Berkeley USD Regular School Board Meeting February 19, 2025

001good evening everyone what happened to the energy in the room good evening everyone good evening we are so excited uh to see you all here uh for our February 19th meeting of the Berkeley Unified School District Board of Education um at this time I will call the meeting to order at 7 time is it 737 7 37 p.m. um we have uh our agenda in front of us already and so I'll ask for an approval of this evening's agenda is there a motion to approve I move to approve okay it's been moved by director shinoski is there a second I second seconded by director Chang uh all those in favor please signify with the sign of I I I I opposers have the same sign extensions the eyes have it the motion passes and our

002agenda is approved tonight we have a very very very exciting presentation uh that will happen here for um all of your eyes to see and for everyone watching online ygb young gifted in black is one of the most amazing programs uh that we have here in Berkeley Unified School District and they perform all over um the Bay Area enlightening people and in uh educating them about black history and black excellence and every year during Black History Month we welcome them for a presentation to the board of education and to our B USD community and this year is like every other year and so we are excited to welcome ygb back for their presentation tonight under the direction and Leadership of their phenomenal and amazing director here who has been just phenomenal throughout the years and

003so we're so thankful uh for her and for all that she does for our students in B USD and so I'm going to ask my colleagues if you all will please join me down below so that we can get a front row seat to this amazing Excellence that we are about to view in addition to that um those who are watching online our sound system um is not working right now we've been having some um technical difficulties tonight and so what we will do is we will record uh this evening's performance and when we upload our meeting we will upload a a special recording of This of tonight performance so that everyone will be able to watch and hear online all right uh with no further Ado colleagues we can take a seat in the

004front and please help us in welcoming ygb we teach black students black history we do it through performance poetry rap and freedom songs and they share with the community what they're learning we've been working as C Brown said with UniFi so a lot of our students go to school in ber School District but not all of our students um we have been serving the bay areas for the past 15 plus years my grandmother started this organization in 1981 New York so he did upholding Legacy so we hope you enjoy the performance if you want to learn more about you can go to Crow the number two be.org we're always fundraising we're always working with babies we're always hoping to provide a better future for our okay so please listen to what they're saying they're not

005here teach listen to the they're saying but also knowes gentl what's the first rule the African plague the African plag we are an African people we are an African people we'll remember we remember Humanity GL and suffering of our ancestors of our ancestors you will honor new Valu and New Life New Life to our people to our people we will have peace we will have peace Harmony Harmony us be loving sh creative will struggle resurrect andif land children our nation have free who are free and Destiny and Destiny we are an African people we are afrian people are [Applause] what [Music] the of be heart Maring we will recall our ancestors to occupy our bath we will embody Our Heroes while still being ourselves we will ask our elers for [Music] when e hat to

006[Music] two one ja victories black black e spe hey [Music] all right Dr your smile be serious be serious serious thank you for doing that oh that was really zo they're amazing they oh yeah thank you so much again ygb under the phenomenal and capable leadership of cure we are so thankful um to have just amazing Educators young Educators uh in the room with us tonight and we're so grateful for uh you all taking the time out of your busy nightly schedules uh to be here with us so please give it up one more time for ygv at this time Miss chares can you please call the role of the board director Jennifer shinoski here student director winter Clark here student director Evelyn Velasquez here uh director Jennifer Korn is excused this evening vice president

007Mike Chang hello hereid pres CAD Brown pres thank you uh director Chang if you vice president Chang if you could please report out from Clos session absolutely 3.1 um a portion of the items were removed by director schanowski seconded by President Brown second and the board voted unanimously 3.2.1 the board heard an update and provided Direction um 3.3.1 director schanowski moved and vice president Chang seconded to accept the district's recommendation and the board voted unanimously ly 3.3.2 director vasev moved and president Brown seconded to accept the district recommendation and the board voted unanimously thank you this completes the report from close session at this time we typically have our superintendent comments um but unfortunately as you see our superintendent is missing from the Das this evening she is ill not doing so well so if

008you could please um send her messages of uh encouragement we hope that she gets better soon in messages of healing uh we definitely miss our superintendent anytime she is not in the room her bright bubbly spirit and personality uh is is always missed and so we hope that she heals and gets uh better soon so please send her warm thoughts um as we wait for her to come back to us healthy and healed uh we will move on this at this time to our um open session for uh public comment and right now I only have uh four speaker cards and so we will only hear uh from these four commenters this evening and uh after that we will move on to uh Zoom to hear our public commenters on Zoom because we only have

009four speaker cards I'm going to allow each speaker to speak for two minutes um instead of our typical one minute when we have over 10 speaker cards and so I'm going to uh invite the first speaker to come uh tonight which is going to be namoto BINA who will speak at the dis uh followed by neoo will be Peter Wright okay and so Peter if you'd like to go ahead and get in line uh we will hear your public comment after uh namoda welcome namoda good evening um honorable school board members and um special shout out to superintendent hope she gets well fast um I'm coming here to speak to you guys tonight about subject which I believe you've probably gotten many um emails about and that's about um The Pedestrian and bike access to

010Longfellow Middle School um and with the new Workforce housing we are switch supposedly switching our um drop off to Virginia Street which happens to be a bike Boulevard um we ask that you guys consider um working with the city to switch that to a more um suitable entrance um we also are asking that you work with the city to get a stop sign put on uh put up at cane Street um and also work with them to find uh suitable parking um because we are losing our parking lot um and our um Educators have graciously agreed that our students should have a playground so um they are going to be losing their handicap parking so if you could work for that and just in general um safety and um Traffic Safety around all of our

011schools um than thank you guys for um working with the city for having extra police present at least at Cragmont Elementary and I also noticed some extra presence around Longfellow this morning thank you thank you for your comments at next we will hear from Peter Wright followed by Joe Lesner thank you very much I really enjoyed the uh show tonight the perform is amazing um my name is Peter Wright uh I am a Berkeley native a Berkeley High School alum and a proud parent of three Berkeley High School graduates um as someone who's been engaged and highly motivated to help bring tennis courts back to Berkeley High School uh I fully support the board's plans to construct four or possibly five tennis courts on the Berkeley High School campus I've spent over two decades helping

012devise a plan to help bring tennis courts back to Berkeley High School I've attended Schoolboard meetings Community meetings City Council meetings 2 by two meetings uh and through it all it's clear there isn't a perfect solution and one that will be universally accepted however I'm here tonight to say I support the school board's plan to build new tennis courts at Berkeley High School tennis courts that were included in the bond measure that Berkeley voters recently passed uh I'm here tonight to say that new tennis courts of Berkeley High School not only support the tennis teams but support the entire student body through PE classes and they support everyone in the community who will benefit from having accessible tennis courts according to an announcement just today by the United States tennis Association Tennis participation has experienced

013five consecutive years of growth with one in 12 Americans playing tennis in 2024 the USA also recently shared results of a long-term study that found tennis players live almost 10 years longer than non-tennis players um and so I hope these young people will be playing tennis and and living a long life finally I encourage everyone here tonight and those of you online to get in dust off your tennis racket get out and and play tennis and hopefully we'll all be doing that soon on the new Berkeley High tennis courts thank you thank you as well we'll hear from Joe and Then followed by Victor Ward good evening thank you for giving me a chance to speak on your dime um well I came up tonight because I'm really terrified about what's going on in this

014country we are in the midst of a coup and it's a serious coup um that involves all of us and I don't have much faith in the Congress either party in the Congress has not really stepped up and the thing that I'm using this platform to announce is that on the 28th of April we're asking um everybody to boycott the big businesses especially those that are in the hands of the billionaire class that are tearing the government apart and this um economic Bo boycott has been called in defense of Dei the diversity um Equity inclusion programs which are being rolled back uh in the federal government um especially black federal employees are being targeted I just learned today um it's a beginning it's probably not going to be you know a general strike but we

015need to build something that's independent of politicians um it's um we're asking that everybody do what they can essential Services you know that you need should not be um avoided people that have to pay tolls to get to work that's all understandable it's all being done under the um hope that it will build because it's right now it's the only thing we have and it does inspire me to the great ends I was in the Mississippi Freedom Summer in 64 and to see these beautiful children um expressing themselves in the freedom songs that we used to sing um is really inspiring so tell your friends try and support as much as you can thank you thank you as well Joe our final uh public commenter uh this evening will be Victor Ward before we move

016on to our Zoom commenters welcome thank you good evening I wanted to start off by saying thank you um uh for your service uh you have incredible patience and great listening GE so I appreciate that um I'm here to talk about something I call it real time it's something that uh my company has produced it's a digital video yearbook which allows students teachers parents and administrators to upload their own memories pictures music videos transforming the traditional yearbook from a one siiz fits none to something that's really personal and memorable and uh I've been through a few graduations in my time but uh the two most important graduations were my sister's graduation from medical school and um when I about 30 years ago I was a long-term sub in Oakland Unified and I had a fifth

017grade classroom and during graduation all the fifth graders got to seeing I Believe I Can Fly And I'm sitting there watching my students and I'm crying but you think about graduation it's the happiest time of the year and it's missed by every traditional yearbook if you think about what we just saw here today with ygb that cannot be captured by a page in the yearbook no music program no vapa program no sports program can adequately capture the magic that happens in the traditional yearbook page so I just wanted to uh that you know it's uh I'm sure there are plenty of teachers and students who are working hard on the yearbook committee but they're producing a yearbook in the year 2025 using 1825 tools so it's time to do everyone Justice and uh move into

018uh the Modern Age thank you very much thank you as well Mr Ward we will now move on to our uh public comments that are online and as of now I see Four Hands online and so uh we will not take any other hands after um Lindsay Noel begins and so um okay and now they are five hands so we won't take any other hands after Lindsay Noel begins um and you all also have 2 minutes online I understand that it is a little difficult for you to see um the timer here in the boardroom and so what I will do is I'll let you know um I'll hold up this paper when you have about 30 seconds left and then I will interrupt you uh when the two-minute timer goes off um so just

019be prepared for that again miss charz we're going to begin with Lindsay Noel um so if you could please promote Lindsay Noel after Lindsay Noel we will then receive the comments from sopina Jones Okay welcome Lindsay whenever you are ready you may begin again when your uh 30 seconds is about to um run up I'll put up this white piece of paper unless you can see the timer behind me oh they're zooming into the timer this is nice progress he's he's great he's on fire tonight great comments and great uh tech support so you don't even need me go ahead and look at the timer and whenever you are ready to begin your time will begin thank you my name is Lindsay noeld I'm speaking as a parent on item 14.3 curriculum adoption um there

020have been a lot of great gains in the year and a half that the curriculum and instruction department has been formalized under the literacy action plan the district has made great gains toward using evidence-based practices in early literacy instruction I and many others hope that this movement toward a structured explicit knowledge-building curriculum will help many more students learn to read write and spell on grade level setting students up for the bright future we know that they have there is as always room for improvement and room to keep on learning my first point is that evidence doesn't mislead but anyone can find a piece of research that reinforces their world view this is why the words evidence-based are much more powerful and accurate than using research based the true difficulty in choosing curriculum is sorting through

021the options to find highquality material and importantly ignoring the charlatans point two is that we yet have yet to hear of a measured consistent and public review schedule of curriculum used in our schools BD needs to fulfill the promise of board policy and make a review plan and budget to ensure our teachers have the support they need so that they can fill all the other tasks that they have and the third is that we should apply learning to multiple subjects through the literacy work many teachers are starting to understand how brains learn that foundational skills are essential and that teaching Concepts explicitly then allowing practice helps to reach all Learners these tenants apply to all other subjects too we can build on this movement to improve outcomes for students thank you so much thank you

022as well miss Noel we will now move to sophina Jones followed by uh Daniel brownson hello honorable school board members also shouting out my dear and lovely Evelyn hey girl my name is sopina and I am here tonight representing um the bridge program at Berkeley High School I'm here to speak about maintaining the budget for bridge for the ne next academic school year Bridge has a long waiting list of students who would benefit from the oneone support and structure of bridge and would benefit from having the Rel relationships that bridge provide in the after school setting with supporting homework and college Based Services and right now they are graduating two cohorts of seniors and if the budget is maintained um in the next academic school year bridge will be able to bring the now on

023the waiting list about 40 students um to bring in two ninth grade cohorts and so if we bring those ninth grade students that would ensure that bridge can maintain their budget for this year Bridges has supported over all of their students to be 100% a through G eligible and 96% have been applied to colleges and applied to four years and got in so this is a benefit program that I know that will be beneficial to students especially in this time for black and brown students might be losing a lot of services with the federal government and Bridge will be able to support those students thank you thank you as well uh next we will have uh Daniel brownson followed by um Tanya or Tania hello can you hear me welcome we can hear you okay

