker exceeds the allocated time, it reduces others opportunities to participate within the established limits. If you're unable to complete your remarks, you're welcome to send them to the board via email. We will read all of them. To assist in time management, we're also requesting that the next two speakers after the one called be in
012the room and come to the podium promptly after being called. There's plenty of empty chairs or you just be in the room, please, and that'll help speed things up. Um so, we'll go ahead and I'll ask Vice President Muñoz to call the first three speakers and after each speaker she will read then the next the next ones that are coming up. Thank you. Okay. Um yes, [clears throat] first we have Carla Hernandez, Connie Alexander, and Carolyn Abate. Hi. Um thank you for letting me speak. Um I'm not a budget person, so I'm I didn't want to speak on the budget. Only but I am here to comment on um something that I'm hoping that the district and the board will do, which is to um look a little bit more closely at what the information
013that's being presented, have more eyes on the information. Um since the projections that are being made um are used to make such critical decisions for what the future will look like for our students and the district. Um you might ask why. Why do we need more eyes? Why do we need more people checking? Why should we continue to audit the financials? And the reason is because I feel like the documents that are presented are probably looked at by several people, I would assume. But despite that, there are still mistakes that are found in the documents that are presented before this meeting. And I was as I was perusing the documents, I found a mistake with um some of our retired staff, which made me a little sad to think that the information attributed to this
014staff member was incorrect. And uh so, I thought, well, if there's one mistake, there's probably more than one mistake. And so, I just ask you tonight to look more critically, ask for more more eyes more eyes to look at the data more like more eyes to look at the information before decisions are made about cuts and about things that will impact our schools and our students. Thank you. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Okay, and then I'll read the next two will be Deborah Reed and Joel Block. Welcome. Okay. It's on. Okay. Good evening, board. Connie Alexander, president, Santa Barbara NAACP. I'm here this evening really to express um disappointment about the lack of engagement during Black History Month. Um you know, the last meeting you had a resolution for Black History. And I was really
015disappointed that you didn't even read it out loud. I mean, you passed it and then nobody even knew what it said. And that for us sets the tone, right? And so, if you go to put in a resolution, read the resolutions cuz those words are important. They mean something. People are listening. Uh your staff, your faculty, everybody, people are listening. Also, to have like an newsletter go out the the the regular newsletter go out that didn't even mention Black History Month really. So, when you think about it, anti-blackness is really rooted in erasure. And erasure means we don't acknowledge. That's erasure. And so, having that feeling of not having the depth of acknowledgement that is equitable to the depth of acknowledgement of other holidays, of other things that happen, I roll back to October and
016I think October, November and I see other cultures being celebrated in a different way, which by the way, we're hugely supportive of and we participate in and we're happy that they're happening. But when you compare, it doesn't feel the same. And so, I have spent some time on some campuses this last month and there was very little engagement. There was very little happening. Um so, you as the leadership expect really set this expectation. You do. The cabinet does. The principals, you set this expectation. And so, what we're asking you is to lean in a whole lot harder. When we were here back in November, we made the invitation, a strong invitation for you to participate in a different way with the black community. And I still haven't really seen you step up to that. So,
017I'm here to lean in a little harder to say, step up. I don't want to really have another Black History Month where this is this is kind of what's going on, what's happening. I'll close in saying I brought you all a little gift. Can we have me um brought you a little Black History Month gift. It's about black inventors. Something else that you can celebrate. Thank you. Thank you very much. >> [applause] >> Okay, so after Ms. Abate will be Deborah Reed, Joel Block, and Rich Lashua. Good evening. Limiting public comment time to only 20 minutes means that because there are often times more than seven speakers, each speaker will have their time cut to only 2 minutes to speak, which has happened at the previous three board meetings, February 10th, January 27th, January 13th,
018and of course, tonight. Please make public comment a priority because board members and the public audience must hear a variety of perspectives about how our students are educated. For example, students learn gender fluid ideology in the Teen Talk curriculum. However, we know that achievement is the result of working in harmony with reality, not in opposition to it. Students are also taught that abortion is acceptable as simply a procedure to end a pregnancy. When the reality is, we must protect the humanity of an unborn baby and protect students from making decisions with which they will have to live with regret later on in their life. Why is it so important to cultivate a conscience in our students? So, they know the difference between right and wrong. And how does a free market economic system maintain individual
019freedom and liberty? Even 3 minutes is barely enough time to explain the analysis, logic, and present the evidence in support of these ideas and a better curriculum for students. Please support the exchange of ideas so critically important to our schools and our democracy. Please reconsider board bylaw 9323 and increase the time for public comment. Thank you for being willing to listen and consider these ideas. Thank you. Good evening. I come to speak tonight about where we've been, where we are, and where I think we need to get to. No one blames this particular board for the decisions of previous boards, but you will be blamed if you fail to rectify the mistakes of the past. No one blames this board for declining enrollment, but you will be blamed if you continue to support a system
020of unfettered open enrollment that has led to significant segregation in the junior high school in terms of ethnicity, economic disparity, and EL students. According to the most recent figures, the ethnic makeup of students enrolled in our district is approximately 60% Hispanic and 31% Caucasian. However, the range at our junior highs run from 40% to 90% Hispanic compared to 13 to 15.1% Caucasian. As such, no junior high in the district comes within 10 points of our actual ethnic makeup in the district. >> [snorts] >> Under the Ed Code, a school district shall provide that the parent or guardian of each school age child who is a resident in the district may select the schools the child shall attend irrespective of the particular location of the child's residence within the district, except that the school district shall
021retain the authority to maintain appropriate racial and ethnic balances among the respective schools at the school district is session. While I have no doubt that this board did not have the intent to create the situation we are in now, until the policy of unfettered enrollment is changed by this board to reflect our district's true ethnic and economic makeup, you will continue to support de facto segregation in our junior highs and continue a system that does significant harm to all our students. Until unfettered open enrollment is gotten rid of, no solution will solve the underlying problem. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, now we'll have Deborah Reed, Rich Lashua, followed by Madeline Berdowsky. Good evening. Two years ago you cut 2.2 counselors. Last year you cut three more counselors. The high schools know how important these positions
022are, so they work with their alumni organizations to retain those positions through alternate community funding. Again, you are proposing to cut a counselor. When will you start to value the work the counselors do? I'm speaking tonight in part on behalf of our counselors who could not be here this evening. The Santa Barbara High counselors can't be here tonight because two of the counselors are presenting to our PEAC AVID students for a parent event at La Cumbre. And other counselors at Santa Barbara High are presenting to the junior high and to the junior and sophomore class parents students on graduations plans, scheduling and college planning. These are the types of things that might not happen with further cuts to the counselors. Cuts to the counselors undermine our ability to meet student needs. So please take a
023moment and reconsider the impact that this decision will have on them. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Okay, we'll have um Rich Lashua followed by Madeline Bordofsky and Moni DeWitt. >> [snorts] [clears throat] >> Good evening. First of all, thank you. From one person in public education to another, I know we hear the negative far more often than the positive. So thank you for the time, energy, thought, listening, and real work you do in guiding this district. The hours aren't always great, and let's be honest, the we're not really in it for the paycheck. But you're doing good work. Please don't stop now. And that's the most important let's go change the world thing I can say to you tonight. Barely one bargaining cycle ago, things were so bitter between the union and the district that
024we were teetering on the edge of a strike. Things have changed, agreements were made, and much of that is due to the leadership represented in this room. But it would be folly to assume that everything is fine now. So keep the communication lines open. Keep listening. Keep asking good questions. Build trust with all parties. Continue to include all relevant parties in the discussion. The shorter the gap gets among the board, the district, the union, and the public, the less you need to worry about limiting time for speakers or providing overflow seating. Continue to represent your community faithfully with kids at the top of your priority list. The more we can publicly encourage each other with sincerity, the faster and stronger that trust and communication continues to be reinforced. So thank you. Let's go change the
025world. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Okay, so Madeline Bordofsky followed by Moni DeWitt. All right. Um good evening, board members. I'm here tonight to respond to the district's recent update regarding bargaining. In that message, the district states the district returned a counter proposal around elementary prep time to maintain the current system of two to three PLCs per week along with 300 minutes of prep time. I want to be very clear with the public. This statement is intentionally misleading. It implies that elementary teachers receive 300 minutes of prep each week in addition to two to three PLCs. That is not the reality. In practice, we receive an average of 300 minutes per month of prep. In some weeks we receive as little as 45 minutes of prep. One month One week a month we receive a
026whopping 105 minutes, um which is still nowhere near enough to prepare a full week of instruction. To put this into context, I invite you to look at our adopted Wit & Wisdom curriculum. Open any lesson, examine the depth of content, the teaching routines, and then consider the adjustments that we need to meet the particular group of students that we have in front of us this year. Multiply that by four to five lessons for one week, and that's just for language arts. The same level of preparation is required for math, science, and social studies. On top of that, teachers are expected to plan SEL lessons, prepare power hour interventions, fill out referrals, communicate with families, grade essays and assessments, plan field trips, complete data trackers for PLCs, and document information for IEPs among many other responsibilities.
027We are not saying that teachers should never work outside the school day. That is not the reality of this profession. What we are saying is that the current PLC prep wheel does not honor the work we do, nor does it provide us anywhere near enough time to meaningfully meet the expectations that are placed upon us. If any of the board members would like to better understand what the PLC prep wheel actually looks like in practice, the sixth grade team at Harding would welcome you to observe any week. Please reach out. Thank you. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Um hi there. Thank you for this opportunity and thank you for everything you do. I would also like to sort of piggyback on what Rich Lashua said. That was like our when we discussed uh last board
028meeting about seventh period, that to me was very interesting in a slightly different tone than when we mostly have sort of a back-and-forth relationship, but never really drilled down far enough. Like I would like to see the same attention go to literacy, and I know it's one of our top goals, but you know, I help run SB Parent Plan and ask many times in there, "Well, why can't we get more teachers trained?" And many of them don't think the stipend's enough. We try to propose maybe we do substitutes, but um there are pros and cons to everything, but at the end of the day, um our students are the ones who are missing out. And now we have RIFs, which cause a lack of stability, so that's tough on students as well. And um and
029then also when we look at other models, we still see that we're a little top-heavy in this district. Like I compared it to Ventura, and they have more and higher enrollment and less people in admin. So I think we just need to take a big picture view because otherwise ultimately uh some of our most vulnerable students are we're just not meeting their needs, and we have a moral obligation to a free and appropriate education, and the ability to read is so linked to the school-to-prison pipeline. And in our very own community, our sheriff just asked for 21 million overtime uh for, you know, arresting people. And when I look at Juvenile Hall, and I have first-hand experience of justice-involved youth, all of them tell me they struggled with literacy, and yet these are brilliant and
030many of them have, with the right supports, managed to go through UCSB, and some are even succeeding in Berkeley. So it's not the students, and we shouldn't blame them, and it's not poverty. It's us, and we're not doing it in the right way, and we need a further discussion, and we need action cuz it's just morally not okay at all, and it's been going on for generations. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, that concludes public comment on non-agenda items. And that will bring us to the board comments and correspondence. Is there anyone that would like to start with their comments? Okay. Dr. Biel. Oh. What's the name? Is it possible they're misfiled, too? Okay, give me the names again, please. Okay. Um Allison, I have your card on item E3. Ed technology, is that correct? I
031I I think it sounds like it's appropriate. It's not the E3 is a finance committee report, so sure. Let's Let's bring that one on, and give me the next name. Jackson? So your your topic was on paraeducator stipends, and that's uh an item F3, which is the resolution on on um on the reduction in force, is that right? Is that all right? We'll do it that way. All right. Please. No. procedure. Um my name is Ali Bierki. I'm a parent to three children at Isla Vista Elementary School. >> Is Yeah, can you push the button for the microphone? It's the Can you hear me now? So my name is Ali Bierki. I'm a parent to three children at Isla Vista Elementary School. Um my oldest will be going to Goleta Valley Junior High next year.
032Um I've been involved in the last year in the smartphone working group, and I'm very much looking forward to the good work that the device working group will soon be doing, I hope. Um I'm here tonight because I've really been trying my best to wrap my head around the school budget and in particular I'm very concerned about the amount of money we're spending on edtech contracts. Um, in my research I've learned that we are supporting 21,500 devices according to the district tech plan. Now, keep in mind we have about 12,000 students and maybe an additional um, something under 1,000 staff people to my knowledge. That means that we are supporting approximately 1.7 devices per person, which seems like an awful lot. Um, the tech contracts related to these devices uh, come in at nearly $6
033million to my understanding and this does not include the money we pay our staff, our IT professionals. Um, and it just seems to me that this is too much, especially when we know that edtech uh, is not delivering on the academic achievement um, outcomes that we really want to see. We know that increased time on screens in schools is correlated with dropping uh, test scores and cognitive scores. We know that students learn learn better um, on paper using pencil and um, reading in hard copy. There's plenty of empirical evidence um, and I would refer you in particular to some of the late-breaking work by Dr. Jared Horvath um, out of Harvard neuroscientist. Um, in any case 30 seconds. The screens are also associated with lots of harms to our students. So, it seems to me
034that um, we have a major opportunity. There's um, a major opportunity here to reduce our expenditure on technology that is not working and to do better for our students. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so I think that that's going to bring us back to comments. Dr. Beal, are you ready? Yes, I just wanted to um, give a shout-out to our music programs. I went to a fabulous jazz concert. It was a fundraiser for San Marcos High School and it was really it was very professional and quite amazing. Um, and so I don't know if I'm going to make it to the honor band concert, which I might have to miss, but I hope people do attend that. Anyone else? Trustee Caffrey. >> [clears throat] >> Okay. Thank you, President Banning. So, I want to talk
035tonight a little bit about um, improving accountability and transparency. So, I ran on being student-focused and improving accountability and transparency to our to the public and to the staff. Um, and there are processes incredibly important. I think I will talk about that a few times tonight because um, on our agenda we have several weighty items and I don't feel like we're able to give enough input into them given the number of items that are on the agenda tonight. Um, seventh period day, the LCAP, student outcomes. Um, and so I just think we really need to focus on thoughtful governance. President Banning has already done an exceptional job of improving procedures of our board and I just ask that we as a board, I really feel we are coalescing um, that we start our governance journey
036now um, and really first by doing a self-evaluation. I think we missed one last year, but uh, self-evaluation based on a framework um, that is widely accepted to see our our our starting point and just how how can we be most impactful for students and how do we set I mean, our agenda is one of our most important things, but how do we set our agenda in a way where we can move may basically im- improve students' lives. Um, and also earn the public's trust. So, one more example is RIFs today that is an agenda I'm sorry, an action item and I think it needs to be a discussion item. Um, a topic that is as weighty as RIFs that impacts people's lives potentially. I I think the board needs to have the time to
037get feedback from the public and also time to do thoughtful analysis and not be asked to vote on RIFs in just one meeting. So, I really I feel very hopeful because I think um, President Banning is providing very steady leadership and I just think now is the time to really tighten up our governance structures in a way that we continue to help move the district forward and really bring our A game. So, I'm my ask is that board self-evaluation in um, the near future in the coming month. Thank you. Thank you. Any others? No. Okay, I I have a couple brief comments. I also attended the San Marcos Junior High School Jazz Concert at the Lobero. Um, it was spectacular. Um, I appreciate the support of the boosters that were raising funds for a trip
038to Washington, D.C. and and uh, I suspect that uh, they made some pretty good money between the ticket sales and the and the uh, silent op- auction auction. Um, also terrific kudos to Director Michael Keioy um, and a thank you to the veteran musicians that he brought on to perform with the students as mentors and featured solos, but I'll tell you they weren't the only soloists and some of the kids that were soloing were just spectacular. It was a a great evening and I was very happy to participate. Um, we're fortunate to have a research research like the Lobero in our community. They were gracious in allowing the program to run longer than it was scheduled um, because everybody was having such a great time. Um, and and I also would like to acknowledge the
039employees and community members who've taken time to express their opinions and perspectives tonight on several issues uh, that we have in front of us. I will receive uh, review my reserve my specific comments along the items as they go. But thank you very much. Appreciate your involvement here. So, that brings us then to um, our report discussion agenda and the first thing is the uh, mid-year update on the LCAP. Um, please note that this is a listening and discussion item only. There are no decisions or recommendations that will be made at this meeting. Dr. Maldo, will you please coordinate and introduce our staff presenters? >> Yes, so we have um, Dr. Vance. I gave you a new title. Mr. Vance who's going to give us the LCAP mid-year report. Thank you. Good evening. Uh, so
040by law the LCAP mid-year report is required to be delivered during a regularly scheduled board meeting by February 28th. So, that's what we're doing tonight. As a reminder, our 2526 LCAP goals are designed for these five specific groups of students, low income, special education, emergent multilingual learners, foster youth and homeless students. So, that's crucial to remember. All actions in the LCAP are on track to be fully expended with the exception of four. And these are our goals with our LCAP. So, if you take a look at goal one action one, the biliteracy dual immersion teacher on special assignment, also known as TOSA, was not filled this year due to the lack of applicants for the position. In addition, the English language arts TOSA position for secondary was not filled after Miss Keanu uh, actually filled
041the principal position at Adams Elementary. Goal one action number five, 1.5, beginning this spring semester, junior high schools have implemented their tier two intervention programs using this funding source, which will be decreasing the remaining balance. And these are the rest of the actions for goal one. If you take a look at goal two action four, so that's 2.4, at this Monday's district professional learning day, trainings will be provided to our special ed paras who are not contracted to work on that day. So, these funds will actually cover the costs of their hour- hourly rate to participate in that training. So, that's a crucial uh, that's a crucial part of the LCAP, particularly with these with our ped- our paras who need that extra support. Last one is actually goal three action four at the very
042bottom, 3.4. Additional funds will be used for book purchases and professional learning contract, which is going to the board tonight. Uh, about 90% of this funding source in this action is funded by California Department of Education's anti-bias grant, which expires in March of 2027. So, whatever remaining funds are left in this funding source, it'll roll over into next year's uh, work. So, it'll help us to continue to build sustaining systems addressing anti-bias and anti-blackness. Uh, last part of this in particular is we have our specific dates for LCAP meetings that are also posted on our website, and that is the end of my report. Thank you. Do we have questions from board members? Oh, I'm sorry. Are there public comments on this item? >> Yes, no, there not. >> Okay. Thank you. All right, so
043that brings us to questions from board members. All right. Trustee Caffrey. Thank you. Um So I sent a few questions about the LCAP and I Basically, I understand that um because of short time turnaround, um they won't be able to be answered. So, I'm basically wondering um two questions. One, if the LCAP report could come back to us with the the LCAP metrics and goals included in the report, so we understand how the the spending is associated with our goals, and are we making progress on our goals? How is the spending impacting the kids who are covered by the LCAP? Um and uh so basically, I'm just wondering, can we bring this back at a later date with um some additional data? I'm I'm just wondering, the the LCAP is an annual document that it
044reports on the effectiveness and the and the change and growth at the end of the year. So, I I would suspect that that's really the the next step in the cycle beyond getting public input is um looking at what the interim report tells us about what our how how we've moved toward the the specific goals. Am I Am I Do you have a clarification? It might help. Um Where are we in the current LCAP cycle? This is the last year, is that correct? Uh no, we have one more year of this 3-year plan. So, for the development of the next LCAP, can you walk us through what that process might look like next academic year? For the Okay, so are we talking about the LCAP for next year or actually the 3-year LCAP? >> The
0453-year. >> Okay. So, the 3-year LCAP, that's we do an extensive um rollout with the staff. So, we usually start Last time with this LCAP, we actually started in November. So, we started with leadership getting input from them, and then we go to specifically start sending out surveys, and then we have specific meetings with um with various groups that you would see similar with the current LCAP. But, that's how that process works. >> And would we have, to Ms. Caffrey's point, would we have information based on the effectiveness of the investments made in the previous 3-year LCAP? Yes, actually, the we have metrics that we've set up as our goals, and actually, we're exceeding some of those metrics right now. So. And those goals are um revisited every year. It's a 3-year plan, but there's
046an opportunity to modify your goals on each of those 3 years, and we would have um expectation about reporting with the progress each year toward those goals. Not Not until Not waiting till the end of the third year, right? Right. So, every year, like during this time in the meetings that we have, we we do adjustments to the plan itself. >> And And today's report was primarily um showing the subsets of the groups and and how expenditures were going toward them. Exactly. >> Okay. I So, I guess for me, I'm wondering, what is the purpose of the LCAP? And what is Yeah. Can you just explain to me, what is the purpose of the LCAP? And it sounds like you're adjusting what you're doing based on data on Yeah. Okay, so the goal of the
047LCAP is to address I I brought up three student groups. That's very crucial. Cuz it's we're focusing on those students. And the LCAP itself is a With our school district, we have community fund our we're community funded. So, we're required by law, what we do is we have to carve out a specific amount of money of that to be applied to address the needs of those specific students. So, and we have our LCAP is designed to focus on pretty much similar to the the board the board goals. So, we have, you know, we have academics, behavior and wellness, and then we have also uh culture and climate, right? And then we have a specific one tied for La Questa. So, all of that is tied into taking actions using data, including California dashboard data, and
048we can use additional data on top of that. So, you'll see we'll see have star, we'll be using M-Class now that we're rolling into that as well. So, we can include all of those metrics, and we set a goal for each one of our actions, and and set that at the end of the third year. We say, this is where we would like to achieve uh at the end. I Let me just make sure are there other other questions from other board members? I want to make sure that everybody has a turn. And then we'll get we'll come back around. I just want to make sure um by par- parliamentary procedure, we're giving everyone an opportunity. Trustee Vice President President Monreal's, please. Sorry, I have more of a comment. Well, we'll get we'll do the
049comments after the questions. Are there any other any other members with questions? Okay, so Trustee Caffrey, please continue. So, I guess my [clears throat] understanding of the LCAP is that we are tying funding to student performance for subgroups, right? That we have specific goals for our most marginalized students, and we talk about what our goals are, what metrics we use to see if we're making progress for a certain subgroup. So, basically, what I'm I think would be helpful, and again, this is part of the governance conversation, is um for us to understand how these expenditures are tied to specific goals. And And I know all these metrics exist, and that we're looking at them internally, Yes. >> and adjusting what we do. Yes. Yes. I'm just asking that we um include that in public presentation,
050so the board has more oversightability of what is happening with our LCAP funds, and and how they're being used to drive positive student outcomes, and what the student outcomes are. So, one of the things just remind Marin the board, actually, is we give the first out student outcomes report is actually our LCAP data that we provide to you all. So, it's a academic achievement, how we've done. So, that's we continue to give student outcomes reports that are tied to the LCAP to keep you informed ongoing throughout the year. Yeah. And And I was going to just ask, isn't the LCAP is is largely an accountability doc- document that helps us to assure that the money we're receiving for these students is being spent for their benefit. Now, because we're a basic aid or community funded
051district, we don't receive the money to get it, but we still have to use from our tax revenue that same or equivalent amount of money that other other districts similar to us that aren't basic aid would be getting. So, um at the end of we're we're going to see outcome-based [clears throat] data here. I I think we just need to clarify that the LCAP itself is an accountability document that has to do with showing that we're spending the money that is being allocated appropriately. The outcomes are linked to it, but not necessarily um a direct expectation of a midyear update. I think the update is about are we spending the money that's been allocated, and um we could be in trouble if we say, "No, no, we didn't spend that, or we didn't spend that,
052or we didn't spend that." And And that's really the core of what's happening here. Um but please. >> Yeah. I guess my question is My understanding of the LCAP is, are we spending it well on behalf of these students? So, basically, we look to see the data uh how is growth changing, and then we adjust our um Adjust the actions within that goal, right? So, it's not only are we spending for these kids, but So, basically, all I'm asking is could when we see LCAP data, right now, this is a receipt of our spending, but not a strategic um >> Right. So, my question I think I think your point is well taken. Spending money well is an important part of what we're doing. Um the question is on what type of a time cycle.