024um I'm a member of bcce and but I'm just uh commenting uh just for myself I'm not representing the union um but I I know that the district is facing uh some budget trouble but I believe that there are a few ways that uh um that uh that can be mitigated um others have probably already told you this but uh we have very very expensive uh contracts with staffing companies that if we actually hired for those positions directly would actually save us um a ton of money um also i' um I've made U my my supervisor paen aware but um I think we can we have a lot of flat roofs in um in in uh BD and um there might still be uh State programs to for solar uh panel installation um and that

025way we wouldn't be hemorrhaging money to pg& um uh lastly um this is unrelated but um I would um I commend the district for uh you know taking steps to protect our uh immigrant students and um I would encourage you know all further efforts both in that area and protecting diversity in um our staffing um and in our program um as you know both immigrant communities and uh communities of color are under attack at this time thank you Daniel for your comments got a list I think we were hearing from Tanya Tanya next but um if Katie is ready Katie we will receive you at this time uh small But Mighty school and um I wanted to bring up a topic that I think is going to be brought up soon by an Kary from

026the African-American success framework but um I've heard from multiple students that they've been discouraged from coming to our school by their counselors um I can give specific instances but I don't necessar want to name names but um multiple students have informed me that when they uh expressed being interested in Berkeley Technology Academy they were told it wasn't the right fit for them because they were College Bound I would like to point out that our students are College Bound we just had a student accepted into an HBCU and another student accepted into UC San Diego um it is concerning to me that students are being told not to come to our school um especially when those students are expressing a straight interest in in our school um I know students are often being told that they

027should go to bis instead and bis is fantastic but it's not a Traditional School format and so it's not it doesn't have the structure that's right for everybody um and many of them are being told to stay at BHS even if they are very credit deficient so in order to increase our overall District graduation rate um because our school allows students to collect their credits faster um and in order to um keep the community at BTA alive um I think we there needs to be a serious discussion about who and when students are recommended to come to BTA and um I know we don't have a lot of teachers and the argument often is made that we don't have enough teachers to have more students I would argue that we don't have enough students to

028have more teachers um and that both ways could be looked at um that's it thank you um thank you thank you very much for for your comments um thank you all right and we will go to our last public speaker for tonight I am sorry if in your name and you when you come on can you tell me if your name is Tonia or Tonia Tonia T okay I had it right yes you had it you had it um good evening board memb um I am coming to the board about the bridge program um my son is um will be a Long Fellow graduate graduate he will be going into Berkeley High and um he needs the support from the bridge program he he's one of the students that is currently one of the 50

029students that's currently on the wait list and um it's very scary and it's intimidating to me because my son um he does need the extra support he needs the extra help he needs that one-on-one communication um and that one-on-one bond with the additional support that the bridge program offers um so I am bringing that to the board um I would like to um recognize the um sorry I would like to recognize all of the great things that the bridge program offers um you know they need that for your support especially trying to go into a um College even if it's Community College um he still needs that because that's something that he's thriving for he needs a safe place coming from out of Junior High School into High School school because Berkeley High is a

030really big place I graduated from Berkeley High in 2004 and I know how easy it is for you to get lost inside of just the school itself um and I'm very Hands-On with his um case manager right now um I really love her Miss Bell I have to shout her out cuz I love her so much um but you know we communicate every day we she lets me know what's going on with him if he's having a good day a bad day you know he needs that support so um we want to keep the funding the same for the Bri bridge program that will really help a lot of students especially ninth graders thank you so much for your comments as well this uh ends our public comment period uh for the board this evening

031and we will go on to committee comments are there any folks who are here for committee comments if so you are more than welcome to approach um the microphone at this time in no specific order hi my name is Vicky Davis thank you for having me tonight I'm speaking um to report on behalf of the Berkeley schools Excellence program planning and oversight committee and the 29 members of the pno that represent all our school sites across the district myself Vicki Davis and my co-chair Nicole shabbo would like to start by welcoming the new and returning board members after the November de election we thank you for your service to the district we would like to take a moment to recognize Wen Brad street our previous co-chair who served in that role for six years we

032thank Welden for his service on behalf of the district as well as his many volunteer roles in service of safety within the city of Berkeley in addition we thank all current members of the P for their time and commitment to serve on our committee our committee holds an average of 15 meetings per year each one typically lasting two to three hours or more last year we reviewed over 100 documents presentations reports and budget proposals requiring many Advanced hours of preparation this collectively represents over 1,500 hours per year by our members who are parents staff and teachers volunteering their time who serve on this committee as a true labor of love for our students and we wholeheartedly thank them finally we would like to thank our staff Kathy Fleming director of local resources Craig Kaufman budget

033analyst and Danielle Perez are betet program specialist for their dedication and hard work in bringing the many reports data items budgets and presentations to us without their tremendous efforts our work could not be done this year the pno made several process adjustments with the goal of improving our focus and efficacy first we restructured our annual timeline starting our election and meeting schedule a month earlier and adding three additional meetings in the fall this allowed us to complete our review of previous year's programs earlier in the calendar year and giving us more time to focus on next year's Budget Building we also streamlined and restructured the department reports to focus more on goals activities challenges and most impactfully we are beginning to incorporate and measure metrics of outcomes the intention of this new structure is to

034enable budget managers to evaluate the efficacy of their previous work and Aid in their development of next year's programs and budgets at this time we have completed a review of all the 2324 BP and Bearer programs such as libraries vappa professional development and student achievement strategies starting this month we will shift our focus into reviewing proposed programs and budgets for the 25 26 school year based on feedback we shared with budget managers over the past few months we hope to see a shift in programs that align with the metrics demonstrated in their reports prioritizing funding and focusing on positive outcomes for students all materials and meeting recordings are available to the public online at the Pano page and District website you can find this at www.berkeley schools.net departments BP planning and oversight committee thank you

035to the Berkeley voters for passing measure H because of this we are still able to provide smaller class sizes and the many programs supported by the BP tax measure even in this year of budget cuts to our general fund thank you to our Berkeley taxpayers for supporting and prioritizing education in our Berkeley Community thanks thank you Vicki next I'll welcome Rebecca lenson so this is a shout out to our superintendent we hope you feel better soon we miss you tonight um I'm the co-chair of the gender Equity sexual harassment advisory committee the intention of our committee is to get granular in opportunities for prevention and earlier Intervention when it comes to climate and culture relative to sexual safety and bullying so I'm coming here tonight in problem solving mode recognizing both the fact that hasht

036we broke and the silver lining of reimagining what comes with that reality here's what we know and what we could use your help with we know that the bullying of lgbtq plus students has increased dramatically since Trump has taken office we have heard this from students parents counselors and teachers we know with bullying there's an increased risk of suicidal ideation and substance use disorder this truth equals a call to action and a reimagining of what safety looks like this moment requires that we move from a sole focus on physical safety to having a clear component that's about emotional safety specifically we are thinking about expanding the role of safety officers and promoting the idea of safety Specialists I want to be clear that I'm not suggesting we add staff but rather with the staff we

037have expanding skill sets yesterday at the Berkeley High School Safety Committee meeting we got to hear from a safety officer telling us that they want more training they want more skills for the day-to-day they want to know how to better address substance use Etc as we bring together both the recognition that our lgbtq plus students are struggling and that safety officers themselves are wanting to broaden their skills it seems the concept of reimagining safety officers into safety Specialists fits the moment we see safety safety Specialists having both skills in deescalation transformative Justice and that they're very comfortable working with our lgbtq plus students we see these folks as comfortable going into gender neutral bathrooms when they're issues comfortable having conversations and referring students to supports in order to modify a job description and by the

038way this is where you all come in we understand we first have to bring it to you for approval this is a formal request asking the board to consider this reimagined and expanded position the idea has all the magic sauce to meet the moment and perhaps make us better and stronger than we've ever been we see these safety Specialists both as folks who are physically keeping our campuses safe and breaking up fights helping with fire drills all the things that they do now but with this new added lens they are also stewards of emotional safety they will be the folks that are the connectors to the wellness center to the counselors in the middle schools or notice the kid in the hallway that needs some extra noticing and care so that's idea number one here's

039idea number two we've had five deans of students at Berkeley High School in the last four years of my math correct let's also reimagine this position because when because something's not working we have seen incredible individuals try their hardest year after year by way of background for our audience the dean of students position is an administrative position but probably the most Junior admin position and often gets the brunt of the hardest duties I mentioned this um because at the last board meeting um I me I mentioned this at the last board meeting the Safety Committee that the dean chairs has been a very problematic committee this isn't because she isn't dedicated and smart it has everything to do with being green you need to you need a strategic seasoned person in this role keeping it

040as a junior p position isn't working um so I know that the case is hashtag we broke but this might actually be a place if we spend a little bit more money we get a whole lot more um positive culture change in our community lastly and I've got 42 seconds left I want to leave you with um something that's spelled out in the California Constitution um in Article 1 Section 28 that provides that all students and staff of primary elementary junior high and senior high schools have the inalab right to attend campuses that are safe secure and peaceful in our own mission statement we talk about children being safe I'm hoping each one of you are doing everything you can to move the hearts and minds of our mayor and our city council members to

041clear the encampment in front of Berkeley High School which continues to be a dangerous and um yeah just a a really complicated place for students to have to pass thank you so much for what you do thank you as well for your comments this evening uh next we will move on to Union comments do we have any Union comments okay hearing then we will move on to board member comments um first I'd like to thank everyone uh for coming out tonight um I'd like to thank those who took the time to speak to the Board of Education uh regarding the following topics pedestrian and bike access um at Longfellow uh the tennis courts and the invitation for all of us to get out there um in an effort to live a longer life but to

042also prioritize um having tennis courts uh at our in our with within our district um I'd like to thank those who spoke about the up upcoming economic boycott um to support Dei efforts and to sound the alarm on what is happening in our country like to thank those who spoke um in regards to our uh the option opportunity for a digital yearbook uh bringing us to the 21st century uh as well as those who spoke about curriculum needs and shifts and who spoke highlighting the need for the continuation of the amazing bridge program additionally I'd like to thank those who spoke tonight about the 2025 budget protection for our students and the encouragement to protect diversity in our staffing and our programs within BD and uh this the important very important comment uh in support

043for uh Berkeley Technology Academy and identifying all of the amazingness that that school uh has to offer as well as um uh condemning the discouragement of for students to um to enroll into such a great great um Academy additionally I'd like to thank um BP pno as well as gack for their um committee comments this evening I'd like to report out on our last committee meet uh our last policy committee meeting and thank vice president Chang as well as yasmina uh for their collaborative work and uh the policies that an AR our regulations that we are bringing forth this evening and so you'll see on tonight's agenda for information that there is a uh board policy and AR for continuation education um as well as a policy around conflicts of interest and so both of

044these items are on information again and will be brought to the board uh during the next meeting for board approval uh I'd like to take this time to issue a public apology for today's cancellation of the 2x2 committee meeting um and we had to cancel unfortunately due to a um incompatibility of Duties conflict of under the California government code uh which prohibited the participation um of certain members on today's uh 2 by two committee and um I I'd really like to issue this apology especially because right now there are some really hot topic issues uh that we absolutely need to discuss and to collaborate with our city Partners on and so um cancelling the meeting today just um was really unfortunate because we need to take care of those items we need to address those

045items and we as Leaders need to be able to um make comments on those items um and collaborate to help the district move forward however it is the utmost priority that we always remain in compliance and so we needed to cancel the meeting because of that and so uh my apologies the district's apologies the city's apologies uh for that but we will absolutely uh find another time to uh have that meeting and I'd like to thank um Jessica who will work uh with the city to find another time so that uh director shinoski and myself will be available as well as um our uh city council uh Partners additionally um namot I'd like to thank you for the acknowledgement tonight of our officer presence um around a lot of our campuses um it was really

046because the collaborative work uh with ourselves our city Partners as well as um our Berkeley Police Department under the leadership of uh Chief Jennifer Lewis that we were able to make those important shifts especially um in the face of uh safety needs for our community and so it is really great to hear back from the community that that um the work that we've done uh is acknowledged and it's seen um and that their presence is felt and received in a great way um to make sure that all of our students are safe uh in addition to that I'd like to invite all of the community um to a town hall meeting that will be held uh with the city um our city Partners the district um as well as the Berkeley Police uh Department in