053This is a required a statutory required midyear check that is really about spending, not about achievement in this particular um portion. We will be hearing more about the LCAP on several occasions in the in the upcoming months, right? Correct. >> Yeah. Okay. So, I don't think we're in disagreement, and and I'm never going to uh turn our our discussion away from saying we're not spending money wisely, but I think it there's a combination between spending money and spending time, and what's in the in the whole sequence. Yeah. Any other questions from board members? Comments. Trustee Muñoz. Yes, certainly. Thank you, um, President Banning. The, uh, LCAP, you know, mid-year report was helpful to me as a board member to understand, you know, how the money's being spent, how the you know, compared to the budget,
054what our expenditures were, and then also detailing the next steps with the, um, advisory committee meetings, uh, labor partner meetings, and then also parent advisory committee meetings. So, thank you. That was very helpful. Other comments? I'll add, um, I'll add my appreciation for the work, um, the this document itself is a very dense, difficult, complex document to put together that involves not only, um, our oversight, but county oversight, and I appreciate the amount of effort and time that goes into it. I'd also like to point out that the percentage of our budget that is represented by it, do you know the number off hand? It's a relatively small percentage. The percentage? That's a Conrad question. I'm sorry. I'm not supposed to ask those kind of questions, but let's just I know how much is there.
055It's a it's about 22 million. Okay. Yeah. All right. So, um, the beauty of this plan and this program is that when we spend a smaller amount of money, this 22 million, on that that tight-knit group of students that, um, are targeted by the LCAP, that this is a case where the what we we're putting into place doesn't just help them. It helps the system by and large. It helps every student that is in connection with them, and and so I want to draw that that question as it's often, why are we spending so much time on such a small portion of the pie? It's because we're really targeting the very neediest students in a way that will help not only them, but everyone else as well. So, again, my thank you to to to
056you, Mr. Venz. Also, it's not just Mr. Venz. He's standing up there, but this is the kind of work that that has a huge, um, a huge breadth of of who it touches and who's involved with it. So, thanks to all the staff that take the time to do this. Thank you. Any other comments? Uh, we'll bring us to report report item E2, the student outcomes report. Um, please note this is also a listening and discussion item on the topic only. No decisions or recommendations will be made at the meeting. Dr. Dr. Maldonado, uh, will you please introduce our presenters? I want to welcome Dr. Wilson, who's going to bring us up to date on student outcomes report, which is a little bit related to the LCAP, uh, groups that are called out, but not
057necessarily, uh, direct correlation. And this is one of three student outcomes reports that we have for the board throughout the year. Welcome, Dr. Wilson. Good evening, Board President Banning, Superintendent Maldonado, Board Trustees, district administration, and community members. We are presenting this evening a student outcomes benchmark report and that highlights our mCLASS data as well as our IXL data. And I'm joined this evening by our Executive Director of Elementary, Denise Alvarado, as well as our Executive Director of Secondary, um, Dr. Mary Ann Hugh. So, to really start us off, I want to, um, share with you that as a district, and we've shared this slide before, that we have a variety of data that we use to make decisions, uh, within our system. We have implementation data, student and staff outcome data, as well as capacity,
058um, data for our practices. And for tonight's presentation, we're going to focus on student and staff outcome data. Of course, this is all connected to our Santa Barbara Unified Board Priorities. We have literacy, math, um, aligning instruction, assessment, um, as well as belonging community. And for this evening's presentation, we will be highlighting elementary literacy through the mCLASS data, as well as our secondary math, um, through the IXL data. And now I'd like to invite, um, Denise Alvarado, who will be sharing more about the elementary data. Thank you, Dr. Wilson. Good evening, members of the board, Dr. Maldonado. Just a [clears throat] quick refresher on mCLASS. Um, I know that we talked about, uh, what mCLASS was, but for, um, all of our members, uh, of the public, uh, just a quick refresher. This is a
059literacy screener that measures foundational skills, and it is for grades kinder, first, and second grade. For our kinder students, we assessed one time so far, and for first and second grade students, we have assessed two times. So, you will see a BOY, which is beginning of the year, MOY, middle of the year. And, um, what this assessment does it it data identifies readings, um, reading risk early, so that we can intervene. Teachers use these results to provide tier one instruction support, and also guides, um, the data information guides, uh, group small group instruction and intervention provided, so that we can progress monitor our students and provide the support they need for the skills that they need. Um, just a once again important context is that this is our first year of implementation. We have not
060done this before, and we have not used this platform before, but good news is that, um, it is well as being well implemented. Of course, it's not perfect. We are learning through this process. This is our first time doing it, and we're still adjusting to this assessment. The beginning of the year data tells us where the students are at when they first assess. So, that happened at the very beginning of the year. The middle of the year data tells us where our students, um, what what we can do in our system, and whether our system is strong enough to accelerate student results. I'm going to share the overall data for kinder, first, and second grade across the district. This includes all nine elementaries, uh, eight elementaries, not, um, McKinley because, uh, McKinley is a DLI
061school and they tested in Spanish. For kinder, what you will see in the band that is above, I know it's a bit blurry, it's, uh, it's in color gray. That is the national data. And where you see the SBUSD with a K, that is our district data. So, when we look at kinder, when our students first started, uh, at the middle of the year tested, 30 at the national level, 31% of students were not were below, um, benchmark across the nation. For SB Unified, our students were at 41% in kinder. Now, we're going to move on to, uh, first grade. National data shows 30% of students below, um, were below benchmark, 30%. And then middle of the year, when students were tested across the nation, they were still at 30%. If you look below, this
062is Santa Barbara Unified. We had a slight increase from 40% to 38% reduction of students who were well below, uh, well below benchmark. And then looking at second grade, we were from 32% to 31%, and if you look at the national level, it's it's almost the same, uh, for the well below benchmark. These are not the results we want to see. We want to see, uh, more accelerated results for our students, but I do want to share that in first grade, our students at benchmark improved by 7% by seven. And for grade, uh, two, students improved from 25% to 29% for four points. So, we had some movement, but not in the well below benchmark. And so, we we're still working on this and providing This is one measure. We we do other assessments across
063the district, so I just want to caution us to not make, you know, recommendations or changes right away based on one data point. Just a quick reminder of that reading is a complex system. It doesn't just happen magically. It is required for us to be very strategic as well as explicit explicit about how we're teaching reading. The reading rope has several areas in which when we have a strong, uh, strand at every level is what creates a very strong rope. And a a simplistic way to put this together or to share with you about the reading rope is over on the right. To learn to read, the brain must hear sounds in words, connect sounds to letters, practice reading words, and build language and vocabulary. And I I'm get I'm going to I'm putting it
064in very simplistic words, but it is a very complex systems, um, and we'll be sharing a little bit more about what is happening across the district at a specific site, but also in the at the classroom level, so you can hear a little bit more about that context. Uh, looking at the subtests. So, you saw the reading rope that it requires different areas, different skills. The subtests, can we increase the size of this like you did before on the screen? It's a little blurry, but if you increase the size, >> [snorts] >> zoom in. Thank you. >> [clears throat] >> Not so much. Uh, if you increase the size, um, you'll see it, but there are areas like, uh, such as, uh, in each of the grade levels for first and second grade, in which
065we can compare the beginning uh the beginning of the year and middle of the year data. Can you go back so we can see the right-hand side for the bullet points? Thank you. Oh. A little more so we don't cut off. Thank you. So grade two composite scores, we saw very little movement in our uh grade two. Did I Did I move too fast? Excuse me. I got There we go. Grade one. Thank you. Uh we're seeing foundational skill growth especially in letter names and word reading by 7 and 9. So these are the areas that tells us that we're doing something right here and we should continue to do what we're doing in these specific areas. Uh growth is incremental in many students are still below benchmark unfortunately for mid-year, but we are making
066progress in targeting specific skills. We will continue to strengthen our tier one instruction, identify tier two interventions for those specific skills that you see here, which is um in in these areas here um listed. Can you go to the next? Thank you. The next slide. Um for grade two composite scores, again very little movement with many students still below well uh benchmark on mid-year. Letter sounds and decoding is mod it has modest improvement with more students mov moving towards benchmark. Reading accuracy remains a strength with over half of students at benchmark um and then uh just once again beginning of the year middle of the year assessment changes at each benchmark. So the target keeps moving. The beginning of the year middle of the year is not the exact same number. That number increases from
067beginning, middle, and end. Can you go? It's not working. The Can you? Yeah. And now we have the overall scores um by school. Most schools reduce the well below from beginning of the year to middle of the year. So the the movement is positive. Not at the rate we want it. We want this to be accelerated. Growth is uneven across sites. Some school sites made strong gains such as Cleveland and SBCA, while others showed minimal change such as Franklin and Harding Elementary Schools. Uh and Washington and Roosevelt have the highest percentage at or above benchmark, but those are the scores that they started with from beginning of the year as well. Um and we did not see much movement both at too much of a movement on either one of these schools um as we
068did for Cleveland and SBCA. Significant gaps remain between schools with some still over 40% well below mid-year. And again, our goal is to focus on tier one and tier two instruction. There we go. Uh now with McKinley, we have a DLI school in which the assessment is in Spanish and that is called MClass Lectura. And for MClass Lectura, we see that well below decreased from 64% to 55%. So we saw significant growth there for McKinley. And students at benchmark increased from 15 to 21%. So we're seeing a positive movement at McKinley Elementary with our Lectura assessment. And just to share the specific grade one, again we're seeing some strong growth in phonemic awareness. Decoding and word reading show some progress, but risk levels remain high and fluency and accuracy are the greatest area of need
069for first grade Lectura at McKinley. Second grade composite scores show uh improvement with well below decreasing from 64 to 54 up 52%. Uh word reading shows notable growth, but comprehension declined mid-year because we still need to strengthen those other areas subtests in order for us to have that comprehension. And um Next we have uh we're very glad to have here uh Principal Sandoval from Cleveland Elementary who will share a little bit more and also introduce one of our teachers about what is happening in first grade. Good evening, board. Dr. Maldonado. Thanks for having us. Um Am I on on the mic? Get closer. Got to go closer. Check, check. Oh, there I am. Uh so I was invited just to talk um to you about the systems at Cleveland that we believe helped our success,
070our growth. And I wanted to highlight a few things. And one of the things that we do at Cleveland is that we try to minimize the variance at our site. And we focus on aligning our instructional time and our materials. Those are huge tier one um outcomes for us and that takes a lot of lifting. We also focus on the feedback that teachers are getting through my feedback and through our instructional coaching. Um some of the things we also have to work on is our MTSS and that goes into the tier two is when we get these results, when we get progress monitoring results, what do we do about it, and how do we approach it, and how do we fill the gaps that we see? I do have uh Ms. Rodriguez that's going to
071talk a little bit more about that as a instructor in first grade, but I just wanted to let you know that we also do this together. So one of our mottos is we make decisions together, not in isolation. And that's through our PLC process. It is vital that we have these conversations at PLCs so that we can analyze the data together, make decisions together, redesign together. Those are our big tools when you talk about systems. When I go in there and I meet with teachers and we're sitting there looking at results and we're adjusting and refining, that's where some of the big work happens and that's that PLC time. Um we also do a lot of leadership chats where we get our SLTs together during staff meetings. We just have a lot of forums of
072alignment. And that has to happen constantly. Not only in literacy, but also in math and other content. So we make sure that we are talking about it often. And so those are just some of the systems I wanted to share and I brought a teacher who's actually doing those systems as well all right boots on the ground um a very successful very very renowned teacher in our first grade right now. She's actually teaching of kindergarten first grade combo. So she's getting a big perspective about the growth of students and that is Katia Rodriguez. I'm going to have her come up. I think it's the next slide for us. Yeah. If you need to reference that. Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see that. No, that was right. Go back. It's okay. So um good evening. Uh
073to summarize what we've been doing at Cleveland, um we've been meeting. We meet every week. We talk about results. We talk about how instruction is going. We look at data. And uh with MClass, we find we found another tool that helped us look closely at areas that sometimes you don't have the time to assess or you're not thinking about assessing because you didn't have that assessment before. So we were able to look at the beginning data that we have beginning of the year and then identify um the areas that the students were um needing to work with and then come up look at the results and come up with the lessons and sometimes actually more a lot of the lessons on the M in the MClass, we were able to use those lessons because they
074recommend if your student is not working well here, then maybe you should do this lesson or that lesson. And we've also been using that to help us. Um Here there is a a few things that we thought of as a team in K2 that we do uh consistently. These are some of the things that I do in my classroom. Um We date we do daily work with fluency practice. One thing that we noticed with the results from MClass is that yes, our students are sounding out, they are reading, but how about their fluency? How quickly are they they recognizing these patterns? And if you want them to read more fluently, you definitely have to get those patterns practice as a fluent um uh process. The we do a lot of dictation, which also helps with
075that orthographic mapping for the students. Um nonsense word guided reading practice is something that comes with the Foundations program that we also use. And that's something we do just to make sure that the students are um able to read a word that is not necessarily a word that they memorized just to see if they really getting those patterns fluently. Um we do sight word practice three times a week. Again, that's based on assessment of not only um the Foundations sight words, but all those sight words that we think they need to have at that grade level in my class in the in this case K1. I happen to to with both the K teachers and the first grade teachers. Um rereading the quotable text um for the text connected text fluency and um as you
076can see down below also something that is I find we all find very important at Cleveland is to be able to give them feedback and then have them get excited about the improvement that they are making and celebrate that as well because that's a big part of the process. Um and again um using the materials that are that everybody uses, we know what we are doing in terms of the lessons that we are doing and we are sharing that information and then trying to make it better each time. So that's about it. Thank you so much. Can we give her a round of applause? It's amazing the work. [applause] As I said, um this is a science and it is a complex system. The last thing I want to share is uh we will continue
077to build strong literacy systems across our district by strengthening our tier one instruction. And how would we do that is making sure that all of our teachers are providing an explicit foundational skills in every classroom. How will we do that? Um it's not one person as um both uh both um at Cleveland we shared that it takes an entire team and it's a collective effort. Implementation of adopted materials instead of using other things here and there. Um we need to utilize the materials that we have adopted and that we have been trained on. Regular principal classroom walk-throughs, but not just walk-throughs, providing feedback that is actionable for the teachers so that they are able to receive that support not only from the principal but also from the coaches. Um letters training uh we now have
078uh letters training uh for all K2 teachers that is coming up and we also have a cohort cohort two uh that we have filled up with a full class uh for for us. That has already started. And also refining our written wisdom pacing and assessment guide to provide more ownership and also a uh teacher feedback on how to make that better for all of our uh grade levels. And then we are launching a targeted small test of change with a team of um different partners as well as uh SB Unified staff members on how are we going to improve our literacy um our literacy across the district with a specific focus on a small group and we will provide more information at a later time. Aligning our interventions, making sure that you saw the different
079strands that when we are providing that intervention, the intervention's targeted for that specific need that that individual student needs. Or if it's a group of students, if 60% of our students need support for phonemic awareness, that that intervention is on phonemic awareness for that specific group of students. And then uh PLCs and data, continue with our data-driven PLC cycles to adjust tier one instruction and plan for intervention as a team as PLCs. Site level progress monitoring to measure impact in which the principals are monitoring the progress that PLCs are making as a team as well as individuals in providing that support for for teachers as well. And then lastly, structured principal data chats which we already have um in which principals present to a district team and we have conversations about student outcomes and next
080steps in the systems that are in place at every school. And uh we have completed eight out of the nine elementary schools and then we're moving on to secondary as well. That concludes the elementary uh report. Dr. Hu is next. Thank you. Good evening. I'm here to talk about our math uh assessment data which we use IXL for. So IXL, this is our second year of using IXL for our math benchmark assessments in the secondary level. Uh last year was our first year. One thing to note is that while this is our second year using IXL, we have switched to a different assessment within it. So there are still some things that we are learning about the assessment that we're using this year. We give the assessment twice a year. So for our junior high
081students, what you see here is a beginning of year on the left in the fall and that was within the first couple weeks of school and then in the winter, so right at the end of January, beginning of February as we turned to the new semester for our junior highs. In seventh grade we saw some slight improvement in the students that were meeting or or exceeding the grade level uh benchmark for our math in seventh grade and then similar in eighth grade. One of the other things I do want to point out is that the red is shrinking just a little bit as well. We also saw a decrease in the percentage of students who were far below base or far below that grade level or that red group for our seventh grade uh in
082the from the fall to the winter. And then in eighth grade as well. Similarly, we saw a slight improvement in the number the percentage of students who were at or above grade level from fall to winter and then a slight decrease in the percentage of students who were far below grade level uh from fall to winter. One thing I do want to point out is that for this level up assessment, we are assessing students against a standard grade level by the end of the school year. So at the beginning of the school year, it's okay that not all of our students are at grade level. What we're looking for is that progress from the fall to the winter and then we'll be looking for the results on our grade level CASP assessments in the spring.