047regards to these safety concerns that are ongoing um around our school district um around around our city rather uh but involving our students in our school district um so as of right now it is scheduled for February 26th but there will be more information that will come in regards to time and location so please be on the lookout on our B USD website for that information and finally um happy Black History Month again everyone uh Black History Month is a time to celebrate the many accomplishments of black and African-American people and recognize their Central role in history both here in the United States and throughout the world and while black history hist uh is the or while February rather is the month that we celebrate we know that black history is much much more than

048a once per year event in fact it should yeah clap it up it is it is absolutely more than um a once per year event and here in B USD we strive to honor the contributions of black and African American people through culturally relevant and responsive teaching through learning and through activities in our schools for the benefit of all of our students as well as the education of all of our staff and our faculty and the greater Berkeley Community this black history month I encourage each and every one of you to educate yourselves and immerse yourselves in the richness of black history committing to learning about a new figure or event uh in black history every day of not just this month but really committing to doing that for the rest of the year and

049for the years to come so again I want to thank thank ygb for their wonderful Educational Opportunity this evening uh for all of the things that they're doing in the community and I want to take the time to celebrate all of our strong powerful and excellent black and African-American people in Berkeley Unified School District and the uh city of Berkeley as well as all of our amazing Heroes and shuros who are making black history every single day uh this concludes my comments and I will now turn it over to director shinoski who looks like she is ready I'm I'm ready um first I I want to thank um Vicky and P for coming out um that was the first committee that I was assigned to as a board member and I learned so much on

050that committee and was always so impressed with how much time people spent preparing for the meeting um and really coming just with an amazing amount of expertise and knowledge um so while I'm no longer on that committee as a board member um I'm happy to go back on anytime and I really remain super grateful um for your service Vicki on so that and so many committees and also Nicole and Welden and everybody else on the Pio so thank you so much and thank you again and again to the voters of brookley for making sure that we can do things that some of our neighboring districts are unable to do because California does not fully fund a public education um I'll get off my soap box now and move on um so a common complaint that

051we get as board members and I believe administrators as well um is a lack of communication from the district so we get a lot of complaints from parents and community members who often feel blindsided about decisions that are being made that the district has really engaged in many conversations about and had meetings about um robust meetings so it's always a little shocking to us that there's you know that there's this feeling of being blindsided so um I know it is a challenge and I know that I share with my board colleagues a feeling that we can all do better so with that in that Spirit I'm going to try and do better um by previewing some upcoming meetings as well as reviewing meetings that I've attended in the past during my board comments so coming

052up um we um have a Long Fellow PTA meeting next Tuesday um it's Tuesday evening um I'll be in attendance along with the superintendent um and at that meeting we're hoping to talk a little bit about the workforce housing construction as well as updates on the construction at um Longfellow that are progressing right along um I just got a headshake so maybe I'm not quite right about that but we'll be there um and as a member of the facilities committee I am happy to share what I know about updates um regarding those items um next Thursday February 26 at 5:30 p.m. council member eigor Tru will be holding a community Town Hall um that will be focused on um on issues including the encampment um at Civic Center Park so I encourage folks um to

053attend um and hear more about um the items that President Brown uh discussed with uh associated with safety um there's an audit committee meeting on March 4th at 3:30 p.m. so we'll be looking at um at the district finances which again with looming budget cuts um are are more important than ever and a Citizens Bond oversight committee meeting again on March 4th later that evening at 6 PM um we also I want to make it clear um there was some concern um from Neighbors around mhing field that the district has moved forward on things without a sufficient Community input um the district actually has not moved forward since our last community meeting um but we do want to acknowledge the concerns of neighbors and we are going to be scheduling um another community meeting in

054the coming weeks um and a date will be confirmed in the next couple of days and announced in the next couple of days and finally I want to end with a huge congratulations to our very own president kadia Brown who announced recently that she's expecting her first baby in August so I don't believe in astrology but I do know that Leos are the best so I can't wait to hold your little Leo um and I really wish you a smooth pregnancy as smooth smooth as possible an easy birth and um all the joys and pains of Parenthood um it is truly the greatest privilege of my life to be a mother and so I'm excited you get to have that privilege too so congratulations I'm done now I had to take a second because Jennifer

055is gonna make me cry up here oh all right Educators don't cry we Chang the world so I'm not gonna cry right now and I'll just go ahead and go to Mike Mike are you ready thank you thank you so much um of course congratulations President Brown we were so pleased when we learned and I'm very excited to meet mini mini Kadija um so uh I'm GNA try to keep this short as short as possible thank you everyone for speaking your hearts and Minds as as always um welcome Evelyn Vasquez it's great to have you here um and a superintendent get plenty of rest I find that uh chicken soup helps and Jin sang and I just want to make a um quick comment about current events and I'll get off my Soap Box very

056quickly and this relates to um what some public commenters had added and I'm sure there's a lot of anxiety and concern across the district um and it's related to our agenda discussion item I would like to reflect that ethnic studies is a critical foundation for the American value of fairness and just giving everyone a fair Shake um I strongly believe that as someone who enforces anti-discrimination laws equally that um the concepts behind ethnic studies which ground diversity equity and inclusion are also absolutely critical to American values in fairness and giving everyone a fair Shake I know that at BD we are not going to be rolling back on fairness and G giving everyone a fair shape so let's show them what we mean by Berkeley values thank you director Chang um student director Clark are

057you ready okay okay good evening everybody um and happy Black History Month I'll keep my comment short and sweet but first I'd like to extend a warm warm welcome to student director Evelyn vqu um the new school board representative for bch I'm really excited to work alongside you and see the impact you'll make in this role um I also wanted to take a moment to recognize the incredible student staff and Educators who continue to uplift black voices in our community the performance tonight from um ygb was absolutely beautiful and such a powerful reminder of how art can celebrate culture and Inspire change black is indeed beautiful and powerful and it's Moment Like These that show the importance of honoring black history not just this month but every month and for those looking to further support

058these efforts I encourage you to visit the African-American studies Department website and the Berkley High BSU Instagram page where you'll find information about upcoming fundraisers and events and it's a great way to stay engaged and show your support um that's all I have to say thank you thank you student director Clark student D director vesca are ready okay hello my name is Evan Velasquez I am currently a senior at BTA I feel compelled to bring attention to several important issues that's affecting the daily experience of students teachers and staffs at BTA these concerns Reign from conditions of our physical education facility and heating issues within classrooms to the quality of our food service in the cafeteria and our school over for all funding and security these are critical matters that require immediate attention addressing these

059issues will help ensure a safer more comfortable and productive learning environment for everyone BTA I have more topics I would like to include these would be further discussed at further meetings thank you for having me today and thank you as well for your comments and uh finally director Vasa thanks president Brown um just join my colleagues in congratulating you and want to Echo all their positive sentiments for you the next couple months and um also wanted to thank everyone who came out here for public comment tonight thank our amazing ygb students who came and joined us in celebration of Black History Month and as uh director Chang alluded to our diversity as a district is definitely what makes us stronger and so we are not going to shy away from our values and making sure

060that all our students feel a sense of belonging in our schools I want to thank the community members who came out to speak about the tennis team and who I hopefully watched the last board meeting and heard my comments about that and also um all of The Advocates who called in support of the bridge program it's great to hear from Families how important that program is for their students I also want to thank uh the Longfellow Community who came to talk about pedestrian safety issues at the school um I have updated uh superintendent Ford Morel and principal Mitchell but now that um that was brought up I want to make sure the community knows that I have reached out to Alama County's Transportation Commission to request an updated school safety assessment for Long Fellow the

061last assessment by the county and safe outs to school was done in 2018 so it's we're super overdue for one and um just for folks who don't know what that is safety assessment is where you have folks from the county City staff School District staff parents um safe roots to schools Advocates all kind of walking together near a school observing the traffic patterns and coming up with ways uh to improve pedestrian and bicycle safety near our school and so hopefully we can get that scheduled soon um I know that the superintendent and principal Mitchell should be following up with the county shortly so we can all get on the same page of what needs to be done to address safety at Long Fellow who's going to do it and come up with a concrete plan

062um to make sure that our students feel safe getting to school we received numerous emails expressing safety concerns about the encampment across BHS um and I just want to let the community know that I really do share your sense of urgency for addressing this I spoke to council member Tre group today got to just get an update of kind of where his office was in addressing this and he re he reiterated his support for BHS students and their families that he wants to address the issue promptly and um as my colleague shared there is a meeting coming up on the 26th from 5:30 to 7: um council member trade group wanted me to pass pass along that it could take place either at the North Berkeley Senior Center or BCC to please email his office

063tomorrow to get confirmation of the exact location feel free to reach out to me too and we'll make sure that you know the location as soon as I know it there's also a very important meeting tomorrow for the sanctuary City task force that's being led by mayor isi so just grateful to her and to her staff for inviting representatives from the school district there to make sure that we're working together in protecting our undocumented community members our students don't live in isolation they're part of the broader City and so we want to make sure that whether they're on our campuses or in after school programs that our students and their families are protected so I'll be taking part in that and tomorrow I'll also be at BHS to cheer on our English Learners as they

064prepare for the lpac I know that our um associate superintendent hooken zek will also be there so it'll be exciting to see our English language Learners prepare for this important Milestone I hope to see many folks this weekend on the 22nd at to um to attend this really important event at BCC Caminos aliv it's a college readiness fair for middle schoolers and high schoolers that's taking place at 9:30 at BCC so I'll be there as well as some of our families from Latinos of Berkeley some of our Middle School um rasa clubs and affinity group club members and our high school students will also be there so I'm excited about that and with that I'll conclude my statements H thank you for your comments director vasu um and thank you board members for all of

065your comments at this time we need to approve our consent C calendar um there were no corrections to the consent calendar this evening so is there a motion to approve I move to approve moveed by director shinoski is there a second a second second it by director Chang all those in favor please signify with the sign of I I I opposers have the same sign extensions the eyes haveit the motion carries and the consent calendar is approved this evening uh we have three uh discussion items tonight you all and uh it will be pretty pretty long night but I'm really excited about these um items because they are really really important and uh information that the um that the district needs to hear uh important updates on and so you'll see that we have uh

066our first discussion item tonight which will be on our local control accountability plan um our midyear update so as you all know uh we are governed by um our elcap plan um that every single School District comes up with um and I'd like to say that our lcap plan is probably one of the best um the best around so we'll get to hear an update on that and then followed by that we'll hear um a midyear academic update um data update and just to um make the board and the public aware um that update uh will really fall under goals one and two of the lcap plan and so we'll take some time to kind of um we'll we'll receive each of the presentations separately but understanding that there is going to be some overlapping

067information between the two of them and so you may hear some of the same things twice um and it'll just be another opportunity for you to go ahead and put that information in your brain so at this time I will introduce um our ass assistant superintendent uh Jill hogen dij who will um begin our presentation this evening please welcome her all right good evening Board of Education again ex extending well wishes to our superintendent for speedy recovery I'm also extending well wishes for speedy recovery to miss Lena Sweeney who is joining us online even though she is under the weather um so we will share this uh the the content of this presentation um I I do agree with President Brown we have one of the best lcaps so I just want to acknowledge the

068work of the pack and the daac and staff and our other advisory committees um for all of their inputs last spring to get us to this point um as president Brown said uh this evening our ed services team has prepared three consecutive presentations we really are looking at this as three chapters in our teaching and learning story beginning with this presentation which will highlight an overview of our District's progress through the lens of the California dashboard and the lcap um chapter two will be our midyear update uh presentation this will be a dive specifically into lcap goals 1 and two and our uh formative data in from our Dibbles and star assessments and finally our third pres presentation for this evening will serve as chapter three and it will be a look at our curriculum

069adoption process in other words the materials that we use to support teaching and learning so for chapter one we're going to start with an overview of the California dashboard and um our lcap midyear report um we are Pres ing the elcap midyear report um because this is now required by law that we um on or before February 8 uh 28th present any AA all available midyear outcome data and all available midyear expenditure data so we're looking at midyear um from a point in time of mostly December 31st as a reminder for folks at home and in the audience um our lcap is a three-year plan that tells a story about the services and supports that we are uh we are performing in bosd to meet the needs of our students and our unduplicated students in

070particular our unduplicated students are students who qualify for free and reduced price lunch our English Learners and our foster youth last year as part of that spring development and the initiation of our three-year lcap plan for 2427 we have five lcap goals um and we are working to align those lcap goals with our emerging strategic plan so you see here goal one which is really focused on high quality tier one instruction and goal two which is around the timely interventions and supports for students are in um the bucket or pillar that we are calling academic excellence and Equitable outcomes um the second presentation or chapter two tonight is really going to focus on those two goals chapter three for wellness and belonging in chapter 4 partnership and engagement you'll see um some of those metrics

071in our appendix um and in the other documents that are on the board agenda and we will be presenting uh more information about our actions and measures for goals three and four in a presentation to the board in March goal five is specific to um the Burkley Technology Academy as our only Equity multiplier School in the district um and this just is a slide to provide that visual of alignment between the elap goals that you see there on the left and our strategic plan pillars on the right um again we've talked before about the number of plans and initiatives that we have in the district um across those plans we have something along the lines of um 141 actions and so we're really working uh to align and streamline those things because um it would

072be really challenging for us to track those individually but looking at them in the context of these goals helps to provide um some of that context and and Alignment um the BD strategic plan is still under development and lcap is the continuous in process um so we are here at the midyear point but we are moving into budget development season so you'll be hearing more about elcap budget development um as we move through the spring um and then we will be coming to you in June um with the recommendations for the 5 26 school year um and with that I'm going to turn it over to miss Lena Sweeney who's going to give us a quick overview about the 2024 California dashboard and Lena just let me know when you want to advance the slides

073thank you thank you so much good evening board of directors the USD staff and community members it is an honor and a privilege to present to you tonight as Jill mentioned I am unfortunately quite unwell tonight so I present from this virtual platform I'm also ACC companied here by two team members Colleen renck Bria TSA teacher on special assignment and also here tonight um for our subsequent presentation is Rebecca um also abraa TSA so I'm honored to have them here as well on this slide we turn our attention to our California state dashboard data data on the dashboard is represented by dashboard indicators with red representing the lowest performing performance range moving to Blue representing the highest performance band next slide please the California state dashboard is important for key reasons transparency and accountability and

074a centralized and publicly accessible platform it consolidates important data points and identifies student groups that may need extra support while also highlighting our eight State priorities including basic necessities implementation of State Standards access to courses student achievement student engagement parental involvement student climate and other student outcomes next slide please so what is new or different for 2024 the state's dashboard continues in its development in 2 excuse me in 2024 the Das dashboard added the Science cast assessment in the form of information purpose informational purposes only for now access to the lcap inclusion of ltels or long-term English language Learners updated differentiate differentiated assistance information as well as returning 5x5 charts for the College and Career indicator next slide please okay as you can see here um overall our district has five green the second highest

075level indicators and two yellow indicators on the 2024 State dashboard this is an improvement from 2023 when we had an orange rating on the English language progress indic Ator students making at least a Year's growth and chronic absenteeism indicators next slide okay um for English language arts we made 2.3 points of growth from 2023 overall our Ela indicator would have been blue if our distance from standard were 6.5 points higher so we we we aim for that all right next slide please in mathematics we were 15.8 points above standard overall with a slight decrease from the year prior we would have reached the blue level for this indicator if we had been 16.3 points higher and next slide okay so I'm excited to present this um we are pleased to share a new aspect of

076the California state dashboard and that's our growth level data so I'll try to be brief um there there's a lot here um so the release in January 2025 there was a release of aggregate Lea school and student group growth score data for English language arts and Mathematics using 2022 2023 and 2024 results on the California dashboard California's student growth model methodology uses Statewide California assessment of student Prof performance and progress results from students in grades 4 through eight in both Ela and Mathematics these individual scores are averaged for students across the district at the district excuse me school and student group levels using using either a simple average when there are large enough numbers of students or a weighted average when there are small numbers of students overall and importantly our students made eight points

077above typical growth in English language arts according to this growth um metric next slide okay when analyzing growth data by subgroup we highlight that our ltels long-term term English language Learners are black African-American students and our students with disabilities made below typical growth in ela our other focal groups English language Learners students experiencing homelessness students economically disadvantage in our Hispanic latinx students made typical growth three groups of our students do not have growth data due to their small overall numbers next slide please I am quite pleased to present this data our students overall in mathematics made above typical growth with 15 points over typical next slide please we had no students in mathematics who showed below growth three of our focal focal groups made typical growth while the remainder of our students and students in

078focal groups made above average growth according to this California state dashboard calculation next slide okay so differentiated assistance refers to the state system of providing targeted support and intervention in the case that we have struggled to meet certain criteria currently Berkeley Unified School District is in differentiated assistance under lcap 4 five and eight for our students experiencing homelessness and lcap priority four and five for our students with IEPs our students with disabilities next slide and we'll turn that back over to you Joe all right um so for the lcap midyear update just want to make sure the public knows and the board is aware that we have a lot of information in the appendix so we're going to give some highlights here but there are additional details with lots of different slides in the appendix

079so an overview on our our midyear expenditures um just as a reminder we have about $116 million of lcff funding about 5.86 million of that is our supplemental funding that is to be used to Target a services and supports increased and improved services and supports for our unduplicated students um as of December 31st we are about halfway through the spending and you see here an overview of the breakdown of that spending by each goal um so overall we have spent about $6.5 million of the $ 15.5 million called out on actions on the lcap which is about at the halfway point um pretty much to be expected most of the expenditures um that we've articulated on the lcap involve Staffing so we're at the halfway point we've paid out half of the salary um so

080we are on track for our expenditures for this school year um as far as the midyear metrics um we um had introduced as part of our spring um presentations to the board and our 2425 lcap rollout um a new metrics document so that for each of our individual measures we have an appendix in the lcap that also includes all of our focal groups remember we've got the 3x5 goal for this year so what you will see in an attachment um to this board agenda item and was shared with the board um the turquoise column in our metrics document has been updated with all available midyear data in some cases as is true for the Casp data here these are data from the spring administration of the Casp assessment other data points are uh more recent

081like the star and dibles winter assessment um so those have all been updated um what you'll find in the appendix is a breakdown of the overall metrics um for each of um the goal areas in the lcap um and this is an example here of goal one okay and then for next steps um we have launched the annual planning survey as of about 3:00 today 590 participants have completed that survey last year we had 1,200 so we are at the halfway halfway point of meeting um last year's numbers um we are conducting our pack meetings they will be collecting information from ssc's and L and elac at their sites um we are going to work to update the lcap plan based on these inputs and we'll be gathering recommendations from both Pac and daac that

082will be presented to the board we will continue to monitor implementation of the budget um and we are having ongoing meetings with the Alama County Office of Education and most specifically they will be working directly with us um related to analyzing um additional data toward that differentiation uh differentiated assistance um subgroups um we will uh have tonight tonight a data presentation um to the board on elcap goals one and two and in March we'll Circle back with goals uh three and four and key dates on lcap development we will have the public meeting on June 4th and look for approval of the 2526 lcap on June 18th um this is just a budget time and lcap timeline for folks uh to reference and then finally since we do have members of the audience here um

083this is the link to the annual uh survey so we can leave this slide up as we take questions from the board um Board of Education if the majority of your questions are around um academic data which I'm sure they are because I know us do we want to receive the mid your academic data update and then ask questions then what is your pleasure sure go right ahead will you be talking about The Chronic absenteeism later or should I ask about that now you can ask about that now but we will be coming back to the board with a presentation on elap goal three and four and we'll be looking more closely at The Chronic absenteeism suspension data then then I can hold it and that's fine we can wait unless you want to ask

084your question now about um chronic absenteeism because then that could also help shape uh the information that they provide and then I'm also going to look to Liz I think Dr shell was online has he been promoted just in case he might have some of the details super well maybe I'll just change it to a comment so um I know that chronic absenteeism is one of our areas um where we need growth and I also know that our um attendance rate is something around 94% now much lower than it was prior to covid and that every 1% in attendance um translates to about a million dollar into our general fund so um I would really like to know what kind of concrete steps we're taking um to really look at attendance proactively one as sort

085of our bottom line it really impacts our bottom line and two because we know that kids that are not going to school are not um as successful so that's my comment maybe for next time thanks all right at this time we will uh receive our midyear academic data update uh which is just pretty much a continuation um of this presentation and so at the uh culmination at the end of that presentation then I'm sure we will have more um data questions and so we are ready to receive it now all right thank you okay we've got director alback will be coming and again uh we've got Lena Sweeney online alongside of Miss Colleen and Miss Rebecca who is here in the audience welcome okay oh Liz we need to switch up the presentations although I

086do like the QR code but we can get started while she's talking because we always start with our mission and we don't need the slide to say that by heart um as we come into this space we want to remind ourselves that our mission in BSD is to enable and Inspire our diverse student body to achieve academic excellence and make positive contributions to the world um and that academic Excellence is important and totally aligned to elap goals one and two um and so for tonight's presentation um we are going to be reviewing highlights uh of BD's midyear data by grade span and we are doing things a little bit differently tonight because we're going to be highlighting some instructional strategies and systemic shifts that we have made in our practice based on our bosd theory

087of improvement and change some of the data sets that we're going to be looking at tonight um are our reading Dibbles and star data for students in grades K through 10 and our math data for students in grades 2 through 10 so again um for me for the board and members of the audience um we have all of our data sets are in the appendix but what we're doing for tonight's presentation is pulling some samples related to some of the Strategic actions that we have been taking as a district that's the lcap one uh Boe midyear it's the one it's it should be in your chat but I'll just describe the data sets so we have our overall data sets um which is by grade span clustered by grade span and then we also have

088data sets by ethnicity and by program um so so related to the previous presentation we are um honing in on goal elcap goals one and two which are directly related to our academic excellence and Equitable outcomes for all pillar in our strategic plan we do want to remind the board and our audience that we are operating um from a framework um these uh items on the left are key insights for organizational Excellence we know that ideal results require ideal behaviors um and in that context um we are working on the delivery of our tier one instruction um and some of the actions that we have around aligned PD and coaching which has been a significant investment on the part of our district and on the part of our teachers our school-based Specialists and our site

089leaders um and then we are building we are building muscles as you heard in our literacy action plan report from our monitor Mr George Ellis um we have been um building our routines around observation and feedback um in order to do this work purpose and system Drive behavior um we need to be a data informed system and we have been working to articulate an mtss framework and mindsets um inform form behaviors and that is our work around continuous Improvement um our continuous Improvement focuses on three questions so as we do our work in the classroom at a school site and in the district we are really asking ourselves what is it that we're trying to improve what are the changes or actions that we might make and why and then how do we know that

090change LED to Improvement and when we are looking at the how do we know that change LED to Improvement we're looking at both the outcome measures um that we see in our student data and as a reminder we've got a 3x5 goal for this school year or through the course of our threeyear lcap 3% growth annually for all students with an accelerated growth Target of 5% for our focal student groups but we're also looking at um how are we looking um how are we measuring and understanding the implementation data so if we're providing PD do we know that those actions are translating into the classroom so we're going to be talking about um some of those actions in this presentation today so with that I'm going to turn it we're going to start with El

091English language arts and director albeck is going to give us an overview about some of those actions thank you uh good evening Board of Education so we'll start with English language arts I'm happy to be here so at the heart of our work in English language arts is our instructional Vision that literacy is a fundamental right human right and empowers individuals to engage meaningfully in Civic life challenge inequities and shape their own Destinies we commit all uh to providing a rigorous research aligned literacy instruction to all grades so that all students can build their own literacy skills to make positive contributions to the world that part that literacy vision is newly Minted as part of our curriculum adoption committee which we'll be hearing a little bit about later um but as we go about examining

092our midyear literacy data we see growth across grade spans with increases in Reading proficiency among many student groups however our data also tells us that not all students are progressing at the same rate and we must continue to refine our instructional approaches to close these persistent gaps that we continue to see um so building off of what we shared with you all in October um our Focus areas and our key strategies for this year have remained the same so this is an opportunity to provide you a reminder of what those key strategies are and also an update on what has happened between October and now in February so this year we have anchored our literacy improvement work around three key strategies first we are focused on building the capacity of our Educators uh literacy instruction

093is complex and effective teaching requires continuous learning and refinements to support this we have invested in professional development coaching and Collaborative Learning structures that help Educators Implement research-based practices with consistency and Fidelity so the picture on the Le hand side um whether we see structured literacy training for instructional Assistance or coaching Cycles with site-based literacy leaders we are ensuring that every adult working with students has the knowledge and tools to accelerate literacy growth that goes beyond just our classroom teachers uh that includes our par professionals and other Educators that work with our students daily ensuring that they are also using their research back and evidence proven strategies that we are looking to see in our classrooms um second we have strengthened our assessment and progress monitoring infrastructure you all have heard a lot about this