083It's that will be another measure of how we are doing at moving our students along the continuum of their grade level content standards in seventh and eighth grade. This is another way of looking at the data by school. This is combined seventh and eighth grade just to give you an overview of how each school kind of went from the fall to winter. So again, you'll see that there was the percentage of students who were at or above grade level remained steady with some growth at La Colina and Santa Barbara Junior. And again, more importantly, we wanted to see that the percentage of students at the far below grade level is shrinking meaning that we are moving students up the continuum. And then this again by grade level seventh and eighth so you can see them
084both at the same time. This is another way that we are looking at the data. Again, just knowing that the level up assessment that we are trying out this year is a little bit different. We haven't spent as much time really digging into this part yet. This is work that we're starting to look at in our PLCs and we're starting to make sense of what this means for us and the work that we are doing to intervene with students. So again, just given the fact that the grade level assessment is looking at the whole grade level content standards, when we look at this chart, this is looking at an average score for all of our students by content strand. And you can see here that we are seeing that growth from the fall benchmark average
085score across all of the content strands to the winter benchmark. So we know that math is an iterative process. Students are learning and they're building on those skills throughout the year as they move from the fall assessment to the winter assessment and into the spring until they get to the end of the school year. And we are seeing that students are building on their skills and you're seeing it in the data here on how they are doing per content strand and that improvement there in those scores. Turning now to our high schools, our high schools are in a little bit of a transition as we have moved to a new uh content a new curriculum adoption. So this year with math one, we are looking at our IXL data a little bit differently because our
086IXL data and the assessment while we're learning about the level up assessment as one way of measuring students, we are also looking at what it can tell us about how we are doing with our math one adoption and understanding where we are with the curriculum there. So as our teachers and our students are learning the math curriculum for our Amplify Desmos math one curriculum, we can look at the assessments within there and our teachers are doing that in their PLC teams, but we can also look at the IXL data which is an external assessment to see how our students doing on those skills that we want to see students developing as part of math one. So this is the first look for our spring semester students in ninth grade. So again, with the block schedule,
087this is considered our beginning of year for students. So in end of January, beginning of February, this is their first time taking math sometimes since last May or June. So think of this as beginning of the year for our students. Uh right now you can see the breakdown of students in ninth grade who took the assessment. That was about 85 to 80 about 80 to 85% of our students in the math one math one math two math three space who are ninth graders for this assessment. Uh and you can see there what our results are showing us as far as students meeting uh at grade level or above. So not where we want it to be, but again, given the fact that some of these students may have not taken math in a while, we
088know that our beginning is just our beginning assessment score is just a place for us to look as a way to look at who needs additional support. Are there things that we need to review because it's been a little while since our students have had math, and then we're going to get back into it with the content. So, this is a view of all of the ninth graders who are in currently a math course, not just math one, but also students who are in math two and our extended time class in the spring. And so, by content strand again, just like we saw for the seventh and eighth grade students, you can see how those strands break down for students at their beginning of year assessment in January. And then this is by school. You'll
089see there for Kitsap, there were only four students, and I believe they didn't have any who took it, and that is probably because they were independent study students and we couldn't grab them in the time that we were giving the assessment. But those students are being, you know, caught up with so that we make sure that we are addressing the needs of the students as well. And then this is across all of our math classes. Again, you can see by grade level. I do want to point out that this doesn't include all of the math courses that we are offering this spring. So, this does not include our compaction classes, for example, where students are doing math two and math three at the same time. So, those are often our more advanced students who are
090going faster and doing two courses in one semester, basically. And so, that does mean that our data is skewing a little bit towards students who are at or below grade level who are going to need a little bit more of our support. It also doesn't show any of our students who are in precalculus or calculus or dual enrollment courses and all of those. So, I just want to make sure that we're painting a a fair picture of, you know, this is the data that we're looking at for this group of students who takes the assessment, but it's not all of our students. And then one of the other things to point out is that as students move up, you can see that once we get into 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, the percent of students
091who are at or above grade level does go down even more. And again, that is because the students who are being assessed in math three, math modeling, are students who have been struggling with math all along, and so that is why the data skews a little bit in that direction. Again, our IXL data is just pointing is just one indicator of the health of our math program and the supports that we are providing for students. So, here you can see by grade or by course, these are the courses that we are including in our IXL assessments. Again, this is for our beginning of year or spring benchmark, and then we'll run this data again when the students take this at the end of their semester, so in May. So, by then, again, given that it's
092a year-long course and the content is for that year, we would expect to see growth from this time to the May assessment results. As I mentioned before, at with the high school space in particular, because we are in the middle of implementing year one of our math one implementation for the new curriculum, there is a lot that our teachers and our students are grappling with and learning about. And that means we are all learning new things while we are giving these assessments, and the data that we're looking at is very important to help us along that process. So, all of our students are learning new materials and learning new instructional routines. All of our teachers are also learning new routines and new instructional practices as they are learning the new curriculum that we're implementing, and
093that goes across the board. Our math seventh and eighth teams that have been a little bit further along in the implementation journey are still learning as well. And so, we keep coming back to them to say, "What else do you need? How can we make this stronger and better?" And then, as we're looping back to them, we are learning more about how to support our math one teachers. And then that will feed up into our math two and math three courses eventually as well. Our leaders also need a lot of support, and so part of the learning that we are doing as a system is investing in the learning of our site leaders. Our assistant principals and our principals are going through coaching sessions of their own in instructional walk-throughs with our amplify staff. That's
094an opportunity for them to not only see instructional routines in the classroom, but to also understand how the materials, the curriculum that we've adopted is designed to support the learning that we want to see in the classroom, and then how that is going to show up in the results that we see from students. And then we as district leaders and as a district are engaged in this professional learning as well, because we need to make sure that we are providing a robust system of support for our site leaders and our teachers to support students and and those student outcomes. So, all levels of the system are learning and growing together. Our IXL data is part of that. Our amplify data is part of that as well, and this is an iterative process that we are
095continuing to go through along the way. We also have joined forces with WestEd who is helping us to develop a measurement system so that we are looking at data not just IXL and amplify to help us understand more about our our implementation journey, but some qualitative data as well. And so, our math teachers and leaders and students are actually in the middle of that survey process, and we are excited to learn more about the feedback that they're going to give us about how we are doing with this implementation journey. So, as we build those systems, we want to make sure that we are aligning our forces with our MTSS system of support. So, that means building on establishing that strong foundation for our tier one program. We have newly adopted curriculum that we are still
096learning about and learning how to use. We want to make sure that we have a strong, aligned, and agreed-upon scope of sequence that we are using that will help us in that journey. And we are working on how do we implement that adopted curriculum with integrity. So, making sure that our teachers are provided with the adequate training and support they need to understand how these materials work together to provide the supports for students and to help us go through those new instructional routines or shifts in instructional routines that are going to help us see the student outcomes that we want to see in the classroom. We are also invested in checking in with our teachers along the way. So, we have math one teachers that are meeting not only at their school site, but also
097as a district team to just feed back into our system some information about how pacing is going in a block schedule. How are we doing at implementing those assessments, and what are we learning about how that's working, and what we need to adjust. That's one of the nice parts about a block schedule is that we tried it in the fall and now we're trying it in the spring. It looks a little different already from what it looked like in the fall, and I have no doubt that it will continue to evolve and iterate as we continue with the implementation process. That is something that we've learned from our junior high team is that it will continue to evolve as we learn and get smarter and learn more about the curriculum as well. And then we
098are also working on strengthening those monitoring progresses processes for our PLC teams, for our principals, and then how they are monitoring students and making um efforts to engage and inner and intervene. So, we have some small tests of change going on at our junior high. They're doing some small instruction work using IXL data to form groups to to work on students on skills. Our high schools are starting to work on that as well, and so we've got a team of math one teachers at San Marcos that are starting to look at how they can build some interventions within their classroom experience, and then we've got our high school principals who are working on a small test of change with our math three. So, the other end, not in curriculum adoption, but certainly and a group
099that we want to make sure that we are supporting as well. So, these are all part of the things that we are doing to provide supports to our math program and to build again that strong aligned system of support for math instruction as we make this change. Thank you. Do we have public comment on this? No, [clears throat] we don't have comment on this item. Oh, yes, there's some coming. Actually, this is E2, right? So, you have these two. Yeah. How many are total? Four? Yes, apologies. Um we have five comments on this item. Well, um >> No, um four. Four. Well, uh we'll allow our three minutes. Okay. >> So, you want to call your your Certainly, we'll start with Yes, with Thank you, President Banning. Sherry Ray, Moni DeWitt, and York Shingle. >>
100[snorts] >> Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. Um in 2015 when the California dyslexia guidelines took effect, legislators eliminated the screening provision due to strong pressures from special interest groups. Um when screening finally became mandated by the state, the language in the press release of December 17th, 2024 referenced a new requirement taking effect for the 2025-2026 school year to annually screen all kindergarten through second grade students for risk of reading difficulties, including dyslexia. Dyslexic Governor Newsom was quoted in that press release, "I know from my own challenges with dyslexia, when we help children we read, we help them to succeed." So, my question is, where is the mention of dyslexia in this report about the literacy and the screening? Um I can't find any references to interventions implemented to
101address the needs of these students, which make up 20% of the population. Um are character- these students with the characteristics of dyslexia identified through the mandated screening process? Additionally, what professional development is provided to assist educators and administrators in addressing dyslexia, this most common learning difference? What strategies are they employing and how are they monitored? Screening is just the first step. Appropriate, intensive, timely, specific intervention is essential. What happens to a child who is identified with characteristics of dyslexia? And how are their families notified and how are they brought in in a partnership? Time is short for these students to learn to read before the negative self-esteem issues so common in dyslexia rob them of their confidence and add to their academic difficulties and prevent them reaching from reaching their full potential. So, I hope
102that we can address the issue of dyslexia identified students uh through the screening process because it's a great thing that we can are finally screening in California, but we need to be more um intentional about it. Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay, so we're going to have um Monita Witt, York Shingle, and Briana Serrato. Hey there. Thanks again. Sorry. Uh couple things about this report. Uh one was just um it's difficult to see what the information that we're actually trying to observe when it's presented in a horizontal line and the percentages are actually written right on that horizontal line in a font size that looks like it's about four points. So, I just might say that for the public would be beneficial even rather than doing all the color coding if we could just
103see what the percentages are, you know, so like for example, the composite is 60% of our students aren't reading and about 38% for the first grade are. The other questions I had was about Cleveland. Only 12 students seem to be in the assessment. That seems a little low to me. I would imagine they had more and then why were just 12 picked? And um >> [snorts] >> but the long and short of it is, yeah, these scores are low. I was a little shocked to see the math scores for 9 to 12 at 5%. I'm just wondering, is that a mistake? Because that just can't be right in my mind, anyway. Um but moving on. So, half the reason why we do the assessments is so that we can give pointed pointed um remediation to
104people in a specific way. Certain people struggle with a different part of like they did show the rope, but phonemic awareness, decoding, comprehension, fluency, they're all different aspects and so it needs differentiated instruction needs to happen in the first grade. If it doesn't happen by the uh first grade when our minds are naturally oriented towards learning language, it's four times takes four times more effort to do it. And one thing too was missing from the report that I would find interesting is how many teachers in the first through second space are trained in the science of reading? Like for example, in Cleveland, are they trained? The ones that have made incremental uh improvement, how did they do it? And I didn't quite get that. And as for uh one of the solutions being like the
105small uh scope of change or whatever that buzzword is, I I don't think we really need to do that test of change. We have Peabody right here and we can invite Claire Croc. She knows it all and so does the president there of what they did, how they did it, and they're very successful. So, I'm thinking, you know, why don't we use them as a resource to help us get the first to second graders where they should be. And my last comment really is this all really trans down translates down to a human uh effect. And when somebody doesn't know how to read, I frankly a woman who was in the show that we had up here on the wall was my neighbor. I've known her for about 20 years. She recently passed last month
106and um she graduated from Santa Barbara High. She was dyslexic. She wasn't able to read. She had a very nice teacher who she was really attached to, but still couldn't quite was too late by the time she met her and she named her daughter after that teacher. Her life was uh very struggled and diminished and um even when she passed, she still couldn't even write a check by herself. She had friends, we helped her, but um it's real and it hurts. Thanks. Thank you. >> [snorts] >> Okay. Uh York Shingle followed by Briana Serrato. All right. Uh good evening, board superintendent and cabinet. I am York Shingle, president of SBTA. Uh now that you've learned about student outcomes, please consider how that connects to your potential reduction in positions coming up in F3 and F4.
107When teachers get data that shows students are below or well below grade level, they work with the curriculum specialists to determine intervention. While teachers are responsible for student learning, the curriculum specialists do amazing work to uplift students and help them make progress um from one marker to the next. So, now that we finally have a system across the district, you're considering cutting the folks who respond to that data and drive student progress. With fewer employees in both bargaining units, our student outcomes will suffer. As a former McKinley Bear, thank you for addressing the different assessments, um but also when you mention letters training and Wit & Wisdom, please make sure that you have plans for our dual language students who use CKLA and Caminos. Uh they may need different training from letters because their focus
108is primarily on Spanish language acquisition for the first few years. And then in secondary, I don't understand how we're getting a presentation that shows 2 to 13% of students are on grade level that isn't coming with radical changes to the structure. That makes teachers give up. That makes students give up. A curriculum isn't going to fix it. Better tier one curriculum or pardon me, better tier one instruction isn't going to fix it. We need to make some systematic changes to address this. Kids hate going to math class cuz very few of them know what's going on. And it's tied to literacy. It's tied to all of these things. But we can't make simple changes and get up here and say, "Well, this is what it is. We'll get better next year." Right, but we need
109to get significantly better. We need to make serious change and we need to make it soon. Otherwise, we're going to continue setting up our students to fail and we're going to continue failing our community. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Okay. Uh Briana Serrato. Good evening. My name is Briana Serrato, pronouns she/her/ella. I am a parent of an elementary student and a junior high student. While in While I understand that special educations are gen ed students first, the lack of breakdown of how the marginalized student subcategories, such as sped, EML, and racial identities is concerning. Since these breakdowns are something that have historically been included in outcomes reports, why were they not included for the M class and math IXL reports? It seems that the beginning of the implementation journeys are the time to ensure that
110the growth or lack thereof are representative across all sub- categories to ensure equitable outcomes from the start. The scores of only 5% of all high school students testing at or above grade level is frightening for um the all three schools even with the factors of implementing new material. To clarify, is math only taken in the spring semester for the block schedule? I graduated from DP, go Chargers, but I went there instead of San Marcos because the block schedule was something that would not work for me for math and Spanish. So, I'm not sure how this all works. So, is that part of an issue of kids are having a year or a year and a half between when they might have math from one semester to the other? And is this something that has been
111historically been an issue since the block program went through all three high schools or is this just an issue this semester um or the school year? And basically, uh also um and if if it's not just a spring only class, then where are the assessment scores for the fall and the winter to compare other than just the spring one assessments? And were these low spring scores similar with the other instructional programs as well if it is a spring only class? Thank you so much. Thank you. That concludes public comment. All right, that will bring us to board discussion. We have questions from any board members. Okay. Trustee Beal. Um, I have a question about the M-class system. I'm not sure who's going to answer my question. Is Alvarado going to answer? So, um So, this
112is our first year of this assessment. We're also embarking on training our teachers in letters. Um, and I guess I have a very specific question and then kind of a more general question. The more specific question is is now we have for I guess first and second a beginning of year and mid-year assessment. Some of those students and I think there was a comment about sub classes are not progressing for a very specific reason. So, it's not really shown in the data, but can you um, elaborate on when those students are identified between the beginning of the year and mid-year, what is the specific process that's in place for those students to potentially identify them with other learning needs such as they may have to let dyslexia, etc. So Before [clears throat] we had M-class,
113we had other assessments as well and our MTSS system has always has been in place for several years. And the way in which we identify when a student has difficulties in any area, whether it's academic, behavioral, social, emotional, we have a system in which um, we can provide that support that is needed and provide other assessments for students. With M-class, we have a new opportunity in which we can pinpoint that specific skill that the student need. For example, right now I can tell you that across the district, phonemic awareness is the area of need. I wasn't able to pinpoint with ease before what that need was. And so now myself as an entire district, I can see when the greatest areas of needs, the principals can specifically pinpoint the area of need for a specific
114grade level, the entire school, and then teachers individually um, can provide that. M-class provides additional assessments. For example, if we know that there's a specific area of need in phonemic awareness, there's other assessments in which the teachers can provide or do progress monitoring, test it out, provide that instruction intervention during tier one instruction or or during intervention and monitor whether the student is growing. And if it's not if the students are not are not making progress, then the teacher may adjust and do something differently to intervene. I hope that answers your question. I'm not sure if it does. It does in the sense that you're talking about what happens if a student's not progressing, but there going to be students who do not progress because the standard process of teaching is not going to fit
115what they need. For example, we've talked about dyslexic students. And at the same time in other conversations, we've talked about disproportionality where students are going into special ed because it seems like they have a learning a general learning difficulty and it's not really it's very amorphous when they may just need specific interventions to become more able to read and that's really their their the the thing they need help with. So, I'm asking that's the specific question, right? What what is happening? Are you already identifying those students and what is through M-class, other methods also apparently, what is happening right now with those students? So, we have a percentage, are we identifying [clears throat] them, that sort of thing? I don't have the percentage, but I can bring you more information. We have an SST process
116at every school in which um teachers can refer a student to the SST team to determine what other needs the student may have. Because when we see a uh, let's say an academic need, there might be other factors that are affecting the student learning, whether the student may have I mean, we have situations currently in our community where students are afraid to come to school because of ICE raids and their parents and what they're going through. And so the student students may experience other things. There could be other social emotional needs. There could be behavioral needs because of other factors that might be happening. And so when the student is referred to that SST team, they look at multiple measures such as M-class, we look at STAR, we also look at the Panorama data across
117our our our schools and other measures that happen at the school site to determine the next steps. Some of those steps are to intervene and provide a referral to a community to a service in the community or to the family or to the student. And sometimes it may require a referral for special education depending on the need of that individual student. So, are you are you are is this is M-class starting to trigger this process of referral just cuz there's so many specifics in that screening that I mean, I'm not an educator, so I would think that maybe some students really stand out in their lack of progression. And so is it triggering referrals early on when we hear statistics like or the suggestion that first grade is very important, right? I'm I'm just curious.
118I'm not I know I'm not really asking that I'm curious about >> it's too early. It's a bit early for us to see if that's happening. So, I would say that um we're still trying to establish consistency across the way in which we implement the assessment, right? This we just trained the teachers, they're doing it for the first time, they just kinder is doing it for the first time. Um, first and second is doing it for the second time and there's only been a few months in between those two assessments. Um, but I I can bring back more information about what we're seeing in some of those um um what we're identifying that is different that we have in the past. What I can tell you is that yes, we are identifying certain specific needs
119and I don't know if um Principal Sandoval wants to provide any other insight if if you have noticed anything, but I have not based on my conversations with principals, the data chats we've had, we haven't seen a spike in referrals to SST, student support student for support or for special ed. We have not seen that increase because of the new assessment. Okay. I have questions about math, but I'm going to concede questions about literacy to my other board members before we talk about math. Thank you very much for a comprehensive report. I found it was um very interesting and helpful. So, thank you. My question kind of builds on Trustee Beal's question, which is specifically for students with characteristics of dyslexia, do we have special intervention specifically for them? So, dyslexic students. A characteristic of
120dyslexia can be one of those specific skills that the student might have. And so we would intervene in that way. Um we have not provided the training in terms of the how to intervene for um for dyslexia, but we have like I said, our referral to um services for students and for additional intervention or also for referral for special education if needed. Which would provide that support for students who have characteristics of dyslexia. Are there any other questions? Carlos, anything? My questions are more a little different both [clears throat] math and and literacy. I had um one question about I heard that this is IXL's this is the first second year second year of putting IXL in the first for for M-class. And I was wondering just how that how that transition is going and
121if you know, we have information on what the students think so far of of these processes. >> [snorts] >> I don't have the data for for M-class for elementary for our kinder first and second grade students. We haven't asked the students, but that would be another way to you know, consider, but also asking teachers. We have not um uh seeked information from specific teachers as a district, but individual at each site, principals have been communicating with the teachers and I communicate with the principals about how that's going. I would say honestly, it's been smooth a lot more smoother than I thought. I thought this was going to be a significant which it is a significant lift, but the way the teachers have embraced it and the way that they see it as a very useful
122tool as you heard from one of our teachers. And I've I'm hearing from different teachers across the district of it provides provides teachers with specific information that they can focus on that they don't have to go looking for or try to analyze multiple data across a table with different information. Instead, this platform allows the teacher to have all the information in one place. The platform groups students based on need and within that same platform, teachers can click on that specific lesson that supports that specific skill. So, I would say it has been well received and we're still learning and there is a lot more room for growth for us. In IXL, Dr. Hill can share. So, for IXL, uh likewise, I don't think we have asked students yet about um their perceptions of the IXL
123assessment or tool. So, remember that IXL is not just an assessment, it is actually paired to a practice tool and that's how uh that was one of the reasons why we selected it for our benchmark is once the students take that assessment, they then get an individualized skill plan which they can use to continue to build their skills. So, if my assessment result comes back and says that I have a lot of work to do, I'm I'm not doing um at-level work uh performance in algebraic functions, it's going to give me a skill plan where I can work on algebraic functions and practice and practice and learn how to build that skill so that the next time around, you know, my score will be closer to at grade level. Uh and so, that is where
124our junior highs that are dedicating, you know, at least 10 minutes every week students have dedicated time in home room or in math class that they are working on their individual skill plans in that in those math classes or in home room, uh they're able to do that. And so, um that is one area where we're looking at how is the assessment how is IXL being implemented not just as an assessment that our teachers can look at in their PLCs and our site leaders can use to support their teachers in their PLCs, but also how can individual students and families benefit from that assessment data and then know what to do to support their student in developing those skills. So, there's two pieces to that. It goes back to I think we haven't yet really
125looked at, you know, how can we get more information from our students about how they're using it and how they feel that it might be helping them, but I think that's a great area for us to explore. Other questions? What Can I just go ahead and add one um additional comment related to your question is one of the things we learned from our first year of implementation was that the first assessment we used in IXL took a long time for students to take. And so, it was starting to um impact instructional time. And so, that was one of the reasons. So, even though we didn't directly survey students, we received this feedback from teachers that it took a lengthy amount of time for them to administer. So, we moved it to an assessment that would
126only take an hour to administer and that was um the rationale for that shift. Another thing at the high school level we're hearing in this year of implementation, second year, but the first year of implementation of the um instructional materials, the um curriculum we adopted, is that they we are starting to hear that they would like an assessment that actually potentially is within Amplify Desmos that does the same thing. So, we're starting to hear that feedback and and we will explore that further because the high school teachers aren't using the IXL practice as much because of the block schedule. So, they would potentially, we're hearing, um is a desire that having an assessment in the Amplify Desmos platform that does the same thing. So, that may be something we explore in the future. Trustee >>
127Can I follow up on that, Dr. Wilson? Does a assessment like that exist for Amplify Desmos? I don't know the answer. Um I believe it might, but I don't know the full answer yet. Uh so, we would need to talk to them further to see if that's possible. Okay. And then for the difference between the two IXL tests, the longer one and then the one that you can finish in about an hour, what are the practical differences on the outputs that the teacher gets in terms of results? So, I may defer that to one of our junior high principals to see if it's any different between the first and the second. I believe it's similar, but it's similar. Yeah, so they're able The assessment that we did last year required the students to keep working
128in the platform to stay pinpointed and this assessment is the same assessment in the fall that it is in the winter. So, it really almost is like a better measure from one thing to another. Um so, it's a little bit I think not as long and they kind of max out at an hour, which I think is helpful. Um the other thing I know that some of us did to your question, Carlos, um IXL has a great um kind of supply of certificates and things like that and we did that last year between the fall and the winter um was we printed out certificates and all the teachers gave them out to the students and, you know, you think in junior high and high school maybe they're not as into that, but they were thrilled.