094you've heard a lot about educ climber and um progress monitoring and uh the slide that you see in the middle it should be um fairly relevant reminder is our new diagnostic plan so this is uh showing that data is a powerful tool in literacy instruction to help us understand where students are what they need and how to best support them this year we have refined our district districtwide literacy diagnostic plan ensuring that dibles and star assessments are used consistently not just uh three times a year but also to monitor progress regularly in two to three week in increments to inform instruction and also to guide intervention in small group instruction we recognize that there are students in our classrooms that have gaps and if we're not providing that small group instruction in tier one in

095the general education classroom environment then we're relying on our students to be intervened to efficiency which we know has a significant amount of resources and there's an inclusion um and I would say um um belonging element that that um presents its challenges um and finally our last uh Focus area for literacy this year is attending to curriculum resources to ensure that all students have access to high quality rigorous and engaging literacy instruction the picture on the right you see is a lab classroom which we'll talk a little bit later about our our our curriculum adoption but as we talk about this in our next presentation much progress has been made around our K5 language arts adoption and we look very forward to bringing a curriculum recommendation to you all in early spring thank you director

096albec so this slide highlights the role of progress monitoring as an integral aspect of continuous Improvement and continuous learning Cycles as Berkeley moves to accelerating growth by 3% for all students and 5% for Target populations teachers and staff at tiers one tiers two and tier three have worked on setting clear goals and administering systematic assessments we highlight here in this presentation the star assessment as well as the Dibbles oral reading fluency measure as a progress monitoring tool to assess phonological awareness fluency and comprehension next slide please star reading grade fall to winter progress this data represents our students overall in grades 6 through eight reflecting a match cohort scores on the star reading screener assessment from Fall 2024 to Winter 2025 we see an increase in our students at Benchmark and a slight decrease in

097our students at the Urgent intervention levels we highlight here both our progress in decreasing the number of students in in need of urgent intervention and we call out and name simultaneously the work that remains for our students in the high percentage of our children who continue to require urgent intervention based on this metric next slide please so I'm I'm very excited to be able to present and highlight some of the work that our teachers are doing we move here to looking at some of the work happening with regular assessment and progress monitoring looking at our students overall as related to our 3x5 Target but here specifically highlighting our students with disabilities at the sixth through 8th grade level our practitioner highlighted here Susanna Bell is is a tier three interventionist in an interview I conducted

098with her Susanna reflected that the systematic use of Dibbles has impacted her work in the way she uses consistent data to adjust instruction in response to the dibble's oral reading fluency measure and this enables her to provide valid And Timely feedback to her students next slide so here connected this slide provides an example of what our edge of climber internal data tool looks like based on progress monitoring in edge of climber using oral reading fluency probes this slide here depicts a student with an iep's benchmark scores as represented in the small little black squares as well as their progress monitoring data Trend which is represented each prog ress monitoring probe is represented by um a separate blue um Circle and I'm happy to talk more about it at their's questions the orange dots represent student

099accuracy so this is actually a screenshot of a student on Susanna Bell's case load um demonstrating the work that she's doing with progress monitoring so very pleased to be able to present that um next slide please okay so we now move to highlight our elementary intervention work and progress on the fall to winter star grades three through five star as as many or most of you may know is a screener used in grades now grades three through 10th grade and we'll talk a little more about that later overall we had a slight increase in the number of students who scored in proficient bands and when viewing are reading three 3rd through five excuse me thir 3rd through 5ifth grade fall to winter progress by race and ethnicity grounding in our 3x5 Target we note the

100decrease for our black African-American and Hispanic laex students in need of urgent intervention while simultaneously recognize the in unfinished learning we see represented next slide please moving here we highlight matilde a tier 2 interventionist A literacy interventionist at Rosa Parks Elementary School our tier 2 literacy specialist coaches and interventionists differentiate their instruction to intervene more effectively next slide please so this slide depicts a progress mon monitoring chart for one of our students also representing a student in a focal group in one of matilde's literacy groups again we see here the internal use of Ed climber as part of our mtss implementation and an example of a visual that practitioners use to determine the efficacy of their intervention in order to make database decisions okay next slide so this slide demonstrates our star reading score star

101is and I think we highlight this in a few more slides but um this is the first year that we have implemented the star assessment at grades 9 and 10 um holistically so this demonstrates our overall um progress from fall to winter on the star reading test as well as by program so moving here from 9th to 10th grade overall and by program we we focus on the tier three intervention work at the high school level Rachel a special education teacher at Berkeley High School is using Orton Gillingham structured literacy intervention to support literacy as represented in this photo for for all of our students including our focal students so we're really excited about this progress so we're going to shift gears and start talking about math one of my favorites I love them all

102but particularly U love math so in BSD you recognize that math is more than just numbers and computation as any good math teacher would say uh it's about building thinkers problem solvers and confident Learners uh as we review our mid-year math data we see positive momentum and increases in profic rates across grade spans however similar to ELA we also recognize that some student groups continue to face persistent challenges highlighting the need for comprehensive and aligned approach to instruction and Intervention which I feel very positively about that we're making those headways as it relates to math next slide please so returning to the three uh change actions that we are focusing on this year that we're again shared with you in October and providing updates on those um so to ensure that all students receive a

103high quality math education that they deserve we have focused this year on these three areas of improvement first as a reminder we launched the meeting of math Minds M cubed for those of you that M Savvy a districtwide math initiative that brings together teachers families and administrators every single month to shape our instructional priorities through this work we are tapping into the expertise of our district but also tapping into expertise that goes beyond our district and into our community so on the picture on the left you see the Silicon Valley ma math initiative coming to work with us uh as it relates to the new California math framework and doing some professional learning around that um this partnership is helping us clear establish a Clear Vision for math instruction that is both rigorous and Equitable

104that we look forward to Bringing to you all at the end of this school year uh second we have strengthened our collaboration and professional learning for elementary teachers across all Bud Elementary Schools we have implemented structured site-based math professional development designed to build teacher capacity and improve instruction these sessions provide teachers with tools and strategies they need to Foster deep mathematical understanding among students ensuring that foundational skills are strong and enduring and I think the key component here that stands out for me is this H is happening across all 11 elementary schools whereas previously math PD was happening in different silos depending on a school leader I would say expertise and U personal initiative uh the finally we have focused on align in our tier one instruction with targeted interventions to ensuring that all students

105receive the support that they need uh this year we introduced Math 180 at the secondary level as a systematic Intervention Program that has helped us better address gaps in student learning providing structured data informed support to those who need it the most um last thing that I would say is that these efforts are more more than just about raising test scores uh they're about building a culture of mathematical confidence and success for all of our BD students thank you director so on this slide we we observe our third through fifth grade mathematics fall to winter progress following our 3x5 Target we we observe a 3% increase from fall to winter although lower proficiency rates for focal groups signal continual need for targeted instruction next slide please here we highlight Tracy eagleheart at the tier one

106level there's an emphasis on tier one interventions Universal assessments and progress monitoring here we highlight Tracy Eagle Hart's Elementary tier one interventions in math she emphasizes the power of using assessments for determining student need for re-engagement and reteaching at the tier one level importantly thank you on this slide we observe our math our star math overall fall to winter scores adjacent to our slide representing our racial and ethnic groups we see a slight increase from fall and most subgroups showed progress as well although again Lower proficiency rates signal a continued need for targeted instruction and accelerated learning here we emphasize at the middle school level the work being done at the 6 through eight tier one level as well as the tier 2 level in mathematics we highlight here miss Juliana Jones she shares that

107her work using the Intervention Program Math 180 that director albec referenced importantly she shares that having these systems aligned with curriculum is incredibly exciting in an interview with her thank you so again here we lift up the regular assessments and continuity now in VD using the star assessment in grades 2 through 10 creating longitudinal data analysis opportunities as well as aligning with the foundational as aspect of mtss through regular and aligned assessments and assessment Cycles right and as we round out um this presentation we hope that what you have seen through this context is that we're really trying to connect the academic results that we're seeing with some of the actions and significant shifts that we've been making to um to really strengthen our instructional system whether that's through profession development whether that's through um

108aligned coaching and feedback whether that's um time with our uh site based uh intervention Specialists um how we're looking at the curriculum that we're implementing delivering and thinking about adopting um these are all um components of developing a strong instructional system so as we head into the remainder of this year and look ahead to next year we are going to be bringing K5 uh curriculum adoption recommendation specifically for our uh literacy uh uh curriculum um that will come to the board there you see the key dates on the right hand side at the uh March 19th board meeting um we will continue the work of the math initiative in M3 um and we'll be drafting an instructional framework in districtwide vision for mathematics which will situate us for looking at math curriculum um in the

109next school year we will continue our focus on improving our coaching and feedback Cycles we have been conducting instructional rounds with principles and that will continue um and we are looking at um some shifts for our literacy coaches moving from uh spending a a large amount of their time on Intervention into more coaching and feedback particularly as we're looking at implementing a new curriculum in the elementary schools next year we will continue to build our assessment and progress monitoring routines um and you should look forward uh to a March board meeting update on goals El Cup goals three and four wellness and belonging parent engagement um when we turn our attention to next month and with that we'll take any questions thank you all very much uh for your presentations um I have lots of

110questions going to be gracious I'll let my board colleagues um go first and uh director shinoski I see your hand director vasudev I think I saw your hand as well so we'll go director vasudev then director shinoski um director Chang and then myself yeah I just want to say thank you for the presentation it was really informative just to take a little bit of a deep dive into the math actions and I was great to see the level of professional development that's happening in the TK to 5 age range thank you for for um going over that I just had a question about the middle school just like professional development at the middle school level um it's you know one of the things that stood out to me to think was really good is to

111see the number of St of high number of students that are in the like above Benchmark percentages which is great so um congratulations to our staff for that um and the amount of students at the third to fifth grade level that are showing uh Proficiency in the winter star math assessment my question was about the Middle School level and just kind of how professional development happens across all three middle schools and if we're seeing and know look at Berkeley High we have there's a lot of talk in the community about the advanced math program so without uh entering too deeply into that but if we're seeing a comparable percentage of students in the kind of you know Advanced or above Benchmark range entering from all three middle schools at the ninth grade level I'm just

112curious how the data kind of breaks down by middle school and terms of differentiation and how we're seeing um the percentag of students at above Benchmark I could get that data later too are you asking specifically about the Benchmark data from middle school moving into advanced placement numbers I'll have to get for you later yeah we could get them later on or just if we see that the numbers kind of break down in a comparable way the number of students that are above Benchmark from all three middle schools when they enter nth grade at Berkeley High so we can we can get you those numbers I think it's important to know that the board is making updates on um look at the as meus here there's a there's a policy coming about the assessments and

113what that will look like for placement in the ninth grade but we can we can take a look at that comparison from I think we're asking for 8th grade Benchmark data into ninth grade math so it' be last year's data right last year's data into nth grade advanced math I understood yeah so that would be looking yeah so spring 2023 into this year yeah thank you we'll get it yeah director schow okay I have one comment and three questions um my comment is I really loved the slide that you had early on about the continuous Improvement Loop um I think especially as we go into these budget cuts really understanding what changes are having a true impact on our students is so important so thank you for that um so we keep talking about Edge

114climber and I got a little tutorial on edge of climber a year or two ago um and thought it was great but it was in its very baby steps of being used and so we talk about it from time to time but we haven't dug into that data much in this space and I'm just maybe it's we're not we're still not we're still building it out I know that there was a lot of work that had to be done there so I'm just wondering how we're using educ climber data is it pretty robust you know and being used by Educators to make decisions are we using it to make decisions um that's that's my first question I have two others but they're totally different yeah I I think I I can start um educ Climer

115is built out and um practitioners at all different levels of the tiers as well as leaders are using Edge of climber systematically um we have been going out as a team I can speak specifically for for the Brea team we go out to all different groups in in Cycles knowing that when people are learning new systems they require multiple opportunities to know and practice those systems so um we are still working through encouraging even more use of edge climber but we've we've seen um a very positive shift in using Edge climber at all different levels I think it's important to know that edge climber isn't intended to be a public facing Dash dashboard so we gave you a couple of snapshots in today's presentation for how we are using that educ or how um some

116of our site based specialists in particular are using that data um you do actually see some of the data because we pull in Star and into Edge climber um we are using that data to make decisions about students who need more frequent progress monitoring so while we are sharing um our screening data which we administer three times a year students who are scoring below Benchmark are being administered the ORF in the case of reading um uh at least three times but could also be weekly depending on the level of intervention and so that information then helps our teachers or our literacy coach es or RTI tsas be able to make decisions about whether or not the instructional delivery is meeting with the results that we want and what shifts might need to happen I wonder