129Like the teachers were said, "It's like the best day we had because, you know, celebrating like over 100 points of growth." And I think when students can see that in math, that's how you're really like building that confidence and like, "Oh, I can do this." You know, so that we're really working a lot on trying to do those kinds of things, too. Thank you. I appreciate that. Trustee Muños, did you have question? No. I have a couple. Um just to to clarify what I think I heard about about both the the math and the the language tests, um are are we giving tests that are adaptive so so that at the beginning of the year it's a different test when they take it later or is it the same one and we're seeing growth against
130the same kind of concepts? In class, it's a moving target, so it's not the same test. It is something that students have to gradually increasingly increase their literacy skills over time. Okay, so this this is important I think for everyone to understand that that if you had that what it whether it's horizontal or vertical or whatever, if you had that graph and it looked exactly the same at the beginning of the year and the end of the year, what you would be saying in essence is that the students in that cohort are moving keeping up with what the the the um advancing standards are expecting. So, it's not the kind of thing where we're measuring against a stable uh a stable benchmark. The benchmark changes as we go. >> Yes. Middle >> in both of
131the mCLASS and the um IXL tests? mCLASS, beginning of the year, middle of the year, and end of the year, we can't compare the three because they're not the same test. They increase they increase in rigor and it's a different type of assessment with a moving target. So, just wanted to share that. >> That helps. And for IXL, as Principal Foster explained, it is the same test and so, it is a stable from the beginning of year to middle of year. >> Okay. Um I think the rest of what I have are comments. So, let's go back to questions. I I think my math questions were asked. >> Okay. Trustee Caffrey? Um so, my question is basically now we've trained teachers and letters and administrators and also instructional coaches. Are we can we see do
132we see additional growth in students um whose teachers or principals have been trained? So, we had uh we have a one cohort and that training takes 2 years. So, cohort number one was completed over a year ago. We are just starting uh cohort number two about a week ago. And so, um I can't tell you specifically whether we have seen growth because we've only had one cohort of about 38 staff members. Um so, moving forward, the goal is to have all K-2 teachers trained so I can provide you more information once we get through the first year of training to see some of that growth. And for our administrators, letters training is also a 2-year program and we just started in October uh is when principals had their first uh training. I have two math
133questions, but Go ahead. So, we are seeing that a large proportion of students are entering junior high very far behind. So, like at La Cumbre, they're 75% of students are very far behind and Santa Barbara Junior High, it's 71. And so, basically I'm wondering um math is so much about building on skills. How we support our students in elementary schools so that they enter junior high less far behind um and whether we have something kind of similar to IXL. Do we have diagnostic data at the elementary school level? Are we giving support at the elementary school level? And then also like can we use IXL data we know, let's say, the kids going into La Cumbre don't know their algebraic functions and they were supposed to learn that in sixth grade, we give that data
134back to that elementary schools and say this is a is somewhere we need to work on? So, I'll answer for the secondary level and then I'll hand it to Ms. Alvarado. So, that is part of the reason why we do that beginning of year assessment very close to the beginning of the school year is that that helps to provide an additional data point to our math teachers so that they know who are the and they can identify students who might need additional support. That can also mean a slightly different placement in some cases. Vertical articulation is a very important piece of of what we are doing. It's one of the benefits of being in a unified district and there's always more that we can do to be better vertically aligned and to communicate better. So,
135I know that each of our junior highs is getting information from our elementary schools within our system as well as from our feeder districts from that are not within Santa Barbara Unified as they are starting to do those spring transition meetings and getting to know our students. So, that information does help our junior highs prepare. One of the things that we can do a lot better is maybe giving some data back to our elementary schools to feed that process and again build those stronger connections. And then as far as elementary assessments. In elementary the last 2 years we have focused on the implementation with the correct adopted curriculum for mathematics and our we have a pacing guide and an assessment guide in which we connect our teachers into what our students should be learning at
136different different time periods within the year. IXL something we just adopted recently and we are using IXL it because secondary was using it and we saw some success there. We decided to adopt it so that we can have that articulation in the near future. Currently in elementary we're using it as practice and intervention because that's what teachers were wanting to see. The curriculum provided specific um practice but not enough and that's what the teachers were looking for and that's why we adopted IXL for practice and for intervention but not currently as an assessment because we use STAR math for our current assessment in elementary school. So, Okay, I want to be mindful about the the length of time. We do have a lot of other things on the table and we have yet to do
137our comments so I want to kind of keep us moving. Let's make it the last question. Carlos, did you have one? Okay. Okay. I Both Dr. Hue and Ms. Alvarado, I heard you talk about how IXL and mCLASS are both just one of the data points that we use. I'm wondering what are the other measures of data and are they saying similar things yeah as as these data points? We're also using STAR that happens multiple times a year as well as the CASP which happens one time a year and also for our EML students we use our um ELPAC as well. So, there are multiple assessments if there's anything else. So, math we are using our Amplify Desmos assessments. So, in grade 7th and 8th there is a more established curriculum and there are assessments
138that are consistent across all of our all of our junior high 7th and 8th grade and so that assessment data is also something that our teachers are using to help feed information about how we're doing in our math implementation. We also look at grades. So, once you hit secondary the grades become a big part especially as students move into high school. So, we're looking at the assessments both within the curriculum as well as IXL and we are looking at their grades because that shows that they've mastered the content and are ready to move on to the next course. And then again Casta Casta. All right. Yes. Yes. >> then we'll go to comments. >> down my questions a lot so these are my most important questions. So, basically my final question is about how we
139what is the process for changing the block schedule specifically for math. So, basically I know last year we went through the secondary scheduling academy and hybrid schedules exist where kids are in math all year, they're in foreign languages all year. Like what does it take to implement all year math because >> I think we're outside the realm of what the um So, I think I I cut down my question a lot. >> Trust the process. I'm going to ask you to stop. Okay, because >> I'm going to ask you to stop. >> Well, well can I just say one thing which is we're looking at scores where a huge percentage of students are behind and we heard from Mr. Shingle that we need to be thinking about systemic changes so I'm asking related to student
140outcomes what kind of big picture we're thinking we like how we approach this in a big picture way because like Yeah, so I I think it is totally related to ask the question the block schedule has come up multiple times in in the presentation. So, if you want Yeah, we can agendize it at a different time but I guess I'll ask for that. Okay, so I'll make a request then instead if we can't talk about it now. >> we can do that at at the at the appropriate time in the agenda. I just think that we've broadened from what we were talking about of achievement to now an entirely system system situation that needs needs to be a separate topic. So, thank you. I appreciate it. We'll go to comments. Trustee Muñoz. Yes, um thank
141you for such a you know in-depth comprehensive presentation including you know the Cleveland staff being here. The teacher I I liked having the hands-on you know description of of how the students were assessed and such and just appreciate the challenge also of for example with um with junior high and high school having students that possibly are new immigrants go from um have been in charter schools or private schools and then go to the junior high and all the challenges that you have with that including and the EML students. So, thank you to you know just want to give show my appreciation to everyone um on this and um and you know continuing to grow in terms of the progress with our students. Thank you. Thank you. Dr. Beal. I also appreciate the presentation and and
142my comment on this and I think it is is actually been said here already is um there does need So, the system that leads to outcomes is is what we really are talking about. And it isn't just in mCLASS or IXL when we talk about everything the 7th grade adding the 7th um 7th period to the to the middle schools. This is a systemic change and so we have to be very intentional about you know how we gather data and make those decisions. And so this always kind of leaks into the conversation on the side and and it seems like board meetings are really difficult place to have these conversations because it isn't a conversation. And so um that that's something that I think about a lot is where in what setting and where can
143we talk about the system we have set up in all of our schools and what is effective. I very much appreciated the presentation from Principal Sandoval. Um I um I'm also heard that at Santa Barbara Community Academy there are some very specific interventions that move the needle and I think those need to be looked at in terms of the system. Did they do something unique or did they do something especially well? And that conversation needs to happen in a much larger setting and it informs all of us and it can be a real conversation. And so again, I don't think board meetings are the place. We don't have the time and the capacity. So, I will say outcomes committee if we can get there. And and to really talk about what is going to move
144the needle in many areas. We we have everything tonight reduction in force, adding the 7th period, how our students are achieving. They're all related and they're separate conversations but they really aren't. Thanks. Trustee Caffrey. I just want to say thank you very much for a great presentation and that it is so helpful to have this type of data now and our next steps are you know well or what is what is already happening is what we do with the data. I loved hearing from Principal Sandoval and our teacher from Cleveland about how you're using data to specifically provide intervention for students. So, I thought that this was a great presentation and really the right approach. So, thank you. Thank you. Trustee Escobedo. Just more gratitude for the presentation for being here today to give us
145a little bit of insight into what these two the screener and then the IXL assessment what they mean for our schools. I do want to follow up on Dr. Beal's comment and and give [snorts] a nod of agreement on having a more comprehensive discussion about this in a space that is not rigid like a board meeting, where there is back and forth, where there is the ability to challenge ideas, and um for there to be multiple perspectives involved in the conversation, rather than taking turns, whether it's public comment or presentation, and um we're put pressed for time because we have so many substantive topics. An outcomes committee, I think is a a great idea, but I also like the idea of having um maybe it's part of the outcomes committee, but a forum and some
146sort of discussion, where I actually would love to also see our feeder districts involved in in those conversations, because we're spending a lot of time talking about curriculum, interventions, and alignment in our system TK through 12, but we oftentimes, I think, acknowledge it, but don't really address it in partnership about the fact that we have schools that feed into our district, and we're not aligning or trying to partner with them to get alignment with our standards, and our practices, and our interventions, and our assessments. So, I can only imagine that I I'm looking at our junior high principals. I can only imagine that it's a tricky proposition to enter integrate um students from a different district using different curriculum and different assessments at the same time that we're trying to meet student needs. So, I'm
147going to stop because I'm getting feedback on my All right. Carlos, do you have any further comments? I do. First, thank you for the presentation. Um my comment was or is about pointing out a trend in this data that I'm that I see um especially most clearly with slide 19, um the IXL data for, you know, the junior high school, but also just a general a general pattern. Um which is, you know, although it's it's great to see how you know, a lot of these students who start the year at uh you know, a below grade level um a below grade level the the yellow or orange orange color um improving to an at an at at grade level or above grade level even. Um it's great to see that it it is quite, you
148know, painful to see how the the far below grade level numbers remain the same. And I and I point out that data trend because it rem you know, makes me think of this feeling um with students, seeing your peers, you know, improve, you know, maybe peers who were closer to you at the beginning of the year, seeing how they're improving, and you're stuck. And that that um you know, I I I wish I could say it's for a minority of students, but, you know, looking at the data, it's for hundreds of our of our students. And so, um yeah, that that feeling of being of being stuck um being stuck behind your classmates while they move forward is it's, you know, it's a difficult thing to deal with. And so, that's just something that I
149saw in this data um you know, converting that into, you know, numbers into a into emotions. So, just wanted to point that out. Thank you. Thank you. Um I'll echo the thank you for the staff and the time that's that's gone into creating these reports. I will have to say I agree with the people that that that say it's disheartening to see a sea of red on these on these um these reports. It's also um important that we understand exactly what it is we're seeing, and and that's that's an important piece for me. Um but lots and lots of below level positive reports being given on growth that is incremental at best. All of this is new, um but we're also dealing with with students, I think both in math and reading, maybe more in
150math, that that motivation disappears when they're as far behind as they are. What are we doing to even um imagine whether their attention to the detail of the test is really something they care about, or that they're giving us any kind of answers that have true meaning for us. There's lots and lots of information that's here, and it's really good, and I'm really happy that we have it, but every bit of it is doing what's causing this to go on is it's creating new questions that are just as important, if not more so. They're linked into everything we're doing. I think the good news about all of this is that we're seeing kind of a gestalt of how all these things come together to create a really strong system, and asking ourselves the question of
151what gets us to that point where we will be the strong system that others will point to and say, "Look what they've done." It's hard, difficult work, and much of it will have to be increment incremental. And one of the things that we're going to need to talk about is the importance of persistence and grit, and not throwing away good work simply because somebody has an idea that there might be better work. We can spend years running around in revolving doors and looking at different trends and such. Um but I have to say that that in in my brief experience here the last 3 years, it seems to me that the work that's being done is consistently the right work, and we're seeing some great results and some not so great. Math in particular is
152relatively new with new curriculum and all these type of kind type of thing. So, I just want to say again, thank you, and thank you to the board for asking the tough questions, and asking for what else we can do. The idea of outcome committees or better kinds of discussions, and um just thank you, and I don't want any part of our meetings and our questions to be perceived as being anything that that might be um uh perceived as as implications of incompetence or or difficulty. We are a strong organization that's trying to become stronger, and um we're asking tough questions, and and it's going to be tough work. Yeah. Dr. Beal. I just want to make one more comment. Um I know that we talked about mCLASS and and IXL tonight, because we're really
153trying to see if our um curriculum is allowing our students to progress. But we are also going to talk about the uh seventh period, and if you look at the data there, the math CAS scores are are pretty good in some of our junior highs. The high school seems to be a really complex spot. Um so, those are CAS scores. So, I think, you know, it's it's not all lost. We are going somewhere. Um and and I think that's where that bigger discussion, like what do what is all this stuff we're doing, what is it really speaking to, and what is our end game, right? And so, I I see some really good indicators there. So, all is not lost. All right. Yeah. Dr. Maldonado. Thank you, Dr. Beal. I just want to say that
154what you're seeing here is years of work of creating alignment, transparency, and accountability. And it would be wrong for us to look at these scores and not bring them to you. And so, it takes a lot of courage for everyone here to bring you the results that are truly results from a new platform that is new to the teacher, new to the principal, and new to the student. And typically in my years of experience, whenever you introduce a new assessment where there's that is uh basically measuring and comparing across groups of students and schools and grades and nationally, the first administrations are never the best. And that's another part of, you know, just the kind of alignment work. The board priority number three was aligning our academics, our assessments, and our achievement. And that's what
155you're seeing tonight. It's not the greatest, but it is the transparency of this board has asked us to have. It is the account of accountability systems you want us to put in place, and they're not to shame or blame, but they're definitely pointing us to the right places to look at in a system across 18 schools, across two cities, with feeder school systems that are coming to us. So, I'd like to encourage all of us to be patient, to resist the urge to point to one answer kinds of uh solutions, because it's a whole system with lots of people working at their best to try to get there. And I want to give some our teachers some grace, as they're having to unlearn and relearn things that for some of you who hopefully not many
156of you is old as I am out there, didn't have in your initial training as a teacher, in your career, and so on. So, I just want to ask everyone to think about this idea that alignment, transparency, and accountability is what you're seeing before you, and I know it feels hard, but thank you, Dr. Beal, for bringing up the CAS scores. We have seen those summited summative end-of-year assessments increase. Mhm. And not just for all students as a group, but some of our groups that we're focusing on that have been left behind. Thank you. >> Yeah. I appreciate those as closing comments. Thank you very much. It frames our conversation well. I'd like to um have us move on to item E3. This is the finance committee report and recommendations. And uh again, this is
157another listening and discussion item. Um however, in this case, the board may elect at the end of this to by consensus without formal vote ask the superintendent to direct staff to implement either or both of the committee recommendations. Um let Can we get through this and do a break? Okay. Good evening, principal principal President [laughter] Banning, and uh members of the board. Dr. Maldonado, um I appreciate the opportunity. I'm honored um to represent our finance committee. I will try to be quick, but I also don't want to diminish the importance of the work being done in the finance committee. And it's interesting that this item comes right after the last item because really the alignment of the financial data, our budget, really needs to move toward this achievement. And so um it's kind of aligned
158up nicely on the agenda. Um I just wanted to give a brief update on the journey our finance committee has had and then get to those recommendations that President Banning had referred to. Um as you know, our the the board here approved uh the forming of the committee in June um of last year and I started here July 1. So, I'm new, the committee's new, and we're working through um some newness with that group and I appreciate um the support everybody's been giving me through the learning pains of getting through it. It is a Brown Act committee um that allows for the transparency and openness to the public and and the opportunity for feedback. Uh we went through and elected officers and approved bylaws. Uh interestingly enough, we have nine committee members and I believe
159seven are in the building tonight. We have two board members, two committee uh two uh from the community members. We have two union representatives on the committee as well as two principals and myself and Carlos is on the committee as well. So, we appreciate his input. Uh we've met eight times with our first meeting in August. It didn't take us long to get together to get that first meeting. And then if you remember in December, the board passed resolution uh 2024-25 32A that revised uh the original resolution to provide some clarifications and roles and goals and all of those things. So, since we started over the nine meetings, we have had a number of presentations and uh we've gone over some data uh and there's more to do. There's a lot of work still to
160be done. We went through some challenging meetings and we also have been through some real productive meetings and I appreciate people's willingness to stick with it and to be open to the conversation and to really move forward. You'll see there's some pretty meaty topics here. Uh we've talked about transportation and with each presentation of a budget or an official report that's brought to the board, that'll come to the committee as well. Uh we've talked about some processes cuz part of this committee is kind of learning for everybody, you know, learning what it is we do, how it works, and then really getting to a point where getting some recommendations of how can we make it better. And so with that, we have our first recommendation that was voted by the committee on February 17th to
161really uh to direct the superintendent to have staff really dig into a deeper analysis of general general administrative expenses and cost optimization strategies. Now, this came out of some analysis that uh committee member Todd here uh really took some time to put together. Um it was a good it was a good uh presentation. I'll kind of cite some of the stats that came from that. Uh it it it took our unaudited actuals and identified we've had over a 10% decline in enrollment over the last few years and the state average for general administrative expenses is about 5%. We're now up to 6.6%. And uh per ADA, that's about in 2023-24, that was 1,030 spent on administration per student. And we're now up to about 1,364 per student. And so um let's see. Our general administration
162costs in 1920 were 10.8 million uh with 13,208 students. And now in 25-26, it's up to 16.2 million with 11,873 students. So, we've seen an increase in administration and we've seen a decline in enrollment, which really prompted the recommendation that this is an area that we think should be looked into, dig a little deeper. What makes up those numbers? Where is the money going? What is happening? And so, I uh would recommend to the board to consider this uh recommendation from the committee. Um it's not an official vote by the board. Uh President Banning can guide us through that uh process, but I think the ultimate goal of looking at general administrative expenses will be really looking at ways we can trim some costs in that area. And if there are reasonable options for that,
163and so then we would really recommend that. And so, basically through that study, that data would come back to the committee, come back to the board with more recommendations. And so, this being the first presentation from the finance committee, we're still kind of finding our our way on how to best present the information and the data to the committee. And so, that's the first recommendation we have. And then the second recommendation is an interesting one. Uh we voted as well on the same day to recommend the Board of Trustees direct the superintendent to complete the um Government Finance Officers Association has a group called the Smarter School Spending for Student Success. And they have an introductory diagnostic tool that really has you look at your district and really determine if getting into their program of
164analyzing your budget and how it works would be a good thing for our district to do. And so, I've been doing budgets for over 10 years for school districts and I am open to different ways of looking at it and I think this might be an interesting exercise to really get into that the the initial diagnostic tool is about a 30-minute investment of of time to really kind of get an idea of how much really to if we say, "Oh, this program is good for us." Then we look into, "Okay, what's the investment we need to make? How much time is it? What's involved? How does it all work? How do we bring that into what we're doing?" So, um that's the CBO here. I'm open to a value doing that evaluation, looking at it,
165and really seeing if this is something to bring back to the board to say, "Hey, I recommend this program um for us as we move down the road in our budget development process." Now, these kind of things do take time. This like I think a five or six-step process to really get into analyzing your budget. There's there's different ways of doing it. But um if the board recommends that we utilize this tool, then after doing the tool, another recommendation would come back to the board to say, "Hey, maybe this is something we can do, maybe this is something we can't do, but we don't really know until we kind of go through in the the diagnostic tool to determine." And so, with that, we will continue to move forward with our meetings. We'll continue to
166dig in to different areas of the budget. For our next meeting, we'll have an in-depth look at the second interim budget as well as other topics that our committee members bring up. We have a better system now than when we first started as far as a kind of getting things, formulating our agenda, what are the hot topics, what do we want to discuss. So, with that, I can kind of leave it to the We have two board members on the committee who can probably provide some insight as well. I I I just wanted to ask for a clarification on on on the um administrative costs. Can you differentiate between administration and manage management? Sure. So, management is included in it in general administration, but that also includes like our technology department, a lot of the
167administration, uh there's property and liability insurance. There's a lot of pieces that go into administration. That's based on how things how transactions and positions are coded into our system. As part of this study, maybe there's things that need to not be coded there or should be coded there. So, it's all of the things it takes to keep a district going. Um our principals and assistant principals would be included in administration. They're more site-based administration. We have district administration and site-based administration. Does that answer your question? >> Yeah, thank you. Um we do have uh public comment. Um Mr. Voit, our our um uh one of our community members on the committee. Uh there's just one. Thank you very much. Thank you, Conrad. Uh thank you, board members. Uh Dr. Maldonado, thank you. Uh my name
168is Todd Voit, uh father to San Marcos High School students, committee uh a committee member for the finance committee. So, I have relatively uh quick comments and just is really for the benefit of the board members um for Dr. Maldonado and for the community. It's just really one the question of what is the cohort we're talking about? What is the part of the budget we're talking about? And second, as much as you gave all great data, there was one other data which was the ultimate conclusion it came to. And then a final plea of just what we'd like to what I would like to see happen. So again, the what we're talking about in terms of the cohort that we're talking about. So, um the G&A analysis that I pulled all the data from focused
169on the standard account code structure number 7000 through 7999. Agency-wide overhead. So, these codes predominantly exclude all site level costs. So, unlike school administration code 2700, which covers principals office the costs under 7000 to 777999 are centralized non-instructional back office functions. And that's the only data I pulled was for that. So, it was not principals or anyone else. Um and then what did we learn? So, the preliminary estimates of savings were estimated and calculated to be between as little as 2.3 million to as much as 4.3 million per year. So, that's 3.3 million at the midpoint. So, again, my only ask and plea is that um please vote to empower the Finance Committee to pursue further deficit reduction acts. Thank you. And I I want to personally say thank you for the work and the
170the energy that you put into the the committee, Mr. Voit. Are there questions from the committee from the board? Comments. Mr. Voit. >> I have a question. Oh, question. Okay. Uh for Mr. Tedeschi. For the first recommendation, what does it look like in terms of strategy for you if this that's the general the board gives that general direction, what what are the next steps for you? Right. So, there's there's different ways to analyze the data. I think it's getting really down to the account transactional detail of maybe comparing a year or two prior to the current year. And it also could include doing some comparative analysis with some other similar districts to see where their general administration costs are as a percentage, as a cost per student. So, it's really getting down into the transactional
171detail. If nothing else, to really get be transparent about what's in there. And and really having those discussion with the Finance Committee and kind of looking at those as are are there things in there that may not be necessary or there things everything in there really important to keep. But I think it's really without getting into the detail of what's in there, it'd be hard to really identify the cost to reduce. And I imagine you don't know right now, but do you have an estimate in terms of time that it would take to dive into that particular section of the budget? The hope would be to have some data for the next Finance Committee meeting. Which Do you know when the next one is? It's It's It's like the third week of March. The third
172week of March. Yes. And And so, the timing of presenting those of that data, whether it's there's a board meeting that comes before the next Finance Committee Committee meeting, maybe I bring it to the board first. But I think it's good since it was part of the committee to really get into the depth of the details because the board meetings, we don't have a lot of time in these meetings to get into all the detail, which is my understanding what the Finance Committee is really for. To get into the depths of the detail, have conversations, and really kind of get it out there what's in there. Thank you. Sure. For the second recommendation, did I understand it correctly that this would be the first step of what could be a six-step process? Yes. >> This
173is just to assess whether we need to go through the full process. If the diagnostic tool checks out and we look good, you wouldn't make a recommendation to continue the other five steps. Right. I think you know, that that that tool really gets into you know, there's questions like does your district have the capacity to do this, which is kind of here's all the things we're recommending, do you have the capacity to do it, do you need to hire someone to do it, or is it you already doing it, or do you can you do it? So, that's it's kind of helping us determine capacity. Hm? Other board questions? Comments. Uh Trustee Muñoz. Yes. Um just to say that I've appreciated everybody's work on this and um and dedication with with all that you've done
174in a short amount of time. Thank you. Other comments? Trustee Caffrey. Yes. I would say thank you so much. Thank you for a great presentation, um Mr. Tedeschi. Thank you for everyone who serves on the Finance Committee. I think it's really fruitful committee. Thank you, Mr. Voit, for doing the G&A analysis and just the level of teamwork and um yeah, your real leadership, Mr. Tedeschi, in um bringing us all uh along together and having much clearer answers for the board and the community. And I'm very excited by this. So, thank you so much for all of your work, everyone. Carlos, you're on the committee. Do you have any questions or comments? I don't. Thank you for putting me on the spot, though. Well, you don't have to. You don't have to. Okay. All right. Well,
175but I I'm not sure we're going to actually do a vote. We'll see what happens with that. Are there any other questions or comments? Let me just say that um this is my first experience um with a a Brown Act committee. And one of the things that I see that being with two board members and that kind of opportunity to dig into things and such that when recommendations are made from the committee to the board, that if we don't want to go through everything that's already been through the the committee, it would make sense for the board to acknowledge the committee including Mr. Tedeschi's recommendation that we we do both of these things. So, I I don't believe that it takes a formal vote. I think it's just a sense of consensus or agreement that
176that would be the right thing to do and we can say um to the superintendent, please direct staff to do the two things that were the recommendations. All right. Very good. I want to um say thank you again for the time and energy that's been spent on this. So, that um that finishes the um report section. We're going to move into the action agenda, but I do think it's time for maybe a 10-minute break. Yeah. Thank you. All right. We're back from a break. We're moving into the action agenda. The first item is F1 student discipline. Um do we have a motion? Yes. I make a motion on um board action on student discipline education code 48918 case number 202526-04. Is there a second? I second the motion. Moved and seconded. All in favor? I.