117if though we're also using like you know we got some calls for bridge at in public comment today right um expanding the offerings of bridge because people are on weight list but we should through educ climber have some data about outcomes for kids that are participating in those types of programs but those are not like the interventions that we talk about like a tier one tier 2 tier three intervention so most of the data that we have on some of those extra programs are anecdotal you know I mean we get data but it's not it's not directly tied to the kinds of metrics we're looking at here so I just that's what I'm thinking about like is there some way and maybe we can come back to it later as I think about it more

118and flush it out a little bit more but I'm just thinking we do have all these programs in addition to our classroom interventions and I we should have some kind of way to see how effective those programs are so that we can invest in the effective programs right invest more and expand them as we're often called to do okay um to intervention I learned a couple years ago that um kids that get into you know tier 2 and tier three interventions often spend their academic careers sort of stuck in those tier 2 and tier three interventions um and don't always make it you know sort of back into the tier one um and we see the aggregated data so we can sort of see overall how many students are above Benchmark at Benchmark and so

119on but do we have data about you know how effective our tier two interventions are at moving students back into tier one instruction is that something that we have or um have we looked at that at all because it seems like that would give us some sense of how effective those interventions are Y at what we want um that is information I mean so once we can tag toward the intervention so what I will say is there's been there's been an investment in our site based specialists in particular for the Orton Gillingham training which is a tier 2 intervention we can now tag students who are in OG G but there are a number of we're still on a a learning curve to some extent because teachers are learning the intervention learning how to input

120data learning how to progress monitor all at the same time so one of the things that we have been looking at this year are that four students who've been tagged for Orton Gillingham how many times have they been progress monitored right because what we're looking for is at least three or at least every three weeks or Le or or more am I saying that right so if you're a higher intensive student that that's doing weekly but at at least every three weeks so do we see that happening right so that gets back to Ideal results require ideal behaviors right so we need to know are we have we trained people to implement the Orton Gillingham intervention are they entering that data so it could be that they're progress monitoring but then that data isn't enter

121entered and then how are they using that data so there are n there are like three different types of learning curves that we're on now to be able to put that together so it's probably too early to say yes this works and knows that works because we're trying to calibrate on an understanding of of how often what's that expectation and then what's our responsibility you heard George Ellis articulate this in his monitoring report what's our responsibility as District staff to implement those progress Che checks and then follow up if we're not seeing those things that are happening so there's been a lot of work that that this team has done members of Chris's team member of Len uh I'm looking at Lena and Colleen and and Rebecca here um to and our Special Education team

122to to train all of our site based folks on this progress monitoring and on Orton Gillingham so we can connect those dots thank you but but it's something that's sort of in the in the yeah I do appreciate that there's been a lot of work and I want to thank all of you here and all of the Educators that have I mean it's been a huge shift obviously lastly um my last question is about the math data especially for the African-American middle schoolers so I'll never forget last spring when we saw some of the data for outcomes and it was something like 15% of African-American seventh graders were proficient in math and when I look at the numbers here it's something it's almost 40% it looked to me and so I'm wondering what happened like

123that is a phenomenal shift is my memory wrong or do we I mean you know it's still not enough but I think you know reading and reading and arithmetic those are really our most important yeah so what what happened there because that just blew me away it blew me away last year in a bad way and such a big shift is am I don't know if you're because you're are you comparing star to star or are you comparing star to Casp oh I'm comparing star to Casp yeah okay that's why question answered thanks I hope that that data also um improves so dramatically and that I can be so happy um when we see that a girl can be optimistic thank you also just to quickly add in reference to to your previous question um

124we do H um tag our special programs including Bridge within educ climbers so we are able to to pull different groups for for for different types of data analysis just wanted to add that no we have it I just don't know if we're using it uh yeah thank you so much um thank you for the comprehensive review and everybody's hard work here um as other board members have noted we really appreciate appreciate the efforts towards a um constructive outcome of improvement and effectuating our mission um uh I really appreciate in your presentation the um the slides with the getting to know the interventionists and the work that they do that's obviously a critical position they form they they can be very important change makers inside of the district um in that sense my question is

125geared towards that um we're talking about next steps um math as we all have have uh know and have discussed here is an area where there can be um uh more improvements as in particular pivoting from um Middle School into high school um I see that with next steps we have draft instructional framework and a districtwide vision for mathematics which is very exciting this is something that's been um proling and been um uh been asked for some time by members of the public um how does the work of folks like um Juliana Jones um who uh in the secondary context are um working on uh as an interventionist this issue of managing this balance and the responsiveness between differentiation and intervention how does that type of um on the ground work um feed into the

126coming um instructional framework and district-wide vision for mathematics um thank you director Chang so if I understand your question it's really connecting the boots on the ground um every day in the classroom and then making sure that those lived experiences um translate into what we say is our vision and framework for math that's a great way to is that accurate yes okay so um as part of our mcubed group we are fortunate to have 17 Educators so we have 11 Elementary Math teachers we have um three Middle School Math teachers and then we have several um high school and independent school math Educators so these are folks that are having these experiences daily some of them also are intervention uh teachers so their voices are front and center and at the table as we go

127about this process of creating this vision and framework great thank you so they're doing a lot of committee engagement with with you uh as you're Drafting and preparing this framework and I look forward to seeing uh some of the presentations on that framework absolutely thanks all right now on to me um so first and foremost I do W to um highlight that overall our data as a district is something that we we should be proud of I'll get to our subgroup data in a second but um our overall data looks really really good um as a district and I'm talking about both our cast data um as well as our um our star data and what I always look for when I'm looking for data is um not just how many students we have in

128the blue but how many students are increasing um and that is that's incredibly important um and when we look at it from a perspective on Casp it's really year after year and then for Star as you all already know and mentioned um it's from Winter to to spring or summer um a winter to Spring and or fall to you know what I'm saying and I think it's so important uh that we can see continuous growth in our students and that's what we we always look for and I know um that we have a lot to be proud of um in terms of our ongoing um literacy efforts as well as our math efforts and so I want to take just a moment to um to highlight that now um as it relates to um our

129star reading so in the assessment data for grades 6 through 8 um there was a you know a small decrease in our students who required urgent intervention on the STAR testing um and we look for the increase of students who are moving to um the yellow to the green and to the blue but we also highlight and identify the decrease of students who are in the red and that's you know phenomenal and I'm sure as you mentioned director albec earlier um that's because of the work of our ongoing diagnostic um assessments or ongoing assessments throughout the year um and you know which we know is really crucial for our students um and because of stronger tier one instruction you all know I'm always up here I'm like okay all this is great but what's happening

130for first instruction in the classroom um and how are we improving first instruction and so um I'm happy to hear that but I am interested to know know a little bit more about our students who are on the cusp so our students who star identifies um as our intervention on or on watch students um those students are in the you know our students who are in the yellow really just about to get to the green um and with more I'm s I'm short intervention support can get all the way uh to the blue as we have you know the greatest expectations for our students but I think those are students who we we spend a lot of time talking about students in the red but our yellow students are really our students um who are

131just right just right there and I'm wondering um I'm wondering what can be done in terms of districtwide um uh entire District approach to intervention so I think it was really great to hear um all of the stories um from our interventionists throughout the district and all of the wonderful things um that they are doing to really make the difference at the school sites that they're serving but what are we doing collectively I think that um you know we always know that education is not a one-sized fits-all approach and so I I definitely want to identify and highlight that and I think that there is also much to say about what we do collectively as a a district that trickles down um to everyone and so I'd like to know what your thoughts are around

132that what your plans are and then I have like four more questions so can we start there um I think I mean just on a big picture and all see if my team has other things that they want to add is a lot of what we shared in the context of the theory of improvement so what are we doing as a district as a district we have invested heavily in shared professional development um we had all of our teachers in grades K through 12 last year complete the core reading training um and so that helps with alignment on specific practices and then expectations about what we would want with the expectations about what we need to be seeing in daily reading instruction so for example daily phonics should be happening um that gets connected to

133the observation and feedback so how do we know that that's happening and what are our systems and routines for making sure that the observation and feedback are happening um what are else are we doing as a district as a district we have moved to an aligned assessment system through star and Dibbles we have established uh expectations and routines and support you heard uh Lena talk about the Brea team going out to individual School sites to help support with that assessment to ensure that we're doing that and we're now moving to a space where we're looking at regular data Cycles and moving into more strategic progress monitoring so I think what you saw and what I really appreciated about each individual teacher story is um you know there were some mindset shifts that had to happen

134not with these necessarily with these particular teachers but in terms of like how do we understand the importance of that shared assessment and then how that's connected to practices we are now able to have more aligned conversations with our teachers and our school leaders because we have a shared uh vocabulary and expectation around what we were we would expect to see in literacy um and our work with math is is moving in that direction too starting with that Vision so I don't know if you all have other things you want to add that can can I ask can I just get a little bit more specific so um you know fully aware and you all just shared um your efforts around professional development or your efforts around assessment which I you know highlighted earlier in

135my comments but I think what I'm really looking to hear is a plan of action that says at every School site we are doing X Y and Z right so professional development is great because it allows everyone to be trained and get the same amount of information but training and implementation looks different um from site to site and so if my future kid is going to one school I'll know that they'll get this specific type of intervention um I'll know that they'll have have interventionists who have all been trained and are all using the same language and are all using the same assessment but what does that look like in day-to-day practice at every single School site does does my question make sense to you I'm asking more so not about training and not about

136assessments but what it actually looks like like in practice what do do do small s small group um and heterogeneous or homogeneous groups look like at every single School site what does um building academic vocabulary for students look like at every single School site and how are we aligning it so that it all looks the same for every single Stu every all looks the same at every single School site I know that we give students you know what they need to succeed but I'm what I'm hearing from the community is the need for alignment at every single School site like one student may get something at Washington for example and it may look completely different at Rosa Parks so that's that's what I'm asking um and if we don't have a plan yet then my

137direction is how how do we work towards one um excellent question I appreciate it because I believe that one of the biggest Equity gaps in all districts but um Berkeley as well is the variance in uh the quality of Education that students potentially get from school to school from teacher to teacher and it is our hope especially with a curriculum instruction Department to have stronger alignment and coherence across our school district so I do believe in the last you know few years we're getting closer to that um and um we also believe that you know each of our teachers responds to the students sit before them and not all the students are the same um but with that said I do I I think we are operating with within this framework of learn it expect

138it support it and then uh monitor it and what I would say that this looks like a very concrete example um director Brown is we've been focusing a lot of time on foundational skills with literacy um what does phonics instruction look like um so we spent you know the core reading Academy shifting and balance and then this year I'm really focusing on what that early phonics uh and literacy instruction should look like so that's the learn it right so to your to that point around the professional learning so on and so forth but then the next part that I think potentially is an opportunity is what does it what does it look like to expect it right what do what do our site leaders need to be doing and what do they need to know

139and how do they need to be able to engage with the teachers um on their campus to um have those conversations when they go into a class and they do observe um both the positive like who I really appreciated the brisk pace in the phonic sequence um but I was noticing that the schah sound was coming up in in your as you were uh teaching it as well so like having those conversations so that the expectation is being reinforced not only by seat leaders but we have we have the privilege of having literacy coaches right um and then to support it like we're not going to get it right every single time but we we we can expect something and then we can support and I feel like if we had that framework for all

140of our disciplines for all of our you know what we expect the xyz's like you said we'll get closer to that alignment and coherence that I truly do believe and I think our district beliefs is is needed um and um we also respect the art of of the teaching of the classroom as well I don't know if that helps and I I appreciate your response because you know we want to respect um not just teacher but interventionist autonomy I think that that's really really important and I also think it's important that we have alignment and that um when we talk about um Equity we also have to like not just talk about Equity but talk about equality too and how things can look equal but still provide look equal at each School site but still

141provide students with a little bit extra of what they they may need so thank you for your resp um and I think this answers your question um well to start it's honored to be sitting in front of you tonight for the first time um I just wanted to add that we didn't didn't choose these highlighted Educators because they're outliers um necessarily we chose them because we thought they were representing what is happening at all of the school sites and um my conversation with um Miss Jones with Juliana Jones um was was very interesting because she talked about having a districtwide um math intervention curriculum at middle school for the first time and that they have had intervention classes before but it was kind of at the whim of the teacher to develop the curriculum and

142um and we and so if you have a good teacher you know that year um um or someone with more expertise around intervention you know it's it's not going to be equal um but she said um she really enjoyed going to the other middle schools and talking with the other um math intervie vention teachers kind of for the first time around a shared um curriculum beautiful thank you for that response because you actually just answered two of my other questions one around curriculum and then one around uh shared practices with our school so thank you for doing that so now I just have one question um left I want to ask about um uh miss swe when you were talking um and we were looking at the star assessment data for grades 3 through five