177Motion carries. unanimously. Not on discipline. Okay. That'll bring us to F2, the resolution recognizing March as Women's History Month. Do we have a Do we have any public comment? Oh, well, we should do the presentation first. Sorry. You go right ahead. No, this is really just to uh say that we are bringing this resolution forward um to the Board of Education for approval to acknowledge March as National History Month for Women. All right. Thank you. Is there a motion to approve? Or discussion? I make a motion to approve resolution number 2025 resolution to recognize March as Women's History Month. Is there a second? I second the motion. All right. In this case, before we vote, I'll ask for the student board member's advisory vote. Carlos? I. I. So, we have a um the rest of
178the vote. All in favor? I. >> I. Yep. As the second female superintendent for Santa Barbara Unified, I wholly support this. Thank you. All right. This gets us to F3, the resolution to eliminate or reduce certain classified positions. Are there any public comments on this item? There are three. Okay. We'll allow 3 minutes. Oh, well, first you're going to do the presentation, right? Sorry. It's correct. Good evening, Board President, Board Members, Superintendent Maldonado. Um this item and the next item uh we're going to do a short presentation um just to set the stage for the next uh two items. Uh first, I'd I just like to give some background to the reduction in force process. Um we are at a point in that process in which um we're bringing forward tonight uh for approval, your
179approval of us moving forward with the potential reduction in forces. I use that word potential because this this action tonight, if approved, would um allow us to move forward with um issuing um reduction in force notices prior to March 15th, which is the the um legal date by which we need to issue those to individuals that need to receive them and only to individuals that that we think need to receive them. Um the process does call for another board action, which is um prior to May 15th, which would be your action to approve the individual layoff notices that are required to individuals that um will no longer be able to be employed with us. So, that's So, that is the process. Um our approach to the cuts this our approach to the cuts really were
180to strategically look at places that would minimize the need for us to issue reduction in force notices, ultimately minimizing the number of layoff notices that happen in May. >> [snorts] >> Um, you'll see that um in particular with the district reduction in forces, and I'll explain the site ones in a second. With the district ones, we found um places that were vacancies currently. We have been in the process of freezing certain positions as we go through the years when they become vacant so that we possibly could utilize those positions um in in a reduction in force because it means we do not have to have an employee lose their job. Um so to give you an example in the classified space, if we have 13 positions being reduced, we might have to issue about five
181riff notices or seven riff notices. So, we've tried to minimize that amount even though the number of positions that we're cutting are larger. Um, in terms of site-based reductions, that it really [clears throat] is a whole separate category. What happens with site-based reductions is I have to contact each of the school site principals, and I have to give get their positions that they potentially may not fund. The reason that list is large, you saw curriculum specialist, paraeducators, bilingual paraeducators, playground supervisors, um is because these are all site-funded positions where they need to get their site council approval before they can commit to funding those again. And so, if for some reason they didn't put it give the the the position to me to put on this list for you to approve tonight, and the site
182council said that they're they don't want to fund that anymore, and they voted against it, we we wouldn't be able to to actually do what site council um is voting to have have us do. So, you'll see that list is very large, but much of those positions, many of those positions will be funded by the site um funds. And with that, I think that's the background information I wanted to give you, and with that I'll I'll turn it over to um Conrad. Thank you, John. Um, it's important to understand uh the budget situation where we are when we talk about reductions in force, and we talk about trying to right-size our budget. Um, and and when I started here, I realized it's important to look back uh before we look forward to see where we've
183been, how we got here, and uh where we are now. And so, the data you have in front of you, and it's it's linked to the agenda. I know the numbers will be hard for people to see, but if you look back in 2019-20, that first column there, we had 13,208 students, and a reserve of 14.43%. That 14.43% went up to 18.46 and 18.75. And then as you get, it stayed up to 18% into 23-24. That's when the the ending of the COVID money, and then some things were changing. We had to kind of take a good hard look, and then 24-25 is when the the new compensation increases began to hit the budget. And then you can see 24-25, the reserve went to down to 13.68. And then this year at first interim, it's
184projected to be at 8.52. So, we're working on the second interim right now. It shouldn't be too different than first interim. I see it being very similar. But uh the important note there is really with the drop of enrollment, um what do we do about that to start controlling costs, to really look at staffing levels, and really what what needs to be done. Cuz right under that, you'll see our total active employees. We had 1,555 in 2019-20, and that got up to 1678 in 2022-23. And then right now, we're at 1599. And that's still more than we had pre-COVID. And so, it's really important for us to look at staffing as we have fewer students. The bottom row there lists the cost of the negotiated salary settlements over time. And over the 7-year span, that's
185about $67 million in compensation. About 60 million of it is ongoing. That there was there were 2 years where there was a cash bonus added on to the salary schedule changes. And the text under the chart there, the the big point there's a couple points to be made there. One is that yes, we have a reduction in the number of students, but we still have a lot of needs and a lot of important things to address with our budget for the students that we do have. We don't have declining needs for those those students that we still have. And in first interim, if you remember, uh we projected that we would need a minimum of $2 million in reductions next year and $4 million after that to maintain a reserve of over 5%. And that
186does not include any expansions of programs or any negotiated settlements that we're working on right now. So, any additional costs, we would have to look for additional reductions to fund those things. And that's what we did. Um, I wanted to oop address the increase in classified staff. And so, I pulled this chart from School Services of California, and apparently we are not alone. Um the green dotted line there shows that statewide from 19 2019 to 24, classified full-time equivalents have gone up 19.26%. Teacher FTEs have gone up 2.28%, and enrollment has dropped statewide by 5.77%. Again, this is from the School Services of California. One of my um organizations that I rely on pretty heavily for budget analysis and and things going on at the state. And so, the next slide shows how it's been
187here at Santa Barbara Unified. So, we've seen classified spike during the COVID time. It came down a little bit, and now it's back up to it's increased by 8.43%. That's less than half than the state average, but yet it's it's still an increase. We saw teacher FTEs decline 1.1%, and our enrollment has declined over 9% over 9 and a quarter percent. And I just wanted to briefly touch on some of the classified positions that have been added during that time. Uh we've added a whole new grade level, transitional kindergarten, which requires support, classified support, paraeducators in each of those classrooms. We've also had an increased need in special education paraeducators, bilingual paraeducators. We've added curriculum specialists, wellness center coordinators, our um technology support positions, clinical social workers, camp campus safety assistants, peak tutors, and some
188custodians, some floater custodians. And so, those are the the main areas. And I don't know if I did I mention the after-school program that we added during this time as well? And that after-school program is completely almost 100% classified employee support staff that are on the campuses, you know, till 5:00 running our after-school program. So, the next slide uh provide a little financial uh data for to kind of go back to what it was at first interim. This is the multiyear projection where the first slide looked back, this one looks forward. You'll see the highlighted there shows the targeted reductions of $2 million in 26-27 and $4 million in 27-28. You can see the um the projected reserve goes from 8.45% to 5.41% and down to 5.19% over the next 2 years based on what
189we know now. And so, there this is doesn't incorporate any changes that the governor's proposing in the state budget just yet. Basically, in the multiyear projection, we put in a 4% increase on property tax. We also put in changes, step and column, people moving on the salary schedule, PERS and STRS, those kind of things go into the multiyear projection. And these numbers, get ready for it, are even smaller, but I think important um to give to remind everybody of the kind of general financial state um that we're in. Our total expenditures on the left column there is $263 million at first interim, and of that, $214 million are salaries and benefits, making up about eight 81.21%. And of those salaries and benefits, we have about 60% are certificated, 31 and a half are classified, and
1908.35 are management. That's both certificated and classified management. Um, other expenditures, we have books and supplies, and the highlighted item here would be our services and operating expenditures, which include all of our contracts, are over $30 million. The middle column there, to give you perspective of where our revenues are, the top green section lists our LCFF sources. These are revenues that basically our property taxes make up the biggest portion of that. Doing the LCFF calculation that determines whether a district is basic aid or not, what the funding level, what your entitlement is, that's all in that that green section. And you'll notice there of our $189 million in property taxes, we send 15 million to charter schools here in Santa Barbara. And then the next section, our federal revenues are 7.8 almost 7.9 million. Mostly
191um special education and title one, two, and three. And you know, we've talked about do we ever going to get it? Is it going to stay? I think we feel better now than we did at the earlier part of the year about federal revenues for education sticking around. Uh so, that's a good thing. We get close to $30 million in other uh state revenues with a big chunk um coming from ELOP and lottery. Um and then there's a big $17 million chunk of other state, which is a whole bunch of other smaller items. And then finally at the bottom there, our local revenue. Um I wanted to highlight, thanks to our community partners, we do receive almost $6 million in donations and fundraising. A lot of that is done at the site. So, good job
192principals um in your fundraising as well as here at the district um getting those donations to support A lot of those donations are directed to specific programs at the schools, which is great. The tuition number represents services through the SELPA that uh where we're providing services for other districts' students for programs that smaller districts that they don't necessarily have the staff to run. Um and on the right side, you see the LCFF calculator. And the reason I put this in here cuz it's important as we heard about LCAP earlier um the supplemental grant and the concentration grant make up the two pieces together that required that set them the minimum amount that needs to be spent on LCAP. And for us, it's over $20 million. But, I think it's a little over 8% of our
193expenditure budget is LCAP. And then basically, this calculation determines if we are basic aid or not. So, the bottom line there that says not the the second from the bottom says entitlement. If that number, which is 157, was more than our property tax revenue, then we would not be a basic aid district. But, because our property tax revenue is $189 million, our entitlement from the state is $157 million, that means that we're basic aid. Our property taxes exceed what the state would give us if we were an LCFF district. And then the bottom box there lists our contracts over $50,000. We put this in here to give some some um idea by department uh how much is being spent on contracts. Uh and so, you can look you can look there like our technology services
194team, a big chunk of that is our iPad program and repairs for iPads. Um there's a lot of different things in each of these categories. Uh planning and construction is a lot of the building and things that uh that we do around. Um and uh yeah, those are the contracts. And there's probably more to come to the board on the detail of contracts. The thing to know about contracts, they are not part of the riff process, so there's really no March 15th deadline to reduce contracts. We have a little bit longer of a runway to really evaluate our contracts. And so, here we have this evening um is our what we've come up with in our summary of proposed reductions. And it's been a big effort with our principals and our administrative cabinet as our
195cabinet, we've looked really internally to our departments to see what we could cut from administration, from some of the contracts that we do, from the things here with really trying to not dig deep into the school sites. And so, the reduction in forced positions, the non-site funded ones, we have about 5.2 million. The contracts that we've identified internally so far um about 1.6 million, which gets us to about 6.8 million in proposed reductions. And what do we plan to do with the money we would save through these reductions? If you remember, we identified 2 million right off the top that we want to cut out of next year before we do any program expansion, any negotiated settlements. And then after that, we have what we're kind of I the idea about 1.7 million for seventh
196period if the board decides that's the the direction they'd like to go with the remaining balance of 3 million for all of the other things that I've mentioned. And with that, I that's the financial information that I have for you this evening. I tried to keep it somewhat condensed. Of course, we have second interim coming, which will be a more detailed look into the restricted side, unrestricted side, and all of the pieces. But, for this evening's conversation, I just wanted to provide some financial data to give some perspective as we talk about the reductions, how it plays into the rest of the um the the plan financially for us. So, that's what I have. All right, thank you. Now, um public comment. Yes, we have let's see public comment. Um I'm going to start with
197Ken Revas David Jackson and Todd Voit. It's just those three? Those are the three commenters. >> Okay, so we'll allocate for the full 3 minutes. There. We are on. Good evening, school board members Superintendent Hilda Maldonado and uh cabinet members to my right. Good evening. Um so I understand uh what can be considered precautionary reduction in forces, you know, uh although I didn't hear that term today, but I know that uh it's usually around this time each year in which riffs are considered uh if they're deemed necessary uh to meet a required deadline. Um I do get that it's the district's fiduciary duty to take account for what's what's the needs and but budgetary means of such positions to be eliminated or reduced. Um I do look forward to working through such decisions with the
198district and our CSEA uh bargaining unit uh which represents the classified staff. Uh but in terms of the effects of such proposed riffs being presented today um assuming based on lack of work or lack of funds, it is my hope that we can uh find spaces through attrition um or monies to to keep classified employee employed. Uh in regards to enrollment sizes and staffing, there was a period where um we were down in staffing. There was actually uh uh for example, paraeducators. Uh at one point, there was uh quite a few paraeducators that were needed uh and there was a lot of work done to uh to find them and uh get them into the classrooms. Um so, that's just an example. Um so, as we started as I saw the numbers rise up, I
199know that that's probably in part because there was a shortage in certain areas of job classifications. So, that needed to happen. Um so >> [sighs] >> what I want to finish here with is that um I just uh you know I just hope that uh again that we can find some space some somewhere where um we really limit uh the reduction and elimination of classified employees and uh you know again, I don't think uh classified um is the biggest uh item on the entire budget that we look at. We're Okay, thank you. Thank you. Next speaker. Thank you. Uh David Jackson. Good evening. I represent Dos Pueblos High School's math department, special ed department. Uh um I'm a math one co-teacher, so you have questions about what's happening how is the implementation of as amplified
200Desmos going? I sat back there fuming over some of the feelings I have that we're talking about reducing paraeducators while we have a glaring red zone of need. And they don't need extra time, they need rigorous instruction that's been ful- implemented with fidelity thanks to our IEP teams, my colleagues in math one that I collaborate with, our PLCs. You guys want more information, come on out. Talk to us. If this is too formal of a setting to find out information we meet every Tuesday. Y'all are welcome. Happy to see I wasn't only the only one getting kind of riled up. I appreciate all the emotions can run high, especially when we're talking about human needs. If our district is based off of every child every day, then don't take away the people that help those
201children every day. There's got to be some I mean, y'all make a ton of money, right? Like our paraeducators, we need them. And they are by comparison, paid significantly less. Give us more. Um >> [snorts] >> Mr. Woodard set out a mission that we were focused on community growth and excellence. And you cannot take away our community. These people are needed. I can't just turn over to anybody. These people have to be trained. We have monthly meetings where we're talking about the one-on-one support needs of our students amongst each other. I have daily conversations. And I as I told my supervising assistant principal this year in my evaluation. I think this is the best year yet because I have more time with the same people I get to work with. Sure, I'm on my fourth
202co-teaching assignment within math one alone. Uh no two consistent back-to-back. Uh but the benefit is for the first time in a long time I've got a chance to work with a paraeducator who is exceptional at what he does and it's because of the growth and time we've had to collaborate together that makes that possible. Uh his concerns are my concerns and thankfully we're not isolated in that. We have universal access. Students of vastly different needs are pushed into the same classroom. If I'm implementing this IEP with fidelity and I have to leave the classroom, but there's still extra students in there that need assistance, I need my paraeducator. My current assignment, over 60% of the students enrolled in this math one class have special needs. Is that a gen ed class? We probably need more
203paraeducators. Please don't take those away from us. There must be other ways to solve this budget. With all respect to the people who have spoken before me, it should be obvious. You know, I don't need more time. I just need good people. Continue to find us good people and thank you for putting the good people we have at our schools now. I'm inspired to go to work every day. I rising to find the way of making what we do better together than just if they were on their own. But it's a tall order to do with less people. So please consider saving them. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, Todd Voit. Great. Hello again. Hello board. Superintendent Maldonado. Um my name is Todd Voit, father of two San Marcos High School students. Uh member of the
204finance committee. Um I clearly understand the urgency to pursue deficit reduction strategies and recognize that difficult decisions are being made. I encourage the board to delay or not take a formal vote on the RIF action item on the agenda today to allow for more time for board members and community members to really understand and analyze the proposal. Further, this additional month would allow the board and community to time to consider the RIF proposal in light of potential other cost-cutting savings that may arise from for example, the G&A analysis that we just discussed. Um or other sort of analyses that we can look at. Uh and to begin, this G&A analysis is only focused on the member code the code 7000 through 799 agency-wide overhead. Um these codes are predominantly exclusive of all site-level costs, unlike
205school administration code 2700 which covers principals' offices. So again, to be clear, principals are not included in that analysis. The costs that we analyzed for code 7000 through 799 are centralized, non-instructional back office function. Again, the preliminary estimate of cost savings from that alone is between 2.3 to 4.3 million per year. The net result of this analysis may be less RIFs needed than currently budgeted. Why would the board only consider RIFs without full knowledge of other options? So I implore the board to make to not vote for RIFs today. Make fully informed decisions based on all the facts and options, not just one option. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you. Okay, that concludes public comment on this item. All right. We have an opportunity for board discussion. You want to start with any questions?
206All right, trustee Beal. Um Thank you for that um financial description of what we need to do. Um I know that in the con- Speak closer. I know in the conversation there was discussion that some of these positions have not been filled. Um that it so that we're either freezing or or we're freezing them or something other. That detail I don't know is visible in our RIF list. Um so I don't know if we should look at the classified first and if you could shed more light on this list. I don't think that No, there we go. Um yeah, that is not a um well, it is if you look at um administrative secretary three, it's the fourth item down. It says vacant. Do you see that one? Okay. So that was on there. There's
207a purchasing assistant that's has a vacancy. Um there's also um there's ones that have um attrition to them like a retirement which we won't label and I and I won't really talk about that publicly. Um it's not been approved. Um So So you can see some of those there. None of the site-funded ones are any vacancies. Those are all currently funded positions that again, as I mentioned, will um will be brought back as funding gets approved for those positions. Okay, so with the site-funded positions, to be clear, um we issue the RIF, but they could be brought back by the sites. That's correct. >> have funding. That's correct. Okay, that's Thank you for that clarification. >> all those site-funded positions you see on there where it says paraeducators, those are all elementary general ed paraeducators.
208There are no cuts to secondary paraeducators and there's no cuts to special ed. Um there's no cuts on this list to special ed paraeducators. Thank you. There are a couple spots on this list that won't show here, but there are some plans on for example, on restructuring. So you have um three positions three or four positions on this list that require us to put them on the list so we can eliminate that position, but we also want to create um several positions that will end up the the total restructure will be a cost savings, but it's likely through negotiations that the three people that are the three or four people that are losing their position will slide into the newly created positions, but it's an overall cost savings. Thank you. Thank you for that clarification.
209And then also, one more clarification, I think it it was brought up. What is the timeline because there is a legal requirement that these um and we have only a certain amount of board meetings before the date in which we have to actually finalize these RIFs. Um the timeline is that we need to um So if the board approves this tonight, we need to issue begin the process of you know, we look at seniority lists, we look at bumping rights, and then we um issue um reduction in force notices which has to be prior to March 15th. I think that ends up being final date will be March 13th. Because that's I think that's a Friday. And so um I I highly recommend that the board take action tonight so that we can have um
210our staff be able to work through the bumping and issuing and noticing of um employees about reduction in force. >> [clears throat] >> Ms. Escobedo. And then, can you speak to the work that's done between the March 15th deadline and the May 15th deadline for So March 15th being the preliminary RIF notice, reduction in force notices, May 15th being the final reduction in force notices. That's correct. So what we will begin doing is looking at um attrition and um and then bumping rights and the and and really the bumping ladder so we know where people have rights to positions as they move back. And then we get to the end of that ladder and and we have an employee ultimately that may end up losing a position. And then through negotiations um with CSCA, we
211would look at the potential of offering that employee a position that is vacant that they're qualified for in the district. Um And so all that will happen um between March 15th and May 15th. And then um hopefully we what we would bring back to the board is a budget savings that we were able to cover and keep everyone through attrition and and positions that we they do actually need. If you remember, we put out an um a retirement incentive. And so we do have um classified members resign um sorry, retiring in June. So we will have um some positions to help us with making sure people have work, but also allow us to eliminate positions and and incur incur a savings incur a savings. Thank you. Trustee Muñoz. Yes, um Dr. Becchio, with the positions
212that you're saying, you know, would receive a riff and then with the restructuring may possibly, you know, be able to move to another to one of the created positions. Um what is the policy in terms of will that be discussed with the you know, with the employee as to you may you know, you may be able like I don't know, you you can apply to this position or how does that work or do they find out later? That is the type of um when we talk about restructuring, that is the type of conversation that we would have at the negotiation table with CSEA and um identifying who's qualified and who could go into if it's restructure and newly created positions, then who could go into there. Um and then we would reach an agreement with
213CSEA on that and um you know, in this case it it would be quite likely that three qualified individuals would that were losing their position would take over the new positions. But that would be an agreement in in negotiations with CSEA. Thank you. And would uh sorry, and would seniority be considered in that? Uh you >> is it? Uh it depends, but generally speaking, we are always looking at at seniority in the different decisions that we make. Okay, thank you. Mhm. Other questions? Okay, we'll go to comments. Anyone ready for comments? Trustee Trustee Caffrey, please. Okay. Um so, for me for a decision as large as riffs, I think we need to have two meetings, not have it on the action not have it on the as an action agenda item because we have not
214we got these this information on Friday night. Um we have not had the we've not had the time for the community to give input and also to do really deep analysis. Um and so I I think while it is not in our bylaws, I think it's best practice that for big financial decisions and riffs, which potentially affect people's livelihoods, you do this over two meetings and then to our public commenters point, um if we are starting analysis in the finance committee and we have a bit of time I mean, I really thank Mr. Tedesco um and Mr. Dr. Becchio Dr. Dr. Becchio um for their presentations and for the reality check that we need to we need to reduce our deficit substantially and our reserves are um declining. So, I think that um Mr. Tedesco
215and Mr. Becchio's presentations were very clear and gave us a good understanding of our financial position and also our enrollment decline and um the number of staffing positions that we currently um have. At the same time, just on a process note and um the ability to do more analysis, I think that we should not vote on these riffs tonight and I would say the same for um for certificated employees. Other comments? Dr. Beal. Um in looking at these riffs and understanding that the site-based riffs are kind of a a thing we're doing because we have to because the sites funds the funds the positions and they make the choice if they want to fund these positions. So, in some ways there's a difference here. Um site funding is is obviously can change and they may
216not be able to rehire uh these people in the positions, but at the same time, that that is a site fund issue. So, the question I have is it is February 24th and we have a meeting on March 10th, which is the only date that this could be delayed to. What will the financial committee provide between now and March 10th that will impact this decision? I don't know, Conrad Tedesco, because guess what? I mean, I'm I'm really asking also my fellow board member. I'm just trying to figure out what can happen between now and March 10th that gives us the financial leverage to make a different decision when some of these things are more um I I'm having trouble with words today. We procedural. Exactly. And um and some things there could be more discussion,
217but this is not as large as what we looked at two years ago where there was really a lot of change going on. So, I'm curious uh you know, if I were to say, let's delay this, what can I expect to happen that might change my decision-making? So, the finance committee meets next March 17th and so there's really not much of an opportunity there. I guess I would ask what kind of analysis would you like to see to help that would help in making those decisions. There's a lot of conversation and work that has gone gotten us to this point. So, I guess my question would be what would the board what would what would the board need to help better make those decisions from an analytical standpoint? Data-wise, financial data-wise. I mean, we have
218second interim coming, but that I don't that's not going to be in time, either. But it's I don't think it's going to be a lot different than first interim. It shouldn't be. Did you have a follow-up? Mr. Escobedo. Yeah, it I think for the way I see it is we're not going to get any fiscal information that is going to dramatically change the perspective or the recommendation that we're going to get during this meeting. I agree with Dr. Beal that the site-funded positions do feel procedural in in this case. I think it does make a substantive difference in the bumping process and being able to actually issue the notices because it's such a complicated process. We've done this unfortunately for the last few years and it takes time. So, if I'm remembering correctly, our next
219meeting would be March 10th and the date the deadline that Friday is the 13th. So, you're talking about if we make any changes at the next meeting, three days to get out get through the bumping process, get through the negotiations, issue the notices. Whereas right now, what we're talking about are preliminary reduction in force notices. That doesn't take away from how serious we need to take this decision, but it is only I only highlight that to say if we were to approve this today, it provides us more time to work with our union partners to make sure that we get the issuing of the notices right, that we don't over issue, that we issue them to the correct people and we still have time between March 15th and May 15th to do the analysis, to
220go to our fiscal committee, to get the information that we need to make different fiscal decisions because we can take those notices back, but once we go past that March 15th deadline, we cannot issue more notices. So, really what we're doing is in my mind and I I wish there's a better way to put this, but I want to get this right and make sure that we don't over notice and make sure that we issue it to the right people working with our union partners and the way that we're going to do that is by having ample time to get through this very complicated bumping process. And we still maintain the flexibility to figure it out fiscally if we can cut more and save some of these positions if we think that it's also in
221the best interest of our students and the long-term fiscal picture for the district. If we can do that, we still have the ability to pull those notices back. So, I actually I personally, as much as I hate going through this process and I hate having to make these decisions, it is part of our governance and I think the responsible decision is to approve these today. All right, I'll I'll have a couple of comments and then we'll go to you. I I just want to say to Mr. Escobedo, you took away most of my comments. I agree with with much of what you had to say. There are a couple little things that I want to add. Um and that's it as we often hear, sometimes two things can be true. The amount of time that
222would be beneficial for us to have conversations about this could have been better. If you're reading the papers, if you're listening to things about LA Unified or any of the other school districts, there are districts all over the state that have already done what we're doing tonight. And they still have the same March 15th deadline that we do. So, I think that that with everything you've said about the procedural parts, that's absolutely critical. Last year, well, first of all, I want I want to say that we reduced the number of layoffs by about 50% this year from last year. That was one of the things that we talked about at the very first meeting of the of the finance committee that RIFs are a fact of life. We have to do them. They're precautionary. Maybe
223we could figure out how to how to not do quite so many. I think we did a really good job with that. And yet everything you said about the time between now and May 15th is really no different than the time between March 10th and May 15th. We have time to discuss this further. We have time to see how things um um pan out with with budgets and and all that. Um so what I'm going to suggest is that in addition to moving tonight to get this done to give our staff the time to do it right, that we also start to consider about what a budget timeline process might look like that would have us starting this conversation not now but in January because that's also that's also things that go on in other
224districts. So I want to honor everything that I've heard here. There's nothing I disagree with. But I'm going to very strongly recommend along with uh along with um Mr. Tedesco and and um and Dr. Becchio the incredible importance of giving them enough time to do this right. Last year the 15th was a day that we could do it on and our meeting was on the 11th. This year it's on the 10th and we lose two days. We're asking them to do all of the work in three days. I just as as unfortunate as that is, the same people so we make a difference of one or two. It doesn't change the ability for us to modify between March between tonight and and May 15th. So I'm going to strongly support moving forward on this difficult
225and unpleasant activity that we have to do. I'll make just one more comment. I think I made this last year. It has not been typical in California to be doing these kind of reductions for many years. The budget has been very very good for education. COVID make it made it even better and then made it worse at the end when it got pulled back. This generation of of teachers, of board members, of admin is not used to things that used to happen on a regular annual basis so that people understood very clearly that a precautionary RIFs RIF was not a death sentence, not it's all over, but simply buying us the time to follow procedure and law. So those are my comments and I want to say thank you again for all of the work
226that's being done to do this um with the least impact possible and still leave money behind for us to continue to discuss what's next. Thank you. Okay, Trustee Muñoz. Yes, I I would also favor, you know, moving forward to voting um on this issue today. It's it's very difficult, you know, I've been on the board for uh 7 years now and have not had, you know, to vote on RIFs as often as you would think. Um thank thank God, right? Thank goodness. Um it is something that it is a there's a concern about the budget of the district overall and keeping a reserve to to in order to maintain the district. Um >> [clears throat] >> I I am hopeful that as, you know, as um President Banning stated and um Mr. Escobedo, that precautionary
227RIFs can be given, you know, and then hopefully positively that in a positive um frame of mind that by May 15th we'll figure out how to be able to maintain several of these, you know, as many as positions as we can. Um one of the things I want to emphasize, too, in terms of this item on the agenda is that the decisions do not reflect the individual performance or dedication of any staff members. We are very grateful to all our staff that is concerned about our students. Bottom line, you know, what's the best for our students. And I certainly understand, you know, that there's a livelihood that folks have, you know, to pay food and rent and such. Um but please understand that we also have to look at um a budget cut. You know,
228we had already known this uh was going to happen uh since last year. We were talking about it and getting more updates in terms of the budget, having the finance committee work in depth, and I just want to say, you know, I I do favor uh voting on this tonight in order to give staff an opportunity to do what they need to do legally and then be able to focus on the next step. What can we possibly do to maintain as many positions as possible or or have folks transfer to another position. Thank you. Thank you. Other comments? Trustee Caffrey. I'll just say [clears throat] that um I appreciate what everyone is saying and I appreciate um President Banning for talking about our process for next year and starting earlier and that um I think
229that that is very positive. I think that's happening in the finance committee, too. How do we improve our process so that we have more time and we don't make rushed decisions. At the same time I'm still I'm voting no tonight and I just want to explain and that is because I again think we need to have the community as part of this discussion and um I I appreciate all the detail and thought that went into this um but that is the reason that I'm voting no is because I I strongly believe that decisions like RIFs and um budget amendments need to first come up for discussion and then an action item. So um there is more community participation. I I appreciate you the clarity and transparency of your thinking. I would just say that that
230um Um I'll just leave it. We'll leave it. Are there any other comments? Do I have a motion? Trustee Muñoz. Make a motion to approve resolution 2025-26-27 to eliminate or reduce certain classified positions. Do I have a second? I second the motion. All in favor? I. >> I. I. I I think we're leaving the advisory vote away from the the student in this case. Um our next agenda item is resolution F4, resolution to reduce or discontinue particular kinds of services and decrease certificated employees. I'll just um I'll just go ahead and I know I explained the process already so I'll go ahead and um and turn this back over to the board for any questions or comments related to certificated side. Great. Are there any specific questions or comments related to the certificate certificated reduction
231force? What the Oh, I'm sorry. Public comment. Gosh, I did that last week, too. Gosh. How many? Uh on this item we have, I believe, seven. We will start with Kat Ross. Wait. I'm sorry. >> That's 21. We'll do three. All right. We'll keep it at three minutes with seven. I'm sorry. Three minutes. Okay. Um Kat Ross, let's see. Rita and last name starts with a C. Caffrey. I'm so sorry. Okay. Um and Joel Black. >> [snorts] >> You can challenge the numbers the district has given you tonight. How is it now? Okay, great. You can challenge the numbers the district has given you tonight and spend a second time really thinking about whether these documents are saying accurate things to you. Uh on this slide, look forward multi-year projection. Conrad said that um he
232was projecting 4% increase for next year. And if you look at the LCFF property tax money that we're getting for next year, uh that's not what that increase shows. That's a 2% increase. So in 23-24, district revenues were 233 million. They said that the next year uh they were projecting 220 million. They were off by 14 million. Last year district revenues were 234 million. They said that the next year they'd have the same amount. They were off by 10 million. This year revenues are 244 million. They say they're going to be 248 million. Let's think about that for a second. Most of the revenues come from property taxes. Property taxes are set to go up again next year. This year they were up 4.7%. An increase of property taxes for next year at 4.7% would
233be 8.8 million. The district projects under 4 million. Eliminating jobs, closing classrooms, and removing course offerings based on bad projections hurts students and our schools. If next year we get that 8.8 million rather than the under four the district projects and we don't do the 2. the 2 million at reduct- reductions, the reserves would maintain at 7.6%. Again, if the following year we only add expected property tax increases, the reserves would go up to 8.3% without any cuts. No targeted cuts, we would maintain reserves around 8% as long as we trust our property tax returns. Our students deserve better than cuts to programs and the elimination of teachers, counselors, classrooms, and services for students based on math that doesn't add up. Thank you. Okay. Um Rita. Sorry. Good evening, board. Okay. Good evening, board. Um
234In preparation for my little speech tonight, I I cut it down to 90 seconds, but that allows me to say it a little slower and with more impact, maybe. Uh last year you approved cutting 18 secondary teachers, closing 91 classes. This year, those cuts forced more dismissals across the three high schools. Last year, the district instituted a forced dismissal policy requiring students in 11th and 12th grades to take a dismissal period because they suspected that they did not hire enough teachers for all students who wanted a class. Thankfully, that illegal policy has been reversed. But if we are staffed low enough this year that the district thought we would need to force students to take a dismissal and you are considering closing more classrooms next year, isn't that a problem? Don't you think this will
235again increase the number of dismissals across our campuses? We are required to offer students classes for each period that meets their needs. Not So not just any class. Not a class that they have already taken. Not a class that isn't at their level. But a class that is suitable for each student. When students are told they could repeat a course or take a dismissal, we are not following the law and we are not offering students the educations they deserve. At the high schools, we are forced to have a cost neutral block schedule across all three campuses that requires dismissals. It is by design that we do not have students attending class all school day because we are not staffed to accommodate all students taking classes. More cuts at the secondary level would exacerbate an already
236troubling situation. Reconsider the cuts that close classrooms. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We'll have um Joel Block followed by B.J. Lent and Todd Voit. Well, here we are again. Despite everything we have gone through in the last few years regarding the RIFs, the budgeting, openness, we are right back where we started from. In respect to the RIFs, no recommendation was made as to cutting a higher level district staff, outside vendor contracts, or other specific administrative costs, only to look if we can. The same faulty assumptions are being made again this year. I'd like to point out a number of them. If declining enrollment is given as a reason for cutting teachers, why is it not a reason for cutting staff at the district and administrative level above like as we saw a secretary or language
237specialist? One assumption used in the recommendation is a property tax increase of 4%. When was the last time that happened in Santa Barbara? If property tax money for next year would result in a revenue increase of 8.8% or 8.8 million, why is the district only projecting less than 4 million? Why does the district continually underestimate revenue by tens of millions of dollars while widely overestimating expenses? How under the consequences of the RIFs proposal does closing 10 elementary schools, 60 del- 10 elementary classes, and 60 high school classes benefit the students? How is having a reserves that are vastly greater than what is required do anything to tell the community the district is more interested in their own jobs rather than those of teachers and staff? If the district is so concerned about giving our students
238the best possible education, why are the first people to be cut those who work directly with the students instead of being the last to cut? It is disturbing to me that the recommendation was made on this date so that it put the board in a position where you almost have no choice but to vote. It could have been done earlier. Secondly, this board has the authority to say to the district staff, "You need to give us more information in 2 weeks." Now you need to call a meeting. You need to do the work and do it so that we can make a proper decision. But the most disturbing thing to me about this is that RIFs go to human beings and not a single comment was made about how even if they're preliminary, it has
239a devastating emotional and psychological effect on those who receive them. This board should do the correct thing, not vote on this tonight, and at a minimum require the district staff to give you more information and ways that budget can be cut other than this. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We're going to have um B.J. Lent followed Oh, okay. Um thank you for letting me know. Uh Todd Voit followed by Michelle Voit and you uh York Shingle. Um thank you again. My third time. Um basically going to say the same thing, but I'll make it a little bit quicker. Um and I would say just that last comment really rang through in terms of y'all y'all can just call a meeting earlier. You don't have to wait. I mean, we're dealing with RIFs here. Like show
240up you know, March 5th. You can do it, right? So So again again, the background, my name is Todd Voit, father of two San Marcos High School students, committee member for the finance committee. Clearly understand the urgency to pursue deficit reduction strategies and recognize difficult decisions are being made. I encourage the board to delay or not take a formal vote on the RIF action item or vote against the RIF action item today and allow more time for board members and community members to understand and analyze the proposal. Again, the the additional month and the actually maybe it needs to be 2 weeks uh would allow the board and community time to consider the RIF proposal in light of other cost-saving strategies. Um the net results uh of of this and this time and analysis would
241allow us to better understand really what the RIFs are um and how they're currently budgeted. It would allow the board to consider other opportunities um to have the full knowledge of both the RIFs as well as the other options. So please, I urge you you all um please do not vote for the RIFs today, vote against them. Make fully informed decisions based on all the facts and opinions. Again, I appreciate your your um consideration. Thank you. Good evening. I am Michelle Voit, mother of two San Marcos children. Um Wow, what are our priorities? I have We are here facing a huge financial challenge. We get that 20.5 million deficit, reserves down 40%. How we make these decisions right now is crucial, but the plan you are presenting us with is asking classrooms and students to
242bear the brunt. Nearly 40 support staff and 26 teaching counseling positions are on the chopping block. These layoff notices themselves create instability. They disrupt classrooms. They scare families. And they damage morale. Student enrollment has shrunk more than 10% since 2019. And executive pay has grown 30%. The plan cuts classroom teaching jobs at roughly double the rate of management roles. This raises serious questions about our fiscal priorities. We have contracts worth $24 million, but we're looking at just cutting those, trimming those at 7%. That's not all right, guys. You're later today talking about people's jobs, and it's just a riff. It's just a notice. It hurts these people. It hurts my kids. My kids are impacted every day worrying if their teacher is going to stick with them or they're not. We've gone through this year
243after year. You have people tell you every time what that instability cost them. It costs you great teachers. We've lost great teachers at San Marcos High School who go on and find better jobs. And here's what's really important for you to know. We talk about falling enrollment. I believe this district should be one of the best districts in the country. We have everything in this community to be one of the best school districts we could be. Do you know what the news is going to say about us tomorrow? It's going to say that 67% of our high school students are not at grade level in their math. It's going to say that we are laying off 40 we're giving layoff notices to 40 support staff and 26 teaching and counseling positions that our kids truly
244need to improve their math and reading. Do you think that's going to make more kids come to our school district? Or do everything they can to go to a private school if they can afford it? Thank you. Mr. York Chengel. Good evening. Uh it is so wild to me that you believe you need to cut $2 million for next year and are approving 6.8 million in cuts. Uh it's not wild, it's unacceptable. That is no way to treat people. Branding it as a move for flexibility is incorrect year after year. Yes, it's better than last year, but it's not as good as it needs to be because it's not you who doesn't know if they need to start looking for other jobs. It's the newest teachers who are emailing me asking about seniority lists and
245being nervous about job security, and they aren't going to wait until May 15th to decide if they should look elsewhere. They're going to look to find security in the profession that they love and have committed their lives to. While we have declining enrollment, we don't have declining revenue. Our income isn't tied to enrollment, it's tied to property taxes, which rise every year. So while we have fewer students, we should look at this as an opportunity to provide more for them, not less. We shouldn't be trying to cut staffing, we should try to expand it. Student outcomes showed us that students are well below grade level. With eight periods in high school, student students should retake courses for credit recovery instead of using Edgenuity. We should not be using that platform. If we talk about student
246learning and their actual outcomes, that needs to go away. We need to get creative about more substantial intervention systems. That is going to take people. Students have the space in their schedules, and if we really are focused on student learning, we should expand our offerings with the intention that our graduation rates better reflect our literacy and math competency rates. Having graduation rates above 90% where our literacy and math competency rates are much lower is a massive problem. Addressing that is going to take additional staffing, but will result in better student learning. Please don't reduce the number of positions of certificated or classified staff. Again, $2 million in cuts was suggested, and you're approving 6.8. Thank you. That concludes public comment on this item. Thank you. That'll bring us to board questions or comments. Trustee Caffrey.