143um you highlighted that unfinished learning um for our black and African-American students as well as our latinx um students um still need it to happen and I think the same can be said of course about math when we look at our math data um and so I'm wondering and this is a question for um everyone of course but I'm wondering um what are we doing from a culturally relevant approach um to address this unfinished learning and I'm asking this question because I've looked at this AC I've sat on this Das for almost 7even years right and I've looked at this academic Gap presented by data and it's been the same year after year after year after year I will say that this year it is actually starting to look a a little bit better so

144I'm happy about that but um the gaps are significant right and so um I think we continue to say like Target and instruction targeted instruction targeted instruction but as we move towards budget conversation it's important to know like what is working and where the gaps are so that we can do our work on the dice and make Rec and make uh Financial recommendations um to either support what is working or to help fill the gaps so I know that on the elementary level um that our partners who are working uh with African-American success framework are providing um some uh some coaching for our interventionist on the elementary level and I'm really excited excited about that I've been hearing from community members that that is working um and working well so then that's something that we

145need to continue to support but what more needs to be done um especially with a culturally uh responsive lens so following that I I do want to highlight that um with I have the privilege of working with response to intervention interventionists um at the elementary level as well as the Middle School level and um we've been able this this Academic Year to um partner with our African-American success framework in providing our interventionists with a um six-part series on providing response to intervention techniques and approaches that are culturally and linguistically responsive rigorous and and relevant so that work um you know it's immense work and um I just wanted to point to one one um one intervention that we're we are using right now with our interventionist or One support um thank you for that response

146Miss Sweeny I think we're talking about the same thing I just mentioned but um it's good to know that they also are having the opportunity to work with our Middle School um division as well because that's where we're seeing um a lot of the areas of need um and so so thank you so much for taking the time to re to respond to that um my question uh stands what's happening at the high school and um additionally like what more what are what are additional needs what what can we um support what do we need to fund what do we need to do because um we've been in this crisis for a long time and um we want to get out of it and we want to help our students we want to support our

147students um as well as support Educators and so what are your recommendations um for us so that we can make um good fiary decisions to help you know support those needs and those gaps I mean I think you actually said it in one of your earlier comments like one of the foundational things that we can do is have a strong tier one and tier one have strong tier one instruction which would include those tier one materials um the most significant investment that we are going to make as a district uh this year in particular and generally would be around our elementary curriculum I think the team has done a lot of work particularly as we were looking at materials to adopt to ensure that we were meeting um our responsibility as teachers and Educators and

148students who are in a diverse community that those materials reflected um our student population which is one of the reason reasons why we're piloting the fish tank materials um the the National Review that was conducted um out of the carry uh division in the University of Minnesota um most of those curriculums scored pretty low on the cultural relevancy component of those materials um fish tank was high was was higher and you know bosd sort of what supported the review of those materials based on um information and feedback that we were getting from our core partners and then some of our sister School District so I do think that that is going to be a an one of the other moves that we're going to be making and a pretty significant investment that we're going to

149ask you to vote on and and beyond that um looking forward to our next presentation in a few minutes you're going to be hearing more specifically around our ethnic studies work and I I feel like how that brings a lot of the cultural cultural and listic responsib is contextualized for the Berkeley context to our students which um builds that engagement that that that um embodiment of what what our Berkeley values are so but I think like for your question it's a little bit deeper like there's the there's the curriculum but it's also the instruction and what are those like instructional strategies that are cultural and responsiveness Beyond what is being taught and I think we we have some work to do around that um so let us get back to you on further plan I'll

150let you I'll let you get back to me um on that um and I want so I think you hit the nail right on the head like it it absolutely is curriculum it's absolutely um instruction and still it is intervention as well and so if it looks like an expansion if it looks like more um resource allocations towards um instruction in towards intervention specifically at the high school level or it looks like tiered instruction for our black and African-American and latinx students um that is maybe a little different than the instruction that we are providing um or the intervention excuse me that we're providing for the entire District like we trust you all as the experts so inform us we want to you know of course collaborate with you but we trust you as the

151expert so inform us so we can make um good decisions up here okay thank thank you all so much for your presentation are there any other questions from the board okay thank you very very much um Miss Sweeny I hope you feel better Colleen thank you for joining us as well and uh we will move on to our next presentation um that will focus on what we just talked about curriculum adoption um and so this curriculum adoption presentation really focuses on uh curriculum adoption for literacy ethnic studies a push so we invite our next presenters to join us at this time thank you thank you yes so as those presenters are making their way this is the third chapter of our three chapter story this evening um just also recognizing that we have said all

152along even through the work that we've been doing with literacy is that it's it's not about curriculum it's about the teaching that is happening in the classroom and the individual act uh interactions that our teachers our site leaders our instructional assistants our Specialists are having with our students but the content does become a vehicle for that engagement and interaction um and uh director albeck has done a lot of work with his still newly formed team we're a year and a half in to articulate that process for curriculum adoption um and we're going to be looking at that in in the context of three different types of curriculum adoption that are going to be happening uh this spring all right we will use our time very efficiently we planned and planned and planned to make sure

153that this uh goes within time we recognize that it's getting late um and I want to appreciate the team that sits before you um for all the work that we put into not only planning this presentation but all the work that has gone into the processes that we'll now share with you um I'll let the team go ahead and introduce themselves um their their position their pronouns and the work that they'll represent tonight I am Joo Gates She her pronouns I the ethnic studies teacher and special assignment I'm also a mother in The District to a third grader uh I also want to mention that today is the day of remembrance when Executive Order 9066 was signed uh which legally allowed for over 100,000 Japanese Americans to be incarcerated in prison camps so I want

154to acknowledge that day today thank you um I'm Annie J fishburg I'm a vice principal at Berkeley High School um and I'm over textbook adoption so I'm here to talk about some of the adoption processes that have happened at the high school so far and uh plans for the future good evening everyone my name is Juan Rosa principal at Berkeley High School and also the parent of a second grader at Sylvia Mendes uh and I'm also here to speak to what the curriculum adoption process has looked like for AP US History at Berkeley High School thank you so we're going to go ahead and get started and ground ourselves in our mission which is into enable and Inspire our diverse student body to achieve academic excellence and make positive contributions to the world and I

155could think of many things that improve the lever of student academic achievement and I know that what the curriculum that sets before our students that our teachers get to teach um is one of those significant levers so excited to present to you on tonight um tonight we have three main goals for you uh first is to identify the role that curriculum plays in supporting academic achievement second is to outline BD's curriculum adoption process and then third is to provide examples of process process adherence throughout this school year as it relates to our adoption procedures uh so we're going to go ahead and get started by recognizing the critical role that curriculum plays in student learning uh what we know and what research says is that well-designed highquality curriculum that is implemented well can ensure that

156students regardless of their background um ensures that they have access to Knowledge and Skills that they need to thrive um as a well-known Ed researcher Mike schmoker powerly States the single greatest determinant of learning is not socioeconomic factors or funding levels it is what we teach and the effectiveness that we teach it in um this is why quium adoption is such an important process and that's why you all as our steam board get to approve um our recommendations the instructional core is the relationship between us as educ at s our students and the content that we teach um the instructional materials that we use with our students matters it has a direct impact on their academic achievement and our District's ability to meet our identified lcap goals um in BD we take this very seriously

157which is why we follow a structured curriculum adoption process that you see on the right side of the slide before you this process unfolds in three key phases and seven structured steps each step is designed to ensure rigorous evalu valuation broad stakeholder engagement and a commitment to selecting materials that reflect the needs of B usd's students and community and I I I emphasize that because I think that's important um BD is unique and we want to make sure that what is taught is um very reflective of our students um so tonight we'll walk through this process using three ongoing curriculum adoptions as examples for you all to see what it looks like um you'll hear updates on the K5 language arts adoption you'll hear updates on the AP US History and the ethnic studies curriculum

158adoptions um these three adoptions were chosen specifically because they represent a range of what the term curriculum actually means um you'll you'll hear about a large comprehensive grade span wide adoption to a subject specific textbook selection to the development of In-House instructional units tailored to our District's needs um throughout this presentation we'll connect each of these seven steps of our process with artifacts that illustrate what this work has looked like in action whether it's teacher feedback student engagement or Community input that has helped shape our decisions does that sound all right all right let's do it uh so with that so we'll Begin by looking at how we establish our curriculum adoption process so in the first step of our adoption process we establish our process this foundational step ensures that our curriculum adoption work

159is inclusive and it is transparent um one of the most critical aspects of this phase is assembling an adoption committee that represents a broad range of diverse group stakeholders people who bring different perspectives and expertise to the table um for our K5 language arts adoption we were intentional in selecting members to ensure representation across all grade levels across all schools and across areas of expertise um as shown on this image on the slide our committee included teachers from grade levels ensuring that students needs at different development stages were considered we also thought representation from elementary schools to capture diverse site perspectives and experiences and additionally we intentionally shot out Educators with expertise in language development and special education expertise um ensuring that the curriculum meets the needs of students who have been historically underserved or

160under responded to these Educators play a critical role in supporting multilingual Learners and students with disabilities groups for whom we are committed to driving accelerated growth as outlined in our 3x5 Target the artifacts on the slide before you illustrate how we actively recruited and engaged Educators in this process by assembling a committee that reflects the voices and experiences of our school Community we laid the groundwork for a thoughtful collaborative and C Equity centered curriculum selection process in the second step of BD's adoption process we develop a lens for what we are looking for in a set of instructional materials part of that process is exam exing our local BD data in order to establish priorities in the 2021 2022 Academic Year several listening circles were held virtually so caregivers and community members could share their

161hopes and ideas for a DE to 12th grade roll out of ethnic studies there were also several in-person listening circles with students at the middle and high school levels additionally a survey was sent out to the entire bosd Community the ethnic studies advisory committee was formed in the spring of the same year and that body synthesized the findings from the survey and listening circles creating a set of recommendations based on community input one of the leading recommendations was to create in-house anti-racist age appropriate culturally responsive ethnic studies curriculum for TK to 8th grades and to update the nth grade curriculum based on and guided by the Educators teaching ethnic studies at Berkeley High School what has helped us to develop our lens is to Center the tenants of ethnic studies led by our expert educ

162ators so that our children who have been historically marginalized especially those most impacted by the ongoing achievement Gap or as glor letson Billings calls it the education debt can see themselves affirmed and uplifted by our curriculum in the third step of our adoption process we narrow our choices in this stage we take a broad set of curriculum options and we begin refining our Focus ensuring that only the most highquality standards aligned and Equity centered materials move forward in our process this step is critical because allows us to focus our deep study on piloting efforts of materials that best meet the needs of USD students and Educators for our K5 language arts adoption this work was grounded in both local educator expertise and National research the image at the top of the slide before you represents

163our collaboration with Dr Kim Gibbons and her team who conducted a National Review of all language art curriculum options a process that took over 10,000 hours of research this comprehensive study helped ensure that we were starting with the strongest most research-backed materials before moving into deeper levels of analysis at the district level building on this National Review we brought together BD teachers to carefully analyze the curriculum options discuss key instructional components such as foundational skills reading comprehension and writing developments this process wasn't just about reviewing textbooks it was about identifying materials that align with our instructional Vision support diverse Learners and reflect the priorities of our Bud Community by narrowing our choices through this structured research-based and teacher-led process we ensure that the next phase investigating our materials was focused intentional and grounded in best

164practice in the fourth step of our adoption process we investigate the materials in this stage we deeply study each of the materials that we are considering request samples materials from available Publishers and determine what types of professional learning our staff may need before piloting materials for apus history or APUSH adoption at Berkeley High School we turn to the College Board website which provides a list of suggested textbooks that meet the curricular requirements of apus History while the list is not meant to be exhaustive it currently offers 18 different textbooks for educators to consider one of those textbooks is Give me liberty which is the material that we most recently piloted and are considering at the moment in addition we also consulted the AP US History teacher Community made available on the College Board website where

165you can read different teachers experiences teaching and piloting each of the different textbooks that we were considering we also reached out to Publishers for sample text scope and sequence guides and implementation guides throughout this stage we worked with a team of apus history teachers uh small school teacher leader to plan out the pilot including teacher collaboration on implementation how we introduce new materials to our students and how we collect feedback from students piloting teachers and our community in our fifth step we pilot the materials and I will speak to the piece around obser obing pilots and Gathering observations so there are currently seven ethnic studies pilot units and 22 piloting teachers with most School sites represented as part of the piloting process we are gathering feedback from students families and piloting teachers in the spring