247So thank you very much for the presentation and the public comments. One question I have is if we were to expand back to a full day in high school, how does that impact um the number of teachers that we need? Basically, yeah. Uh the question I would have back to you is are you saying that every student takes eight course takes? Yes. Yeah, I mean I last year we reduced the number of um course takes like students could take in high school resulting in more dismissal periods. So basically, um restoring course takes. Okay, but we weren't at 320. We were at two I think we're at 285 or 290. Um so I would need to know that number, and then I'd have to bring figures back to you, but not every student would take If
248you If you had everybody do [clears throat] eight course takes, the students wouldn't do it. So there would be students that opted out of that, a high number of students, but particularly juniors and or particular seniors. But I would need to know that, and I and I I wouldn't really know that. I might be able to get some data from the high schools. Okay, any other questions? Mr. Escobedo. Mr. Tedesco, can you speak to um the $6 million figure versus the $2 million figure? Why we have uh reduction in force / contracts that add up to $6 million when to afford the um Well, uh the bargaining outcomes from our last contract negotiation, uh it was recommended $2 million for this year. Right. So the original estimate of $2 million was part of first interim
249to maintain reserve of 5% for next year. And the last slide that I had incorporated if the board decided to do seventh period, it would allow for fully funding seventh period and also having some left to help us get through the negotiating cycle for this year or whatever other expansions the board would want. Thank you. Stick Dr. Beal. Um Con- Conrad Tedesco, may I ask you a question? Or I I don't know. It actually might be for John Beckius or Dr. Beckius. Um can you maybe talk about the fact that we have a number in our certificated staff of um of teachers, and we're also talking about attrition. You are going to present your HR list a little bit further down where we have a certain amount of retirements. And so I feel like that
250those those are related. Um you know, there's a decline in enrollment, we have uh retirements, and we are trying to right-size our budget to our student population. So can you connect that for me, please? Yeah, I'll try to do that. The um certificated side, I am um if if we had no credential areas, we would issue no riffs because we have we have more attrition than we do um these figures that are on this sheet. Okay. The only issue I have to dig into deeper, and the reason I can't tell you that, is I just have to look by credential area and make sure that we have attrition in the credential areas at an even across the even um across the credential areas evenly. And um and then make a estimate um best guess of
251what I think I might need to issue ultimately in terms of reduction in force notices, and it could be none with the certificated. I just don't know that right now and can't tell you that right now. Um my staff um after tonight, we begin immediately to look at um based on whatever the board approves, we immediately start looking at atrition, um current resignations, temporary employees that are released, um and then um start doing some projections of what we think we safely might need to issue, if any. Thank Thank you. I I think um I'll I'll say more about this in our in our in my comment section. So but thank you for answering the question. Any other questions? Any questions first? No others? Okay, comments? Trustee Caffrey. So I think that we cannot make a
252decision like this at 10:00 p.m. So as we heard, we know that these riffs really impact people's lives. We started in closed session at 4:30, and you can hear from the other board members that they are not thinking as clearly 6 and 1/2 hour is it's If I did the math wrong, that would be embarrassing. But my point is basically it is 10:00 p.m. We're not giving ourselves time to understand the impact of these RIFs on our students, and I think the idea of scheduling another board meeting is very reasonable. All of this is within our control. And so, better understanding impact on kids, hearing more community input, and also being able to think clearly. I don't like I I feel like we have already had several important discussions, and at this point I'm fried.
253To be frank. And I I don't think that it is It's like you don't want a surgeon operating on you. I mean, in the 25th hour, right? I want to be patient one, you know? So, my point is a bit rambly. I'm going to pull it all together, but is we need to again, make this decision in a second meeting. And also, I think that it it would be very helpful. We're hearing over and over again, we heard through the GNA analysis that basically our central office has expanded substantially, and I think if our district needs to um become more efficient, that we need to show that we are also increasing efficiency and effectiveness in our central office and saving money there. So, I think that has not been a part of the conversation, and
254basically, I would love to have this as our first item when we're all fresh. Um you know, at a date earlier than March 10th. Other comments? Trustee Muñoz? Yes, I understand your, you know, and I appreciate your honesty, Celeste, with needing to make this decision. Um however, I feel like it's, you know, kicking the can down the road. And although, you know, there are you know, you express concerns about the central office expanding, um and such, and we have also uh we at the same time, we've asked for data, more data from the district as And so, you know, that that another, you know, I could go on for um an hour about how much the district is needing to produce, you know, legally uh to the state, to the county, and such. Um I
255feel like, you know, I I I know it's difficult. There's This is never easy, but I really feel that, you know, we need to vote on this tonight. Other comments? Mr. Acevedo? So, I'm going to share the same perspective I did on last time. I think the only additional comment I'm going to make is I I'm so tired of pretending like there's not prep for these meetings, and that we didn't meet with staff where they showed us this exact information, and we had opportunities to talk about it and ask questions and do it and when it was the only item we were talking with staff about. To come here on the night of a board meeting, I totally I'm with you. I would love for this to be the first item. Um but I'm also
256not going to pretend like we didn't have I we we know you're going to rebut. I And I just Like I we can't as a board continue to just pretend like we come here and we're hearing it from staff for the very first time at the podium. We're not. We're thinking about these things. We're meeting with staff. They're talking to us about this. They gave us their rationale about the what they were going to present today. It's not as though this is the first time that we're hearing it or seeing it. And this is literally the worst time of the year every year. I hate this meeting where we have to talk about this. It is it's the worst. And it's also one of our responsibilities as the board. And I do understand and I
257do grapple with the effect that it has when someone re- receives a preliminary reduction in force notice. But these are the decisions that we have to make, and also task staff with the responsibility and the job of figuring out how we keep the people we have to reduce positions. But I want to keep every single person, and that might mean finding them another role, but keeping every single person and diminishing the number of jobs that we have, so not people, but jobs, so that we can right-size our organization. Our organization is deficit spending year after year. We have to make changes structurally. Staff hear it from us all the time that we want to figure out how we can operate differently and serve our students, and that we want to protect what's closest to the
258students. What we're hearing from the question that Dr. Biel asked and what we asked in our sessions with with staff, they were one-on-one or two-on-one, is that we are trying as much as possible to look for it in vacant positions, in positions that are not currently held by people, or there's retirements, or there is attrition. We are not trying to push people out. We are still trying to serve our students, but we have to have to have to make decisions like this. And I I'm sorry. I just it it frustrates me to hear from a colleague to pretend like we're not taking this seriously or we have not done our due diligence. And we are going to I will speak for myself. I'm going to continue to push our staff to figure out how we
259are going to right-size our district without pushing people out of our organization. I I I want to maintain our process. Dr. Biel, you haven't made comments um before we go back to Ms. Scaffidi, do you have comments? I do have a comment, [clears throat] and so, yes, this is um this is the the second or maybe third year I've gone through this It's the third year I've gone through this reduction in force process. Generally, when you own a company and you lose money, you fire people afterwards. You say, "We've lost money. We need to do this." This RIF process is very particular. It I don't see it exist anywhere else. You say, "We may have a deficit. We have to trim, but we can't fire people after we figure out we're losing money. We have
260to We have to like project." And it's It is a painful process. It is painful because you reduce positions, positions, not jobs, and then there's a seniority thing. And so, for one position that's lost, five people get a notice because you're just really trying to move one person down the line who you could put in another position. You don't know. It's a process. It is a terrible process, but this is as a board, this is what we're left with. Um there was a comment made that there are no cuts being made anywhere. There's a 1.675 million reduction in contracts. That is a big number, and that is not to people in the organization. That's looking at contracts. And um so, and I think there there's a whole HR section here. There's a lot of movement
261right now in the district. We are talking at a later in a later subject about spending money on our junior high schools to add teachers to our junior high schools. So, the purpose here is not to get rid of people. It is It's a way of moving people around and anticipating that if we do have a problem, that we are not we don't have a financial situation that we cannot handle. In reading about all of the um reduction in forces that are happening around, it's obviously not a thing that's particular to Santa Barbara Unified. Reading about Carpinteria having to sell land because they were going to go below their 3% reserve, that's sad that they had to sell land because of a legal settlement. So, we need to have a reserve. We need to have
262a plan to to have some money in the bank. And I think it is really difficult to look at the numbers. I remember when I started on this board, and we were right in the thick of negotiations, we were projected to have a reserve like in the 30% range. We never got to 30%. The numbers are really hard to track. And so, I just feel that nobody here at this board table, I I for sure feel like I want to be cavalier and issue notices and tell people, "Sorry, I'm more worried about the money than I am about you." But this process puts us in this position. And I we we need to have enough teachers for our students. So, I honestly don't see a scenario in which we won't keep teachers that we need.
263They may have to move around. We have enrollment, students are going to one school, another school. We might add a seventh period. Teachers are going to move around, so the positions may change, but the jobs will be there. So, I have to have a certain amount of faith. I I look at that we just voted that the financial committee is now going to do an analysis of our managerial and district costs. I'm really glad about that. I think that is going to be very helpful, but there have been eight financial committee meetings, and they're still trying to bring clarity. It's just not a fast process. There's a lot of information to go through. So, I honestly feel between now and March 10th, I'm not going to have an additional clarity or reassurance to make a
264different decision, and I truly hope that we work I I feel that every year, as painful as it is, we have preserved people within our district kept their jobs, and it may not be the job that they started with. So, the question we ask ourselves, we do have a process where we have to make really good decisions about what we do in this district, student outcomes. We're trying to get there. It's not going to happen tomorrow. We'll try to work on it, but right now the financial stuff is important, too. And as a board member, I have to make financial decisions that preserve our liquidity. And I I certainly feel that I would like to vote in favor of issuing the reduction in force tonight. I do wish we had a longer ramp, so we
265could talk about every single detail. Again, we have to have a place to do that. I I think we're in a place where we can call for a vote soon. I will give you a brief moment to respond. So, I would just like to say, it has been night and day compared to last year. We got an hour with Mr. Tedeschi and Superintendent Maldonado this past week, and it was a very good presentation. So, kudos, 100% I'm very happy with that change. Thank you. At the same time, last year we had two meetings where we talked about reduction in force. One was a discussion item, and one was an action item. This year, we only have an action item. So, yes, we were informed about RIFs one week in in advance. That is totally true,
266and I think that I you know, I celebrate very much. I think we are really going into a positive financial trajectory, and like I 100% consider myself a financial hawk. Like, yes, we need a 10% reserve. At the same time, I don't think it's fair as community representatives, people who are elected by the people for everyone in the public to basically find out RIFs, what the RIFs are supposed to be on Friday, and then they're presented on Tuesday, and we vote. That's a really fast turnaround. So, that is my concern, and I'm I'm not pretending I'm not That is a true concern, and I think also what I found last year is that it was extremely helpful to, you know, as a new board member, I've only been here for a year, to understand additional
267context and the hive mind, learning from um other people once they were able to give us input. And just there's not enough time, and I understand we're improving the process, and I'm 100% behind that. I think we're only going in the right direction, but I strongly disagree with having RIFs at 10:17, and also as an action item. I just do not think that that is transparent to the public. So, that's my That's my concern. But I 100% thank staff for the way that they shared information with the board this year. I think that was great. All right. Thank you. I'd like to call for a vote. Is there a motion for this item? I move to approve the reduction in force for certificated staff. I have a second. >> I second it. Okay. All in
268favor? I. >> I. Motion carried Oh, any opposed? Okay. Motion carries 4 to 1. We are approaching um another um important conversation. Uh we are at 10 minutes before the bylaw time for our meeting to end without the board to vote for extended time. I'll remind you that that that extension is a one-time extension. If we don't finish within that time, the meeting has to be adjourned and um um reopened at a later time. So, is there someone that would make a motion or be interested in making a motion to extend extend the the meeting time? I make a motion to extend the meeting time. Okay. Do we need a we need a a firm end time? Uh until 11:00. Anyone going to Anyone want to How about 11:15? >> 11:15. Second. Okay. Okay. Moved
269and seconded to 11:15. All in favor? I. >> I. Opposed? One opposed. All right. Thank you. >> make a comment. Yeah. Yes, I know that the principals have been here um for hours waiting for this topic, and I I don't want to say come back another day. All right. That brings us to item F5. Um staff presentation. Dr. Maldonado. I'm going to turn Okay. Good evening again. I'm here to share a presentation with you on the feasibility for the seven-period day at the junior high level. So, the purpose of this presentation is really to share with you the overall feasibility of that implementation, specifically for the 2026-2027 school year. We have our four board priorities that we want to ground this decision in and discussion in, and literacy, math, um as well as belonging in
270community. And this is the slide I shared in my February 10th presentation to the board, and that really we're looking at a student-centered framework that balances both access and engagement, as well as equity and support. So, keeping those two important pieces of the framework in mind as we look to implement this and the feasibility of it. This evening, I'd also like to ground us in the Results Count sequence. So, the Results Count sequence is the process that we have gone through as a district in terms of our leadership development in Results Count Leadership that really is how we implement systems change at the district level. And so, we start with first a population result, cuz we want to look at who is most impacted, who is most burdened by the current state of the system.
271And so, for us, and really what brought us to this discussion and data that was shared in the February 10th presentation, was our EMLs and our students on an IEP, and wanting to give them access to electives. So, we start with the population result. Then we also have indicators, and these indicators tell us how our current system is functioning, who has access, who doesn't, how is the system impacting our most vulnerable students. And so, that those indicators some were shared in the last presentation, and new ones will be shared in this presentation. Then moving on to step three, we want to have baseline targets, so that we center the result that we want to have around data that we're going to measure over time. The next step is factor analysis. So, this is a key
272part of it in determining what is helping and hindering the result of the systems change that we want. Then that culminates with developing a strategy that um we will implement. So, for this particular discussion, it's around this strategy of a seven-period day. And then moving to performance measures. So, how will we monitor our progress? How will we monitor what difference we make, um and are students better off because of it, coming back to our population results. So, just as a review, we have our indicator of the California dashboard data. This is uh listed by each individual junior high school site. It's English language arts, math, and English learner progress. We also have our Panorama data that we saw last um in earlier in February. And then here is an established baseline target. So, thinking about
273that critical step three of having a baseline target, our goal would be to increase um the number of students who meet or exceed the standard on CASP ELA and math for both our EMLs and our students on an IEP. A new indicator that we're bringing into this presentation is our parent survey data. So, we did um administer a survey. It was provided to our parents and families, and you can see overall um we have a 50 almost 54% approval rating for it or support with 16% neutral and 30% who oppose. We can also see this parent survey data disaggregated by our junior high school sites with more favorable support at La Cumbre and Santa Barbara Junior High, and a little bit less at Goleta Valley and La Colina. And then you also see favorability or
274support in terms of transportation method, whether students are walking, take the bus, parent drop-off or carpool. So there's there are differences in terms of favorability there. Anecdotally, we also just heard from parents that they're they have a strong desire for the increased electives, but there are some concerns regarding student well-being, specifically the course increase in terms of homework and just the demand that might put on students, as well as the logistical elements that are part of this in terms of transportation and having different schedules that that may impact each other with siblings at different school sites. To highlight just real briefly, here are helping and hindering factors. So this is that factor analysis that we engaged in. And you can see on the left-hand side, there are a number of factors. And so the top
275one around staffing, the question came up around the Proposition 28 funding and can they be used to support some of the electives expansion? And so during our analysis, we determined that by school site, one to two sections of prop funds could be funded through that process. And then a hindering factor would be that we do need the additional 13 certificated full-time teachers as well as to increase our classified hours. So this slide highlights additional factors on the left related to materials, facilities, transportation, and the transfer policy. I would like to just highlight here. I know there was a board memo that's listed with this action item. And there is data that Mrs. Edison provided in terms of our transfer policy. We do know that this impacts our school sites. That that we do have a
276prior practice of approving more transfer requests into the school than boundary students who have transferred out. And this does create an imbalance of our race and ethnic representation at each site, as well as opportunity disparities. So this slide is a chart that shows really the overall feasibility that we see for our junior high schools. You'll see the legend on the bottom in terms of the X indicating a significant barrier, the triangle a moderate concern, and a checkmark really means a a strong readiness for the implementation. So as you look to the right-hand side, you see the overall readiness ratings for each of our junior highs. We have both La Cumbre and Santa Barbara Junior High showing a higher readiness for this implementation for 26-27 and a lower readiness at Goleta Valley Junior High and the
277lowest readiness at La Colina Junior High. And you can see the factors that are impacting that readiness. So we are presenting to you this evening two options. The first one is the all at once. That would mean all of our junior high schools implementing the seven period day during the 27-28 school year. The advantages of this option is it gives us the ability to create coherence and equity across all of our school sites, which does impact the way we communicate and coordinate with our stakeholders, and also helps us create the same conditions that we're going to evaluate the success of this under for all school sites. However, option two would be a phasing in over two years, which in 2026-27 would be to implement it at Santa Barbara Junior High and La Cumbre. So first
278launching the two school sites that show the most readiness to do this. And in 27-28 to implement it at La Colina Junior High and Goleta Valley Junior High. I do want to just review this slide that I also shared in February at the February 10th board meeting. Did share the criteria that we want to look at this through the lens of impact, justice, staff sustainability, the fiscal reality, and student outcomes. And you'll see the results results count sequence that really does follow the the sequence of these criteria in the order that we want to really look at this decision around. And as a district staff and site staff, we recognize there are going to be a number of next steps that we have to engage in. And those are listed here on this slide from
279transportation to master schedule development to communication with staff and families. And so we recognize all of these next steps are important and needed. And with that, I want to conclude the presentation so that the board can engage in a discussion and have we will answer any questions that you have. How how many public comments do we have? We have four. And what was our closing time? 11:15. Let's do let's do a minute and a half on the on the comments. 90 seconds. Okay, we have Stephen Hughes followed by Rich Lashua. Followed Stephen, okay. So Rich Lashua, you're next and your first I mean, and then York Shingle and Briana Serrato. Do my best. >> [clears throat] >> Please include the teachers union in discussions about the seventh period. Last board meeting, some suggested piloting it
280at one or two schools. Sadly, no union rep was allowed unrestricted time to present our perspective, comment on others presentations, nor answer questions from the board. If so, we would have reported the flaws, such as we're talking about this in 2026 because piloting was already proposed in 2024. It's a really bad look to push for equity by having [clears throat] teachers at disadvantaged schools work longer days for free while their colleagues across town work shorter days with more affluent students. It's even worse to try to do this twice. Please trust the experts working closest to students and give them voices in this. >> [clears throat] >> I tell anxious parents weighing enrollment lotteries, if a public school isn't good enough for your child, it's not good enough for any child. The converse is also true.
281A systemic solution improving one school will improve all schools. We're not reinventing the wheel here. In fact, we're putting the car back together and arguing about whether or not the spare tire is big enough. Meanwhile, time is waiting for none of us. And we're dangerously close to snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Actions speak louder than words. Let's go change the world. Okay, York Shingle. All right, good evening again. That was a great presentation that showed many angles of complex changes. My hat goes off to Dr. Wilson and the folks who put in so much time to make it happen. My main comment is please make this happen for all schools. The seven period day is doable and will benefit our students. It's going to be a challenge for SBTA if we have some
282junior high teachers working longer days than their junior high counterparts across town. And as a matter of process, you should have put this item before the riffs because if this doesn't pass, then we didn't need to include it in the amount we would have needed to cut. Thank you. Okay, Briana Briana Serrato. Hello again. As a parent of a seventh grader at La Cumbre Junior High and a member of M Lac School Site Council, Guiding Coalition, and SEEK parent representative, I am urging the board to approve option two in which the seventh period day is implemented at La Cumbre Junior High and Santa Barbara Junior High for the upcoming 26-27 school year. This is a topic that has been highly favorable each time it has been discussed at those various meetings throughout the school year
283as it has been discussed as part of the school's IB school candidacy and those elective requirements. While I understand the desire to implement this at all four junior highs in the same year to make it equitable, looking at the student population breakdowns, CASP scores, and current offerings of zero and seventh period classes across the four sites, embedding a seventh period to La Cumbre and Santa Barbara Junior Highs will help reduce the current equity gap. It is apparent from the discussions at the last board meeting and the results from the parent survey that Goleta Valley and La Colina have a large hurdle with implementing a mandatory seventh period with regards to booster bus schedules and that it will require more logistical planning than may be feasible for the fall. Those campuses also require adjustments to facilities
284for implementation. With regards to a few of the listed hindering factors, some students may not get their preferred choice of elective. Both incoming seventh graders and eighth graders are asked to select their top three electives, so likelihood of not getting at least one of their preferred electives seems slim. And schedule changes likely require IEP amendments. This seems to be an administrative task, not a hindrance. And with regards to the start and end time, please do a beneficial survey similar to to each school site because the sites will determine for start and end times. Thank you. Is that complete? That completes public comment. Sorry about that. That'll bring us to board discussion. I want to look at 35 minutes and take a look at the rest of the agenda. There are a couple of other items
285that are critical. Um so I want to try and limit our our conversation. Um Uh let's try and be concise. Are there questions from the board? Trustee Caffrey. Um Um so I I heard from parents that Goleta Valley Junior High that they didn't understand in the survey the benefits to all students. So I'm curious, can you talk a little bit about how the survey was how how it was um introduced to parents and how they understood what the benefits to every kid um was of expanding seventh period? So we did provide in the communication with families, there was a an email that shared more of it that information with them. Within the survey itself, it did talk specifically about the targeted um population, which is our EMLs and our students on an IEP. So there
286really was both. I think sometimes, you know, the you in taking the survey, it may not have um fully parents may not have fully read the email, but there was some information there um that was provided about how it would benefit all students. And uh even in the results, we did hear um information about, you know, concerns about how it might impact their students. So um that information was provided. Other questions? Trustee Ca- um Beal. I have a question about this concept of um some teachers working longer than others. So I know that um we are talking about teachers working five out of seven. So not spending more time in the classroom per se, but there's the work day, there's there's the the prep period. So I get a little confused. So if we were
287to choose option two, how would that look? I'm going to defer to Dr. Beckio. Thank you. Um so option two would be two schools that would have um student instructional day is longer. The teachers would have two prep periods, so their non-teaching time um would be would still be the same as the other teachers, but the students school day would be longer at the one school at the two schools than it is at the others. They teach the same amount of They they'll teach the same amount of time. The implication seems to be that they will be at their school sites longer than normal, the teachers. I I I feel like there's that's not entirely clear to me. Well, it it depends This is going to sound funny, but it depends on when the teacher
288leaves the school site. The students' day, the students will leave earlier than the other students at the other two schools. So for I'll give you an example. If they have a one through six schedule at Goleta Valley, a teacher presumably could have a sixth period prep and they may um leave at the very end of the school day or even during their prep period if if they if they chose to do that. Um they're not supposed to, but they could. Um if over across town, there's a seven period day and you have a first period class and a seventh period class, your two prep periods are middle of the day, that teacher would not be able to leave at the same time as the teacher at Goleta Valley. They teach the same amount of classes.
289Does that make sense? That does make sense. It seems that the difference really is is that one teacher can leave earlier even though their work day actually extends beyond that period of time. And in the other situation, they're on campus for that entire period of time. Correct. Are there other other questions? Okay, time for comments, please. Yeah, this is I have to say challenging at this hour of the night to keep my thoughts together. I can still think though because I'm a doctor and we think in the middle of the night. Um so you know, there was other data presented that everybody had access to if they looked at the agenda and it really looked at what has happened with transfers. And I think we're the what's what's really um what we're starting to understand
290is that um we have schools that are under-resourced. And I don't want to use the opposite for the other schools. The other schools have everything they need because they have enough students. Not everything, but a lot of what they need. And so this has created a situation that that is not great. Um and I think that is a different dis- a discussion, but it really feeds into this seven period day that in our under-resourced schools, they're suffering and it doesn't really there isn't an easy way to fix that situation quickly. We we have to address it in one way or another, but that's much more complex with the transfer policy. Um but we can in the schools that are under-resourced, add that seventh period and start to reverse some of the situation that has occurred.
291So again, we I talked about an outcomes committee, I think transfer policy, there's so many things that we need to talk about. Um but it's not it can't be part of this discussion. We we're not making those decisions right here. Um the survey I found interesting. It it was a little bit of limited value to me. I have more questions than I had answers. But I was happy to see that there wasn't like a wholesale opposition. So there are a lot of people have individual um opposition to the plan. They have, you know, things it it's like with any situation, some people like the change and some don't. Um When I look at the bigger picture, um I would like to put this plan in place at all the junior highs, but I cannot ignore
292the fact that at the larger junior highs, there is a lot more change that has to happen. And I feel that in this atmosphere of giving people the ability to change something, to do it well, is actually really important. Sort of the opposite that can be said for our under-resourced schools, that they can build a program because they are trying at La Cumbre the IB program and at Santa Barbara Junior High trying to enrich their electives. Um they they have the the talent and the desire to do that. They are looking forward to this. The other junior highs are saying this is a big ask of us. There is a lot that needs to change and it's not it just doing it in a rushed way may have consequences. So um as much as I
293would like to just say, let's do it and let's do it as fast as I can, I do have to pay attention to resources. So um I feel that two things. One is I do think that electives are important. A lot of people talk about stress and the students um maybe won't want to do electives. Um I chose to send my my children to middle school that had very rich electives for that reason. Um I'm an academic person. So yes, I like academic rigor, but I also like children to have balanced lives and I think electives is where they learn to balance their lives and manage their mental health. And so I I support the addition of a seventh period. But at the same time, I feel that I support option two. I won't say
294more. I could say more, but I'm going to stop. Option two with a phase-in? Yes. Okay. The expectation being that we do put it in place at all the schools, but that we do it at the schools that want to, that feel that that would benefit them. They they can make the change more quickly. They can I'm Santa Barbara Junior High La Cumbre and phasing it in for the larger junior highs a year from now. Okay. Trustee Muñoz. Okay. Uh yes, I certainly I also, you know, um echo much of what um Dr. Beal mentioned. Um I think that in terms of equity, the students that are, you know, learning English, um I'm trying to remember how to say that. I'm so sorry. Emerging multilingual students, um that they, as well as students with IEPs,
295students with financial barriers would very much benefit from the seventh period day as having an elective in arts and theaters as I see um Mr. Lashua sitting here um and other electives would motivate them to attend more to attend school things that they would look forward to and also increase their self-esteem and confidence. Um the the you know many times the families that we have you know are either single parent or parents that are working two jobs or grandparent who's older that is not able to work and afford such luxuries as you know music classes etc. Um would very much benefit from this and I also agree with having it implemented at two schools and I'm hoping that we are able to move into the next step which would be you know looking at all
296the details and how we could make this come about. I'm going to do my comments next. Um I'm I'm going to change change the tone. I'm going to support option one which is the all at once option in 27-28. I think we've been talking about um in the last meeting some of the incredible complexities that are going to go along with this and that it's it's February it's March there's all types of pieces there and since then it's just gotten more complex with the data around the inequities and the uh and the transfers and all of those things that kind of come together. Um and um the last thing we want to do is do this wrong. The board has been supportive of this in concept all along and all we've been talking about is
297complexities. I really think that and and now add to that um a clear message from our from the president of our teachers union that the divisiveness of doing two different schools with two different subjects will have problems. I'm want I'm I'm going to want to step away from the early desire to do it quickly or to do it with a a test of change because I just think we've got to do it together and we have to take the time to do it and we have to start now to figure out how to do it in 27-20 or in 27-28. I think that for me the risk is just too high to say yeah we can do that at a couple of schools. Um the the letter from MTV MTD um the costs associated with
298bussing we we learned more and more about um how difficult that is and how much of a problem it will be. I just think we're walking into a buzzsaw if we say we can do this even at two schools next years. Um Christy Caffrey? So I would go for all four schools next year would be my vote because basically um so first my concern is that the survey doesn't accurately represent what parents might think at La Colina and Goleta Valley Junior High because hearing from um parents at Goleta Valley basically I think that the survey did not talk about the fact that there's that our kids are in school one hour less every single day than the national average you know or that if they had the seventh period day every child would get more
299electives and I really feel like as a district we need to ensure all of our students have a whole child education and um that includes the arts and electives and things that are um exciting and grow your brain in different ways um and then the other thing I would say is of course we also care about our marginalized students and we have marginalized students at La Colina and also at Goleta Valley. So basically it doesn't make sense to me not to do it across the board and I feel like we just have so much momentum here the whole board supports a seventh period day. I think the question is just how but I would say let's rip off the band-aid and do it um and that we have very um we have very competent staff
300members and I think it's totally possible. So I'd I'd like to move the conversation along and see if we can get a sense from where other board members are. Gabe? Uh um [cough and clears throat] I'm going to go with option two. I I hear the idea of the having half of our schools doing a six period day and the other half doing a seven period day. I also want to recognize there are challenges the transportation challenges and the MTD letter was quite persuasive. It's a we discussed it at the last meeting. That's going to be uh problem that is going to be tougher for us to solve more expensive for us to solve. Um I I'm hoping that by presenting the option two as one of the options that that was done in discussion
301with the principals that there was factor analysis that said we could do it and we could do it well. Um I am on the fence whether to put them on the spot but um I'm I'm seeing some different body language from them than what I'm hearing from you. So I guess I am going to put you on the spot. I'm going to ask um uh Principal Brock and um Principal Dupont since you would be option two and I I want to say I guess this is what comes with leadership roles is um can you just spell out some of the concerns if you have them about option two about your two schools starting first versus the option one all four in two years because I want to know about your confidence that we could implement
302this next year in your two schools. It looks like there's the facility space it looks like transportation is less of an issue. Um we would have to do some hiring we would have to do some investment in equipment but um I'm putting you on the spot. Thank you. Um as the four principals met with cabinet to help develop this um all four of us we decided that option one is the option that all four of junior high school principals would prefer. Um myself personally I do not want to solve one inequity by creating another. I feel like waiting until 27-28 to do this is the way that we all do it right. And we're I'm convinced we only have one chance to do this and I want to do it right. Now I'm going to
303echo uh Dan in that assessment as well uh and also board uh board president Banning. Um I do think that we have to do it right and uh and I think there's strength in numbers especially uh we've learned from our cell phone implementation policy that it's uh we're stronger together especially when we only have four junior highs. Uh so uh and I know in our last board meeting I believe we we figured out it was 19 years since we had a seventh period day so what's one more and I think that would give us a much longer runway for us to really take all of these uh factors and really uh make sure that we're um tending to them and uh and and doing it the right way. Thank you. I I have to say
304I don't know that we can disregard four principals opinions and the teachers unions opinions and the operational issues when you add on top of that the fact that we just voted for a riff that's going to have teachers moving from place to place there's too many moving parts to say do this next year. I I do agree. I think I want to just say I put you on the spot and it's not the easiest thing to do but I do appreciate the honesty. Um and I hope that you feel that the board is receptive to your feedback. It It does matter. So thank you. Okay. Any uh other comments? I guess I would just comment that I this is where I think there's that discordance between materials we received. I mean I'm looking at this
305graph that says the two schools are ready and two schools are not. And so I as a board member I'm like you know I can't talk to everybody that's involved in this decision. And so if I'm hearing that the principals are ready it sounds like it's not going to be an easy process for two of our schools. Uh the MTD letter um I don't I've already said before at the last meeting that the MTD thing I tend to disregard it a little bit but I maybe read the letter a little bit differently. They were kind of like we can't do this and I thought that's odd because you already do this like you know whatever. Um I do think we can have a discussion with MTD. I think it does impact we can't decide the
306start time without involving them in the discussion. So it's not as simple as we decide they do. Um but if I am truly hearing from the principals that they want to be together that's the ideal situation for me too but I don't want to put people through something that's felt felt to be done poorly or in in hurry or causes hardship. Um I work in a profession we make fast changes, but we're set up for that. Um people just sort of follow. Um so, I don't know. I I would support what I what if people are ready to do this, I'm supporting completely going to all the schools. >> Yeah. I I'd just make a comment that MTD is a bureaucracy like we are and trying to imagine they can move fast, too, is another
307problem. Uh Trustee Muñoz. Yes, hearing from the principals and finding out that, you know, as um Mr. Escobedo asked was was helpful to me. And so, I'm certainly in favor of option one and having it all happen at the same time and celebrating it. All right. May I call for a motion? What Oh, co- Carlos, thank you. All right. Um at first with the, you know, options presented, I I want I feel like it makes sense to, you know, um I want to say option two. I want to say, you know, have uh let's not wait another year to have students, you know, suffer from not having, you know, these these elective opportunities, but um as I think about it more, I hear more perspectives from the board and um I, you know, and also
308in thinking of of the long term, I worry about students reacting poorly to a rushed change. I worry about students um you know, thinking that yeah, I mean, to a yeah, another, like was said, another inequity. You know, look at I you know, I'm doing here in class for another hour while students um across the town have have shorter class shorter school periods or school school um days. So, with that being said, I I think I would I I would put my um support behind option one. However, I would um you of course I assume that this is with uh would be with accountability throughout the year. You know, I won't be here next year, but um accountability with benchmarks, you know, having um certain deadlines, like create, you know, crafting a sort of um
309you know, a long-term schedule so that we can, you know, get um different, you know, get past different barriers by different by different times, having a timeline. So, um you know, that that's that's my opinion on that. The other thing I wanted to bring up was I know there was work on student surveys. I know they weren't included in this participation. I'm I don't know if you guys know something that I don't about those student surveys. Okay. I do think that is an important factor in in this decision as well. >> Agreed. Okay, let we're we're going to run out of time pretty quickly. Let's keep it brief. >> really wanted to ask about interdistrict transfer. Do we Do I make a motion at the end of the board meeting for basically to address this
310or at what point do we talk? >> think that fits into future agenda. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate it. All right. Can I call for a motion? Seems I'm it. Uh let's see. I call for a motion. Let's see. Sorry about that. The board uh to to implement seventh period at junior high schools, staff is bringing a I'm sorry. That's 27-8 I'm sorry. I'm reading the recommended action, but it doesn't make Yeah, it references rest option reference option one in the in the PowerPoint. Okay. Apologies. Um I make a motion to adopt option one so that the seventh period day is implemented uh 27-28 year at the four junior high schools. Is there a second? Second for the motion? I second. Can I ask a question? We know that there's going to be budget required
311to set aside to do this and I'm wondering if we can add a caveat to the option that we want to put some money aside to make it happen, which is part of the cuts that were presented in in uh Conrad's presentation earlier. Can we just is the board willing to make that that addition to your motion? So, the motion would be approval of of I of option one for the seven period day starting in 27-28 with a direction to staff to set aside sufficient budget to make it happen. Okay. So, there's that revised motion. Do I I'll I'll make that revised motion. Is there a second? I second it. Okay. And um Carlos, your advisory vote? Can I Can I make a comment? >> Sure, please. Um I'm very, you know, I like I
312said, I'm in favor of option one. I'm just having a lot I'm having some difficulty, you know, making uh decision without without the student input, without proper student input. You're allowed to abstain. Yeah. You can say abstain. Mhm. All right. Um yeah, I would I would like to abstain from this vote. All right. The motion There's been a motion and a second, a revised motion and a second. All in favor? I. >> I. Motion passes. Option one. All right. Thank you, everybody. We're going to continue with um the next item. Let's see if we can get through it. I think with the first time of putting a limit on the on the time um the extended time without considering the additional options there that if we can get it done as quickly as possible, I
313think we've Good. So, this is um this is item F6 software contracts for uh contracts for Red Rover and Vector Solutions. Thank you very much and I'll be brief. Um I'm bringing this item as I want to be clear it's a budget reduction item. It is one of our HR items as we looked across the district office on how to cut. Um this is going to be worth a $40,000 annual cut to our budget. Um and I don't really have a large budget in um HR, so that's very fairly significant. Um real quick, I I um I had other um factors that I looked at though, things that were really important to us. One that we minimize the number of platforms we're using to to do all our functions. That's really difficult cuz I have
314to find platforms that stretch across HR's different functions. The user experience and having it be a native platform, something that this that a company built from the ground up and didn't go out and buy a bunch of different platforms and try to patchwork the coding together. That's what we're currently using. It doesn't work. And so, I avoided platforms that um do that. So, with that um I want to turn it over to the board for any questions you might have and and a vote. Questions from the board? Uh there's no public comment. >> No public comment. Any questions? Trustee Cathryne? >> basically I'm curious about how the HR platform integrates with all of our other systems and our financial system and whether we did a holistic kind of analysis. Okay, thank you for that. Yes,
315um I've been um that's one of the really important factors is the integration and ability to get data from our platforms into the new ones and and from the new ones into the other ones. Um we do have um a a very good connection with our plat with our um information system MUNIS in both of these. Um we I think Red Rover's in 1,100 districts across the um country and um some very prominent ones here in California and um also um quite a few districts that use MUNIS and the connection that they've built with MUNIS is a good one. So, um I'm very comfortable and confident in the share of data across our platforms. Um and this also has been vetted through our ETS department as well. Thank you. Any other questions? Did you have
316another? Mhm? I guess my question is about the timing for this because um I know the finance committee is looking at G&A expenditures and I'm curious like we're talking about being, you know, as efficient as possible and our operational processes potentially. So, I'm wondering like is now the right time to approve these HR platforms or does it make more sense to do a a wider analysis and look at all like we're spending so much money on all of our different platforms to look at them all at the same time? Well, I did this is pretty much all of my HR platforms that I looked at and um and it's um and so, I did I did do that. Um I Yeah, I mean, if you're if you're talking about district-wide, that's a whole another that
317is a very long process, particularly if you're looking at changing a financial system. But nonetheless, I did um really was important to get this to you tonight because uh the companies are giving me um uh implementation without having to pay for um, the actual contract until July 1. And I do need that time to be able to um, implement so that we can um, get the systems up and running and ready to go to switch over to different platforms. So, it's it is an important factor for me to have this um, at least dealt with by the board tonight. Any comments or questions from the board? I'll call for a motion. Make a motion to approve the software contracts. Is there a second? Second. Okay. Moved and seconded. Student advisory vote? I. Board vote. All
318in favor? I. >> I. And your vote? Okay. All right. Thank you. >> Thank you. Um, moving on. Uh, what's that? Did you Were you a no? She's a no. Okay. Four to one. All right. Um, next is item F7, the um, Santa Barbara Charter School renewal peti- petition. Yes. Uh, so Santa Barbara Charter is recognized by California Department of Education as a high-performing charter school. And uh, after we had posted our review 15 days earlier, we uh, we're recommending that uh, their charter to be renewed for the 7-year term. Any questions? Comments? Do I have a motion? Oh, there are no public comments. No public comments. Um, but I do have a comment. >> Okay. I certainly am in favor of approving the Santa Barbara Charter School renewal because of all the good work
319that they've done with the students. All right. Any other comments? Okay. A motion? Do I have a motion? I make a motion to approve the Santa Barbara Charter School renewal petition. Yay. >> Is Is there a second? [laughter] I second the motion. All in favor Oh, student vote? I. I. Board vote. All in favor? I. >> I. Motion carries 5-0. Um Thank you for waiting. Okay. We got yeah, just got a couple more here. We we are um, up to a um, public hearing, notice of public hearing on Santa Barbara Unified School District entering into an energy savings and performance contract. Good evening, everybody. I'll be very quick. Um, so we issued out a request for qualification to do the energy savings performance contracting and um, we received five proposals, reviewed them, and OpTerra Energy
320is the one that we chose. Um, the purpose of this hearing is to ensure that uh, we follow through the right process and that we can then go through a preliminary analysis. Um, there's no fiscal involvement in this. We just need um, this public hearing in order to move to the next step. Before any fiscal involvement, we will bring it forth to the board for approval. All right. Thank you, Mr. Ho. I'd like to open the public hearing. Are there comments? We'll open the public hearing at uh, 11:07 and close it at 11:08. Um >> [laughter] >> All right. So, there's not a vote necessary on this. It was just a public hearing. So, we're done with that. That brings us to item H1, the acceptance of donations. Do I have a motion? I'll move
321to accept donations for February 24th, 2026 with gratitude. A second? Is there a second? Okay. Moved and seconded to accept donations with gratitude. All in favor? I. I. Oh-oh. Student Student advisory? >> [laughter] >> I. Okay. Um, that moves to the consen- Huh? Huh? Yeah. Yeah. 5-0. All right. 5-5. 5-0. >> [laughter] >> Okay. Um We're moving on to the consent agenda. Is there a anyone asking to pull anything from the agenda? I have a motion on the consent agenda. I move to approve the consent agenda as presented. Is there a second? Moved and seconded by uh, Trustee Caffrey. All in favor? Oh, wait a minute. >> [laughter] >> Going up. Okay. I. Board. All in favor? I. >> I. Carries um, unanimously. Um, we have coming events, future agenda items. I know there was
322an interest in that. Uh, any anything on coming events? Oh, just take a look. Okay. So, future agenda items. Comi- Actually, coming events, I wanted to just remind people at this late hour about the um, Family Literacy Festival at the library on March 7th. All right. Future agenda items. Uh, I I I'd like to I'd like to and I this might be one of Ms. Caffrey's. Open enrollment has to be a topic that we discuss. Looking at the data in today's presentation in the board memo is it's white flight in our school from some of our schools to to La Colina and um, we have to have that discussion and really talk about it and address it as a board. I know it's not going to be very popular, but there's no way we can
323look at that and not agendize it for a discussion. Can we um, do you have a different topic? I have a yes and an addition to him. So, basically, I think that I totally agree on the inter-district transfer that we need to look at it, but I think we need to look at it really holistically with a boundary review of our schools and our enrollment and so basically like writing policy to address this. So, I don't know if a a first like writing a first draft of a policy to that that really lays out the process for how we do this. Um I think that that is what I was going to suggest. So, it it kind of expands on the what what Trustee Escobedo is proposing. Okay. Well, Dr. Dr. Beal I'm going to
324ask a question what board members um, Caffrey and Escobedo are proposing. So, you know, if we're going to look Sorry. And we're going to look at boundaries and we're looking at schools and within those boundaries, I almost feel like we're getting into a financial discussion also. So, the question is is how big a discussion are we going to have? Do we start an enrollment discussion, just talk about the issue, and then we say, "Okay, we may need to expand it to other areas" um, because we are going to be looking at a lot of other things in the future. I'm I'm just kind of curious how we would present this and how we would approach this. Can Can I make a suggestion? Is this a place where potentially a a special meeting uh, a board
325study session that allowed for dialogue um, on all of these pieces together and how they might fit together where we could generate some recommendations coming out of a special meeting for these various pieces? Okay. So, let's work on scheduling that. I think that's I appreciate the putting it all together. [clears throat] And I will um, I I will make a proposal that we start the process of talking about a student outcomes committee. A student outcomes committee. Okay. And um, the focus um, you know, we talk about numbers, but I think really I'm really interested in process and systems. And so, I don't really I know that we um, uh Yeah. Do you Do you see that initially as potentially a discussion item uh, or is it something that would fit within uh, the special meeting?
326Can we begin that dialogue there? Or do you want it Can I think Can I To Yeah. I think what I'm hearing is a need to understand the process for achieving any number of these things that you're both discussing. One of them is the there is a recommendation in the memo around the open enrollment and transfers, uh, which is one area that you want to explore including the boundaries. But you want to understand the process to achieve that goal. And then the second one for the committee Sorry. So, then the second question I heard around student outcomes is the same idea of we want to create a student committee on a committee on student outcomes, but you want to understand the process for how we get to that development of that committee. And so, are
327these questions about process or not? No, no. It's more that the committee is um, that we form a committee and maybe it be very similar to the financial committee where we start really talking about uh, we have a a forum outside of our board meetings where people can contribute to the discussion about how we get to our student outcomes. Like what processes do we have in place that are working well where we share data. So, I don't know how that'll look. It's something that I would like to explore and I would like to bring to the board um maybe like how we brought the financial, but I would the committee, so um I would like to know if there's interest in exploring it. I could propose something. I could work with somebody. Um but but
328we have heard, you know, in different venues um people saying, "Well, you know, we've started this curriculum, and we want to talk about how we contribute to the outcome." And what I'm starting to think about is the fact that um I've got a minute. Um is is how how are how are the processes we have in place, how can they lead to outcomes, and then we also can set outcomes. It's It's a really much larger, almost academic discussion with people who are interested in doing that. Rose. I would like to suggest, you know, along those lines a special meeting for us to discuss the topic, and then go from there in terms of student outcomes and such. And have, you know, the um have the directors uh present information to us in terms of their
329work along these lines, and then decide from there as a board. I want to I want to ask the question of urgency for having the answer tonight or not. Um I think that that the initial request about um um it uh open enrollment and tying boundaries together, I um I saw an agreement among us about that as a special meeting. Um would it be Would it make more sense to bring this as another discussion item to a regular board meeting where we're fresher and can talk about what the next steps on a committee might be? Yes. Okay. All right, so I'm going to move that we we accept those um those three alternatives, a special meeting for the first two requests, and uh bringing the other one to another meeting soon. Uh okay. Close the
330meeting. Close the meeting. 11:15 and a half. Wait. Wait. By my watch, uh it is 11:15 by the Apple Watch.