166we will have a series of in-person meetings with the piloting teachers to reflect on the piloting process as well as on the data so we can then synthesize and apply teacher student and family input to help inform curriculum Visions another exciting aspect of the pilot process is that for the fifth grade pilot unit from Jamestown to Revolution our new mayor Aden isi was interviewed for the final lesson on reparations and Berkeley UniFi reparations task force work that she was engaged in she has generously agreed to visit our piloting classes to talk about that work as well as her new job as the mayor of Berkeley in closing I'd like to share a quote from a student which is hot off the press from a school visit I did earlier today at Ruth AI in one

167of our wonderful piloting teachers classrooms shout out to Jessica Stern during a lesson from the pilot unit who came to Berkeley a spotlight on African-American and Asian-American stories Jessica was teaching about some of the Berkeley murals that students will see on a field trip next week which are celebrating the stories they've been learning about African-American and Asian-American uh folks in our beautiful city of Berkeley she asked the question um when you look at the murals what will you see next week because she was previewing some of the murals and one student stated when you look at the murals you'll see our ancestors and what they did to make us proud and to not give up on our dreams in the sixth and seventh steps of our adoption process we decide and then we Implement after

168months of careful evaluation pilot and Gathering stakeholder input we will reach the decision making and implementation phase this is where we take everything we've learned from National research teacher analysis classroom piloting and student feedback and we make a recommendation to you our esteemed Board of Education a key part of our decision-making is ensuring That We Gather feedback from multiple perspectives Educators families and students all of whom bring valuable insights into how a curriculum is experienced in classrooms and at the home the artifacts on the slide illustrate how we have structured some of these evaluation opportunities for our K5 language arts um adoption by integrating multiple sources of feedback we work to ensure that our final curriculum recommendation to you all is not just research based and standards aligned but also deeply informed by the lived

169experiences of those engaging with it every day our students families and teachers lastly in BD we recognize that curriculum adoption is not just an internal process it is a community effort we recognize that families caregivers and community members are essential Partners in ensuring that students receive a high quality education that is why we place a strong emphasis on keeping our community informed providing opportunities for Meaningful input and engaging them as thought Partners in this work for our K5 language arts process we have hosted eight Community input opportunities including intentionally Affinity based sessions to hear directly from families who have students from have been historically underserved these sessions included engaging black AF American families multilingual learner families and families of students with learning differences ensuring that their perspectives informed not only our curriculum selection and supported

170more Equitable outcomes for our students so pictured here uh on this slide you'll see um that in the spring of 2024 the Berkeley unified Community was invited to attend an ethnic studies showcase where sample lessons from all of the seven new pilot units were shared and attendees were invited to offer feedback and engage with the materials a panel of experts and students spoke to the importance and impact of ethnic studies and at the end of the event there was an honoring uh and award ceremony for Community change makers who were featured in The Pilot units people such as uh Carol Kenly Beatrice liia Cutler B and Harvey dong Tina Jones Williams Anthony Brown and Karina gold um for our AP US History process before the Pilot We reached reached out to all of the families

171of current apus history students we described the curriculum options and the pilot process and invited them to an after school information session to ask questions and provide feedback we hosted this information session and responded to parent feedback and questions live in the meeting but also over email um and then the apus history teachers also collected feedback from their students through informal interviews and through a formal class survey and we've been very encouraged by the feedback that we've received so far um and look forward to our next steps thank you for spending some time with us and listening and now we'll take your questions thank you all so much uh for that presentation since I went last the last time I'll go first uh this time and I will make it quick but um just a

172couple appreciations first I really appreciate the thoughtfulness and the six-step um curriculum adoption process um I think that that was for me one of the best curriculum adop adoption processes I've seen and so I really just want to take a second to highlight and um appreciate that I think um especially as it relates to um the narrowing our choices um step we heard some feedback earlier and you were here for it um in public Comon and as well as received um some uh feedback and emails uh uh really calling on us to not just use research based um Mater curriculum materials but to use evidence-based materials um and tonight you all really talked about how we are actually doing that um especially uh through the work of um Kim Gibson and using that um information

173to uh to identify what works well and then as it relates to our um to our um AP History curriculum um using the um I guess I'll say the narratives from teachers who have already used this curriculum and say it works and I think um having that evidence-based approach really makes it um a little bit more um meaningful for our families to know that there is evidence-based approach evidence-based approach but I think for our Educators and for our students as well um to know that other people around um the state around the country have used these materials and have seen some um progress especially as it relates um to what you identified earlier director albec um as our student groups who have been underserved um and under represented in a lot of curriculum so thank

174you for that I also um really appreciate um the use of teacher Voice or or teacher Pilots rather um I think that that is always so important um it's one thing to hear the evidencebased um curriculum but but it's another thing to see does it work for us in B USD B USD is such a um a unique community and we need things to work for us so hearing um the piloting um in our schools with our teachers and our students um and then also to hear their voice and their feedback about what works well and what they like and maybe even dislike about um the different curriculum uh options um are important and highlighting our students through our listening circles as well is also um really important so thank you for that um I

175also really appreciate the community collaboration efforts um with our caregivers and our families um but also with our mayor and to hear that uh we are taking almost like a city approach to uh ensuring that the curriculum works for um for our students is really really great my one and only question is about um the community input and feedback sessions um I saw that there were a number of them which are really really appreciate and then I also saw that for the a push you all posted one uh but also sent communication out to our families and so I appreciate that I do want to know um what the attendance was like um and how uh many families we had participate and the reason I'm asking that is because what typically happens is we'll go

176through a a process and then our families just like director shinoski mentioned earlier will say oh I didn't know anything about about it I wasn't able to give my feedback I didn't participate like this is all new information um and it is not because we're not providing the information but most of the time it's because our uh Community turnout is really low and so I'd like to know what the community turnout was for these events so the community turnout is low until you get some good food and then people turn out uh so one one of the one thing that we've um become experts in is um some really great food around Berkeley and providing that to all of our events um but humor aside at least as it relates to the language arts um

177we've had around at least 20 to 30 people showing up for all of our community engagements for our Affinity based ones we had roughly like six to 15 depending on them but I would say pleasantly surprised um how many folks are turning out and we've been really purposeful around that though like going and flying in front of school sites like please come to this tonight um for those folks that are like I'm not even sure what this is like having that Personal Touch is something that has stood out so we felt that um it's been pretty solid turnout on the language arts front and then um I'll let you let me speak to the Showcase sure I think uh roughly there was maybe 150 plus people who attended it was well attended and um I

178really want to just Express a tremendous amount of gratitude to my ofie colleagues because they really helped to make it a success uccessful celebration and input session from the community um they've just been fantastic to collaborate with and so grateful to them and um working with them really ensured that it was a successful event um I can talk to our our AP US History textbook adoption um this textbook adoption process is new for the high school and so we're still working out the Kinks and it's worth noting that it's a smaller textbook adoption so we invited much fewer people we did only get one parent who came to our Zoom information session but we had a number of parents who emailed us afterwards saying sorry I missed it here are my questions and so uh

179we're working on two pieces one is how do we make these events easier for parents to attend and more likely that they'll know about them but also just making sure that our follow-up communication is effective so that when parents do miss it and then reach out they're getting the answers that they needed thank you I I really appreciate you all's um response um to that and the reason I'm um also asking is because I have a an idea or suggestion um I know we're going to go through many curriculum um adoption conversations um in the near future and so one of my suggestions would be to really utilize the students um I think that we you know do a wonderful job to make sure that our caregivers that our families know about um our curriculum

180adoption and um sometimes families don't show up because of time because of other commitments because of you know life and other things but who will show up is our students and so I'm wondering what it looks like in the future to have assemblies or to have um Town Halls at the school sites that really get the students um uh excited and get them to be the mouthpieces for our curriculum adoption and then we'll go back and it may possibly inform their caregivers or Community about um the exciting curriculum that may come um to their school sites and um then I'm sure from there we'll get more um parent involvement and participation I really appreciate it also hearing um that you all uh held a zoom um uh Zoom information session as we know that sometimes

181it's hard for folks to come out and so I also want to just make sure that continue to keep that in mind in the future so thank you for uh listening to my recommendation director Chang would you like to go uh sure thank you so much um I really appreciate the presentation and and the Really uh clear and obvious thoughtful amount of work that has gone through um your team with the adoption process curriculum adoption process and I also appreciate um associate super attendant H's remark at the start that with regard to curriculum there's it's more about content than those who put forth the content and in terms of content um this seven step process I think is really Critical with um getting stakeholder input which is so important particularly when um curriculum and content

182today can be controversial and there's many stakeholders uh here in Berkeley as well um I really uh in particular I think this been noted by President Brown as well um appreciate this aspect of the um piloting of the materials and this engagement with um subject matter experts that are external to the district and also internal but also pulling in external subject matter experts and also pulling in our students who are subject matter experts in a particular way as well they are certainly our state holders um and I want to um reflect my appreciation on the amount of work this team has done in particular the TSA in the ethnic studies context of taking her time to very carefully run this process through through a number of years and engaging not just with internal stakeholders but

183external stakeholders across the district um and weathering um a period of time where ethnic studies has um been challenged and again and um I appreciate the comments as well that um Mr director albrech had noted at the front end that um you know we are also um emphasizing an important value of Berkeley values local values and um doing so in a mission oriented manner with regard to um our goals to the 5es um here in brookley um so uh I really want to um uh note my appreciation for the amount of work that's gone in through this and the time and care of years um in all of this piloting both for ethnic studies by a push and everything else um I see you got Eric foner on there he's an amazing historian and I'm

184really glad that um you've pulled him on for a push um and I'm looking forward to um the curriculum uh implementation in the future so so thanks again thank you director V yeah I just wanted to thank you for I appreciate the quick easy seven step overview it's great um I a question and I wanted to just uplift what uh president Brown said about using student voice and I know that this isn't the same but in the DCA committee I've seen a lot of like special education students come out and talk more about like what would work best for them in the classroom room and um for different disabilities and I think that's really empowering for our students to be able to share that feedback directly with their Educators and with their families and that

185space very brave of our special education students to do that in that setting um and I think it's it's important just in general as you're engaging different demographics to really look at the special education Community as we're looking at the adoption of different curriculum just because their needs I think like first special education students are Masters I think at advocating for themselves as they get older like they've learned to do that in a way that I think is it's really wonderful and empowering in bud I think they have a lot um to to share and also just like how to make sure that the materials really work for them right um our materials have to work for all Learners uh I would love to hear in the I guess for literacy absoption because we've done

186probably the most amount of like robust engagement out of the different examples that you used um because we've been at it for a long time uh what would you share as a positive highlight where you went out and maybe you you s feedback from um perhaps like English Learners or different Affinity groups and that that impacted the way that you selected the pilots or that impacted implementation I'm just curious like what's a successful model of us going out because sometimes when you're um talking to parents it feels very one directional like you're sharing something that you have to do either because it's required or because we're complying with something but when we're getting that feedback back from the community right like how do we operationalize to change and pivot maybe how we thought about implementing

187a curriculum I'm just curious like what you would Define as like a successful example of us taking that feedback from the community and perhaps pivoting on implementation um I could speak to sort of how we have changed our engagement with the community based on feedback so we first came to the literacy sessions with Community listening and learning was the phrase and then we got some feedback around that they felt like they were doing more um more listening and potentially were not doing as much learning from from their experiences um so the last few sessions that we have uh facilitated with our community sort of the way that we went around with the planning and being purposeful on getting feed back and internalizing the feedback has changed um but it's always this tension right because we

188want to give information families like regular say like we don't we don't know what's going on so we want to give information but we also want to get information back um and to to your to your questions explicitly um some of the concerns or questions that came up were how are we how are we getting information from students um so full credit to Jo me for that cute little image on like the the orang the orange orang juice like half full or the but um some of that came from let's make sure that we're um asking our students about their own experience through this uh through their experience with curriculum so that's an example of how a few things that have changed throughout the process for us director shinoski okay well thank you all so

189much uh for answering all of our questions thank you for your presentation and thank you for staying here so late at this evening we look forward to seeing you again actually in uh the next two board meetings uh for another presentation so thank you all so much and enjoy the rest of your evening board members I'll call your attention again to the information items that I mentioned earli earlier the board policies as well as the administrative regulations uh please govern yourselves according to those as we will see them on our consent calendar during the next meeting uh we will now move to the second opportunity for extended public comment is there anyone here for public comment seeing none is there anyone online for public comment seeing none are there any additional board member comments hearing

190none we will uh adjourn this meeting at 10:39 tonight good evening everyone